TNA iMPACT! (PS3)

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'''Name''': TNA Impact!
'''Released''': September 2008, PS3
'''Developed by''': Midway Studios
'''Average Professional Score''': 6 out of 10
'''RRP''': £44.99 - cheapest online store is '''asda.co.uk''' at £14.91

'''You may like TNA Impact! if you liked''':

WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 (PS3)
Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This At Home (PS2)



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...and realistic Gameplay mechanics. With TNA in real life stealing not only WWE’s fans but also wrestlers, could it steal the crown of the best wrestling game around?


So unlike the ‘random’ storylines feature in the Smackdown series, TNA Impact! sports an original concoction of an actual plot. Wrestler, Suicide, is an up and rising star, the world is at his feet and he is destined for a title shot. However members of Flax threaten ... more

Game Info:

Name: TNA Impact!
Released: September 2008, PS3
Developed by: Midway Studios
Average Professional Score: 6 out of 10
RRP: £44.99 - cheapest online store is asda.co.uk at £14.91

You may like TNA Impact! if you liked:

WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 (PS3)
Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This At Home (PS2)

Wrestling games owe a lot to the early Smackdown series, which sent the genre from fan base only to a worldwide phenomenon. They were creative, innotive, original and highly enjoyable because of their free flowing animation and realistic Gameplay mechanics. With TNA in real life stealing not only WWE’s fans but also wrestlers, could it steal the crown of the best wrestling game around?

So unlike the ‘random’ storylines feature in the Smackdown series, TNA Impact! sports an original concoction of an actual plot. Wrestler, Suicide, is an up and rising star, the world is at his feet and he is destined for a title shot. However members of Flax threaten him to intentionally lose. To their annoyance he doesn’t and so they attack Suicide and leave him for dead in Mexico and the world is left wondering where the missing superstar could be.

Picking up in Mexico, the player controls Suicide who is suffering from memory loss and cannot remember his name never mind what had happened, but realises that he is a wrestler. So he enters the local league and fights for a chance to fly to America and fight there. As he progresses he starts to remember things and events and when he is offered a job into the TNA it becomes his personal mission to recover the past and find out who was responsible for his ‘accident’.

It’s quite respectable for TNA to introduce this brand new original story, one that tries ever so hard to gage interest and conduct emotion as you follow his story to rediscover his identity. It certainly had the potential to be entertaining, but overall it simply falls short by miles. The main problem is that it is extremely predictable all glossed with cheesy shine that pokes fun out of a serious storyline. Surely it’s not meant to be funny for all the wrong reasons? Despite having real voices, another problem is that the characters in there just don’t seem real and forgetting that it is based on an organisations ruled by caricature, it feels really undeveloped, rushed and undeniably unrealistic.

I was left under whelmed by the dated PS2 look which many critics praised as being ‘realistic’. Don’t get me wrong they aren’t bad, but I had to ask myself what I disliked about them, for they didn’t really suffer from rough lines, fuzzy blends and even dismal lighting. The main factor I found pretty much instantly was that all of the wrestlers looked similar with a cartoon – esque feel. Skin texture and added depth were missing giving a lifeless look, one that did an average job, but not a great one. Colour also didn’t have much range often only promoting the major primary colours which lacked a variety of shades resulting in an overly generic tinge.

Perhaps the most awful let down in the game is the sluggish, puppet like animation that is sloppy, rigid and without a doubt silly. Obviously the actual wrestling and move execution is perhaps the most vital ingredient in a wrestling game, yet moves often don’t connect and the rest of the actual moves that do require a smooth transition and sadly in here they do not. You would expect a high dose of flamboyance and high attention to detail in the opening walkouts, the stadium and surroundings, but yet again an overwhelming sense of jitteriness is apparent with quick openings, jerky cutscenes and dense arenas that obviously try and trick the player into believing that 3D mechanics have been used when its evidently 2D that looks like a sitcom backdrop.

I suppose the excessively dramatic voice acting and the huge attempt to make everyone sound as butch as possible is actually done well to reflect the actual atmosphere from the television airings. It is humorous though and not in a good way as it just undermines the storyline and adds to the long list of the annoying bullet points that just keeps on coming and coming. To be fair as previously mentioned, all of the wrestlers managed to record their own voices for the game to give it an edge of authenticity and it does help promote the games license. You cannot miss the exceedingly egotistical drone that comes out of Kurt Angle’s mouth and the all of the rest talk as if you’d expect to be covered in saliva afterwards. A lack of in match commentary is also ridiculous as it takes away some of the ambience that TNA is visibly looking for here.

