Apparently a few sightings of  physics issues have been reported – see if you can see them!

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It’s hard to find a reason to recommend Smackdown 2010 if you have already got last years edition. For the most part, they are fundamentally the same game just with the new addition of Storyline Designer. Oh, they have also added a fresh batch of animation clips to your moves, meaning you no longer find yourself elbow dropping your standing opponent. Instead, it will turn into an animation of you elbowing them in the face. A long awaited fix, I’ll admit, but not enough to justify roughly six to eight gigabytes of wrestling.

Wounds begin small, but progessively get bigger and trickle down faces or even pass on to your opponent if they make contact. Sort of like a less violent plague.

Let us delve deeper. The latest feature in the series is the Storyline Designer, which at its core lets you create all your fantasy story lines from the opening segment of the show to the matches and even the dialogue that each wrestler will spit out in the multiple face-off scenarios. It’s a well thought out feature, as there are so many ways you can take your storyline, from interviews, to mysterious packages, or even a car accident. You plan out each of the weekly episodes of your show and watch as your stories unfold, from a slow build-up to an unexpected (pre-planned) finish, everything is in your control. Make your created wrestler the undisputed champion, or make Batista wear a tutu and dance with the divas, it’s all down to you. While this pushes the series in the right direction, there seems to be unexplainable restrictions which stop it reaching its full potential. On the Xbox 360 and PS3 version, each storyline can feature up to 500 segments including 450 matches and 50 scenarios – not to mention created wrestlers are limited to only ten appearances in this mode. Meaning if on one show you use your created wrestler in an interview segment then a match, that is two of your ten appearances gone.

In contrast to the Storyline Designer mode, you have a seemingly shallow career mode. You pick a wrestler (created if you choose) and wrestle your way through title ranks. You begin by competing for either the US or IC titles, these require you to win a list of matches, just to challenge for the title. This mode seems very bland and uninspired as it has no storyline or even a connection among each match. It is essentially exhibition mode with a few perks.

While the career mode does nothing in terms of portraying a story, that is what we have the Road To Wrestlemania for. This mode is exactly as you remembered it last year, which is what I hoped for. You can take control of superstars such as Shawn Michaels and Edge and play their story which begins a few weeks before the Royal Rumble and play through the upcoming weeks to try to solidify them a place on the grandest stage of them all (WreslteMania, for those who aren’t up to date on WWE catchphrases). I don’t really have any hostile thoughts towards this mode, as it seems to be the most focused part of the game. It has authentic voice overs by WWE Superstars (albeit a little synthetic, voice-over booth sounding) and each story will take you around 2-3 hours each – requiring at least 10-12 hours of game play to plough through.

Christian returns to his peeps after a hiatus from WWE.

Each year the game is introduced with whatever wacky ideas the WWE “Creativity” team has come up with, whoever Vince decided to sign or release, or whatever gimmick matches crossed his mind. This year you see a total of 60 playable characters and the new “Championship Scramble” game type, which consists of six wrestlers competing for the last pinfall as when the counter hits zero, the superstar with the most recent pinfall is the new champion of whatever belt was being defended. This is an entertaining gimmick for television but doesn’t really work as well when translated to the land of video games.

The game play for the most part has not been touched at all from the previous game. You still press the same button to strike and the same to run. But this time around, you do not have control who you are targeting. Subsequently in a game type with a lot of wrestlers on screen at once, it becomes simultaneously aggravating and challenging to avoid going for a finisher and ending up elbow dropping the guy who was just kicked to the mat. Another change has been made to the reversal system, which has been simplified further. Now you control every reversal with one button. Just one button. Arguably a good thing as it allows a lot of less-skilled players to reverse and have more of a fair match, but at the same time dumbing down the experience for those who are accustomed to the old school reversals.

One of the first thing you will notice when firing up this game is that there is no longer a HUD at the top of your screen. Instead, your wrestler now has an oval at his feet (a feature that, for some reason, reminds me of the Threat Ring from MGS4) which informs you of your momentum and finisher building, as well as having to pay attention to your opponents and your own physical appearance to see if you are injured or where your next opening is. I found this to be one of the defining alterations in this game, as it eliminates that clunky old HUD which, in turn, makes the game feel a lot more submersing and makes you take notice of things that you otherwise wouldn’t. At times it feels like you are watching the show opposed to sitting on your couch playing a video game.

In this game the crowd chant "Let's go Cena" then retaliate with "RKO!" chants.

At last, it seems Yuke’s have listened to their players and added a feature that has been needed for quite some time. The ability to download and share your wrestlers, videos, and story-lines with people you know, or people who just happen to have an artistic talent with the in-game creator. While this is a good system, it may (unfortunately) render infamous CAW websites redundant.

As for icing on the cake, you can now go beyond dressing your wrestler and releasing him to the world. Now you can design a logo for him or even create an entrance video based on in-game footage you have saved yourself. This means you no longer have to strut down the isle with somebody else’s face on the screen… now if only they could implement a functioning imported entrance music feature.

With a video game based on professional wrestling, it goes without saying: If you do not like professional wrestling, you will not like this game. I would like to add another thing to that: If you did not like last years instalment of a professional wrestling game, you will not like this one either.

You may have noticed throughout this review I had a lot of criticism about Smackdown 2010. But the complains I had were things that should have been fixed years ago, rather than Yuke’s ignoring the problems and trying to distract us by giving us some flashy new feature each year. Though do not get me wrong – I enjoyed this game, I really did. Nevertheless, there are no excuses for not addressing the imperfections after all this time. This may be the best wrestling game on the market, but does that really say much?