WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010

[Matt Young]

http://sports.espn.go.com/videogames/news/story?id=4242013

What's in store for "WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010?" While THQ has yet to open the curtain on the upcoming title, the publisher did release a few pieces of news on the game to keep the wrestling fanatics chanting for more.

First off, the cover athletes. There will be five in total and they all represent a theme in this year's game, said to be the creativity and individuality of character. The five who were chosen for the front of the box are definitely five of the characters who stand out: John Cena, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio, Edge and The Undertaker.

Second, THQ stated that the first features of the game will be revealed during a hands-on press event Summer Slam weekend (August 23), in Los Angeles.

Third, in a press release about the new game, Brain Coleman, vice president of glabal brand management for THQ stated: "Cena, Undertaker, Orton, Edge and Mysterio are incredible Superstars who represent the athleticism, creativity, individuality and strength of today's live WWE programming. These powerful traits symbolize our vision to give players extensive creative freedom and make "WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010" the most authentic, entertaining and compelling simulation of live WWE programming to date."

What does that mean exactly? Will a more authentic simulation of live WWE programming mean a more tone-downed game thanks to the new PG rating of shows like Raw?

Guess we'll have to wait until August to find out.

I need to find a way to get into that press event in August, heh.

 

[Mattdotcom]

HHH obviously hasn't seen the cover of this yet

 

[Sabre]

Hmm sounds like they may give us a sandbox esque backstage pick fights Career mode. They tried to do this with HCTP i belive with you being able to go around the arena and pick fights with people.

Would be interesting.

 

[Obi Chris Kenobi]

I've never understood why they haven't made a game as 'in depth' as HCTP career mode wise, but I guess its because people would just keep it and update the roster as they needed via CAW. Rolling careers with random storylines was awesome.

 

[AntiLeaf33]

If they can finally get rid of the lag from online multiplayer then I may pick it up. Damn lag made the game unplayable online last year

 

[El Psycho Diablo]

I wonder if they'll actually bother putting in new clothing textures this year. Then again, they haven't for the last two games.

Still kind of irked they never even bothered to give 360 users the CAW unlimited points patch.

 

[Obi Chris Kenobi]

If they can finally get rid of the lag from online multiplayer then I may pick it up. Damn lag made the game unplayable online last year

Wouldn't count on it if THQ's UFC game is anything to go by.

 

[Perfxion]

Biggest problem with career mode is voice overs, they lock and bind everything so rigid. Without Voice overs the story lines can free flow anywhere.

 

[Sabre]

Which is why i hate voice overs.

 

[AntiLeaf33]

If they can finally get rid of the lag from online multiplayer then I may pick it up. Damn lag made the game unplayable online last year

Wouldn't count on it if THQ's UFC game is anything to go by.

Are they still using the shitty GameSpy servers?

 

[Matt Young]

Nope. And UFC's lag isn't bad. I have laggy matches maybe once out of every 10 fights. The lag for SvR 2009 was very slight as well.

 

[Obi Chris Kenobi]

Nope. And UFC's lag isn't bad. I have laggy matches maybe once out of every 10 fights. The lag for SvR 2009 was very slight as well.

Matt its ok for you guys in the US as you usually get matched up against each other, but once you try and fight people in Europe, you'll get bad lag, real bad lag.

 

[AntiLeaf33]

Shit, I'm in Canada playing against other Canadians, and I used to get horrible lag.

 

[Adam]

I played PES, possibly 4 or 5, and the lag was the worst i've ever seen. Seriously, it would make your lag issues look like 1000000000 mb broadband.

The best example was while playing, I was on the attack, just had the ball on the edge of the area and was about to score a great 30 yard goal, and four seconds later, before I realised what had even happened, they had scored against ME.

 

[AntiLeaf33]

I played PES, possibly 4 or 5, and the lag was the worst i've ever seen. Seriously, it would make your lag issues look like 1000000000 mb broadband.

The best example was while playing, I was on the attack, just had the ball on the edge of the area and was about to score a great 30 yard goal, and four seconds later, before I realised what had even happened, they had scored against ME.

Ouch. The lag I was seeing was about a second or so off, which makes any kind of fighting game next to impossible. Hard to time your button presses to reverse a move when there is a lag.

 

[DrVenkman PhD]

Smackdown 2010

If creativity is your thing, WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010 has got you covered. More than covered, in fact. From top to bottom, the creation tools in THQ's upcoming wrestling game have been either overhauled, upgraded, or, in some cases, re-made from the ground up. The result will be a game that is more open-ended and flexible than ever before. Recently, THQ producers visited GameSpot HQ to give us an exclusive first look at the new modes in SmackDown! 2010, which is the 11th game in the long-running wrestling series. After watching the demo and getting the briefest of tastes of what the new creation tools will allow you to do in the game, we can't wait to see what people come up with.

