by THQ

Wrestling shows aren’t drawing the huge ratings that they used to. Whether it is because the product isn’t as good as it was five years ago or simply because the public has gotten tired of it is up for debate. One thing is for certain, though, despite low ratings for the TV shows the videogames based on the WWE are still incredibly popular. Even less-than-stellar efforts like the two WrestleMania games on GameCube and the two Raw titles on Xbox sold extremely well. The crown jewel of the THQ wrestling titles has been the Smackdown series which, with the exception of Just Bring It, has shown dramatic improvement from year to year in not only the quality of the games, but the number of sales as well. What makes these games so popular is that they feature enough WWE shtick to keep hardcore wrestling fans happy while providing extremely entertaining gameplay that is easy to learn so that people that aren’t fans of sports entertainment can enjoy them as well.

The latest game in the Smackdown series, subtitled Here Comes the Pain, is the best example of this philosophy we have seen so far. For hardcore WWE fans, most of the wrestlers that have appeared on TV are in the game along with an outstanding story mode that features enough storylines that you can play through it a dozen times and still see something new. For the people that aren’t huge fans of WWE but love the gameplay, the grappling system has been overhauled so you have four times as many moves at your disposal. A new submission system has been added which sets up a "tug of war" scenario for certain holds. And there are more match types than ever. What all of this means is that Here Comes the Pain is the best wrestling game on the market whether you watch Raw and Smackdown every week or not. With a couple of tweaks, next year’s game could be perfect, but that doesn’t mean that this year’s Smackdown isn’t pretty damn good on its own.

The season mode has been redesigned and is a lot better than the season mode Shut Your Mouth. The season lasts one year and you only have five shows a month. Rather than making you wander around backstage in first person mode, Here Comes the Pain gives you several options that you access through your locker. You can automatically move to various parts of the arena or visit the General Manager’s office, but you can only go to these places if there is another superstar there. You can also adjust your attribute points, spend money you earn, check your profile, and enter into your match from the locker area. This setup makes the game flow a lot faster than the season in Shut Your Mouth so you can jump into your matches each week right away rather than suffering through all of the loading and other BS that walking around in first person mode brought.

The actual WWE writers wrote the storylines in season mode, and there is rumored to be ten years worth of angles in the game. Some storylines repeat every year – you get offers to form a tag team or a faction at the same times every season – but there are a lot of new things that will happen every time you play as well. Storylines range from the Matt Hardy and Lita angle where you fall in love with your manager to the classic Stone Cold Steve Austin bit where you drive a truck to the ring and cover your enemies in beer. Throughout each season you’ll make a lot of friends and enemies and be stabbed in the back seemingly every other week. There is a sense of continuity to the storylines as well. If you feud with The Rock for a while and then try to be friends with him a few months later, he remembers and is more than likely going to kick your ass. Feuds last anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months and they all end in a satisfactory way, rather than just being dropped so you can take on someone else. When your season ends you can start up a new season right where you left off. All of the titles are right where they were before, and people are continuing the same feuds they were having from the last season. Season mode is simply outstanding and very addictive. You’ll find yourself drawn back to the game over and over again simply because you want to see what is coming up next.

Another aspect of season mode that I really like is how everything is set up much like the real WWE. Only superstars of a certain caliber are allowed to challenge for the various titles. Each wrestler has superstar points which go up and down depending on how well liked you are and whether you win your matches or not. Win your matches and raise your superstar points, and you’ll get title shots. A determining factor on whether you win those matches is how many attribute points your character has. Attributes for strength, endurance, speed, submission, and technique determine things like how much damage you do to your opponent or how long you can hold a submission. When you start the game, each character’s attribute points are pretty much like they would be in real life, but as you play through the season you earn more points so you can make your chosen character stronger. Of course, much like the real WWE, there are still some people that will beat you no matter how high your attribute points are. Triple H, Brock Lesnar, Goldberg, and Undertaker are just a few examples.

