WWE '12 (With Bonus The Rock Downloadable Character)

Hey my first review but it's a good one, to start with I'll talk about Universe 2.0, It's amazing from the first match onwards I was hooked by the great storyline that you can create within universe mode, e.g. Santino teamed with Big Zeke and Kane and at the start of the match Zeke and Santino where arguing about who starting the match, now at the end they won but Big Zeke decided to get out of the ring and walk out on both Santino and Kane, the next week Santino had a match when walking down the ramp Big Zeke pops outta the crowd and BOOM! Santino gets basted, this storyline went on and on :D, another good feature is the injuries although I haven't experienced one yet it won't be long. OVERALL 5/5

This years game is truly BIGGER, BADDER and BETTER

I've played some bad games in my time but this is by far and away the worst of all of them, The game is riddled with bugs, the story mode is dull despite being improved and the game play is terrible. There are situations in game where I found chairs floating over the ring like some kind of UFO, I was also able to pull players into the ring despite them being halfway back to their dressing room.
Very Very Very poor, THQ should be ashamed of themselves

amazing this is the game you need to get for christmas

This game is an excellent improvement on last year's game. Better graphics, gameplay and story lines. There is SO much to do in this game. The only downside is a few bugs and glitches which I have encountered while playing, hopefully they will sort this with an update. I'm also disappointed with the online server as it never seems to work for me and I've only had the game one day.

Having played every smackdown game in the series and beeing a keen lover of the last game, I was rightly excited about the new features, as I'm sure alot of people were. I didn't even think to question the gameplay, as I thought "the gameplay will be pretty much the same as the last".

In a way I was right, but THQ has "tuned up" things like reversals, pins and others. The reversal timing took me a few matches to get use to and at first I liked it, but having played through all the RTWM stories, I can now informatively say I hate the changes. You may find yourself pressing the buttons at the right time, but nothing happens, however this is abit hit and miss.

As for the new predator technology, it shouldn't of made it past play-testing, in my opinion, the first 2 hours into the game, I had already experienced 3 glitches and countless minor and serious issues, such as running moves and attacks not registering, and this happens often; also animation cuts, where you say: suplex a person from one side of the ring to the other and then they get stuck in the rope.

Also the pins took a few matches to get use to, but again I can say I don't like them, only for the reason that after an opponent reverses your finisher, they then instantly get theirs and, after laying it on you, despite the fact that I haven't had a single strike or move against me the whole match, it is near impossible to kick-out. For one thing in the situation mentioned the kick-out prompt does not even show up until the 2 count, giving you all of 1 second to kick-out. I see what THQ where trying to do, but they really need to work on this.

As for Road To Wrestlemania, the story takes place from the standpoint of three characters across three campaigns. The story is very tedious and does not engage the player. Most of the time, what you do in the ring has no effect to how the story progresses, which made me lose interest very quickly.

Now, despite these issues, I will no doubt play this game for a while, but I am a bit disappointed of what has become of this game. I can reverse well most of the time, kick-out of pins almost all of the time(apart from the mentioned situation), and can quite easily put an CPU opponent down on legend difficulty. So I am not saying these things because I'm bitter about sucking, and I'm sure many long time smackdown series fans will agree, that this game needs more work.

Rating: 3/5 7/10