In the normal world, John Cena would have nothing in common with a cosplay Dr. Venture and the planet-hopping online escapade that is Tabula Rasa; but in the alternate dimension that is ComiCon, stranger things have been known to happen. Smackdown vs. Raw 2008 was an unlikely guest at this year's convention, offering us a look at the popular wrestling franchise on Xbox 360. While our hands-on time didn't give us too much information on the game, it did provide an opportunity to check the core mechanics.
Smackdown vs. Raw 2008 can best be summed up as an annual update to THQ's wrestling series, boasting graphical enhancements and minor tweaks to gameplay from the previous effort. What we played certainly showed improvement over last year's installment, yet you're unlikely find any radical changes to the core gameplay mechanics this year. Instead, it appears that the company is shying away from fixing gameplay that isn't broken and simply adding to what already has been solid interactive wrestling.
That's not to say that there haven't been any changes, though. Now, wrestlers are broken down into eight different styles: powerhouse, dirty, hardcore, technical, showman, submission, high flyer, and brawler. Each wrestler has two of these attributes, one of which is a primary while the other is a secondary. The moves a wrestler may perform are based upon his ability set. At the start you can only use a primary ability skill set but you can now switch to your wrestler’s secondary ability during the match which opens up a different set of skills, which can be important depending on who you are fighting.
There's also a new submission system. Now, you simply move the right analog stick which applies pressure on your opponent in a gruesome, obviously painful, sort of way. It's a bit easy to break free of a submission hold because it requires you to let off the gas to get your grip, but if you already have a guy in trouble, this can be devastating.
Finally, THQ has added the ECW brand, which the company is calling the ECW Invasion which will materialize with new wrestlers (like Sandman) as well as a more ECW-insane crowd, which will even hand you weapons when the fight goes outside the ring.
We played a match in exhibition mode, but you can be assured Smackdown vs. Raw 2008 will ship with a single player career (dubbed 24/7), as well as four-player local and head-to-head online multiplayer. Additionally, we only had access to a few wrestlers in the demonstration: John Cena, Sandman, Triple H, and Jeff Hardy. Of course, you can expect a full roster in the final game. For our match, we paired John Cena against a computer-controlled Jeff Hardy and watched the drama unfold.
Following the typical gaudy introductions for each star, we went into the ring to start the match. Pressing the X button allows you to strike your opponent, whereas grappling is done with the right bumper. You can also pull off an Irish whip via the B button. Although not present in our match, objects will occasionally appear in career mode matches that you can pick up and use with the A button. Once you've laid enough smackdown on your pal, you can move in for a finisher by hitting Y. The controls are fairly simple when on the offensive, even if landing an attack is a bit difficult.
Defensive moves are slightly trickier. Counterstrikes are done with a pull of the left trigger, while counter-grapples can be executed via the right trigger. Timing is of the essence when attempting to pull off any counter. We had some difficulty in successfully getting a counter-grapple going, but we'll blame that on Jeff Hardy and not our poor wrestling skills. If you'd rather just run around the ring and avoid your opponent, holding down the left bumper can work for a short while until you eventually get clobbered. It's better to play rough, though, so taunting with the directional pad is how we like to roll; unfortunately, we weren't able to back our bark with any bite and ending up taunting our way to a loss against the computer.
