THQ prepares new Smackdown! vs RAW game

WALT DISNEY WORLD—For those of you who haven’t been keeping track, THQ will unleash its 10th WWE Smackdown game this fall. The franchise dates back to the original PlayStation, when The Rock ruled the then-WWF. Since that time, THQ has sold over 37 million copies of its WWE games worldwide through the end of 2007 and generated over $1 billion in revenue. Last year’s Smackdown vs. RAW 2008 sold over 5 million copies globally and generated over $200 million in sales through the end of 2007.

So the WWE is as much a cash cow for THQ as Wrestlemania is for the WWE. The real world of professional wrestling and the virtual collide every year as THQ brings its developers and a contingent of international press to the host city of Wrestlemania. This year the game maker set up shop at Walt Disney World, just a half-hour drive from Orlando’s Citrus Bowl, where over 70,000 fans gathered to watch Ric Flair retire and The Undertaker remain undefeated at Wrestlemania 24.

Cory Ledesma, lead designer of the WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2009, talked about a handful of the new features fans will be able to dig into when the game ships across all platforms this fall.

From a big picture perspective, load times will be cut in half, letting gamers get right into the action. In addition, the visuals have been improved, bringing even more lifelike characters—sporting additional motion-captured animation—to the ring. These characters will also behave more realistically thanks to new artificial intelligence that ensures that The Undertaker as controlled by the computer acts like the superstar in the ring. The in-game action is also supposed to feature better collision detection, which is something that has always been an issue with previous WWE games. Sports games have always plagued by limited commentators who spew the same lines to call the in-game action. THQ hopes to remedy this with its new WWE game thanks to a trio of commentators straight from ECW, Smackdown and RAW.

One of the central focuses of the new game, as well as one of the highlights in Orlando, are new Tag Team Matches. Players now have to work as a team because they share one momentum meter during a match. There’s now plenty to do whether you’re in the ring or standing on the side.

“A tag team partner can do things like distract the referee, grab and clutch an opponent, and rally the crowd by banging the turnbuckle during a match,” said Ledesma. “We’ve also added double team finishers for gamers to partake in. To help increase the drama in a match, a hot tag feature allows a player to tag a partner and make a comeback in a match and turn the tables. There are also reverses to hot tags.”

This being a wrestling game, there are also blind tags that allows a player to turn their back on their partner and pull off dirty tricks. Dveloper Yuke’s has created 500 new animations for the game with many of them featured in the tag team game. And a new camera system provides better angles of the out-of-ring action during Tag Team Matches.

Another big addition to the cusomization of the virtual WWE experience is the create-a-finisher mode.

“Fans are going to go crazy with this,” explained Ledesma. “They’re going to have full control over 500 different animations. They’ll be able to link 10 different moves together for a finisher and even control how fast each move unfolds. Finishers can be assigned to any wrestler in the game. Once created, a finisher can be used anywhere in the game, including online action.”

Ledesma said players will be able to create moves you’d never be able to see in the WWE. He added that’s going to be the fun part of this mode. With the addition of create-a-finisher, fans can now create every aspect of a superstar from how he or she looks, to his or her moves to the entrance music and pyrotechnics.

Road to Wrestlemania, the new season mode, is deeper than ever. For the first time, players will be able to take part in a cooperative season with a Tag Team Match story line. There will also be multiple custom single-player story lines around some of the top superstars for players to play. The action will focus on the three months leading to Wrestlemania. These stories will branch into different areas and provide multiple endings to encourage replay. THQ has ditched the 24/7 mode to focus on the in-ring action and the drama that unfolds leading up to Wrestlemania.

For the first time in franchise history, players will be able to update the WWE videogame experience through downloadable content. Long a staple of traditional sports, players will be able to download new content to keep the game fresh. While Ledesma wouldn’t specify what type of content would be available online, it’s likely that the roster for this game will expand (it’s already the largest of any previous game), at the very least.

While there were no playable games shown, the visuals in the taped demos were very impressive. Fans are going to get a lot of extra value out of the additional customization options and the downloadable content (regardless of what that might be). There are certainly a lot of WWE fans out there and wrestling games have always offered a unique take on fighting. Although THQ will face competition from Midway's TNA Impact! next year in the game space, like the WWE itself, the Smackdown franchise looks poised to take all comers.