Rival Angels

Since there's not a Video Games section... And a fair warning, liberal use of the F-word and strong opinions.

Anyway, the game's just out this past Tuesday, and I've had it since that afternoon. Downloaded Stone Cold (Thanks, GameStop, you evil corporation, you), made some CAWs whom I shall put up pictures for as soon as I can get a camera, got a good feel for it. ... And I am seriously pissed off at just about everything they did with it.

First of all, the flipping main menu isn't even there. No, there's this training facility scene with controllable characters and if you want the main menu, you have to call it up! What the fuck?! I'm sorry, but that's the first of many fails, right there, if you're at the main hub for the game and the menu isn't even there by default.

And then you have the music you listen to when you're doing anything but creating your own story, more on that later, or playing a match. More than a couple of that music is heel characters' music. I don't care if you like heels, I have a few I root for myself, but I hate all of them, all. of. them. whose music they chose to play. Maryse? The Miz? Randy Orton? I fucking hate them all. And their choice of face entrance music wasn't too much better. I'm no fan of Rey Mysterio, Matt Hardy's is too fucking repetitive, and I can't stand the style of MVP and Mark Henry's individual themes, the two of them being heels in this game as well, but don't count, being that they're faces on the actual show, and I strive to make this game the most accurate and up to the minute with the actual WWE, making John Morrison's the only entrance theme I can name right off the top of my head that I care to listen to when I'm doing this or that that's not a match. Maria isn't technically a heel, but I hate her and her song, so I skip over that every time. I do have to give them credit for using the themes for some of the recent Pay Per Views, though. Lynyrd Skynyrd's Still Unbroken from Breaking Point is the best song in the game's entire non-entrance soundtrack.

And on the subject of entrances. You can make your own characters, who look better than ever in this game, more on them later, but they seem to have played up the custom playlist for your CAWs, because while you have the PPV themes on there, you can't fucking use them as your CAW's entrance themes! So if you have no playlist you can dissect on your machine to get this song or that for them, you're stuck with either no music for them, the themes for one of the three shows, or having them be a copycat and use someone else's entance theme! What kind of bull is that?! You have these songs in there, but you can't apply them to your CAWs? That fucking sucks.

And the CAWs themselves are great now. They look good, and that's the important thing. They just didn't look like they belonged in past SVR games, but this year, they look like they could be actual WWE Superstars and Divas. But there's a catch. When creating your CAWs, there's a 48-point limit you have to observe, if you exceed that limit, you can't have that character that way. If you favor simplistic designs, that's fine, and some things don't apply to the limit, but come ON! If you want your characters to look like you see in your head, they need to be able to have whatever necessary to look like you want them to. As such, a character STILL can't have piercings every which where you may think they wanted. And you still can't have things like headbands and piercings together. And if your female CAWs have scars in the right places, the scars still overlap certain articles of clothing and utterly ruin the look, despite how good the rest of her looks.

Next, we have the Road to WrestleMania story mode. And I have HUGE problems with the characters they chose for that mode. You may have heard that you can take your CAWs through Road to WrestleMania and there's a Divas story. But only your male CAWs can go, and they start heel even if they're technically in the right given the circumstances. I don't give a damn if you personally like heels, but in this scenario, your God damn character does NOT automatically start off a heel, especially if you designed the character to be a face! And the Divas story? It's only Mickie fucking James! God, I hate her. She and that little idiot Maria need to die horrible, horrible deaths.

And the male stories aren't too much better being that two-thirds of the single-player Road to WrestleMania stories are heels! Yeah, Edge and Randy Orton. Neither of whom they attempted to make it justifiable to play as. For SvR 2009, when they started work on that one, Chris Jericho was already on the path to heeldom, but they still made him a face in that game. Why couldn't they have done the same for Edge and Randy Orton? I mean, if they could write a story in which the Undertaker is a Raw Superstar, despite having not been talent for that show since 2002 or whenever it was those idiots voted him to SmackDown!, then surely having Randy Orton and Edge be someone all the people cheer for shouldn't be too much. You already have people who do over any actual face anyway. Fucking morons, those developers and writers. To make Orton's story worse, Ted DiBiase and Cody Rhodes turn on Orton, making Orton the face, but they have him acting the same way! I can justify that being that this is Randy Orton we're talking about here and his character has never been a face and probably never will, but come the fuck on, people! If you're going to have heel turn on heel, invariably, the one who was attacked becomes a face. Even if the attackers' fathers are Ted Dibiase Sr. and Dusty Rhodes. The fans may like them, but if they're siding with their sons, they're supposed to be the fucking BAD GUYS and the fans are supposed to like it, no matter what you do to them or who you are to do it to them! Having Randy Orton be a RtWM character and having him stay the same despite DibBiase and Rhodes making even worse heel turns were all fucking stupid decisions.

