Wrestling in a Bottle: The Complete Review to Smackdown!: Here Comes the Pain
Submitted by Snapple on Saturday, November 8, 2003 at 7:27 PM EST



In Memorium of Michael Lockwood, aka Crash Holly, Erin O'Grady, and Mad Mikey. Heaven just got 400+ pounds heavier.

Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of Wrestling in a Bottle. I'm Snapple. Forgive the lack of humor in the opener, but I'm feeling mournful this past few days. Hardened have I become to the recent string of wrestler deaths in the wrestling world, as I've become coldly accustomed to hearing of the deaths of wrestlers who were at their peaks in the late 80s and early 90s, all of them in their 40s and almost all of them died due to drug and steroid abuse. However, when an incredibly young guy like Crash who still had a bright and shining career ahead of him meets his end, I can't help but feel real sorrow. Crash was one of those individuals who I found fairly annoying when he was starting out in the WWE, but over time he got me to earn his respect. I strongly put over his new character in NWA-TNA, saying this could finally be Crash's big break, but I guess now we'll never know. My condolences go out to Crash's friends and family.


And now to lighten the mood, a quote from this past week's Smackdown.

Michael Cole: Brock,what can you tell us about this monster Nathan Jones?

Brock: Cole, just look at the guy. He's a psycho. Australians are psychos.

This week I'm giving my comprehensive review on Smackdown!: Here Comes the Pain. Yes, this is is the first official review of the game on LOP, so I'm going to try to be thorough. In fact, that's all I really want to do this week, so let's hop to it.

Snapple's Game Review: Here Comes the Pain

I'll be honest. At first, I really wasn't all that interested in buying a new Smackdown! game, but after watching the commercials, the in-game trailers, reading about all the special features, and in generally just getting pumped about the game from people I know online, I caved in and bought it the day after it came out. I rented the first Smackdown! game many years ago, brought it home and played it. I figured it would at least be on par with Wrestlemania 2000, but oh was I wrong. It was so awful that I never touched a Smackdown! game again, until now. That's why I've always been one of those "No Mercy engine or nothing else" people. After a long hiatus, I finally decided to buy this game. So keep in mind while reading this review that I have not played the recent incarnations of the Smackdown! series.

The Game Engine

The first thing I take note of in any wrestling game is of course the game engine. To me, the No Mercy engine is the pinnacle and the standard, so I was very skeptical. However, I enjoyed the large variety of grapple moves. The controls are different (from what I hear) from past Smackdown! games in that you have four different kinds of grapples, each with four move combinations. This means that just from a standing front grapple, any wrestler can execute 16 different moves. The different grapples and directions might take some playing to get used to, but I adapted pretty easily. The grapples are even divided up into Power, Quick, Signature, and Submission, so you can somewhat more easily keep track of which kind of moves are what.

The key to winning matches is to wear down your opponents' body parts, like with many wrestling games. A picture of a generic blue man indicates how much damage a wrestler has taken to each of the four key body areas, the torso, the head, the arms, and the legs. Every move in the game damages one of these body parts, and it's important to know which moves do what. After a body part or parts have taken enough damage, they will be more susceptible to pinfall or a submission that targets that particular body part.

As you successfully attack your opponent, you Smackdown! guage will also start to build. After the guage fills up, a small yellow 'S' will light up next to your guage indicating you can execute your special move. You can have up to five S's, and you don't have to use them right away, like with No Mercy. You also can choose between two special moves, although some characters are only programed with one. Executing the special move usually involves being in a particular position with your opponent temporarily stunned. A large "SMACKDOWN!" logo will appear when you can execute your special move, and all you need to then do is hit L1 to do it. It should also be noted that you can steal your opponent's special moves and use it against them. To do this, you need to have all the requirements to use your own special move, except then hold down L2 before pressing L1. I haven't been able to do this successfully yet, but the manual and in-game load screen says I can, so I believe it.

Another difference from previous Smackdown! games is the reversal system. Instead of simply having one button to counter moves with, this game has two. To counter a striking move, you press L2, to counter a grapple, press R2, and to counter a special move, press L2 and R2 simulataneously. As you might imagine, rather than desparately trying to predict whether your opponent is going to strike or grapple, you'll often find yourself hopelessly mashing both the L2 and R2 buttons whenever your opponent has the upper hand. I'm sure this isn't healthy for my PS2 controller, but that's the ridiculousness of this counter system. Yes, button mashing does work to an extent, but it doesn't add anything to the gameplay at all. In fact, the counter system sucks quite a bit, so keep that in mind.

