The Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3 and PlayStation 2 versions of SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008 are the best of this year's releases. While other platforms – especially the Wii, PSP and DS versions of the game – suffer from a number of cut corners and questionable game design decisions, the next-gen versions of this game are highly playable. Mind you, I am by no means giving this year's edition of the game a ringing endorsement. These games suffer from some really poor design decisions as well that overshadow the good things that Yuke's has done this year. That aside there's some great ideas in these games that make them worth a purchase for fans of the long-running SmackDown series.

The most notable new features include 8 new fighting styles, struggle submission game play, the introduction of ECW and the ECW Extreme Rules Match, and improved game play mechanics all around.

The most interesting of all the features are the new fighting styles which let you further customize your character with extra powers. Taking last year's heel and face moves and expanding on them, now characters can have an extra set of special moves beyond their signature specials to gain an edge. These fighting styles include Brawler, Dirty, Hardcore, High Flyer, Powerhouse, Showman, Technical and Submission.

Each character gets a primary and a secondary fighting style that they can use to enable moves and special abilities. Some of these special moves require you to get enough momentum to store it to your fighting style icon (just like you used to do with the old special system in SmackDowns gone by). After that you use various button combinations to do your special moves. For example, as a Dirty superstar you can hold down a button to use the referee as a shield and when you are done you launch him at your opponent, sending them on a collision course with each other. This in turn gives you an opportunity to do something illegal to your opponent while the ref is down like hit him with a foreign object. Other fighting styles might give you the ability to “hulk up” or use moves that can't be countered or punches that can't be blocked. The fighting styles add some nice flavor into the mix that makes the game a lot of fun to play if you know what you are doing.

The other new and important feature is struggle submissions, which allow you to really apply the pressure to an opponent when doing any kind of submission. Using the right analog stick, you can wrench a limb, adding additional pressure. Likewise the opponent uses the right stick to try and a escape. If you can figure out how it works and use it properly the struggle submission system works very well in adding some extra damage to these types of moves.

There are lots of other smaller changes thrown into this year's game that really make it shine. They way you can use a chair, for example, has been expanded in a way that more violent minded gamers will enjoy. Now instead of just smacking your opponent in the face with it, you can put it on their neck or their leg or under their head and then use the attack button to slam it down hard. You've seen these moves on TV, and sure enough, they are as violent and dangerous as ever in the game. Weapons can be propped up in the corner of the ring as well (ladders, chairs, tables) for some extra violent effects and you can still grapple with weapons to do a handful of select weapon based attacks.

Escaping a grapple has been improved this year as well. Now while someone attempts to put you in that powerbomb, suplex, etc you can fight back and sometimes escape. While in the early state of a grapple you can throw punches and when you are in the air you can move the stick to slip out of the move and do a reversal. While this is just a small tweak, it adds more authenticity to the whole fighting experience.