The gameplay has been greatly improved as well. First off, the grappling system has been changed so now two button presses are required to initiate a move. Each direction on the d-pad – up, down, left, right – corresponds to different types of grapples. Up is power moves, down is submission moves, etc. After you press the direction of the grapple you want and the circle button, you then have to press the d-pad a second time in any of the four directions along with the circle button again to actually begin your move. What this means is that you have four moves for each type of grapple for a total of sixteen front grapple moves. The submission system has been changed as well. Certain submission moves force you into a "tug of war" scenario where you have to press buttons as fast as you can so that you can make your opponent submit or escape. Wrestlers with high submission attributes can hold the moves longer, which give you a greater chance of making your opponent tap, and they are also able to get out of submission moves much easier when an opponent uses one on them.

This is significant because it not only adds a lot of variety to the matches but it also means that you can use specific moves in order to achieve specific results. During a match, in the corners of the screens beside the character names and Smackdown meter, there is a little body icon. As you wear down specific body parts, they change color on the icon. This means you could do several power moves that weaken the back or the legs and then lock on a submission that focuses on that body part to get a victory. The impact this has on gameplay is tremendous and really changes to pace of the matches into something that is a lot more strategic and dramatic.

The final change to the gameplay is that there is a size to strength ratio. There are different weight classes now, which means that cruiserweights like Rey Mysterio can no longer pick up heavyweights or superheavyweights like Kane or Big Show. This makes the game much more difficult for smaller wrestlers because not only can they not use power moves on the bigger wrestlers, but they take more damage as well when they are being attacked. What this means is that you have to rely on the other aspects of the gameplay. Relying of your speed to maneuver around and attacking specific body parts so you can get a submission victory are the keys to winning. This size to strength ratio along with the attribute points and overall more realistic design of the characters means that you can’t just play the game the same way with everyone and expect to win. From one character to the next the game changes and that is why the gameplay in Here Comes the Pain is simply the best of any wrestling game to date.

The rest of the game is much the same from last year. There are three new match types, however, in addition to the Hell in a Cell, TLC, Ladder, Table, elimination, and all of the rest of the matches you expect to find in a Smackdown game. The first of the new matches is First Blood. For the first time in the series, wrestlers can now bleed if they get hit on the head hard enough. These matches are sort of fun, but play exactly like a hardcore match, so they aren’t that big of a deal. The second new match is the Bra and Panties match. There are so many things wrong with this I don’t know where to begin. You can only use the WWE divas in the game and CAWs aren’t allowed. Another problem lies in the concept of the match itself. Bra and panties matches aren’t that great in real life (unless you are 12 years old boy or Jerry "The King" Lawler) so what is the point of including them in a videogame? You’ll probably play the match once and never touch it again because it is just too stupid and is not "teh seXy" like the developer probably intended. The third and final new match type in Here Comes the Pain is also the best: The Elimination Chamber. Two wrestlers start out in the ring and four others are locked up in chambers where one opens up every couple of minutes and the whole thing takes place inside a huge cage. It is an elimination match, so the last person left in the match is the winner. You can climb around on the inside of the cage or climb on the chambers and do moves off of them. You can throw your opponents into the glass sides of the chambers to do even more damage. The drama and psychology in the Elimination Chamber is simply amazing.

The create-a-wrestler (CAW) mode is pretty much the same as last year, but it is a little easier to use the face-morphing tool and also to access the different layers of parts you can use. Making your wrestler look and wrestle exactly how you want is easy thanks to the hundreds of options available. Their entrance movie, moves, and theme music don’t offer quite as many options, however, and that brings me to my first complaint. Raw 2 and WrestleMania XIX both gave you the ability to make custom entrances right down to lighting and fireworks, and Raw 2 even let you make entrance videos (not to forget the fact it used the Xbox hard drive so you could use any music you wanted), but Here Comes the Pain gives you no such options. You are stuck with crappy generic entrances and the same music that has appeared in the last four Smackdown games. I sincerely hope that THQ and Yukes let us make custom entrances next year. If they do, the game will be just about perfect.

