WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008

So, is it better than last year? In terms of features, it's honestly hard to say. It depends almost entirely on what your favourite modes are, and which wrestlers you prefer. This is the sort of game where most fans will have made their purchasing decision when they first read the updated features list on a message board, but this is par for the course in Smackdown. You gain some characters, you lose others. Game modes and match types come and go. But all of this simply serves to distract us from the elephant in the room that few seem to confront - the wrestling itself, the core of the gameplay, which is all too often an underdeveloped ball of compromise that puts the onus on the player to forgive slack design.

Painstakingly rendered character models that are full of life when preening for the camera become shambling automatons in the ring. People and objects clip through each other with a frequency that should be outlawed on games developed for this generation of consoles. Collision detection is still a crap shoot, with blows and grapples connecting when the visual evidence clearly suggests otherwise, or missing even though hands have passed right through shoulders. Animations are recycled with tedious frequency - within my first three matches I'd seen the "push the referee at your opponent" animation eight times. Presentation-wise, it can be hilariously inconsistent. I've heard commentators praise a wrestler as championship material before claiming he's yet to prove himself as anything special, literally just a few seconds later. Cutscenes and messages during your 24/7 rise to Legend status make a mockery of narrative cohesion, with deadly rivals becoming best pals for no apparent reason.

Want more? The AI is patchy at best, something that the 24/7 GM mode makes horribly clear should you opt to watch one of your matches rather than take part. Set up a 6-Man Tornado Tag match, and watch those CPU wrestlers hobble around each other before settling into a blinkered series of one-on-one scuffles, oblivious to all else around them. I watched wrestlers Irish Whip opponents into the turnbuckle and then just walk off rather than press the advantage. I watched two wrestlers in a Parking Lot Brawl circle each other, holding a bin and a table, swiping at thin air for five minutes. It's laughable, really, and it speaks volumes about where the challenge comes from when you're the one in the ring.

Anyone who's played the series since it switched to the Smackdown vs Raw format should be nodding in recognition at most of these gripes. These are persistent issues, and the fact that they're still so prevalent can no longer be ignored. Please, let's not be distracted by the fact that you can now set weapons on fire. This is a series that needs serious attention to the engine, not just another fresh coat of paint over the rust spots. If the new Tekken came with such basic accuracy problems when landing blows, it'd be savaged. If Fight Night Round 4 features fighters so stupid that they ignore obvious openings for victory, the internet would ring with people denouncing EA for being sloppy and lazy. But in wrestling, none it seems to matter.

Admittedly, grapple fans aren't exactly spoilt for choice these days when it comes to games, so I can understand the temptation to make excuses for persistently clumsy gameplay provided the options surrounding it are plentiful. If that's you, and you've read this far seething with anger at how I've got it all COMPLETELY WRONG and not EVEN MENTIONED the new "weapon wheel" or the NEW HAIRSTYLES in Create-A-Wrestler, then you probably won't let my miserly opinion dissuade you. After all, as we've already established, if you like old Smackdown then you'll like new Smackdown. And therein lays the problem - Yuke's has had a captive audience for so long that the incentive to improve seems to have withered away.