It’s coming – and we’ve played the PlayStation3 version of the WWE’s newest, sweatiest wrestling extravaganza…
When the video game Oscars are dished out in 2007’s prestigious ceremony, expect Kurt Angle to win the Best Facial Expressions award. He does pain. He does surprise. He does confusion. Anger is easy to him. Watching PS3 SmackDown is like watching two Patrick Stewarts trying to out-act each other in the ultimate Shakespearian showdown. We’ve played the next-gen version of SmackDown Vs Raw 2007 and found it hard to believe what we were seeing. The wrestlers don’t just look a little bit more convincing and realistic than before – they’re as close to real as you can get. They’re not just believable, they’re emotional. It’s not because of the costumes, or the skin, or the staggering sweat that forms a translucent layer over their skin – it’s the looks. The facial expressions. The way they react to every little event. This isn’t just a bit better than the usual SmackDown business, it’s miles ahead. It’s uncanny. We couldn’t quite believe what we were seeing. Series creator Yukes has somehow managed to get real men into our televisions.
You see Kurt Angle blinking away the sweat from his eyes. Hit him in the head with something hard and his eyes close again – but not like an extended blink – his whole face screws up in pain, his teeth are gritted and you can tell that he’s in serious distress. Then the poor guy’s left rolling around on the floor with a stunned, open-mouthed look telling you he’s in big trouble.
Meanwhile, his opponent John Cena is stalking the edge of the stage, staring around, desperately trying to find a weapon that’ll turn the fight to his advantage. The view cuts to a John Cena-eye view. What’s this? Cena has seen something! We then cut back to the usual game angle shot of Cena grabbing the lump of wood and aiming it toward Kurt’s now surprised-looking face. This sort of presentation and detail is unprecedented.
You don’t just see them frown and flap their mouths open like in old SmackDown, the full range of emotions is being shown with anger, tiredness, amazement, pain and loads more all flickering across the faces of the wrestlers during the course of a fight. Seeing a confused Kurt Angle all wide eyed and open-mouthed and with his hands held open in a ‘What did I do?’ gesture is utterly awesome. You can see the wrestlers thinking. It’s quite the most amazing recreation of real people we’ve yet seen in any game ever let alone wrestling games. As well as looking different it’s going to play quite a bit differently this year too. All the grappling is now done with the right-hand analogue stick. Throws, pins and grabs are all pulled off with the stick now, with you yanking it in different directions to hit the moves. It’s going to be easy for players new to the series to get into it, but we’re a bit worried there might be less control for us seasoned SmackDown pros used to our traditional layouts.
GOT THE SKILLS TO PAY THE BILLS
But! New skills have been added, and they’re proper innovations that go much further than the lame selection of additions we’ve come to expect with each year’s WWE upgrade. We’re getting a new ‘chain reversal’ system, an enhancement designed to recreate the comedic battle for control of a grapple. You know when they grab each other, spin around, change grip, wriggle out of it and turn the hold against their opponent, then spin out of it again? Chain reversal allows you to do all that sort of thing, giving you more counter-attacking options, and also, hopefully, removing some of the reliance on button-mashing.
The makers have decided they want you to be involved more in the grapples. What happened in the past is that you’d lock onto a grapple, then sit there doing nothing for ten seconds while you waited for the move to kick in. Not any more – now you’ll be waggling the sticks and trying desperately to pull off counter-attacks whenever there’s a bit of holding going on. That’s going to make the whole thing loads more interactive.
As well as these new technical skills for advanced gamers, there’s a whole new selection of environmental ‘hotspots’ for you to find and use to pull off pre-arranged special attacks and moves which exploit your surroundings. Like, say you’re out of the ring. The metal steps are one of these hotspots, so if you approach them you can fire off an easy move to whack the other guy’s head into the cold, hard, but suspiciously bendy, steel.
There’s something like 30 of these hotspots dotted around each arena – some even involving the crowd. During our little play we were able to yank our opponent over the barrier and chuck him into the spectator area, triggering the crowd members to form a little circle around the two of us and start offering us their signs and umbrellas to use as weapons. You can’t get angry and attack the crowd members, though. That’s not in the Marquis of WWE’s rules.
There’s one thing that hasn’t been changed or enhanced in any way, and we’re not complaining. For the first time ever, the makers have decided not to tamper with last year’s Momentum energy bar system, so there’s no need to learn a whole new system of playing. That’s great news – the constant fiddling with the bar system has been a continued source of pain and confusion each year. SmackDown 2007 will just use the straightforward Momentum and Stamina system we all know and understand from last year’s SmackDown.
