Before I start this review, I’d like to give a quick shoutout to Shelly ‘Salinas’ Martinez. She didn’t wrestle much, and basically all she did was wag her hips and yell stuff I didn’t understand due to not speaking Spanish, but I’m saddened to see her leave TNA. She had a lot of in-ring potential that we didn’t really see in WWE, and LAX just won’t feel the same without her. Shelly, forgive any errors Google translator makes, but usted es una muy caliente mamacita y que no será olvidada.

Now then, TNA’s first videogame. I own a 360, so I’ll be reviewing that version.

The first thing I did when I popped this in was make a one fall match between myself, Christian Cage, and James Storm. So the entrances start. They’re what you’d expect of an entrance lasting twelve seconds. What’s interesting is the entrance music is often barely audible over the crowd’s cheers. Apparently they recorded it live, so now we know what it’s like to stand in the live audience. Ha, you can’t hear a thing. Thank god for televised editing.

Now, the match begins… excuse me while I stop acting professional:

OH MY GOD, THESE ARE THE GREATEST GRAPHICS IN A WRESTLING GAME THAT I’VE EVER SEEN. IT’S LIKE TNA BY SOME KIND OF VOODOO MAGIC RIPPED THE WRESTLERS RIGHT OFF SPIKE TV AND TRAPPED THEM IN THIS GAME FOR ME TO CONTROL! HOW SADISTICALLY AWESOME IS THAT?!

Ok, professional again. But seriously, you’ll be blown away when you see how detailed and lifelike the superstars are. Not only that, but their moves are flowed into and out of flawlessly, as are the impacts of the hits. Counters are flowed into without the slightest ‘jump’ in the models. I don’t know how much time they spent on this, but it was worth it. It’s like you’re watching the match on iMPACT!, it’s that perfect. Oh it’s real. It’s damn real.

Now, for the next 20 minutes I got royally destroyed. TNA apparently tried to make this game as “pick up and play” as possible, and maybe they succeeded, but in reality this game is as “pick up and play” as any other you’ve played. Prepare to be humiliated pretty severely in your first few matches. And if you think your experience playing Smackdown vs. RAW will help you, guess again. The controls are entirely different, right down to which button makes you run and which is the counter.

As you learn more and more of the controls (because trust me, it’ll take you days to learn everything you can do), it becomes very obvious that the Mortal Kombat guys designed this game. You’ve got three buttons designed to hurt people: one for punches, one for kicks, and one for grabs. Now, these buttons are modified by pressing the Strong button, or whatever it’s called. Basically you hold it down, then when you press those attack buttons again, you do other, stronger stuff. It’s using this feature that you’re able to lock in a grapple and flow into fancy moves. You press the Hold button again in a grapple to execute an attack that varies based on who you are. This is also modified by which way you press the analog stick before you press the button – each direction produces a different move. And all THAT is modified – doubled – by holding down the Strong button before moving the stick and pressing Hold again. Holy options, Batman!

And oh, it doesn’t end there, that’s just what you can do when standing still. When in a charge, you’ve got three basic attacks, again accessed by pressing either of the attack buttons and all of which vary depending on who you are. Again, pressing the Strong button before attacking gives you three more attacks. The attack produced also varies depending on your distance from the opponent before you press attack, whether or not your opponent is near the ropes or against the turnbuckle, and if you’re a high-flyer, how close you are to the ropes yourself and where your opponent is positioned. Does your brain hurt yet? Because it doesn’t end here. Leaping off the turnbuckle is three options depending on the button you press, and of course this is modified by the Strong button. AND, if you’re outside the ring, you can do area-specific moves using the guardrails, the steel steps, the announcer’s table, the sides of the ring, and the ringposts. Plus, there are some things I’ve done where I have no idea what I pressed, but I ended up hurting my opponent pretty severely, so yay.

And of course, ALL OF THESE THINGS produce different moves depending on who you’ve picked.

