23-May-2007 It's the only wrestling game that can actually make you sweatier than the fighters themselves... The lights dim. The audience quietens to an excited hush. In stomps the first combatant, 90 per cent macho posturing and 10 per cent dewy perspiration. He looks to the crowd and waves the patented John Cena taunt - a hand fluttering in front of his face signifying that "you can't see me". Only this isn't John Cena, the 280lb current holder of the WWE Championship. It's a 100lb game developer from Japan. Welcome to WWE on Wii.
For many gamers the announcement of the Smackdown franchise's arrival on a Nintendo console couldn't come soon enough. Developer Yuke's' GameCube outings, while solid enough, always felt like a lower-tier, pre-show, warm-up act, as opposed to the real-deal WWE Superstars. So the decision to unleash their A-list content on a Nintendo console is to be applauded. However, the Wii is no ordinary Nintendo console, perhaps explaining why we found ourselves watching two Yuke's employees pulling all manner of hammy theatrics to help demonstrate the game.
Standing in the way of controls Although carrying the Smackdown vs Raw 2008 name, the Wii version is a very different beast from its next-gen siblings. The magic words of the franchise as a whole this year are "putting control back into the player's hands". On consoles not blessed with motion sensor witchcraft, this means limiting the HUD and tightening up wrestler animation to better match control input. Snore. Isn't this meant to be wrestling, the ADD-addled child of the sporting world? Glistening macho behemoths don't care about HUDs and animation response times; they care about bellowing, gurning and unleashing facial wallops in your face.
It's a sport based on posturing, and the Wii does nothing better. Precise controls aren't set in stone, but the choice to pursue a full-blooded fist-flinging scheme, as opposed to anal analogue stick tweakings, has been made. In the early version we saw, you direct your mobile muscular mound with the analogue stick and command attacks with remote flails. A simple punch is simply a case of pushing the remote out in front of you ŕ la Wii Sports Boxing.
As in Boxing, arm movements aren't mapped directly into the game. Moving a fist in 3D space is a little beyond the Wii, but to its credit the game reacted quickly to the demonstrator's movements, giving a good sense of flow. A variety of slaps were available, from simple jaw chocks to drawn-out backhanders to the face, although these seemed to respond to random flailing more effectively than deliberate movement.
Shaking like a leaf Grapples - surely the unhealthiest display of man-on-man rubbing and squirming within the game - are brought about with a button press. Both players subsequently enter into a mad remote/nunchuk shake-off in an attempt to overpower their foe. Rapid shaking is the bane of most Wii titles, and while there's plenty of it here, winning the grapple and performing outlandish moves is a more than just reward for the unnecessary lactic acid build-up.
Slipping from a grapple into a choking lift presented the most malicious move of the game. Players raise the remote to heave their opponent into the air by their throat, giving them the opportunity to parade them around the ring like a helpless 280lb baby. When you get bored, or gravity begins to take its toll on your arm's blood flow, flicking the remote down summons an almighty choke slam - the perfect theatrical finisher to a ludicrous chain of gesturing events.
Control freak out A more obvious example of putting control back into players' hands arose during a kerfuffle next to the turnbuckles. After Triple H knocked John Cena into the corner, he leapt up on to the ropes to deliver a series of pounds straight to Cena's noggin. With the camera fixed in place to give the best view of the proceedings, the player controlling H could then choose how many beats to mete out, taunting his poor colleague with feigned hits before delivering the final brain-damage express1 with a mighty downward swipe.
But of course the actual fighting is a small part of the WWE experience. For every punch thrown, a word of testosterone-fuelled trash talk is spat out, and half the fight time is spent on outlandish taunts. While we would certainly like to hear Ric Flair's surreal 'whoooo-ing' emitting from our remote speaker, it's the heavy taunt-emphasis that Yuke's have currently seen to.
With John Cena beaten to the floor, the player commanding Triple H seized the remote and nunchuk and thrust them towards his crotch in the formation of an X. Fans will recognise this as the 'DX crotch chop' and lo and behold the digitised H began performing the motion on screen. Just how much actual posturing was necessary to activate the gesture is questionable, but the concept of wrestler-specific taunts is enticing.2
This is WWE for everybody. By moving the focus off button presses, Yuke's have created a simpler, if slightly watered down, move set. As a result, the Wii version feels more aracdey than the other next-gen versions. Gone are complicated stamina bars, analogue controlled submission battles and all those elements that have alienated newcomers to the series in the past.
As THQ Creative Director Bryan Williams said to us after the demonstration, "the Wii is a pick up and play console, and we want to take advantage of that and make a pick up and play game". If anything, we'd go one step further and point out that WWE is itself of a similar ilk.
There's something instantly accessible and entertaining about a man being kicked through a ladder, or a 420lb giant being smacked with a metal chair - it's the perfect 'pick up and enjoy' sporting event, and it's just waiting to be picked up and played on Wii.
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