TNA Impact! does feature actual wrestlers from the show, 25 in fact with many at first locked so as to persuade you to fight your way through the story mode to unlock them. Whilst I thought this was a little low, 25 really isn’t that bad giving many fans the choice to play as differing wrestlers with many different abilities. Kurt Angle, Kevin Nash and Sting all play a role in the story with each bringing something to the table. You cannot actually play as a fabled superstar in the Story mode but instead take a created one you made earlier. Refreshing yes? Well actually no not really as the Create a Wrestler mode is so simple, so lacking in creative options and really quite useless. With so little options to choose from it’s fair to say that nearly every players’ wrestler will look pretty much the same as another player’s wrestler who is playing 2000 miles away, probably just with different clothes on. You will guarantee to have more clothes to choose from in your own wardrobe than you do in here, but at least in TNA Impact! you have the can dream up a whole collection of creative expressions with a whole range of styles of yes . . . you guessed it eyebrows.

A whole host of match options are available which is a relief. Single matches, Tag Teams, Fatal Four Ways all call out on the screen as well as the highly popular Ultimate X match. Wrestlers can leave the ring and interact with the arenas as well with interactive hotspots where the barriers and ringside details can be used to create more havoc. All of these can be played in a disappointing eight venues around the world, which to be honest is ridiculous. Players like to mix things up playing in different arenas and stadiums and the ones available are a lacklustre effort to provide a setting to house the wrestling rather than give the player more choices in the game.

The actual in game controls are simple to use which give the player an easier set to follow to pull of the moves set. What this does is that it stops the player from looking down at the controller trying to remember the combination of buttons to pull off a finisher or high flying attack and instead just focus’ on what exactly is happening on the screen to only has to flick a simple finger here or there to pull off a reversal or grapple move. The L1 button is used to strengthen the attacks whilst the core buttons on the controller provide the punch, kick and grapple scenarios. There isn’t many options Midway had to decide from so it was inevitable that the Impact! meter is a direct copy of the Smackdown series. Performing moves and grapple attacks build up this meter and when it reaches its peak, a finisher can be executed to deal more damage to the opponent. All of the correct finishers for each of the wrestlers are here which is always a plus, but after a while you cannot help but feel bored of using the same moves over and over again.

When you look into it, there isn’t a highly complicated move selection and many of them at first are all locked waiting for the player to play through the Story mode to unleash them. With Smackdown having hundreds and hundreds of moves to use, TNA Impact! has probably at a guess less than 100 and when you take into account that 25 wrestlers all have one finisher and an abundance of signature moves fans will recognise, the numbers simply don’t add up meaning that you’ll find a lot of the wrestlers performing the same moves. This leads to repetitiveness which in turn leads to boredom.

There are multiplayer options available though which is always a bonus when friends are visiting. It supports up to four players at once meaning that if you are all fans it can provide some decent entertainment. A limited online option though means not many will bother to sit and wait for people to join the one on one matches. It’s tedious and suffers from slow upload meaning it’s best to stick to the offline alternatives.

A recent poll conducted by a popular wrestling website found that in fact 13% of wrestling fans were women. So I ask where are the women wrestlers? Apart from randomly appearing in the Story Mode, none of the actual 15 rostered stars are playable. You cannot create a woman wrestler either which leads to sexism. This may sound melodramatic but really it means again the player loses out in choices and is forced to play within the boundaries the game sets.

Playstation 3 owners will sadly miss out on downloadable content to their X-Box 360 counterparts with Midway announcing three new wrestler’s available to download via the Xbox Live Marketplace. Despite my opinion of the game, many fans here miss out on the opportunities and it’s sad really because of the awful Create mode means that they will not be able to create them themselves. It doesn’t support trophies either which can only mean that when players get bored there is no ignition to play on.

In February 2009, Midway announced that it was filing for bankruptcy and with the company churning out fodder like this im not surprised. It may contain the actual TNA wrestling superstars and promote the Ultimate X match type extremely popular with the fans, im afraid that’s really the only authentic parts that players are going to get. With an awful animation engine, satirical storyline, disgusting Create mode, im afraid it is really hard to sum up the actual good points of the game. The simple control system do it justice in the beginning but the actual lack of moves means boredom will set in surprisingly fast and with little choice and imagination, the game will fare better as a mug mat than anything else. Smackdown may have become lacklustre itself of late, but at least it has the AI to challenge you. You will be enormously let down by this debut offering and when you are waiting the half an hour installation time, the hope that it better be good if it’s taking this much time to load clearly is a sign to stay well away.

* ****

2/10
 

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