You might want to take a coffee break at this point so your brain can digest all this. Plus, every single move in the game can be countered if you’re quick enough. But it doesn’t end there – that counter can be countered by the attacker, and THAT counter can be countered by you, and on and on until someone screws up. Wow. Now you see how amazing it is that the game flows seamlessly into moves. There is no move, counter, or impact where you can say “oh here’s where the animation starts, look at that jump in position.” It’s flawless. All in all, all this stuff you can do make the matches an absolutely fantastic experience. There are critics who say that so many wrestlers have the same attacks, but they haven’t played this game past punching and kicking. With all those attack options, each character does shine individually. Now I admit that some of the wrestlers do produce the same move when you’re running, holding this down, and pressing that when in this position in the ring, but that’s how it is on screen too. Chris Sabin and AJ Styles can do a lot of the same stuff, that’s just reality.

But every game has bad things about it. So let’s look at the Story Mode.

The story starts off with you as Suicide, a masked wrestler. You get a World Title shot, but LAX gets you in the locker room and demands that you lay down in the match. You agree so they go away, but you go on and win the title. So LAX ambushes you and beats you so bad that over half your bones are broken and your face can no longer be called a face, then leaves you for dead in an alley in Mexico.

Wait, what?

Yeah, this is the start of a wrestling game. Yay for attempted murder and racist stereotypes!

So you wake up in a plastic surgeon’s room with no memories, and the surgeon is willing to reconstruct you, because he’s just a nice guy. This is where you get to the Create a Wrestler mode. You can choose High Flyer, Technical, or Powerhouse, and then you choose body type, fiddle with your face, and choose your attire. The options they give for everything aren’t too detailed, but there should be enough to allow you to create the character you have in mind. However, you’ll get to the part where you select your moves…

Everything is locked, so all your moves are set to Default. How do you unlock moves? By earning Style Points, which are obtained by wrestling. The more moves you perform, the more points you get. You get Style Points outside of Story Mode too, so you might want to play Exhibition mode for a while before getting into the story.

Now, the problem with this system is that moves don’t have a fixed Style Point cost – moves can be unlocked only as you accumulate points. You get, for example, 6700 points, and a move will be unlocked. Ok, fine, I could live with this system, except for the fact that THE MOVE UNLOCKED IS NOT UP TO YOU. My character is a high-flyer, but none of the moves unlocked for me after several hours of play and 130,000 points accumulated are high-flyer moves! I’m getting Chokeslams, Full-Nelson Suplexes, Fireman’s Carry Facebusters, and on and on. As you progress in the story your opponents have more and more endurance, so you’ll need these unlocked moves to go toe to toe with them, as Default moves are weaker. So all my high-flyer stuff is Default and weak, and I’ve got a whole bunch of powerhouse moves that I virtually never use, because that’s just not how I play wrestling games. I picked a high-flyer so I could high-fly. This method of unlocking moves makes the wrestler type you choose virtually useless, since it’s not up to you what signature moves you get. Finishers are randomly unlocked too; you don’t get a choice. This isn’t Create a Wrestler at all, this is Gradually Unlock a Premade Character.

So anyway, you (aka, the falsely-named Create a Wrestler) “feel the strange urge to slam people onto a mat, so either you’re a wrestler or you have anger management issues.” So you sign up to a local indy promotion, and you work your way up fairly quickly to a TNA contract. Now, in the indy matches and the TNA tryouts you go through, you’ll face some randomly generated nameless jobbers. Ok, fine, whatever. Once you get a TNA contract, you’re teamed with Eric Young, and face… more random jobbers. Ok, fine, maybe these are dark matches. By the way, just so you know, once you tag your partner in, you take control of the partner and the computer takes control of you. I like this feature. You’ll never be watching in frustration as your computer partner gets destroyed in a situation you yourself could easily overcome.

Soon, you go up against Team 3D. Alright, the game is picking up! You beat them, and who’s next? The Motor City Machine Guns? The Rock’N’Rave Infection? AJ Styles and Tomko? Ooohh LAX, time for revenge! Nope. MORE RANDOM JOBBERS.