While existing features like create-a-wrestler and create-a-finisher have received important upgrades, the big news for creative types will be the design-a-story mode. Using what looks to be a flexible set of tools, you'll be able to unleash your inner Vince McMahon (or, if you're evil, your inner Vince Russo) and design broadcasts of RAW, SmackDown, and ECW from the ground up. This is much more than just an extension of GM mode from a few years ago--you'll have control of everything: matches that appear in your show, backstage fights, interviews galore, and even the words each Superstar speaks will be from your specific script.

Using a variety of preset choices that you can edit to your heart's content, you can create scenarios that will make up your individual weekly show. Create a slow-building feud between two Superstars; build a love story between your created wrestler and your favorite WWE Diva; or go completely nuts and feature an entire show that is nothing but Triple H screaming nursery rhymes at the crowd from the middle of the ring. It's up to you.

When setting up a show, you'll have the choice to create either a scene or a match. Creating a match is straightforward--you'll be able to choose from any of the available match types in the game, set the competitors, and set any specific win conditions. Creating scenes takes a bit more work, and you'll have complete control over the scene, including the setting which can include backstage antics with exploding cars, to more traditional sequences featuring interviews between WWE announcers and talent. There's even a luminous white background that looks like something out of a hallucination, perfect for creating a dreamscape for your favorite sleepy Superstar.

Once you've got a setting and some general action points added in (in one backstage scene, for example, you can cause the star of the scene to get hit by a speeding car), you'll have the ability to add text to your scene, which will appear on the bottom of the screen. There's a character limit you'll need to be mindful of, but from what we saw, there's plenty of room to get a decent amount of back and forth going. Reading text instead of hearing the voices of the wrestlers feels a bit retro, but considering that you can write anything you want, the novelty factor probably outweighs the lack of voice acting.

While you can choose from anyone on the SVR 2010 roster to star in your original stories, why not use a Superstar of your own creation? Create-a-wrestler is nothing new in the SmackDown series, but like so many of the creation tools in this year's game, it has been expanded and improved into something better. There's a ton of new fully 3D-modeled apparel for your wrestler--no more painted-on ties or shirts, for example. If you put a robe or jacket on your created star, the fabric will move realistically. There's also plenty of variety--just in headgear alone we saw everything from traditional luchadore masks to eyeless hoods, samurai headgear, and even a giant chicken head. All of it looks like great fun to experiment with, but to our eyes, the best feature of the "new" CAW was the speedy menus; the developers at Yuke's have spent time on improving the loading time in screens--so the long delays while waiting for parts to load up in the CAW menu look to be a thing of the past. For existing WWE Superstars, there's a "Superstar Threads" tool to customize their outfits--such as changing up the colors of Rey Mysterio Jr.'s masks and ring attire to something completely of your choosing.

Create-a-finisher, introduced in last year's game, has seen its own share of improvements. THQ producers told us there is about 30 percent more content in the standard front grapple finishers, as well as an entirely new category of finishers, this time from the top rope. As with the standard finishers, you create your top-rope finisher by stringing together a bunch of separate animations, the taunt you use to start things off, the dismount off the top rope, any flips or kicks you perform in the air, and finally your crunching landing on the mat. You can even make minor adjustments to animation speed and jump trajectory to create just the kind of move you're looking for.

Enveloping all of these enhanced creation modes is the idea of sharing online. Anything you create in SVR 2010--be it your favorite create-a-wrestler, your insane top-rope finishing move, or your epic series of RAW episodes--will be able to be uploaded and shared with the online world. You will be able to rate content you download too, allowing the best content (and its respective creators) to rise to the top--and you'll be able to add tags to your creations for easy browsing purposes. In essence, THQ is blowing out online content and every SmackDown fan is a potential contributor.

Elsewhere in the game, the developers are throwing a bone to players who might have been away from the SmackDown series for a while with an interactive tutorial that will provide a primer of sorts for the sometimes complex controls that are part of the game. You can use whomever you want in the ring, and you can choose to play either solo or against a friend. As you move around the ring, pop-ups will appear onscreen with instructions on how to pull off different context-sensitive maneuvers--for instance, which types of moves will be available to you in a front grapple or what you can do when moving on the apron. In all, there are more than 100 training tips available, and you can choose to play the tutorial with several AI settings--including the AI turned completely off, if you like.

When in the ring, you can expect to see a back-to-basics approach in terms of presentation. The game's sometimes cluttered HUD from previous years has been stripped down. Gone are the health meter and location-specific damage meters that sat in the upper corners of the screen. Instead, the game is focusing much more on the body language of the wrestlers to convey their relative health. The only HUD elements that will remain are a small halo appearing underneath each wrestler that acts as a momentum meter, and the occasional reversal timing indicator that will pop onscreen above the wrestlers' heads.