Another complaint I have is with the included roster. La Resistance is nowhere to be found. No Hulk Hogan. No Maven. No Tommy F’n Dreamer. And instead of giving us superstars we actually want in the game, we get a list of WWF Legends that is severely half-assed. Sergeant Slaughter and Old School Undertaker wouldn’t have been so bad if they had their old entrance music, but we don’t even get that. None of the music for the legends is available and they instead come down to the ring in silence and all of them ride in the corny mini rings used at WrestleMania III. The legends look and act and wrestle exactly like you probably remember them, but I would of much rather had more current WWE stars than the legends.

My final complaint with the game is that it is extremely difficult to use CAWs in season mode. Their superstar points are very low, but that is OK since it is easy to raise them up. The problem is that you only have a small number of attribute points you can give them, so the best you can do is give your CAW an attribute average of 4 while the people you are competing with are much higher. This means you can’t wrestle for jack compared to the rest of the roster and you lose. A lot. You still get attribute points even if you lose, but it will take you about two full seasons before you can really even compete. Once you have a CAW powered up, you can make copies of it and then just edit the copy so you can make whoever you want, and they’ll already be powered up, but having to suffer through two years of losing and struggling and not having any fun is an outrage.

The graphics in Here Comes the Pain are excellent. The wrestlers are all very detailed and look exactly like they do on TV. The animation was outstanding last year, but Yukes re-animated about a third of the moves and the game looks absolutely stunning. Everything flows together so seamlessly now. Every character moves exactly the way they should and each character has tons of unique animations. Weapons such as chairs and trashcans deform the more you use them and the sections on top of the Hell in a Cell that you can break through bend now so you can see when and where it is going to break. The game includes all of the sets and stages from the fourteen pay per views as well as Raw and Smackdown, and they all look fantastic. An interesting addition this year is that there are several different arenas and they all look very different and add a lot to the feeling that you are traveling around the country in season mode. Safeco Field in Seattle where WrestleMania XIX was held is also included, and it looks extremely close to the real thing. The crowd has been redesigned and the first few rows are actually made up of polygons while the rest of the crowd are just sprites, but it looks very good nonetheless. The graphics are excellent and go a long way towards immersing you in the game.

The sound is also very well done, but disappointing at the same time. Almost every superstars’ music is included, but some wrestlers use older themes. The sounds of wrestling are excellent, as always, with every punch, suplex, and chair shot sounding just like it should. The ring announcer that announced each match and introduced wrestlers is gone, and so is the commentary by JR and The King. I really liked the announcer in the game last year, and the commentary wasn’t bad enough to be taken out entirely, so it is hard to not feel disappointed that these things didn’t make it this year. They let John Madden do commentary every year even though he sucks, so why not give us JR and The King with the option to turn it off if we want. It just doesn’t make much sense.

Overall, WWE Smackdown!: Here Comes the Pain is the best wrestling game money can buy. I said that about last year’s Shut Your Mouth, and I really did love that game, but Here Comes the Pain is just that much better. The depth of gameplay thanks to the new area specific damage, submission system, attribute points, and the new grappling system makes the game much more strategic and adds immensely to the drama of each match. Season mode moves a lot quicker this year and the stories are genuinely interesting, so you will play through the season because it is actually fun instead of playing through just to unlock stuff. The game even has a stat tracking feature that keeps track of wins and losses and who you faced and your record against everyone. With a couple of tweaks, next year’s Smackdown could definitely earn a 5/5. If you are even remotely interested in the WWE or just love to play wrestling games, Here Comes the Pain is a solid purchase and most definitely worth a rental if you want to try before you buy.

Eric Qualls   (11/18/2003)