SDvR 2010 Review

There are loads of customisation options

THQ has put a big emphasis on community this year . There's the expected and mandatory online multiplayer (as well as single-system play), but the new content sharing will be of more interest to many. Everything you create in the game can be shared with other players, making SDvsRAW 2010 a game you could play, complete with new content, until next year's game and beyond. The big new addition that is spearheading this user created content revolution is the Story Designer - your way to create the shows and fights you've always dreamed about.

The idea of making your own script for Smackdown and RAW is probably a WWE fan's dream come true. On the face of it it's all here: you can choose the scenes that make up each show, pick the characters, select the animations, trim the length of each scene, set facial expressions, choose the video to be played on the giant screen and the music (both intro music and crowd effects), move the camera to your desired position and, perhaps most importantly, add text. There's quite understandably no option to add voice overs (although that would have been amazing), but you can tell the story through on-screen dialogue, inputted via a virtual keyboard or USB device.

It's an excellent mode for hardcore fans, and it should mean you'll have new storylines to play through for a very long time, but it's hard not to think it could have been even better. There's clearly a fine line between being too simplistic and overly complicated, but increased control over each scene would have been brilliant. Take, for example, the facial expressions: Each scene is split into chunks of a predetermined length, and you can apply a facial expression at the start of any of these chunks. At times it's impossible to get these to align with events happening in the scene, so characters will express pain seconds before or after you really want them to. A little more refinement would have been superb, but that will have to be on the wish list for next year's game.

Superstar creation has been given an overhaul too, with the clothing items now being real 3D objects. The toolsets are far easier to use than before and the loading time has been greatly reduced, but we struggled to make some of the fighters we wanted due to item limits. The painted-on clothing seen previously didn't look as great, but the layers system enabled you to do pretty much anything; now, with each item costing you points out of a maximum of 48, you have to be incredibly selective over what your fighter really needs. Had the max item count been larger we'd have the best customisation system the series has ever included, but when you can't create who you want it's hard not to long for what we had before.

The storyline creation tool will keep fans busy for months

Presentation all over the game has been given a real TV-style makeover, and the wrestlers look better than ever - although we're not sure about some of the faces. Rope physics have also been greatly improved, even if the way the wrestlers interact with them does at times look a little odd. It might sound insignificant, but one of the best visual improvements this year is the blood. To put it simply, it looks great and makes the more brutal matches seem far more realistic. We're not blood-thirsty psychos, but anything that makes the game more closely resemble the reality of Sports Entertainment is great.

WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2010 is, we're surprised to say, easily the best game in the series to date, and a must-buy for WWE fans - especially if you've been giving it a wide-berth for a few years. The controls are refined, the game modes are plentiful, the presentation is top class and the customisation features will excite the little kid in WWE fans the world over. It's still a tad clunky at times, with traditional beat 'em up fans likely to be unimpressed by the combat system, but grappling fans who like to imagine what it would be like to wear spandex and lift giant sweaty men above their heads will find that this does the job superbly.