And then we come to the Create a Story mode. It's fine, if not for the fact that you're limited in the number of CAWs you put in there. Even if you just make the matches, with no actual story moments between them that feature your CAWs, and you wouldn't put them in there if you didn't what your story to be about them, you'd still only be limited to 10 shows at most that feature them. Yeah, you can only use 10 CAWs in Create A Story mode, despite being able to create a story that could play out over the course of FOUR YEAR! Do you realize how infrequently your CAWs would be appearing with that restriction? What the fuck were they thinking?! How can they say it's our world now if we can't even use or own God damn people to make a nice, long story?! That's fucking bullshit!

My only complaint with Create A Finisher mode is that you can't create your own submission moves.

I feel this has gone on long enough, so I'm going to close with this: If I didn't comment on it, I either liked it or didn't care enough about it to include commentary about it here. But let me say that I am SEVERELY disappointed with this game. It's not nearly as good as they're saying, so DO NOT under any circumstances get it based on the hype. And personally, this is the last straw. If SvR 2011 is this bad or worse, I'm not playing any SvR games after that.

I'm TheTarrasque, and this was my Pissed-Off Review of SmackDown! Vs. Raw 2010.

Thanks for the warning..

Just one question?

Smackdown VS Raw starting 2008-2009.. there's been a flawn.. think of it.. "That can't be happening?" like Michelle McCool suplex the Big Show.

That' cant happen in the live, but it happen on the game? so in 2010? is it still happen? or they fix that?

Thank you for the extensive and detailed review. I can tell you put a lot of time and thought into this. You clearly know a LOT more about such things than I do as well.

(I had a huge roflmao at MGC's image of McCool suplexing Big Show. I doubt she or I could even get our arms around his head. )

How's the actual gameplay?

I think that point limit is to facilitate playing against other custom wrestlers online.

Great review! Do you know if there's an option for multiplayer season mode?

lordmgc wrote:Thanks for the warning..

Just one question?

Smackdown VS Raw starting 2008-2009.. there's been a flawn.. think of it.. "That can't be happening?" like Michelle McCool suplex the Big Show.

That' cant happen in the live, but it happen on the game? so in 2010? is it still happen? or they fix that?

It may not be able to happen in real life, but if you play with the Stamina System de-activated like I do, it can happen and very well does. If you play with the Stamina System, it takes things like a Superstar's or Diva's weight into consideration.

BrendaRua wrote:Thank you for the extensive and detailed review. I can tell you put a lot of time and thought into this. You clearly know a LOT more about such things than I do as well.

(I had a huge roflmao at MGC's image of McCool suplexing Big Show. I doubt she or I could even get our arms around his head. )

Nah. I shot from the hip on that one. Every word was the very thing I felt when I discovered this or that.

jimmy34 wrote:How's the actual gameplay?

I think that point limit is to facilitate playing against other custom wrestlers online.

Gameplay is as you would be expect it to be. Just like in a real match, if someone builds a head of steam, they're going to dominate the match. Likewise, you counter to slow down your opponent and as in a real match, you could win in a variety of ways and there's a wide variety of matches to play.

Some might cry about the balance issue when you set the difficulty to Easy and make everything counter related easier on your part and increase your character's damage output and this and that, but if you're like me and don't like having to stop in the middle of a match in the game because your character takes forever to recover their Stamina and your opponent counters every single thing you try and you can't counter anything, you're going to do something about it, balance be damned.

Who gives a damn about what a CAWs look does to the online gameplay? It wasn't an issue last year, so in my mind, the points system is a terrible idea. We should be able to go fucking crazy, online gameplay be damned!

albone wrote:Great review! Do you know if there's an option for multiplayer season mode?

No. There's a Road to WrestleMania story that you can choose to play as either John Cena or Triple H, and that one you can play Single-player or Multiplayer, but Career Mode does not feature that.