That’s right. Team 3D is ranked lower than computer generated nameless wrestlers. Eventually, after two or three more jobber teams you do get to AJ and Tomko, but after them, more random jobbers. Two or three more jobber teams, then the Guns. This is where I put the game down. I’m at about 45% done, and almost the whole thing has been one-fall tag matches. More of them are coming, since this is a quest to be number one contender to the tag titles held by AJ and Tomko. If we already beat them earlier, why aren’t we the contenders? Who knows. All I know is I still have to go through the Guns, then more jobbers, then LAX, jobbers, and AJ and Tomko again. This will be over half the game spent on just tag-team matches. Where are the falls count anywhere matches? Where’s Ultimate X? Heck, I’d even settle for a handicap match at this point. Plus, as of yet, there have been no feuds. You do get a random nameless wrestler who beats you down at the beginning, but you beat him in the next match and that’s the last of him. “Story mode” is just a random series of matches, mostly against faceless jobbers, and so far half of it has been tag matches. If I wanted unrelated, random matches I’d just go to Exhibition. At least there I can fight real TNA superstars, not random nobodies who aren’t even given a name.

A story apparently consisting entirely of tag matches wouldn’t be SO bad, but every time you try to make a cover, and I repeat, EVERY TIME YOU TRY TO MAKE A COVER, his partner will rush in and break it up. You’d think he’d be disqualified after the fourth time, but no. Plus, limb damage actually has no effect on the match. You could have pounded that opponent for 20 minutes with steel chairs and it won’t do any good. Try to cover his partner, and he’ll still rush in and break it up. The only way you can make a cover in a tag match is to pin him right up against your corner, so the partner doesn’t have enough time to run over. Any closer and you won’t make the three count, period. I can’t play Story mode anymore. I just can’t.

Finally, I’d like to give Ultimate X a special mention, as it’s a very fun match type. Remember the headache you got when I explained all the button combinations that do moves? Ultimate X adds more of them in the form of doing things with those cables. You can jump from the turnbuckle to the cables, jump from the turnbuckle to attack people on the cables to create some pretty epic moments, and even combat while hanging from the cables. I haven’t tried pressing each of the three attack buttons or holding down the Strong button, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all that affected how you attacked.

Removing the X from the structure is a lot better handled than removing something in a Smackdown vs. RAW ladder match. Rather than just hanging there for a preset amount of time, removing the object is a matter of a little meter with a needle rapidly moving from side to side. When it’s in the highlighted yellow part in the middle, you press A. Do that five times and the object is yours. Get knocked down, and the game remembers how many times you succeeded, so the next time you get up there you pick up where you left off. I remember playing SvR and wondering why it takes like two minutes to take the belt down. You’re absolutely guaranteed to get knocked off the ladder. This system adds elements of speed and skill. And you may think “well if removing it is so fast the match must end quickly.” Nope, because you can be attacked while on the cables from wrestlers standing on the ground. Winning Ultimate X is as challenging in the game as it must be for the guys actually doing it. Hours of fun in just one match type.

So, this game is absolutely amazing to play in Exhibition, against the game or against people. The graphics couldn’t be better, and the combat is everything you’d expect from the guys who did Mortal Kombat. Ultimate X is one of the best gimmick matches to hit the screen, and it’s the most fun you’ll have in any wrestling game to date. Bringing the game down is the lack of Knockouts, the lack of blood (I thought the Mortal Kombat guys did this, where is the blood?!), and an absolutely atrocious Story mode and Create a Wrestler move system. Take whatever rating you find for this game, and if Story Mode wasn’t in it at all, I’m willing to bet the rating would be at least two points higher. If you pick this game up, and I urge you to, just stay away from Story Mode and you’ll have hours of fun playing a wrestling game that’s immersive and detailed like no other.

Te adoramos, Shelly. Espero que usted cambia de opinión y vuelva pronto!

I have no idea if that’s grammatically correct.

That’s my view from the Great White North. I’m Roxxi Laveaux Fanboy, may the voodoo be with you.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Editorial Columns, Wrestling News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.