One thing that I'll be picky about is that pinfalls can be broken up by another wrestler while submission moves cannot. Why is this? Don't the wrestlers on television drop an elbow on Chris Benoit to keep his opponents from tapping to the crossface? Pins can be interrupted, but submission cannot. This in and of itself makes submission moves absolutely invaluable during tag and other multi-man matches. And by invaluable, I mean way too powerful and very cheap in that regards. Still, much like a pinfall, submission moves require you to wear down your opponent before being able to bring down an opponent successfully, so they're technically about equal in power, although I've grown to prefer Submission as the more effective finisher in about 85% of matches.

Season Mode

This is the meat 'n potatoes of the game, and probably where you'll spend most of your playtime, unless you only break it out for parties to play with your friends. Here's the basic premise. You pick a wrestler and a brand. Set up the roster how you want it, and then start your career for the next year. You can either take a pre-existing wrestler or use your Create-a-wrestler (which I will hence refer to as a CAW). With real wrestlers, you can either use their pre-existing statistics (not recommended outside of exhibition mode), or you can choose to start at the bottom rung statistics and get better attributes as you gain experience. With CAW, you HAVE to start at the bottom, although they do end up giving you 250 experience points right off the bat to distribute however you like. Obviously, this is a big advantage to starting as a CAW as opposed to a real wrestler. After you pick your wrestler, you play show by show, feuding with various superstars and trying to play for titles.
There are two point systems at play in season mode, experience and SPs (Superstar Points). Experience you earn from matches. If you win you get considerably more experience than when you lose, and the more matches you fight, the more experience you get. Experience directly translates to attribute points which you assign to your wrestler in different areas. The higher your attributes get, the more experience it costs to raise it half a point. SPs basically define three things from what I've gathered: Which level of superstars they'll put you against, your eligibility for title shots, and the likelihood of you even getting a spot on that week's card. So when you're starting out, I hope you like beating up D'Von Dudley, because you'll be doing that a lot for a while if you don't get real good real fast.

Personally, I started my first game as WOOOOOOO! Ric Flair. It took a long time for me to even win a match, and even then it was a table match about three months into my career. I had some pretty ridiculous storylines, and even though I was on the losing end of my first few feuds, it was all exciting to me. Eventually I started winning and never looked back. Ric annoyingly doesn't have an impact finisher, and especially when you're just starting out, your submission skills are way too poor to do anything meaningful (although that will change), which means the Figure-Four wasn't much of use to me yet, so I was relying on a superplex to win my matches. The superplex, although a good move, isn't a great move to finish matches with, as it's not that strong compared to say a Pedigree, so I had to REALLY wear down my opponents to get a pin. In fact, I did not make it to Wrestlemania after one year's worth of playing. However, I didn't fret this much. I liked that they really made me work to succeed with my character, so I immediately started a new season.

In the second season, I was basically kicking ass all the way through (although I should point out I had the difficulty set to 'Easy'), and I noticed something annoying. Repeating storylines. I'm sure some people have heard rumors that there are only a year's worth of storylines, but I can assure everyone this is NOT the case, although you do have the potential to get every storyline each time you play, so there will be many repeats. There is a one-month storyline, for example, where you get to pick a manager from the women's talent pool. Then another superstar will get jealous and try to steal her away from you. I've never NOT been offered this storyline, and it's annoying. What's even more annoying is that no matter the outcome of the storyline, your manager magically disappears after the PPV and isn't heard from again. Well, actually if you play your cards right, she'll give you a pep talk right before the Wrestlemania main event, but for a nine month gap, they'll never mention her. She won't escort you to the ring. Nothing. Most of the storylines are one-month long, and per season you may get one long storyline, but never more than one. The first season I did, I didn't have a long storyline. The second season as Flair, I got to start my own faction and feud against another faction for three months. In my CAW's first season, I feuded with Vince McMahon for three months. I've never had an extended feud with a single wrestler though. I've been told that it's possible to have a long feud, like five or six months, with a single wrestler, although I have yet to experience this. Overall, the storylines are really damn fun, but repeating the same storyline can be boring.

