RADICAN’S VIDEOGAME REVIEW SERIES
WWE ’12 FOR PS3
RELEASED NOV. 22,2011 BY THQ
BY SEAN RADICAN, TORCH COLUMNIST

When THQ announced a re-branding of the WWE videogame series with the “Smackdown vs. Raw” moniker dropper in favor of the simpler “WWE ’12,” the premise was a reboot of sorts with a new game engine and better gameplay. “Smackdown vs. Raw” had become a game that wasn’t all that fun to play with clunky controls and matches that dragged on. “WWE ‘12” attempts to address those issues with matches that are better paced and controls that are easier to grasp.

I’ve always been a fan of the “No Mercy” game that was released on the N64 system because the gameplay was fun and the matches made you feel like you were replicating a true wrestling experience instead of mashing buttons. Counters were easy to pull off in “No Mercy” and controlling your wrestler and wearing down your opponent weren’t a chore.

The first thing that’s noticeable when playing “WWE ‘12” is the graphics. “Smackdown vs. Raw” had good graphics, but “WWE ‘12” looks and feels like the WWE product I watch on TV. The entrances are up to date for the most part, including C.M. Punk’s new music. When Sin Cara is in a match, the dark lighting he uses on television is reproduced. The game uses multiple camera angles and most of the time it feels like I’m watching a WWE broadcast.

Most of the wrestlers included in the game look fantastic, although I noticed a couple of wrestlers such as Brock Lesnar had an odd skin texture. The roster is deep and THQ is offering a lot of downloadable content in the coming months, including legends like Macho Man Randy Savage and Mick Foley.

The commentary is handled by Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole. At times, the commentary is really good, but it gets annoying when Lawler and Cole start to bicker just like they do on television. Cole will rip Daniel Bryan when he is in the ring instead of calling the action. He also goes crazy for The Miz and heaps praise on him if he is in the ring.

The controls are a big improvement. There’s less button mashing and they are really easy to pick up once you get the hang of them. You can get light grapples and then transition around your opponent and apply a hold on whichever side you please. It’s especially fun to watch Big Show do chain wrestling if you want to pull that off. In order to get a strong grapple, you have to stun your opponent, which isn’t hard to do as there is also an option to target specific parts of the body with a blow that usually leaves your opponent in a stunned state.

For the most part, matches are a lot more fun than they were before. The CPU doesn’t ground you and pound away at you like in “Smackdown vs. Raw.” There is a button you can hit after taking a sustained beating that allows you to fire up and make a comeback. As you target specific parts of your opponent’s body, they noticeably wear down. The only thing that is hard to pull off is countering, as the button press has to be perfectly timed. Hopefully, that is something that is improved in the future.

The new “Breaking Point Submission” system is a nice improvement. Once you wear down your opponent, a meter fills up and if it fills up all the way, your opponent taps out. There’s a lot of button mashing involved when it comes to getting a wrestler to tap out or if you’re in a submission, you can bring the meter down to zero and counter your opponent.

There are some collusion issues with body parts going through each other on occasion and objects getting caught in the ropes in unnatural ways, but overall those issues are minor and don’t detract from the experience of playing the game.

As you wear down your opponent, you’ll be able to hit them with a signature maneuver. You can then stand up your opponent with a taunt and hit them with a strong finisher that’s indicated by fire around the finishing maneuver symbol that appears. Standing up your opponent with a taunt for a finishing maneuver is a nice addition to the game. When an opponent pins you, there’s a meter that fills up that you have to stop in a specific spot in order to kick out, which is another solid addition to the gameplay.

The “WWE Universe” mode is deep and allows you full customization of seemingly just about everything. If you want to create your own federation under a new banner, you can. You can build your own cards through customization, or allow the computer to do it for you. Another feature is you can also determine who runs in during matches on the cards you create. It seems the sky is the limit when it comes to simulating your own wrestling company. You can move titles around to the wrestlers you want with each title having a list of top contenders.

