Game Overview
Button bashing is kind of an understatement for this one I would say controller destroying and finger numbing but Smackdown vs Raw is so much fun you won't mind the pain you have to go through to get to the top and win that prestigious World Heavyweight Championship in story mode. The story mode now poses the real voices of the actual stars, unfortunately it's blatantly a voice over on the game and the animations are out of time but who cares about that huh? We are blokes and we just want to beat people half to death with chairs, belts and sledge hammers!

WWE Smackdown vs Raw allows you to join allegiances with superstars in the story mode and fight your way through the Royal Rumble, Survivor Series, Backlash and Bad Blood to name only a few. Work your way up the ladder to compete against better wrestlers and stand a better chance of getting that number one spot to face the champ, to get there you must do whatever you can. Chose to jump people in the locker room, attack them from behind in the ring or just beat them in the squared circle.

New features on this include a new grapple engine which gives you four different types of grapples and strike attacks, the weapons that you can pick up and pummel your opponent with are all weighted so a sledge hammer will do tonnes more damage than a chair. What's quite cool is that you can chose whether to be a clean or dirty fighter, clean fighters will be rewarded with a burst of invincibility whilst the dirty fighter will be given an extra special move to crack their opponent in the crown jewels, and quite possibly the best improvement on the game is you can now fight people online, however, we will warn you now, you might think that you are Gods gift to gaming and that no one can beat you at this game but there is always someone better than you waiting beat you so bad that your pride is no more. Online gaming is not for the faint hearted, they will beat you to a bloody pulp and have you pinned in 3 minutes flat. You won't even have time to scratch your arse.

Our Conclusions
In conclusion we must say that although the animation in story mode isn't brilliant the fact that you can chose what to do with your chosen superstar really makes up for it. Not only that WWE Smackdown vs Raw also gives you the option to purchase leg ends like Bret Hart, Legion of Doom and Andre the Giant, superstars we all wanted to be many moons ago! Brings back memories! Let's face it there are beat em ups and there are beat em ups, this falls in a category of its own and will be very hard to top.



Overall Score: 8.5/10

Thanks to Chris Swanson (BlokesOnly.com's King of Games) and Lee Skittrell at Bastion for making this review possible.