Don't take this to be a smackdown rip-off. This game offers fresh ideas but the excution could have been cleaner...
Firstly, lets not get ahead of ourselves and think, "oh god, a smackdown rip off"- as this is not the case. Now to be honest I have played wrestling games from the 90's starting off with War Zone and up until today the wrestling series has changed a lot. Orginally it was arcadic, but now it has gone for realism. I personally enjoyed the arcadic experience more because it was actually fun. But TNA, has gone one better, it has mixed them both.
TNA has a lot going for it- such as a good multiplayer and a fairly strong roster (but somewhat little). It does not try to play like smackdown, and nor is it any way similar other than good graphics and it involves wrestling. Firstly lets start off with the game itself. Matchs are intense, and the wrestler models are good. The ring has lots of hotspots and the action is non-stop. The free for all and Ultimate X are the highlights in the match types and are really good with your mates. But there are a few problem with the matchs. the first is with the tag team. To put it nicely it is weak, as the games AI for your partner is some what dead, but your oppnents AI partener has a reaction speed of light. Also tag team has an annoying camera with it being pulled out so you can see every wrestler and makes fighting in the ring a different game to the single player. An overall problem with the matchs is the glitchs. In a match you could be happily beating the back hairs off of them and then suddenly your guy will get stuck or will be stuck on the top turnbuckle. Its bits like this that halt the gameplay and really make you want to scream as it is most frustating in story mode.
Story mode is ok for a first attempt but is quite dire. The story itself is unrealistic from a wrestling perspective and is too short. The voice acting ranges from ok to awful. You sound like ok, but when you get Nash involved you think "what did I do to deserve this".
An overall impression is that the replay value is somewhat limited , due to lack of depth, but the multiplayer is good and the series has had a good start off