As you play through “WWE Universe” mode, you can also determine allies and foes for each wrestler and form tag teams and stables. When playing the through “WWE Universe,” several extra wrestlers, arenas, clothing, and logos are unlocked to use in all game modes.

The “Road to WrestleMania” mode features three different villain, hero, and create-a-wrestler stories. This is a deep mode that takes a long time to play through. The “Road to WrestleMania” mode can be fun to play through at times as you have to complete such as beating down someone backstage in a certain area before advancing to the next angle. It can also be frustrating when you have to beat down someone in a certain area before an icon lights up above their head that allows you to forward the angle.

The “Road to WrestleMania” mode would be more enjoyable if things didn’t feel so predetermined at times. You have to play as Sheamus in the villain story and Triple H in the hero story. At times, the angles are fun to play through. When playing matches, there are tasks that have to be completed such as beating down a certain wrestler until an icon lights up that you press to advance to the next part of the match. Sometimes there are matches that you can just play through and win to advance the storyline. There are also opportunities to use other wrestlers in this mode as the storylines play out.

The mode is deep and features a lot of voice acting from the wrestlers to mixed results. It was fun to hear Regal come in on commentary during the Sheamus angle and join Cole and Lawler while Sheamus was involved in a match in the ring. Some of the promos cut by the wrestlers sound uninspired as the storylines play out, although that’s not always the case.

With a few tweaks, “Road to WrestleMania” could be an excellent addition to this game as it offers hours and hours of gameplay and storylines. Sometimes the storylines are fun to play through with various twists and turns. At other times, I was left frustrated such as when I played through nearly an entire Bragging Rights match only to have it result in an angle at the end.

The various ways in which you can customize the game to your liking is staggering. If you want to create a wrestler, the options are seemingly limitless. You can customize entire move sets, entrances, finishers, and more. Heck, you can even create a finisher if you want to.

Creating an arena is also a lot of fun. There is an option to make logos that you can tailor to your liking as well as a ton of logos included including logos from ECW and WCW. You can customize just about every part of the arena from the ring to the mat to the announcer table and more. Making a Starrcade arena was a lot of fun and using it in various game modes was a blast. The only thing that seemingly couldn’t be customized was taking down WWE’s current entrance set to make a smaller arena, but there are ways to scale down the arena to give it an old-school feel such as adding steel barricades.

The game’s online mode is a lot of fun. You can customize your settings before entering a match to block people with a poor internet connection. At times, it took a few minutes to get into a game session, but once the games started there was no noticeable lag when playing with multiple people in a match. In fact, online play was a lot of fun given the unpredictability of playing a human opponent. In the “Smackdown vs. Raw” series, playing online was a chore and felt cheap at times when someone would get the jump on you and ground you for the entire match before winning. That isn’t the case with “WWE ’12” online as matches for the most part didn’t lag at all.

The real crown jewel of the online features is the Royal Rumble match. Up to 12 players can enter a Royal Rumble match online and up to six controllers can connect if you’re playing a Rumble match at home. Playing the Rumble match online was a lot of fun and if you’re eliminated, you can always come back as another random entrant later in the match.

Overall score: (8.0) – “WWE ‘12” is a satisfying game in many ways that offers tons of options for people looking to do a variety of things with the game. The basic gameplay is a lot of fun with controls that are easy to pick up and use. If they could tweak the controls a little more, the game would be even more fun to play, especially if the reversal button could be refined, although it’s more a bump in the road than a total hindrance given that your character doesn’t stay down long.

The amount of customization available in the game is staggering and hours can be spent creating wrestlers, logos, and arenas. The WWE Universe mode is deep, but could use some refining so things didn’t feel so predetermined, although the storylines are mostly fun to play through.

The new game engine really shines through with impressive graphics and visuals. The commentary can get annoying at times, but since it’s realistic based on the commentary on television, it is what it is. The game looks and feels better than the “Smackdown vs. Raw” series ever did on the current generation of game consoles.

I will review the DLC for the game in the near future.

Contact Sean at PWTorchSean@gmail.com

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