While the storylines can get repetitive, the variety of match-types and opponents always keep things interesting. A new feature to this game is the Elimination Chamber match, and oh... my... God, this match is fun as Hell. It looks exactly like the real one, except a bit smaller. Two men start out, while the other four are released at timed intervals. The plastic walls of the wrestler chambers can be shattered with the bodies of wrestlers, and they can also be climbed on and dove off of. It's a pretty bloody match. Although, the best match I've ever had in the game was a Last Man Standing Match against Brock Lesnar. If you choose to get to Wrestlemania by winning the Royal Rumble (pain in the ass), you will immediately launch into a month-long feud with the last guy you eliminated in the Rumble. In my case, I eliminated Brock, and eventually it was Ric Flair vs. Brock Lesnar at No Way Out. It was great for me personally because the match takes forever and everything you have to keep your opponent down for ten counts. Like I said before, Ric doesn't have an impact finisher, and submission moves are fairly useless in Last Man Standing matches. It was a real bloodbath. The upper hand kept changing, and I probably got hit with four F5s in 15 minutes. We battled up the ramp, down the ramp, on the announce table, with wrestling holds, with steel chairs, everything. Not an easy match, but that's what's great about it.

The Royal Rumble is damn frustrating, even if you're one of the last entries. It's WAY too easy for anyone to get eliminated, so surviving is mostly about luck, not skill. Basically all you need to do to eliminate someone is irish whip them into the ropes when you're sorta close to the edge of the ring. They'll flip onto the apron, and then all you need is to punch them once and they're gone. I much preferred the Rumbles in No Mercy 64, although being able to have six people in the ring at once as opposed to four is a bonus. However, once you're eliminated, you have to reset the game, go through all the load screens, and wait about five minutes before it's your turn to join the Rumble again. So it's an arduous process.

That basically brings me to one of my big beefs with Season Mode, which is that there's no "Restart Match" option in the middle of a match, or even a "Load Data" option. If you want to load your data, you have to turn the power off. Hopefully that won't be too much of a problem, but that's just crappy programming from my standpoint. It's only really been an issue with the Royal Rumble and a few important title matches.

The backstage area. During season mode, before the card is up each week, you may have the option to talk to a superstar or the General Manager before the show starts. Basically what this allows you to do is either gain or lose SPs depending on your choices, gain experience (also from good choices), or get in a fight with someone. Getting in fights is a GOOD thing, if you can win. The experience and SP changes won't show up until after the show that week, but they are factored in. Going to the GM's office is always open, and basically you do that to ask for a title shot (if you're eligible), or to request a show transfer. You can only request a transfer if you don't have any titles, so yes, it's a pain.

About having titles, it's a good thing. Not just for the prestige of it, but having titles means you have to defend those titles. Defending your title means more matches per card on average, and thus that equals more experience. More experience is always a good thing, although the odds are usually stacked against you. If you're the US Champion, do you think they'll make you defend your title in a normal one on one match? Hell no! You have to defend your title in a Seven-way TLC Blindfold-on-a-Pole match, or the equivalent. Okay, so that's not an actual kind of match, but seriously, they make it as hard as they can for you to keep your title. Only the strong survive.

Lastly, the only other thing you get from season mode is money, which I think is referred to as Smackdown Dollars. By winning matches, you get money, and after you save enough money, you can buy things. Unfortunately, I wish there were more things to buy. The kinds of things you can buy are several movesets for CAW, about six or seven veteran superstars, like Ted DiBiase, Jimmy Snuka, and LOD, alternative ring attires for specific wrestlers, alternative attire for bra and panty matches, and the load screens which feature the divas on them. That's it.

Create-a-Wrestler

For some people, the Make-or-Break of a wrestling game is its Create-a-Wrestler function. For me, I don't know if I'd say it's the MOST important, but I also hold it in high regards. The ability to create a wrestler completely from scratch seems to become an increasingly complex feature as technology gets better, as opposed to the "Paint-on" costume technology seen in the original Smackdown! games. Everything is more fleshed out and has life. I'll generally describe the CAW function by going through the routine that I did when making my CAW.

