E3 2001 Hands-onWWF SmackDown! Just Bring It

The third WWF SmackDown! game from THQ, simply called WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It, follows in the footsteps of the previous games by offering much of the same gameplay and television-style production that the first two games pioneered.

The version shown here at E3 already looks really, really nice. The wrestlers have the same style of animation they have in the other SmackDown! games, they just look a whole lot better and move significantly smoother. The game will be able to handle nine wrestlers in the ring at once, and it handles run-ins without pausing to load models and textures. On the audio front, THQ is finally adding play-by-play commentary to its WWF series. The game will feature commentary from the WWF Sunday Night Heat team of Michael Cole and Tazz. The twosome will occasionally pop-up mid-match in a small picture-in-picture window to emphasize their comments.

The game is set to feature more than 60 different match types. The version shown here only contained a handful of those, including single match, tornado tag match, tornado six-man tag, triple threat tornado, one-on-two, one-on-three, triple threat, fatal four-way, special referee, and time limit title matchups. The version also featured four arenas, though the final version will surely contain more. This version contained the Wrestlemania X7 arena, the SmackDown! Arena, the plaza, and the parking lot. The out-of-the-ring parking lot environment was large, and it pulled back as wrestler after wrestler ran in on our match, eventually leading to eight wrestlers onscreen without any drop in frame rate.

More than 30 WWF superstars will be featured in the game. We saw a handful of them, including The Rock, The Undertaker, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, Molly Holly, Lita, Perry Saturn, and Billy Gunn. The game controls roughly the same as the previous SmackDown! games.

WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It is scheduled to be released this fall.