WWE Smackdown vs Raw DS
Pen based wrestling?
Tags: WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2008 Categories: DS Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Jan 17th, 2008
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2008 (title page) | 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Wrestling | No | ||
Wrestling games are basically slimmed down fighting games, usually with slower interfaces. Smackdown vs. Raw on the DS changes the rules, relying on touch screen motions based on context. It was a bold move that sets the game apart from most handheld ports, but the boldest moves aren’t always the best accomplishments. It doesn’t work exactly as planned, mostly because developers didn’t figure out the time it takes to move the stylus around the screen.
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As far as content goes, most of what you find in the game’s big brothers is still here (such as the exhibition matches, albeit with less options). The lack of some of the more sophisticated options is one of my bigger pet peeves. The Season mode has some story added to it, but half the wrestlers say little more than one or two lines of a so-called “insult,” and move on. Now, I know this is wrestling, you’re thinking “Lighten up buddy, you’re over-thinking this.”
No. I’m not.
This is being judged the meager standards that WWE’s spandex soap opera set for itself. I’m not being pretentious; I think this dialog may have been written by someone’s 5 year old playing with wrestling action figures. The season mode has more than just bad dialog holding it back. Having you search around for various items and allies through the locker rooms, it turns into a painful point and click adventure game very quickly. The training mode offers some mini-games to practice some of the stylus moves you’ll need to be champ.
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The in ring action really is the story here. The stylus driven wrestling isn’t exactly graceful, or easy to pick up. Also because everything is context and speed based, you’ll end up doing the same few moves over and over. It provides an innovative way to play, but innovation was used as a mask for a weakly designed port. That port is so weak that I only kept playing to explore the control scheme more. Once I got the hang of it, I was stuck with a pretty weak wrestling game. This game needed a lot more polish. The controls are still rough, and the game itself is still rough. One of these will ding a game, but having both is a kiss of death.
Wrestling games are going to keep coming, and it is good that the lessons learned from earlier sports games is ingrained into the developers. However, there does still seem to be a lot of caviler developers out there who think slapping stylus controls into a bad game will make you look the other way from bad design. This doesn’t happen. The DS and the Wii both in fact will call attention to how bad your game is. The control schemes are not able to carry a game, the controls are you port of entry into the game world, but focusing on that would be like a city fixing up its airport to attract tourists. It’ll get people into town, but they won’t be pleased if downtown is still a crumbling mess.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Controls are an interesting take on controls for wrestling. + Less a few match modes, has a pretty wide array of modes. |
3.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- The game isn't well designed, poor dialog, monotonous action, and pointless item searching makes this game a giant albatross around the next. |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| This just doesn't cut it. The game starts off from a decent control scheme to grab you attention, but doesn't deliver a real game. It delivers the kind of horrid port you used to see on the original Game Boy. | |
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Tags: WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2008
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Jan 17th, 2008 and is filed under DS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