My first attempt at making a CAW, I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't really have a plan in mind. So I just started going through the various options one by one, starting with the body shape, the face, skin color, hair, then onto the attire and so on. Some of the features seem to have way too many choices than necessary, such as the eyebrows. I mean come on, they're just fucking eyebrows. There 'should' be about four eyebrow choices: Thin, bushy, shaved off, and The Rock. Yet, there are like fifty eyebrows to choose from. At least with the body shape, you could contort every part of the wrestler's body with different gauges that make things wider and thinner, bigger and smaller. In the end, I made my guy a total fatso with a rounded face and eyebrows number 98723451.

Next we had the hair. I had a slight problem with the hair. A thing you'll notice about wrestlers that have long hair is that in the game, their hair either appears very stringy, or it's tied back in a ponytail. Guys like Triple-H and Sean O'Haire have very well-animated stringy hair. Guys like Nash, Michaels, and Jericho just have ponytails. So it made sense after looking through the CAW hair list, that there's a lack of variety with long hair. Plenty of short hair, but I guess they didn't want to go through the trouble of animating THAT many kinds of long hair. So I did what any fat wrestler would do and gave myself a bowl cut.

Next and most important part of the appearance to me is the ring attire. Again, I found some disproportion of selection. With some features, like jackets, suits, shirts, etc, I wish they just had a bit more selection. The selection they did have wasn't bad by any means, but I wanted more. However, they made up for it with the color and design options. You had about 60 different patterns with which to assign your piece of attire. It makes an entirely different piece of clothing depending on the design, and then after you pick the design, you can still alter the colors any which way you want. It's very shibby. I ended up getting basically a full-body jester suit.

To top off my jester suited fat man, I needed some more accents to the costume. There is a large assortment of body and face paint, masks, horns (!), gloves, tattoos, jacket designs, etc. I ended up picking a picture of a club and a spade, and I put one on the front and one on the back in a faded black color so that it blended with the suit.

Finally, Jestor was almost complete. I took a good look at him in his fat costume with the bowl haircut and thought, "Yeah, I wish I'd planned ahead of time what I was going to make." So I scrapped him entirely.

Fortunately, I saw this particular tribal face paint while I was making Jestor that I really liked, and I decided to base an entire character off of him. He would be a Pacific island savage, with lots of tribal art and an untechnically brutish moveset. After much hard work, Angry Islander was born. Islander is complete with creepy face paint, feathers sticking out of his bald scalp, body art that runs from his chest down his leg, green tights with a tropical flower print on them, and a pair of colorful leggings that aren't connect to his tights but rather clasp just above his knees. I was very happy with my work and gave a positive nod to the appearance editor for allowing me to create exactly what I wanted with my vision.

The second half of creating a wrestler is making a moveset. Typically in every wrestling game I've played, this is a long pain in the ass. Unfortunately, this is no exception here. However, there's a good variety of moves, and grapples and finishers are even divided up into categories so you can find what you're looking for faster. The one thing that annoyed me was that the most powerful finishers were the ones that belonged to the current main eventers. So the incentive to use the trite and overused finishers like a Stunner, or a Rock Bottom, is too high, in my opinion. For Angry Islander, I chose as my two finishers Backbreaker 4 and the Black Out. Yes, I stole a finisher, but hey, it takes a crazy genius to steal Rodney Mack's finisher, especially when I could've easily taken the Tazmission or the Million Dollar Dream instead. I also based a lot of my grapple moves on damaging the head area, so that all I had to do was soften someone's head up enough, slap on the Black Out, and two seconds later they would be out.

The last thing I did was create an entrance, which is pretty simple. You select your entrance moves, your music, and your titantron video. It's unfortunate that most of the titantrons have the name of the wrestlers they represent, so I went with Ultimo Dragon's, since his doesn't. Still, the entrances are pretty breath-taking overall.

There's also a feature called "Create an animation." I was nervous at first, and sure enough, when I opened that menu, I was immediately confused. I started getting flashbacks of when I bought Fighter Maker 2 (Don't buy it! HORRIBLE game). Oh, the pain was too great, so I decided I could live without creating an animation, whatever that meant. If you have the patience and the will though, by all means go for it.

Cheap Tactics

The one thing that I can't believe testers actually let Jakks get away with are all the really cheap tactics you can use to win. Seriously, I think some of these are major bugs in the game and obvious ones at that. I'm NOT advocating that you take advantage of these, but you can. I admit, it's tempting.