Some things remain secret at this stage. Publisher THQ and developer Yukes are keeping quiet about the wrestler rota this year, probably so we don’t start complaining about who’s been put in and who’s been left out. We’re always complaining about that! Moan, moan , moan, every year. All we’ve seen so far are four fighters – Kurt Angle, John Cena, Triple H and Rey Mysterio. They’re all bankers. We’ll keep you updated on rota changes throughout the year, probably while moaning about who’s been left out.
There’s going to be commentary again this year, only that’s different too. Using the standard WWE adage that more is better, the WWE currently has three blokes manning the mic during matches – so that’s what we get in SmackDown 2007. You also here more sounds, more groans, and more samples of Kurt Angle saying whatever the American equivalent is of ‘Ooh, blimey, you’ve just squashed me nuts right up into me guts’ as the fight unfolds.
The crowd is another area that’s always an issue in WWE games. These people are important in wrestling, almost as important as the wrestlers themselves in fact: they cheer, wave at the cameras, throw stuff, and make the experience all the more thrilling to watch. This year they’re interactive, more intelligent and get involved. You might get helped to your feet by a concerned punter should you get a kicking out on the concrete floor, or handed a nice piece of wood to hit someone with. These guys will also be there to surround and help you in the PSP and PS2 versions of SmackDown 2007, but there’ll be less of ’em and they’ll look more cardboard-boxy. On PS3, expect a sea of 50 great-looking, intelligent, back-patting and sign-waving fans.
To help pull all this off, the game’s maker, Yukes, has changed the way it does things. You may remember SmackDown! Just Bring It, the first WWE game on PS2. It was a bit of a let down, a barely enhanced slight visual upgrade of the previous PSone game that totally failed to take advantage of the PS2’s power. The difficulty of working on a new system flummoxed the developers, leading to a lacklustre PS2 game.
But that’s not going to happen this time. Yukes has created several different internal teams – one focussing on getting the technical stuff working as well as possible and another specialising on moving the gameplay forward – so expect this next-gen SmackDown to be, well, a proper next-gen SmackDown.
The camera shots show off this attention to detail nicely. As well as the wrestler-eye view that pops up occasionally you also get much wider, more dramatic shots of the arena – there’s no need to hide the distance when you’ve got the power of PS3. Go out of the
ring and you get a much bigger view that shows you the vibrant crowd, then, if you engage in some close-up wrestling it quickly zooms back in close, always giving you a good, like-the-TV-coverage view of the action.
And get ready for this – SmackDown 2007 uses a ‘dynamic sweat system’ on PlayStation3. Not just sweat – dynamic sweat! The fighters start off all dry and nice smelling, then gradually get slimier as they sweat from the hot heat of combat.
This isn’t just a meaningless boast, either. It’s already clear to see how great this looks, with the wrestlers coated by a seethrough, dribbling, light-reflecting coat of manlube. Combine that with the awesome facial expressions and you’ve got a game that already looks leagues ahead of anything next-gen we’ve seen so far.
And talking of fluids, blood will return too. Expect to see the same critical-hit blood spewing moves when you’ve sufficiently beaten your opponent. But there’s one much-wanted fan addition that still won’t be appearing – you can’t modify the existing WWE superstars. There’s no putting Triple H in Hulk Hogan’s tights, thanks to the WWE’s watertight control over the official likenesses of its wrestlers.
Voice chat while playing online is also a confirmed feature. As for the possibility of the number one fan-demanded extra – online rota upgrades – THQ told us this: ‘Providing downloadable content is fast becoming an ubiquitous practice within the gaming community. Offering downloadable content has been discussed internally, but for now, we’re keeping mum on the subject,’ which means… ‘we don’t know what that means.’ But at least they’re thinking about it.
Even if the wrestling feel turns out to be mostly same as ever with just the analogue tweaking and speeding up of play to differentiate it from previous games, the look, the impression you get from watching these incredibly well animated men stomping around the ring and staring each other down, is unprecedented and should make this a standout PS3 launch game.
And if you’re still struggling to save up the fifty million pounds (approx) PlayStation3 is going to cost, don’t worry – all the play innovations, crowd fights and environmental attacks will also be appearing in the PS2 and PSP games. You just won’t get to see the look of brine-drenched pain on Kurt’s face quite so well, that’s all.
Make no mistake, PSW loves SmackDown. We’ve loved it since 1999 on PSone, we loved it on PS2 after the shaky start of Just Bring It, and seeing the series come to life on PS3 in such a beautiful manner justifies our love completely. Stay tuned to PSW for more on SmackDown Vs Raw 2007, as the game finishes itself off for release on PS3, PS2 and PSP at the end of the year. Our pale and podgy little faces are doing extremely realistic smile animations at the thought of getting to play it this November.