Speaking of reversals, the reversal system has been tweaked for SVR 2010 as well. Previous games had separate BUTTons for strike and grapple reverses--this year that's whittled down to a single reversal BUTTon, which should simplify the process. The timing of reversals--or, more accurately, the length of a reversal window--has been tweaked as well in order to prevent reversals from becoming too easy to execute. Other control changes include a new pinfall kickout system borrowed from THQ's Legends of WrestleMania game (which requires you to fill up a meter in order to kick out of a pin), a load of new moves available to players when standing on the apron (such as Triple H yanking people into the ring, or Rey Mysterio Jr. performing a springboard leap into the ring), four "strong" grapple holds available to players (up from two in last year's game)--collar and elbow, side headlock, wrist lock, and rear waste lock, each of which triggers a different set moves. In addition, you'll be able to manually transition between grapples by holding down the right bumper and moving the right stick.

In keeping with the game's customization theme, it will be easy to record your own match highlights this time around. At the end of a match, you'll be able to see a list of defining moments in the match you just completed. You can choose to rewatch any of these defining moments--anything from bloodying your opponent to sending him (or her) through a stack of tables--and save them for later use.

Last year's Road to WrestleMania mode returns this year with six brand-new stories from around the WWE stable of wrestlers. This time around, there will be a Diva-centric storyline, as well as a story specifically meant to focus on your created wrestler, which is all the more reason to bust out that giant chicken head for your created grappler.

In addition to seeing the Xbox 360 version of the game, we got a chance to check out the Wii and Nintendo DS versions of SVR 2010. On the Wii, the frenetic pace and motion-based gameplay of last year's game have been nearly completely jettisoned this time around in favor of a more realistic game speed and a control scheme that more closely resembles that found in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. In fact, producers told us that the goal was to make the Wii version as comparable to the other versions of the game as possible. As a result, SVR 2010 for the Wii will have a feature set that is virtually identical to the other versions, including the extensive creation options like create-a-finisher, the upgraded create-a-wrestler, and the all-new story designer.

The controls in the Wii version will be more BUTTon-centric than ever before--and the aforementioned motion controls have been largely done away with, mainly because they were so unpredictable in the previous game. That said, you'll have lots of options for control--including the default Wii Remote and Nunchuk, as well as alternate control schemes using the GameCube controller or the Wii Classic Controller.

THQ is still searching for an ideal DS solution for the SmackDown series, and this year represents another experiment. Game speed has been upped from previous games, and in the ring, the gameplay takes place from an elevated camera, with a perspective that is almost top-down. Unlike previous games, which used the touch screen almost exclusively, this year's game on the DS will use BUTTons to control the action in the ring.

The big addition for the DS version will be a collectible card system. You'll earn cards in season mode, either by winning matches or by doing favors for WWE Superstars you'll encounter along the way, and you'll have a deck of cards to choose from before a match. You'll go into a match with a handful of cards and can activate them in the match, like run-ins from other wrestlers, or for specialized boosts that will make your grapples temporarily unblockable. In addition to the match boost cards, you'll earn cards that will unlock goodies like new match types, create-a-wrestler parts, and more.

The DS version will also have a story mode that will have you interacting with WWE Superstars, and even Vince McMahon himself. The 12-chapter story will be semi-open-ended, allowing you to travel across multiple locales, such as the gym (where you can train your created character to improve his or her stats), the hospital (where you can nurse your wounds), and Mr. McMahon's office (where you can be berated by the boss). Of course, you'll be wrestling in tons of matches as well, as you play through a storyline that is sure to have plenty of double-crosses, body slams, and, presumably, lots and lots of exclamation marks.

As much as we've revealed today for WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010, there are still lots more surprises to come for the game. GameSpot will be on top of all the latest developments in the coming months, leading up to the game's release on October 20.

 

[Sabre]

Smackdown 2010

So its a 3D £40/60$ TEW?

 

[Golgo]

Smackdown 2010

Maybe keep new information and subsequent replies to the 2010 thread in the future?

There's a ton of new fully 3D-modeled apparel for your wrestler--no more painted-on ties or shirts, for example. If you put a robe or jacket on your created star, the fabric will move realistically... For existing WWE Superstars, there's a "Superstar Threads" tool to customize their outfits--such as changing up the colors of Rey Mysterio Jr.'s masks and ring attire to something completely of your choosing.

Good.

When in the ring, you can expect to see a back-to-basics approach in terms of presentation. The game's sometimes cluttered HUD from previous years has been stripped down...

Good. Maybe. I'm too used to the previous set-up.

