7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Another Rehash of Last Year's Game
Date of Review: Jun 9, 2008
The Bottom Line: Do not buy this unless you are a hardcore fan.
THQ has become lazy with the Smackdown series and Smackdown vs. Raw 2008 is no exception. This game is last year's title with a graphics tweak and updated roster.
The graphics in this game are superb. All of the wrestlers look like their real-life counterparts. A lot of detail has gone into making the wrestlers look life-like and visually appealing. If you're looking for something pretty, then you've come to the right place.
The control scheme and gameplay mechanics changed last year, which caused an uproar among long time fans of the series. The same control setup is back again and is still clunky and unresponsive at times. You will find yourself unable to face your opponent and grappling thin air a good bit of the time because it's hard to use the controls to get your character where he or she needs to be.
The new match types are fun for a few plays, but are nothing more than gimmicky after awhile. The ECW match is awesome the first time you play, but once you figure out all the environmental hot spots the matches becomes repetitive and "staged". The addition of fire is a little too hardcore even for WWE standards, but it's still a neat addition.
The roster is not too bad, but it's missing a lot of mid carders that are fun to play with. Tag teams are nonexistent in this game, with the exception of the Hardys and Cryme Tyme.
Create wrestler is pretty good as usual, but your characters will still come out looking like cartoons.
The A.I. for CPU opponents is terrible. They either reverse everything you do, or they act like punching bags. You are not going to get a decent opponent out of the CPU. Multiplayer is one of the worst things about this game. It's slow, laggy, and hard to find opponents.
One of my biggest complaints with this game is the load time. It takes forever to load a match. This game would be way better if the load times were way quicker. The load times are horrible for a next gen system.
My suggestion would be to rent this game and see how you like it. As a hardcore WWE fan I bought it the first day it came out, but now it just gathers dust on my shelf and I have no urge to get it back out. THQ needs to try a little hard next year.
