My favorite gaming memories are the ones I experienced when I was sitting in my dorm room, half-bombed with my roommates playing WWF No Mercy. Wrestling games were the total multiplayer experience. It was often every man for themselves and more often than not, alliances were broken and deals were made so the best player did not always win. Or that feeling you get when you are doing a Royal Rumble and its on random and your buddy gets Stone Cold Steve Austin and then you run out as the Faboulous Moolah. Wrestling games were as unpredictable as they were fun and WWW Smackdown vs RAW 2009 may be one the best wrestling games to come out in awhile.

Fans of the WWE SvR series will notice that not a lot of changes have been made, but there have been some nice upgrades and tweaks to make the game very enjoyable. There are a ton of match options, rules, and match types that you can experience in the game and they make it very easy to choose which. Every match can be easily chosen and/or tweaked to your liking and this makes for a great overall experience. People had complained that the menus were not changed from years’ past, but it is not flashy yet it gets the job done. No one crucifies EA Sports when their menus have had little change in the past. A great tweak this year is the ability to change the AI of your opponents creating a truly customizable difficulty. Veterans of the franchise will likely turn it up for a challenge while newcomers will start out at retarded levels of intelligence.

In the graphical department, SvR 2009 falls to the same criticism of many games. The main characters, in this case the wrestlers, are spitting images of themselves and look fabulous. The background is a different story altogether. The rings and different venues have good detail, but the crowd looks almost last gen. Why is this a big deal? The crowd is the major backdrop for the entire game. Normally such a small detail would be overlooked, but it looks like a big sticker with people on it and it takes away from the game’s intricate detail on the wrestlers themselves. I cannot expect THQ to make 18,000 people individually look perfect, but maybe the first few rows can resemble real fans because staring at a mural of painted people does get annoying.

The gameplay has not changed all that much over the past year, but there are some nice additions. You can now store your signature move as well as perform a finisher and they are easy to do. You will be prompted to do the Finisher with the Y button when in the right position, it is just imperative that you know what that position is. Furthermore, if you have no idea what a superstar’s finishers or signature moves are, it can get frustrating. For the players who wish to see all the finishers/signatures, you are either a huge fan or get a FAQ online. It would have been nice if you were prompted in-game to say, “Perform Finisher – Get to Top Turnbuckle!”. It would take some of the guess work out. The move sets are almost identical to last year’s with grapples of various strengths to perform moves of various damage and the always fun of reversing strikes or grapples. You can also turn the tide of the match when prompted if you are getting your ass beat, so no match is 100% over. Finishers can be tweaked for damage in the options menu, but are not as strong as they once were. An example is your buddy taunted you and got his momentum full in the first minutes, blasts you with Sweet Chin Music, and you are out cold. Match over. Not anymore. You can and will kick out if you still have some health left.

The Create A Superstar mode is the best and worst part of the game. Your options are endless. Creating whoever you want however you want has been a staple of wrestling games for a long time and SvR 2009 does not sell you short on what you can do. But, there is a huge issue here. You are going to have to play every CAS you make through the entire career mode to boost them up to full. Everyone. This is not going to happen. People will make dozens of characters but do not want to subject them all to the 15 or so hour career mode, which is fun as hell, just to make their CAS not a jobber. A patch is coming to fix this and THQ said by late Jan 2009, you can fully boost all your CAS after one has completed the career mode. So, don’t freak out, just wait until they fix this.

WWE SvR 2009 is a fun wrestling game that packs the two things all wrestling games need: re-playability and customization. While the latter is not fully tweaked yet, there is room for a lot of fun to be had here. The game has some flaws, but none is too great where you will not want to play through them. With over 60 playable characters, a huge CAS mode, a lengthy story mode, tons of match options, you would be hard pressed to not buy this game if you are even a casual WWE fan. People who do not follow wrestling may seem a little overwhelmed by the details that a fan would know such as finisher/signature locations, what guy is good and who sucks (beyond the ratings, which are generous), but anyone willing to put some time in will be hooked. WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009 is a great addition to a storied franchise and will get fans of the mat more than satisfied this year.

Overall: 8.25 out of 10

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