I’ve been a fan of the Smackdown vs Raw titles for some time but I must tell you that I had some pretty big issues with last year’s offering. Back when it was released I wrote a review of the game which I finally awarded an average 6/10 and in truth it was more of a rant than a balanced review, not that I can be accused of writing those too often. In order to better convey my feelings toward SvR 2009 I will do something which is considered taboo in journalism, I shall look back on my review last year and, without a hint of shame, quote myself. Warning – This may result in a longer review than I would have written otherwise.

“Smackdown Vs Raw 2007 had some big problems, one of which was the poor career mode. You could not use a created female wrestler in career mode, have they fixed this? No, they most certainly have not!” – This issue has been fixed and you can now use your created female wrestler in career mode although this mode has been changed which I will explain later in the review.

“I was looking forward to the 24/7 mode, it sounded like an interesting step forward, but the additions which should have been interesting only help to ruin the game. There is the “choice” of things to do each day in 24/7 mode, which seems nice, until you realise that the intelligent thing to do as far as popularity is concerned, is to choose the basic “sign autographs” option. Signing autographs gives you 1 or 2 points in popularity, with no fatigue, as opposed to other popularity options which give more points but add a LOT of fatigue, and the only way to remove fatigue is to use “R&R” which removes a LOT of popularity points, something like this, but not exact:
“Star in movie” Success = 10 points, but 50% fatigued.
“R&R” Success = most of fatigue removed, but costs you 15 points in popularity!! Absolutely POINTLESS!!!” – This mode has thankfully been removed this year which is a much better decision than to stick with this when it was quite clearly broken and in need of some serious repair.

“Coachman tells you that you are in a triple threat match (part of many matches to prove you are the best talent to be included in a film…silly story…and does not matter how many times you win, if you lose the last match, someone else is chosen over you) and he tells you it is a main event match, but when you look at the schedule, your match is a 1v2 handicap match, and NOT the main event, then after the match, no matter what happens (I won it) Coachman will apologise and say he did not know it’d be a handicap match…and he says nothing about the fact that it was scheduled to be such BEFORE the match, and that either way it was not the main event!!!” – This year I have yet to see any glaring errors such as this which I’m grateful for since, I’m not sure if it shows, I wasn’t exactly happy at how ridiculous the situation was at the time of writing.

That was a straight up comparison with some of the more frustrating aspects of the previous title but it’s now time to look at what Smackdown vs Raw brings to the table. The big change in the career mode which I touched upon is that it’s been almost entirely stripped of a story. There is still a narrative in the sense that you progress through your career and challenge for the variety of belts on offer but there is a distinct lack of story progression. There is no need to worry though since there is now a Road to Wrestlemania mode with multiple characters and individual narratives which more than takes care of this. This mode includes a co-op story, where you and a mate can take control of Batista and Mysterio and set off on that road to Wrestlemania as tag-team partners, which works very well and really makes you feel as though you’re sharing an experience.

One huge omission is the lack of a General Manager mode which is something I enjoyed messing around with in the past and really hope they bring it back next year. If the lack of a GM mode bothers you that much then you can always dust off SvR 2007 or pick it up for a few quid. Wrestling fans who are looking for a polished wrestling experience can’t go wrong with Smackdown vs Raw 2009 which addresses many of the faults in the previous version, tightens up a few other features, and introduces some welcome additions.

8/10

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