Win Any Backstage Fight - There's a super easy way to win any fight that breaks out backstage, and this will almost guarantee a victory every time, no matter who the opponent is. Lure your opponent to the parking lot. That's the area with the motorcycle and the forklift. In the top right of the screen, there's a trailer for an 18-wheeler. All you have to do is irish whip your opponent directly into the trailer (that is, not diagonally). Every single time, unless you're right up next to it, your opponent will jump and grab onto the trailer and hoist himself on top. Then, because the computer is stupid, they will walk right off the trailer and hit the ground, causing MASSIVE damage. When I say massive, I mean you can take out Goldberg by whipping him into the trailer maybe about five times. Then, all you have to do is pin them. It doesn't matter how strong they are or how weak you are, you can win. It's extremely cheap and dumb.

Win Hell in a Cell - This goes along the same lines as the Backstage Fight actually. If you make it to the main event of Wrestlemania in some fashion, it will be in a Hell in a Cell. This is the only time you fight in a Cell in season mode that I know of so far, but it's also easy to win. As soon as the match starts, break out of the door. Then climb up the Cell and wait for your opponent to follow. Now, you're 'supposed' to have to grapple an opponent when they're teetering on the edge to knock them off the Cell, but all you have to do is punch them. They'll fall right off. Then, they'll get back up and climb the Cell again. Knock them off as much as you want until you get tired. Then, apply your finisher on top of the Cell and that's it. I would not suggest following them down the Cell as I haven't figured out yet how to get off the Cell without falling, although I believe there is a way. Still, it's an incredibly cheap way to win.

Win Triple-Threat and Fatal Four-Way Matches - As I said earlier, submission moves can't be interrupted. The big challenge of multi-man matches is always to avoid your pin getting broken up by the other guy(s) in the match. So pick on the weakest guy in the match and make him submit. The other guy(s) can't do a damn thing about it, making it I think a cheap win.

The Atomic Drop Combo - This cheap tactic isn't flawless, but it does work. Basically, the theory is this. There are some moves that will stun an opponent and make them fall to the ground. However, the catch is that there is a delay before the opponent hits the mat, making it possible to regrapple them. The most obvious move that I've been able to do this with is the Atomic Drop. Grapple your opponent, Atomic Drop them, then regrapple and repeat. Your opponent will very rarely counter this, although it is possible to be countered. Still, after I figured out this cheap tactic, I went from jobbing cleanly to Bubba Dudley to beating Goldberg cleanly. If you time it well, you can string together as many ADs as you want, until their torso is completely decimated.It may take like 20 of them in a row, but it does work. If you experiment with other moves besides the Atomic Drop, I'm sure you can achieve the same effect. It is because I find this move SO cheap that I purposely left it off my CAW's moveset.

Final Thought

Overall, I think the game is incredibly solid. The season mode is fun, the CAW features are acceptible. The graphics are absolutely AMAZING at some points. It's hard to describe. A lot of the music is good, but the menu screens for season mode are always your brand's theme music, which gets very old, very fast, especially RAW's theme. Thanks to the attribute system, there's a good learning curve, and the difficulty is variable, meaning that there's always going to be a challenge if you want it to be. I still wish there were more storylines and more things to buy with your in-game money. The repetitive and short-lived seasons really hurt the replay value. In fact, I would say that replay value is the thing that hurts the game the most, along with the counter system. A lot of the game is insanely fun though, and just to be sure I haven't mislead you, this game is more than worth the $50 I spent for it. I've encouraged everyone I've talked with to buy it right away.

Graphics - 9.5
Controls - 8.5
Music & Sound - 6.0
Gameplay - 9.0
Replay Value - 5.0
Overall Score - 7.6/10

So there you have it. If nothing else, I encourage you to rent the game and try it out. Chances are, you'll love the Hell out of it. If not, you can't say I called it a flawless game, but I recommend it.

Next week, we'll be back with the original format: Survivor Series predictions, Nowinski updates, and more Ask Triple-H. Until next time, take care.

-Snapple

Enjoy the review? Was it helpful? Should I do another review in the future? Email and let me know. happydude5000@msn.com

Questions for Triple-H should include the phrase "Ask Triple-H" in the subject header.

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