Playability:
Lets start with the basics. WWF Smackdown
starts off with 36 of the WWF superstars. These men and women compete for crowd
pops and championship belts: Women, European, Intercontinental, Tag Team, and
the richest prize of them all the WWF World's Heavyweight Championship. You can
wrestle in many different matches, create your own superstar, or compete in a
season.
Lots and lots of matches. You can fight in a single match
where it's your typical one on one match. Tag matches involve two wrestlers on
each team fight another team. The handicap match involves one wrestler against
two and if that's not enough how about three wrestlers. Battle Royals involve
four wrestlers duking it out in the ring. When you can seize the opportunity
you must throw your opponent over the top rope and he (or she) must land on the
ground. The Royal Rumble uses similar rules as the Battle Royal except when an
opponent is eliminated anther will take their place until 32 wrestlers have
entered. The King of the Ring involves tournament style play (similar to March
Madness brackets in college hoops). Hardcore matches are like Single matches
except you can use weapons to pulverize anyone stupid enough to step in the
ring with you. Anywhere Fall matches are just that. You pin your opponent using
anything you might find from the parking lots of the arena to the squared
circle. You can even fight anywhere and everywhere else in between. Cage
matches pit you in a metal cage and like animals must fight until one climbs up
and over for the win. Survival Match pits 3 or 4 opponents in a match where
only one will survive. A special Referee uses one of the superstars as the ref
and if you don't like him, slam him. Finally the I Quit match involves two
wrestlers beating each other until one wrestler gets a microphone shoved in his
face and must say 'I Quit' for the whole arena to hear.
My favorite
part to any wrestling game is creating your superstars and knocking senseless
any jabroni in my way. This portion of the game wasn't as detailed as previous
wrestling titles. You select a head, an upper body and lower body. The first 36
choices for each portion are the same as the wrestlers already in the game
(kind of monotonous). You had to pick from a menu of preconceived wrestlers
because certain combination just didn't match. Selecting any move for your
future superstar was a nice touch and naming your favorite and special move was
even better.
The best innovation in this game deals with season play.
If you use a created star you must first enter the preseason. It is here where
you build attributes and develop the character of your wrestler. Special
talents and character traits are now available to your individual wrestler.
Along the way other stars will talk to you. You can say thanks or tell them to
shove it. This sets up certain alliances and build the foundation for future
story lines and matches (just like 'real' wrestling). There are clips of
backstage happenings and this adds to the whole wrestling soap opera. Public
challenges, beat downs, making the save, sports entertainment at it's finest.
I thought this game showed great innovation using story lines and
actual alliances to portray its real life counterpart. A major pet peeve I had
was the game only allowed 4 created wrestlers per memory card. The only way to
save your creations was on another card. You can unlock wrestlers, but you
still have to create them. If you already have four created wrestlers, someone
has to be retired. I also found the game a little buggy with some of the story
lines. I would get jumped by Triple H, get saved by Mankind, and find myself in
a match with Triple H as my partner fighting Mankind and the Rock (Well it's
the thought that counts I guess). Another bug I found was while creating a bad
guy I received character traits of being trustworthy and cooperative. Now I
have a nice dependable heel in my stable. Some things to improve on in the
sequel I guess.
Game
Options:
This is a 1
disk game for 1 to 2 Players (or up to 4 players when a multi-tap is used). It
is compatible with the standard (digital) joypad and the analog stick controls
of the dual shock joypad. Games can be saved via memory card (1 block per
save). |
