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(More customer reviews)I wish I could say that Smackdown vs RAW 2010 (SvR) is awesome and it fulfills all my desires as a fan of Create-A-Wrestlers (CAWs) and round-robin tournament season modes. Unfortunately, THQ and Yukes made lots of improvements and then purposely crippled the game in several ways to make those improvements much more useless than they would have been if they'd just treat fans of wrestling games like any other gamer.
First, let's talk about what they did right, though.
SvR has new wrestler models that look great. The pieces in the CAW/CAS mode are all rendered in 3D, and live on the character as a dimensional object rather than being "painted on" like previous years' versions. The end effect of this is that your CAWs look as good as the included WWE superstars when in the ring. Previously, it used to be obvious which was the "real" superstar and which was the CAW in this game. That has been fixed, finally, and it's about time!
The game itself has several modes, including all the expected ones like single match, Royal Rumble, etc. It has a career mode which can use a WWE Superstar or a CAW. It has a Road to Wrestlemania mode which requires one of a small selection of WWE Superstars as your character. It has training right at the main menu and several Create modes, as well.
The Create modes are all much improved. As stated, the CAW mode is a step up from previous years, but I'm also impressed with the Create-A-Finisher mode, in which you can string together moves to make a devastating finisher for your CAWs. It's quite versatile, and you can make some really crazy finishers with it.
The Create-An-Entrance mode is also very nice this year, allowing you to do a simple entrance (just pick one from a list) or an advanced, customized entrance that lets you pick different segments from lists, string them together, control fireworks, smoke, lighting and add entrance music from the included Superstar list, or from your own collection on your XBox 360 hard drive. (Although I'm perplexed as to why they require each song to be in its own playlist on your hard drive, instead of allowing us to make one playlist that has all the music in it.) It's quite satisfying to make a CAW and have him march down to the ring with all the flash and showmanship of a real WWE Superstar.
The actual wrestling is decent, if not as arcade-like as usual. The moves seem bigger and louder, and the impact more crushing than previous versions of the game. There's still a bit of clipping with the models, though, and the AI is abysmally stupid when on lower settings. Playing on the normal difficulty level makes for an easy game, as the computer opponents don't act like real Superstars. Mostly, they just let you pound on them and string moves, with the occasional attempt to break a hold or throw a punch.
The Create-A-Logo mode is pretty cool if you have the patience to work with the XBox controller and a semi-clunky design system. It's versatile, though, and you can pretty much draw anything you want to add to your wrestler.
The Story Design mode is pretty cool. It lets you work out just about any of the standard WWE-style storylines however you want, with whichever Superstars you want. You can type in text for the cutscenes and set up matches to either watch or play. All in all, a decent attempt at adding some dimension to the game.
The online mode is, as usual, only as good as the other people playing. I don't even bother because the cheap button-mashing kids tend to dominate the online realm, and I don't have the patience for them. They don't want to put on a show or watch entrances or play it as if it's a real wrestling match with any kind of pacing--- They just rush in and start punching like mad, and it quickly degrades to a messy waste of time. It might be good if you're a button-masher, though, and I give Yukes credit for making the game work well online (finally).
The ability to download other people's CAWs is a much-welcomed addition to the game. The range of CAWs out there is pretty vast, and you can usually find excellent versions of whichever wrestler you're looking for, as well as lots of originals.
Now, here's where I get into what's so very, very WRONG with this game:
The online CAW trading, which effective for swapping CAWs, is crippled severely. The major problem is that you cannot, under ANY circumstances, edit anything you download. That means that you get a lot of CAWs with no music or wrong music in their entrances (user music won't upload or download, so you're stuck with the built in music or nothing at all) and you can't fix this on your end. It's disappointing that we have this technological marvel of a gaming platform, and we're not *allowed* to use one of the best features it offers. I understand not being able to edit downloaded wrestlers (so people don't claim your work as their own), but why not their entrances? That just makes no sense. This one major flaw almost ruins the CAW swapping feature.
