WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2007 « Walking Amongst Dark Shadows

The sound is of a high standard. The standard in the ring wrestling sounds are pretty much perfect and the wrestler entrance music is accurate. Just hearing the DX music and intro video brought a smile to my face, and The Undertaker’s entrance is breathtakingly unmistakable from the real thing. The commentary however starts to grate rather rapidly, and is slightly flawed although it has to be expected. During Royal Rumble events, if a wrestler has been disqualified the commentators continue to chat about him like he’s present in the ring.

Visually and audio wise the game is tops. Almost every fighter, bar the lower ranked ones are faithfully replicated and look really good with their animations, despite everyone seemingly having a six pack when they don’t in real life. Some lower end fighters however don’t exhibit the model detail that their more famous colleagues have. There are clipping issues, especially with some of the larger wrestlers where if you punch or even bodyslam another fighter, sometimes you end up either punching through their body, or literally seeing your two bodies merge as you slam him to the canvas. Clipping issues were always going to be hard to avoid for a game like this featuring so many fighters.

Multiplayer

Smackdown Online was something that fans couldn’t wait for. THQ failed at making an online system for Smackdown 2006 so fans were worried about seeing the same thing happening once more. Smackdown 2007 Online is a lot better then it’s predecessor but isn’t perfect by any means. Every type of match is available, well the ones that don’t require more then four players anyway. Smackdown 2007 only supports four players online! It plays brilliantly, and I experienced no lag at all. You can also challenge opponents for their very own created title belts as well as trading superstars amongst other players – this alone is a very popular feature as players like to trade ‘Created Wrestlers’ of legendary stars not in the game E.G I wish Ultimate Warrior was in the game and I’m sure someone has already created a superstar of him ready to trade.

Conclusion

Overall Smackdown vs Raw is a superb game. Yes there are many quirks but they’re pushed aside by fun, enjoyable gameplay and a large array of current and past generation superstars as well as the old WWF Legends. The formula we have here results in a solid wrestling title that is quite difficult to beat. Having said that THQ now has competition in the form of TNA Impact, so they better be paying close attention to fixing any existing issues Smackdown has. Having such a large amount of in game modes/wrestlers will always result in issues and glitches here and there; this is a very big game.

On the whole, Smackdown is huge fun. I haven’t sadly had the pleasure of playing it online just yet but I’m sure it’s just as good as it is in single player. The fact that 2-4 players can sign in with their own profiles on a single 360 and play against you is a boon in itself. The sheer variety of game modes means that you’ve got a large amount of variety and random gameplay outcomes. One minute you could be winning a fight easily, and then the next minute you’ll be close to death as you take repeated blows from a sledge hammer. Lengthy matches can get very, very bloody.

If you are a wrestling fan, I can’t help but recommend this game. It’s great fun, especially the Royal Rumble itself.