User Rating: 6.5 | Exciting Pro Wrestling 5 (Limited Edition) PS2
This game makes major, and worthwhile improvements to the gameplay of Smackdown. It also makes major changes to the presentation, and they are budget cutting changes and wont benefit the consumer. From a gameplay standpoint this game is better than the previous games. There are a lot of subtle changes in the season modes and a lot of cool changes that you will notice when you play, such as stats tracking (awesome), no more wandering around the arena pre-match (brilliant), ability to build up wrestlers in ring ability and sellability (stellar). Now the bad. Terrible roster. Of all this years games, Raw 2 on XBOX and Wrestlemania XIX on the Gamecube, the PS2 game Smackdown:HCTP has the worst roster of them all. Where last years roster concentrated on established wrestlers, this year has a major focus on newcomers. What is the point in doing that when the player can create their own crap wrestlers? Well maybe that is the point, for people that dont have the time or patience or ability to use create a wrestler, the people at THQ have thoughtfully included a whole lot of offical 'jobbers' on the roster. The bottom line is that Shut Your Mouth has the best roster out of all three PS2 games. No ring introductions. This one is unforgivable, although it does have one positive aspect, being that your created wrestler will fit in seamlessly with the other wrestlers in the game as everybody is named in text only. In previous games your created wrestler would be introduced (and commentated) by such ridiculous names as SUPERSTAR or VAMPIRE etc, so from that point of view it is a good change - but not from the point of view if you only ever intend on playing with the real stars. What this means though is you can effectively create the missing superstars through caw, and you wont know that they were never there to begin with (because you dont have JR calling them SUPERSTAR during the match). The final major blunder is the lack of offical entrance music. THQ has severly cut it's budget in this game, probably covering losses from the XBOX game RAW of last year. So Stacy Kielbers "LEGS" theme done by ZZ Top becomes a improvised bassline with chord changes. Same for Victorias theme. When you combine this with the lack of ring introductions you might as well turn the entrances off as they no longer resemble their real life counterparts. The exceptions are wrestlers who's themes are done in house and not by licensed artists. I have given gameplay a 9 because there is a bug which you can exploit to win any match in about 30 seconds (CLUE: it involves getting your opponent onto the crowd barrier and hitting them relentlessly with the ring steps). Otherwise the gameplay it unbelievably good. Graphics were given a 9 as they aren't quite as good as last years game, due in part to the fact that the crowd around the ring and entrance way is now polygonal. I would rather have good looking wrestler models than good looking crowd models. A lot of the gee whiz factor occurs during the entrances, but as you'll probably be turning them off they dont factor into my equation. Sound 6, due to the lack of offical music, ring introductions and commentary. WCW Mayhem had great and funny commentary. That was a PS1 game, surely the PS2 can handle it!? Value is a 10 because I dont think you will stop playing season mode in this one, and will probably be preferring season mode to exhibition (except for multiplayer). Obviously the tilt was the negative changes to the game, including the roster full of jobbers, the lack of ring intros and lack of official music. At the end of the day, you probably will want to keep your copy of Shut Your Mouth to play the wrestlers missing from this game, but you will play Here Comes The Pain for the advancements in the gameplay area.