The best one of the series! Period.
User Rating: 9 | WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2006 PS2
I'll confess, this game is the first PlayStation 2 game I bought, you could say it's the reason I bought a PS2. SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006 is also the first wrestling game I ever remember playing. I remember losing the first few matches, but I managed to win my first match after some trial and error and it felt good. So, I won a few more matches and got the hang of it. It wasn't always easy, but it was satisfying as hell. And there was some much more than just the basic one-on-one match type: there was Hardcore, Hell in a Cell, Ladder, Last Man Standing, Submission, Royal Rumble... hours and hours of wrestling. And then there's the career mode. I've lost track how many times I've played through the career mode, trying to find all sorts of different ways to get to WrestleMania. There's also all sorts of great things to achieve, the trophies to achieve, the legendary wrestlers to buy from the store, you get to customize your dressing room, all the other achievements and challenges, all that will keep you playing for a long time and after you're done with them, you'll just come back to play the game for the fun factor. As a wrestling fan, I really appreciate how THQ managed to create such a good game. Heck, I got myself a PSP just so I could get Jake The Snake Roberts unlocked at the store. Man, sometimes I'm such a sucker. But the PSP version kicks as much ass as the PS2 version, so thank you, THQ.
You might be asking yourself: why am I writing a review about a game that already has three sequels that include new features and updated rosters? Well, I'll tell you why. I still play SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006 occasionally, both on my PS2 and PSP, and that's the beauty of it. It's still much better than all the rest of it's series. No gimmicky controls, a good career mode that made you feel like a wrestler, a great wrestler creation system (you don't have to spend hours and hours just pushing buttons to train your wrestler at a snail's pace, I mean really, SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008, WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT ALL ABOUT!?) and it's just fun without being too simple or too complicated. SmackDown! vs. RAW 2007 was still good, I didn't enjoy the new controls so much, but it was alright. 2008 just felt wrong, like a hideous abomination, a scientific experiment gone wrong and the fans had to pay for it. 2009 is step in the right direction, but it doesn't cover up the mess that is called SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008...
