The wrestling industry has made some huge changes over the past few years that have both benefited the sport, but have hurt it at the same time. As the WWE grew, it acquired much of the competition. WCW and ECW are now apart of the WWE and most if not all of the talent came with it. This allows for dream matches that were not possible when there were two Monday night shows. Who would not have wanted to see Goldberg fight Stone Cold? As always, there are some dissenters and TNA has emerged as a worthy adversary. Jeff Jarrett started up the organization in 2002 when his career with McMahon had come to an end. Slowly but surely he has acquired “castaways” from the WWE and made a very entertaining product and a nice change of pace to the WWE. This is their first attempt at gaming.
Right away I noticed that the game looked great. The entrances were spot on and the wrestlers themselves looked very good. The ring also felt alive and it would shake and rumble with every move you made; one of the best ring responses that I can remember. The crowds did look rather pedestrian. Fans are a big part of the sport and they need to really be paid more attention. The voice talent and announcing are decent at best and the commentary like the actual wrestling moves, more on that later, become repetitive to the point of annoyance.
Anyone who owned a N64 and had friends played the THQ games. WCW vs. NWO Revenge and WWF No Mercy gave hours upon hours of fun because their control scheme was perfect. Easy to pick up but you could always find ways to master new move sets. TNA offers a simple control scheme with the major moves being mapped to face buttons: punch, kick, grab, and action of some sort. The game is easy to pick up and play but pulling off reversals is where I was lost. They are mapped to the shoulder buttons, which is fine, but they happen entirely too often. Granted, you can’t execute a strong grapple move when the match starts, but a simple Irish whip or a punch is reversed ad nauseum. I was reversed 7 of my first 10 moves, which is absurd. Reversals are there to keep someone in a match no matter how bad they are getting beaten to ensure some parity, but it can’t control the entire pace of the match. I was almost afraid to hit the guy.
Finishers are only performed from a standing strong grapple and each wrestler has one move. This is also disappointing. Sting did use the Scorpion Death Drop, but to only set up the Scorpion Death Lock. There are no “finishers” in submissions which is weak. There are no high flying finishers, either; also weak. The move set across the board is very limited and the amount of grapple moves that you can do is way too limited. Wrestlers should have varied move sets to make you want to play as many as you would like. I got the feeling that once I played with a few, I played them all.
The story is about as contrived as you can possibly get. I’ll let you see that for yourself. It will take anywhere between 8-12 hours on the story, depending on how good you are. You can do Ultimate X matches, which are like a ladder match with no ladders. The camera pans way back for tag matches and that made the game look half as good as it did when zoomed. Online mode is only 1 on 1 and there are no title belts anywhere in the game, online or offline.
TNA iMPACT did a lot of the hard things right but the easy things wrong. The game looks good, really really good and is very polished all the way around. The lack of moves and overall cheapness from computer AI make the game frustrating and can leave you not wanting to play. Only true fans of TNA will buy this game, but it definitely is worth a weekend rental just to play through the story and experience some of the old favorites like Sting, Kevin Nash, and some other unlockables. This is an adequate job for their first game and I look for a very strong follow up in 2009. It’s just not on the same plan as WWE Smackdown vs. Raw quite yet.
Overall: 6.5 out of 10