It's important you all undertand, though. If you were intending to get this game but had to wait for whatever reason, I'm not saying don't get it. I'm not saying that. If you want it, you should get it. But if you were wanting to get it based on what they're saying, it's all a fucking lie in some way.

Enough about the bad. Let's focus on the good. Next post from me. This board has a nasty habit of locking up when posts reach a certain length and only go back to the point you're trying to type when you actually type it or have to delete something.

Supposedly, they actually have servers set up to handle all the user created CAW's you will be able to download. Before, you could just swap them I believe. Since there is sort of a free marketplace, I think that's the reason for the limit.

Oh, and I found a $100 best buy card I got for Xmas last year. I may go out and get this game. I should try to do some RA CAW's!

So by this time, it's pretty much obvious I practically hate SvR2010, so what could I possibly like about it?

The number of match types, for one, is staggering. If you've seen a match on actual WWE programming, barring Buried Alive, which hasn't been in SvR since 2006, you can play it. Although, for some reason, they went back to the sexism and bar women from competing against men except in mixed-tag matches, and then you have to tag out for your partner or risk being counted out. Good for the player if you can keep the male in the ring for the full 5-count. And if you're playing the woman and your male partner goes to stop the opponent's female partner from interrupting your pin attempt? Disqualification. Yeah, if you're playing the male or your computer-controlled male partner seeks to remove the opponent's female partner as a factor, you disqualified. Fucking stuipid...

You can create your own stories, as stated above. Even for the severe limits on the number of CAWs you can use, you can do literally anything you want in your story. Want Randy Orton fired and to be helpless to stop Vince from doing so? No prob. Want J.R. never to have left RAW? Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

The roster is HUGE for a WWE game, with more than 60 characters to choose from, not counting dowloaded or created Superstars and Divas. And on the subject, you can move them about to suit your whims. You go in to Superstar Management and from there, you can alter how the fans react to them, change them between being RAW, SmackDown!, ECW, WCW, Legends, or Free Agents. And you don't have to fight a match to have this person or that hold this title or that. You select the node, and from there, you can assign this title or that to this person or that. Want the Undertaker to be a RAW Superstar holding the WWE Championship, while John Cena is a SmackDown! heel who always comes close to but never getting the World Heavyweight Championship? By all means.

And on the subject of titles, there's never been more titles in a WWE game. From the top, there's the Champion of Champions, World Heavyweight Champion, WWE Champion, ECW Champion, WCW Classic World Champion, Hardcore Champion, World Tag Team Champions, WWE Tag Team Champions, Intercontinental Champion, United States Champion, Cruiserweight Champion, Women's Champion, and Diva's Champion! Your CAWs can hold a title.

And on the subject of CAWs. You don't have to play Career Mode to build them up. Between that, Road to WrestleMania for your male CAWs, and exhibition matches, which can be played on any of the three main shows or at one of the Pay Per Views, your CAWs will have their skills level up and get points to apply to their skills, making them more effective competitors in each of those areas, as well as increasing their effective Superstar rating. The highest number of points you can apply to each skill is 99, and needless to say, a Superstar or Diva who has 99 in all skills is the true best there is, best there was, and the best there ever will be. To increase their skills in the first place, you have to do things governed by the skill in matches. For example, you want to aim for weapon attacks if you want your character to have a high Hardcore rating.

I mentioned Abilities earlier, and while it is maddening that they don't tell you in-game how to get them, getting them couldn't be easier when you know how. You need to get your CAWs skills to a certain point, unlocking a new Ability for them. For example, a CAW gets the Durability Ability when their Durability skill reaches 85. And you're not tied down once you've unlocked an Ability. You can set their Abilities in Career Mode, Superstar Management, or Create A Move Set. If your CAW is weapons specialist, but you're going to be playing a match that would have weapons rendered useless, you could switch the Object Ability for something a bit more useful for the match you want them to take part in.

Few though they may be compared to the things I dislike about it, this game does have some saving graces.

I need the bells and whistles to be there for a wrestling game, and SvR 2010 does them better than any in the series I've played. However, I'm waaaaay more concerned with gameplay. I LOVE the fact that they basically added 12 moves to your arsenal by having four options from the four grappling positions. I've also spent a ton of time changing around move sets so I can target certain body parts.

The verdict is still out on the gameplay itself, though. I'm finding it way too easy against the computer.