Speaking of reversals, the reversal system has been tweaked for SVR 2010 as well... The timing of reversals--or, more accurately, the length of a reversal window--has been tweaked as well in order to prevent reversals from becoming too easy to execute... Other control changes include a new pinfall kickout system borrowed from THQ's Legends of WrestleMania game (which requires you to fill up a meter in order to kick out of a pin), a load of new moves available to players when standing on the apron (such as Triple H yanking people into the ring, or Rey Mysterio Jr. performing a springboard leap into the ring), four "strong" grapple holds available to players (up from two in last year's game)--collar and elbow, side headlock, wrist lock, and rear waste lock, each of which triggers a different set moves. In addition, you'll be able to manually transition between grapples by holding down the right bumper and moving the right stick.

Good, but did they ever add in the ability to even run on the apron? How about starting with that.

 

[Big Green]

Smackdown 2010

So its a 3D £40/60$ TEW?

When you consider that TEW is $35, a 3-D version of it being $25 more isn't that bad of a deal. I actually wonder how in depth it'll be.

I hated the kickout system from Legends of WrestleMania so boo-urns to that one.

 

[vivisectvi]

I almost feel like that story mode thing is too much customization. I can't see myself sitting down and writing up scripts on the PS3...

PS - merged the topics.

 

[oldskool]

Smackdown 2010

...four "strong" grapple holds available to players (up from two in last year's game)--collar and elbow, side headlock, wrist lock, and rear waste lock...

That doesn't sound healthy.

 

[DrVenkman PhD]

I had no idea this thread even existed.

 

[Scroby]

Smackdown 2010

Maybe keep new information and subsequent replies to the 2010 thread in the future?

Speaking of reversals, the reversal system has been tweaked for SVR 2010 as well... The timing of reversals--or, more accurately, the length of a reversal window--has been tweaked as well in order to prevent reversals from becoming too easy to execute... Other control changes include a new pinfall kickout system borrowed from THQ's Legends of WrestleMania game (which requires you to fill up a meter in order to kick out of a pin), a load of new moves available to players when standing on the apron (such as Triple H yanking people into the ring, or Rey Mysterio Jr. performing a springboard leap into the ring), four "strong" grapple holds available to players (up from two in last year's game)--collar and elbow, side headlock, wrist lock, and rear waste lock, each of which triggers a different set moves. In addition, you'll be able to manually transition between grapples by holding down the right bumper and moving the right stick.

Good, but did they ever add in the ability to even run on the apron? How about starting with that.

Fuck that, I hated that about Legends of Wrestlemania. Why just keep it simple and keep things that work?

This is what I hate about Yukes, they take the stuff that works and tries to change it to make it better but when they do that, it normally fails.

However I do like the fact they're gonna update CAW and CAM. Though I don't think I'm gonna like the fantasy booking thing. I rather just have a one hell of a good story mode.

 

[DrVenkman PhD]

It dawns on me that for this game to "feature ECW", it's going to have to include people who would normally get overlooked for a modern era video game roster. That, or it will just be Christian, Regal, Kozlov, and maybe Benjamin.

 

[Baby Shoes]

I hope a good amount of ECW is featured, as I prefer play as people like Zack Ryder as opposed to any of the main event clan (Cena, Taker, HHH, etc). I know it usually has rosters/titles until about what would have been The Bash this year (it had Kofi as IC champ who won at NoC which came before the Bash last year where Matt Hardy lost his US belt but still had it in the game). If that's the case, we should have Dreamer as the ECW champ, he's been in the past few years, I don't see them removing him on the year of his biggest push in WWE. ECW guys in last year's game were Dreamer, Regal, Shelton and Ryder as an Edgehead. I would say Dreamer, Regal and Shelton could be back, Zack in his new gimmick I would say is iffy. Now, if the Bash date is correct again, it wasn't until after the Bash that Bourne, Swagger, Finlay and Henry were moved from ECW and they will all be in the game for sure. Christian and Kozlov will be in, so if we go with "pre-trade" ECW (putting Regal back with RAW, Shelton back with Smackdown), we'd be looking at ECW having Dreamer, Bourne, Swagger, Finlay, Henry, Christian, Kozlov which is about the normal amount of ECW reps, with a few other maybes tossed in.

 

[ChrisMWaters]

There is a rumor about the first DLC for the game already:

http://gamingring.com/news/?p=6441

He better come with the theme.

 

[DCH]

I may pick up this, simply for the full creativity.

 

[Sabre]

Im not convinced, while im glad THQ tries to change it up every year the gameplay needs the most workaround, sinze 2007 the game has felt like an expensive roster update. Hell 2008 is more in tune with the current roster than 2009 now.

 

[El Psycho Diablo]

Ugh, they pick the single worst feature out of LOW to bring over. Brilliant.

We finally get "choose your vs screen pose" back. I mean, WWF Raw for the Xbox had that..back in like 2002.

That said, it sounds good..but it always sounds good. Let's see if they deliver up to their own bullshit this time.

 

[Golgo]

Is the pin meter that bad? I've never actually played Legends of Wrestlemania, but my impression from videos is that it's the same button tapping that's been in the game for years anyway.