It’s the return of ‘An Hour of’! Only I’m not continuing with ‘Bullet Witch’, I’m going with a game series I’m all too familiar with. Okay, first things first, I am a huge fan of the WWE. Yes, it’s fake, hence the ‘E’ standing for ‘entertainment’, but it’s a whole lot of fun.
And so, I have essentially gotten every single WWE SmackDown game in the series (Sad I know); from, well, ‘WWE SmackDown’ to ‘WWE’12’, and that’s the game I’m going to go over! For the Xbox 360. So, let’s get started.
Firstly, I put off getting this game, mainly because I couldn’t find the People’s Edition anywhere. I asked at one shop, granted I said the limited edition, and was told it was pre-order only. The People’s Edition was pre-order only? And it’s that popular? I don’t believe it! I couldn’t even find it online! So, eventually, I gave up and got a normal, Rock-free one. Biiiig disappointment right away. I might print off the Sin Cara cover just for variety now.
Anyway, so I’ve finally loaded up the game and the first thing I do is go to the WWE Shop and downloaded some wrestlers. Sort of. Well there’s Shawn Michaels, but then there’s Jim Ross, Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler and Michael Cole. For those who don’t know, the last three are announcers. In my defence J.R and the King are awesome and I now have a chance to beat up Cole with surprise guest Brock Lesnar (Seriously, I didn't see him coming).
Though I want to quickly add that, whilst the feud between Lawler and Cole got old fast, Cole actually did a really good job as a heel, probably one of the best heels ever, since he got every single member of the audience to hate him. That’s what a heel does.
Anyway, moving on. After downloading the Fan Axxess and Online Axxess (Don’t ask me why they’re spelt that way), I decided to finally try out a match. I chose a normal one-on-one match to start off with, and selected one of my, if not the, favourites, Kane. For my opponent, I selected the random icon and got Ted DiBiase (Jr).
And off we go! And here’s where I noticed some changes. Whilst the controls were similar to the previous games, some of the more recognisable controls, i.e. finishing/signature moves, running, grapple, had all been changed. It’s now much more complicated to perform a grapple move and you’ll most likely end up doing the same one over and over again. They’ve also made the B button the pin and pick up opponent button, so when you want to pick up the opponent, your guy/girl will instead try to pin him. And I’ve still to work out how the new submission thing works; I can get out of it alright, but doing it? Pfft!
Another thing that came off bad was the reversing. Now, I had the same sort of problem with the previous game, ‘WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2011’, and it was even worse in ‘WWE All Stars. But my God it was frustrating in this, since I could only reverse one in ten moves. I ended up bashing the button whenever I saw DiBiase throw a punch, only to see it fail miserably. However, as I played the game more, I started getting the hang of it; it’s all to do with timing. That certainly improved gameplay a lot!
Then came a third huge problem; kicking out of pins. Here’s how the first pin attempt on me went:
Me: Ah, I’m getting pinned. How do I kick out?
Ref: One.....
Me: Hold ‘A’, okay here we go. I’ve reached the bar and release! Wait, what? It didn’t work?!
Ref: Two.....
Me: Let’s try again! (Frantically pressed buttons, doesn’t work) No!
Ref: Three! (Bell rings)
And so, DiBiase wins. That was really annoying. So, I have a rematch.....and lose again the same way. This was really fu*king annoying me now. So third time’s the charm, and I’ve finally learnt how to kick out. It’s weird, you have to hold down the ‘A’ button, have it exceed the kick-out bar a bit, because the bar then needs to drop and you then need to press ‘A’ again when it goes into the bar. What was wrong with the old button bashing method from a game or two (or three) back?
So after FINALLY winning the match, I decided to try my luck online. And I see they’ve still to fix the server problems from the last game. In the last game, the online features had so many glitches, including;
1. the match not loading
2. Royal Rumble countdown stopped working
3. Getting kicked out for no reason
4. Not being able to get into the match for no reason
5. The servers going down.
The main problem was, that you couldn’t challenge a higher tier, which cuts half the matches available straight away. But the servers were the main problem. And by God the servers in WWE ’12. After I had finally gotten into a match; a six man battle royal with me as Sheamus, then other competitors as Brock Lesnar, The Rock, Shawn Michaels, Daniel Bryan and John Cena, I was the only one moving. I had managed to knock Bryan into a corner and was beating him up, when the screen went blank and I got a message saying there was an error. I tried to get back into it, and I got a message saying the server was down. The server has been down ever since. I understand they’re trying to solve the problem, but I just thought they’d have fixed the problem since the last game.
Now! Onto the Road to WrestleMania! Well, with the servers down there was nothing else to do. It started off well, with the opening cutscene of John Cena, though there are some weird things which come up. Firstly, why does Cena have the World Heavyweight Championship? Especially since he hasn’t held the title since 2009? Secondly, why is the World Heavyweight Championship on Raw? Why is the WWE Championship on SmackDown? Why has this game screwed up the championships and which brand they’re designated to? Granted in the current television scheduling it doesn’t really look like there should even be different superstars on the brands if they’re going to be on the same show anyway.
I do also question why we took control of Cena for five seconds before another cutscene occurred. Although in this cutscene, Sheamus attacks John Cena from behind, introducing us to the villain episode. I mean the VILLAIN episode. Granted, after getting used to the controls it was pretty easy, and it was somewhat satisfying hitting Cena with the steel steps.
Sidestepping again, I don’t hate John Cena. I think he’s actually a pretty good wrestler and, like it or not, he is a good role model for youngsters. But that’s the problem, he’s suited for youngsters, but for the older audience he’s a cliché, he’s bland and so corny. Then, the WWE forced him down our throats by having him win the WWE Championship ten times (a record!) and the World Heavyweight Championship twice, so he’s now four titles away from tying Ric Flair’s sixteen world championships.
Back to the story, I do a mean streak with Sheamus (though beating Daniel Bryan was a pain), leading up to Bragging Rights, where I take part in a seven on seven elimination tag team match. Which made me think that they’re bringing in fourteen man tag team matches. That was not the case, as only three men only appear on each side at a time. And, as much as I do like the Big Show, I do also like Mark Henry and don’t think you can knock out the world’s strongest man with one punch.
There’s also this weird thing they’ve put in. First, you’re given an objective to do in the match, and they constantly tell you this objective during the match, which, most of the time, obstructs your view so you can’t see if your character can perform a signature/finisher or if your opponent has this icon.
The icon, by the way, is something which triggers an event. Whilst it does make the game seem more like the television show, I’m not watching a television show, I’m playing a game, it takes away part of playing the game. You want to pin or make someone submit in order to win, not just beat them up until you get the icon telling you to press ‘Y’.
Bragging Rights then ends with an event, where Sheamus attacks his teammate Edge, and opponent Wade Barrett attacks his teammate Jack Swagger, before William Regal and Drew McIntyre join up with Sheamus and Barrett. And the United Kingdom stable was born. And I actually liked the United Kingdom angle so much, I want to see it come into effect in reality as well, mainly so that Sheamus has another world title reign, Barrett can finally get a world title, and Regal and McIntyre have something to do.
I certainly liked the television feel to it, even if it does intrude on the game too much. The controls require some getting used to, the servers need sorting out pronto and the story can be good. But, there hasn’t really been any new additions added and the road to WrestleMania story can be long, tedious and, to be honest, a bit boring at times. Overall, it isn’t a brilliant game, but it is a good addition to the franchise
Let’s just hope they can improve it for next years release.
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