The CAW mode itself has a lot of major flaws, too. The biggest one is that there are tons of parts no longer present in the game. Want to make a wrestler who wears camouflage tights? Too bad. They're not here. You can't use the Create-A-Logo mode to make them, either, as THQ is *still* censoring the ability to put any pattern over a CAW's crotch area. Any pattern you make for tights will leave a big, blank gap in the crotch, which if you ask me, looks WORSE and MORE OBVIOUS than if THQ had just let you draw a pattern there! It's incredibly stupid design, and it's about time THQ grew the hell up and let us use the CAW mode as we see fit. If some kids want to doodle naughty bits and put them on tights, so what? The vast majority of us are going to use to to put legitimate logos on the pants or tights.
Of course, they also included the "feature" where you have to play through all the game modes and do specific things to unlock all the characters, parts, and modes. It's stupid, if you ask me, because so many of us don't care about the WWE Superstars, and just want a good wrestling game where we can use our CAWs. Unfortunately, SvR is always biased against CAWs, and this year's no different. Your CAW's skills are all set very low to start, and you have to build them up, sort of like in an RPG. I can't think of any other sports title that does this; Most of them let you train, or assign points as you see fit. In the Fire Pro series, you could make anyone you liked, and assign points however you wished. Unfortunately, the WWE license is what screws up Yukes' efforts for us CAW players.
Another problem is that the Story Design mode is crippled by the fact that you can only have a total of ten appearances by CAWs in it, throughout an entire story. That's not ten different CAWs, but ten *appearances* by CAWs, which basically means your CAWs are only showing up in cameo roles. Forget about making a wrestling event starring only CAWs, because you can't do it-- Halfway through the event you run out of slots and you can only choose from the built-in Superstars.
The Career Mode is fundamentally damaged, as well. There's no round-robin, ever-running tournament like in the excellent Fire Pro series. Instead, you're given a selection of three or four guys to fight, and you have to build up "points" by winning to be able to fight the top contender or champ. Your opponents don't seem to be selected from your CAWs, either, but from the built-in WWE Superstars, so if you play as a CAW, you'll be the only one in the entire career mode, most likely. There are no cutscenes in this mode, and it's pretty much just a shorter, cheaper version of Road to Wrestlemania without the voice-overs or focus on Wrestlemania.
The biggest, most unforgivable problem with the game, though, is the way it handles saved games, CAW files, and other data. Unlike *every other XBox 360 game made* you can't use the XBox dashboard to copy or move your WWE SvR 2010 files from one storage unit to another. This means that, unless you get the hard drive migration tool, you can't switch hard drives on your XBox 360 and expect to keep all your own CAWs and saved games. The game flat-out REFUSES to allow you to copy anything without deleting your CAWs. The best you can do, it seems, is to copy the base settings and saved game without any CAWs, which means, essentially, that THQ and Yukes expect you to throw away hours of work because they don't want you to have control over the game's files.
Attempts to copy or move CAWs from one storage device to another from within the game meet with similar problems. The game won't let you do it. CAWs, it seems, are only allowed to exist on the hard drive they were initially saved to.
It's pathetic that THQ crippled the game so much, and made it nearly impossible for someone to migrate to a bigger hard drive without loss of data. I had to purchase a separate drive migration tool in order to keep all my CAWs. If not for this one game, I could have used the XBox 360's built-in storage or an external device to migrate successfully. Every other game I owned, including all the downloaded titles from XBox Live Arcade, were allowed to be moved to a different storage device. It was ONLY SvR that refused to allow this feature to work.
Finally, there are some major glitches in the CAW save system. When you edit a CAW or make additional attires for him, all the data for your Created Entrance is erased and you'll have to do it all over again. I strongly suggest you don't bother making an entrance for any CAW until you're certain you're completely, totally finished editing or copying him, unless you want to go through Create-An-Entrance again.
Once again, THQ and Yukes deliver a...Read more›
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WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010WWE SmackDown vs.Raw 2010 is the best-selling fighting video game franchise and returnsto the virtual ring this year with the most authentic, entertaining andcompelling simulation of WWE programming to date. Featuring 2-4 player multiplayersupport--both online and off-line. and coop and competitive--unparalleledcreation tools, a robust Superstar roster, key franchise improvements anda few surprises, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010 delivers the empoweringfreedom to create, customize and share gameplay experiences.
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