WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009

The Good
Being a fan of WWE on the telly, I found this game to be very thrilling. I enjoyed the 2006 version of SvR for it had tons of fun features like the create a superstar mode, which I've loved since the days of WWF Attitude. But I really wasn't that impressed with the '07 or '08 editions. So I decided to give 2010 a chance. It looked and played great. Then I decided to get the 2009 version, as it was just a year behind. It also looks great and is excellent to play, even though 2010 is a lot better. I'd still say it's better than 2011, which felt like a total rush job. But you REALLY need to play these games with a real person, as the computer AI is just not that challenging at all (unless you make the difficulty level very high). You could probably play it online, but more and more people are not really that bothered about it as it is outdated.

The Bad
Well, it's somewhat easy in many ways. You really need to put it on Hard if you want a decent match. Not much has been added since the previous game, so in some ways it just seems like a roster update, but I was glad I was able to assemble so many teams in this one. I'm glad you don't have to call your partner(s) in during a tag team match. In the older games, it was a nuisance when you'd have a guy beat and the other member(s) of a team would come in and spoil your moment. Also, a lot of the DLC wrestlers like Vader and Doink the Clown didn't even have any entrance music. This is easily resolved by getting their themes from YouTube using a convert site and putting them on a CD, but it just felt a bit of a rip off putting in these unimportant novelty characters and then not even bothering to give them any music.

The Bottom Line
While it's bound to still be a lot of fun for non wrestling fans, I think this game will probably just appeal to really old school WWF and WWE fans. The game does look like there was care put into it, unlike this year's rather terrible bug ridden 2011 release!