Open your mouth and say Raw (WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2006 (PS2))

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2006 (PS2)
Date:	23/04/06 (729 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A great stress reliever, even more gameplay options

Disadvantages: button bashing controls, platform specific unlockables

Its bad it really is - Wrestling fans have the reputation of being geeks, hell its one of those hobbies that people just laugh at - you want to know how bad it is? When you go and buy the latest Wrestling Game from your local computer game store its better to pretend its a present for your non-existent young son than to admit its for yourself.

The actual premise of the game is slightly different from the TV shows and Pay-Per-Views that WWE put on, in the game the result isn’t pre-determined, in basic its a fighting game that’s different from the norm of the Tekken, Street-Fighter and Mortal Kombat series, the reason being is the actual fighting environment, the standard match takes place in a wrestling ring and its surroundings, plus there’s a referee there to make sure you don’t cheat. The aim of each match is simple, beat your opponent enough so that you can ‘pin’ them (hold their shoulders down to the mat for the count of 3 by the referee) or they submit.

But that’s not the attraction to Smackdown vs. Raw 2006 (here on in referred to as ‘the game’), more the fact that there’s a huge variety of matches that you can take part in, a brief run down of them are:

Cage Match: The ring is surrounded by a metal cage that keeps anyone from escaping the ring, your mission is to beat your opponent enough that you can climb the cage and get out before they get up. This type of match I’d find as the dullest in the game, its generally a case of repetitively attacking your opponent then climbing the cage and for a long time you’ll find that just as you’re about to escape your opponent will make a miraculous recovery and be able to knock you back into the ring which just makes it drag.

Hell in a Cell: Similar to the Cage match except there’s a roof on the cage, this time you need to beat your opponent the standard way of pinning or submission but you get the added bonus of the fact you can break out of the cell and climb to the top where if you’re lucky enough you can throw your opponent off the top of the cell or even through the roof causing a lot of damage to them and leaving them easy pickings for the win. Because of this you’ll find the match is a lot more fun, but extremely frustrating if you get knocked off the roof yourself and its then a long fight to actually win the match.

Buried Alive Match: Beat your opponent so bad that you can lead them to a casket outside the ring, throw them in it and close the lid on them, there’s no disqualifications here so believe it or not its one of the easier style of matches and fun to take any post-work frustrations out on.

Slobber-Knocker: You fight opponents 1 on 1, beat them and another enters the ring, this carries on until you finally get beaten yourself. This is actually quite fun, as your opponents seem to be weaker than they are in a normal match so you can rattle off quite a few quite quickly, but again it does get repetitive.

Royal Rumble: 30 man over the top rope challenge - again it starts 1 on 1 until there are 6 wrestlers in the ring, the only way to eliminate an opponent is to throw them over the top rope - once you have another man comes down, until you’ve thrown the last man over the top - once again its easier than it sounds, as the system to throw out is extremely easy and all you need to do is hit buttons on your joy pad as quick as you can.

There are 5 examples of what are up to 100 different types of match you can have on the game, needless to say when there are 100 varieties of match you can get a lot of similar game styles that only have slight twitches in them - they may be aesthetically extremely different but when it comes down to the game play they’ll be exactly the same.

Wrestler wise - all the big names from the middle of last year are on there, reason its so back-dated is that WWE have to give a list of their current roster quite early for it to be included in the game and that means cuts and additions don’t get taken into account. But all the big names are there - to give an example of a few: Batista, Kane, Undertaker, John Cena, Carlito, Chris Masters, Big Show, Rey Mysterio are in there amongst many others and an extensive ‘Legends’ list that includes Ted Dibiase, Old School Kane, The Rock, Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart and the British Bulldog.

This leads me to a slight niggle with the game - as its the first one that was released both on PS2 and the PSP there are some features that you can only unlock on one system - which seems to be a sneaky way to make people buy 2 copies of the game and this is a trend that I honestly hope doesn’t move on into the future of cross-over gaming.

But onto the thing that makes or breaks a game - the longevity of it and the game has it in stacks - its got that ‘just one more go’ factor that so rarely comes out in games basically meaning you’ll find that you keep saying that and 2 hours later you’re still playing it. It also has a good feature of 2 different types of season mode - you can play as a wrestler going out there trying to get the belt or you can be the general manager of a show trying to increase the ratings, again this just adds to the longevity of the game as once you’ve finished one side of it you feel compelled to complete the other side as well.

As well as all the above there’s the ‘unlockables’ on the game - complete certain challenges and you’ll find that you get new wrestlers, outfits and belts to go after, as well as that there’s also a situation where you get points for each match you compete in, with these points you can buy even more updates to make the game even bigger.

One niggle I do have is with the control set - fair play that its going to be hard to make them varied but every character has the same basic move set which makes for the game to be a bit too easy to use with everyone, in fact the only difference is if you’ve picked a smaller character then he won’t be able to pick up the bigger opponents, as well as that there are a lot of parts of the game that require frantic button pressing - and I thought we’d got away from that after Daley Thompson’s Decathalon on the old Commodore 64.

Graphics and Music wise as you can expect this edition has again surpassed the previous edition of the series, the actual wrestlers are even more realistic and finally have expressions that match what’s going on on screen. The surrounding environments have also been made a lot more interactive, throw someone into a wall and boxes may fall from above, throw them into a table of food and you get the chance to smash their head into a pie or they may get scolded on the coffee that's sat on the table.

With the music side its the standard you’d expect from WWE games - a rock soundtrack always strumming along in the background unless your wrestler’s coming out for a match, at which point his entrance music will play - quick note here, this time they’ve actually got everyone's correct music where-as in previous editions there was the odd occasion when a generic music was used due to licensing issues. As well as the music you’ll find that all the wrestler’s actually talk in backstage segments now where-as in previous incarnations the only wrestlers that talked were your opponents and you had to rely on reading subtitles for what your character said - it may only be a slight tweak but it makes the game a lot more interesting.

Overall it’s a good game - one that non-wrestling fans would enjoy, but wrestling fans would enjoy a lot more - however I’d still recommend picking up a second-hand copy rather than pay full price or perhaps waiting for it to hit the Platinum series as it invariably will.

Summary: A worthy addition to the wrestling game series with some minor flaws.