Smackdown - Just Pitch It!

My wife and I are HUGE wrestling fans. Therefore when we bought a Playstation 2, my wife had to have this game (okay, I wanted it, too). After we played it a couple of times, though, this one went straight to eBay. I'll tell you why.

The first time you play it, you think, "Wow!" The visuals are wonderful, the wrestlers actually look and behave like themselves, the entrance themes are accurate, and it's just too cool. The only drawback I saw at the time was that the audience was 2 dimensional. My wife must have played this game five times immediately in a row (stopping and resetting) just so she could see Triple H's entrance theme over and over because it was so realistic. My father-in-law is into wrestling, too, and we had to show him this game and he couldn't believe how accurate it was.

Once you get into this game, though, you see how limited it is. The controls are very hard to use. As we played, I swear we kept doing the same three moves over and over even though each wrestler has a plethora of moves listed in the instructional booklet. Forget even trying to play against the computer because they will pin you in three seconds.

The story line mode, which we though would be great, was terrible. There's only about three different paths you can take, which gets old fast. Plus, a lot of the characters are missing (for example, no Hulk Hogan, no nWo, no Rob Van Dam, etc.). Supposedly you can "unlock" these characters by doing secret things, but who has time for that?

The audio is pretty terrible. It's Michael Cole and Tazz announcing, but it's hilarious. For example, one example of commentary is, "Kane.... is the.... best wrestler." Then the next comment will be something like, "I'm so excited to see.... Kane.... in the.... TLC match." It's just so choppy and cut-and-pasted sounding.

The game at least does have a variety of matches to choose from (standard, tlc, tag team, hell in a cell, etc.) but if you get more than two people in the ring at once, it's just a jumbled up mess.

I'd avoid this game and spend the money on a monthly wrestling pay-per-view if you're into wrestling!