Remember when Kurt Angle was a big deal?

by Mark Medeiros

Fun factor: Average

Worth to: Rent

TNA Impact shows signs of promise but ultimately feels as second-rate as the show it's based on.

TNA Impact (or if you want to be more precise, TNA iMPACT! I guess) is a wrestling video game based on the promotion trying to be the second-rate knockoff… or rather the “alternative” to the WWE. And following TNA’s affection for overbooked storytelling, they’ve conjured up a rather bizarre storyline for this game, one that feels like it came right out of the imagination of Vince Russo.




A wrestler named “Suicide” ignores threats to take a fall and wins the World Heavyweight championship, despite having terrible attire and the attitude of a jerk that should insure no actual promotion would want to book him. Not to mention a reckless style that puts his opponent’s health at risk. Basically all the reasons the WWE will never give two shits about Alex Shelley. As a result of Suicide’s defiance, gangster babyfaces Homicide and Hernandez brutally disfigure him and leave him for dead somewhere in a hospital in Mexico, where Mexican plastic surgeons resuscitate you using the game’s Create A Wrestler. From there, your creation must climb his way back to the top of the proverbial mountain.

Okay, the nicest thing I can say about the story is that it’s more coherent and interesting than the last couple Smackdown vs. Raw games and has significantly better voice-acting. Special honorable mention goes to Kevin Nash for his amusing VO contribution. However, the story itself is far too hokey to ever belong on television… which unfortunately is what happened, as “Suicide” has since been transformed into a real life wrestling persona, complete with goofy attire and lack of fan interest.

Suicide, listen to your name!

Speaking of which, I can only assume that the goal of the Create A Wrestler feature here was to recreate the plastic surgery options that a beaten-down hospital in an impoverished part of Mexico would provide, as well as the variety of clothing available at Goodwill in Mexico, being that both areas have a severe lack of variety. Your customization options are very limited appearance-wise, and more so when it comes to movesets. You’re asked to choose from one of three movesets and every single individual maneuver is locked up from the beginning. This sucks not only for obvious reasons, but also because it seems like a vague attempt to hide the reality that there are very few moves to choose from, (more on that in a bit). I wouldn’t mind such a paltry Create A Wrestler, or even the lack of one, except that the game makes it the centre of its Story mode and I’m forced to use this jobber of a creation to play the storyline and unlock half the game’s content.



The actual Story mode gameplay is more or less a series of matches as your attitude-ridden protagonist works his way up a ladder that no one with the same chip on his shoulder would ever be able to climb in the actual wrestling world. However, several problems plague this mode, namely how your former World Heavyweight champion of a wrestler can’t do squat against the actual TNA performers.

When you face off against the created “indy” wrestlers at the beginning (and at least this game recreates the feeling of being in a low-rate indy promotion with the fake out-of-shape opponents it pits against you), you’ll be able to win with relative ease, but when faced with an actual in game TNA wrestler like James Storm or Robert Roode, their stats far exceed your character’s stats. So you’ll have to unleash multiple steel chair shots and finishers before you can possibly hope to beat them, and all the while they need only hit you with a few precise shots to build up their finisher meter, hit their big move and humble you Shiekie style. This unfair advantage is made all the more frustrating by how bad the AI in this game is. Climb the top rope and count how many times your opponent will make an effort to get out of the way.

What I do like about Impact though is that you can tell the developers took a good look at the recent WWE Smackdown vs. Raw games. Over the years, the need to add and expand the gameplay of those games with new gimmicks (as opposed to all the work that they’d need to do to revamp that dated mess of a gameplay engine) have made them needlessly convoluted. The result of their countless “revisions” have since stacked on needless quick-time event mini-games, excessively long move animations and some illogical control choices (why did they assign the right analog stick for grapple attacks?). Impact simplifies things back to what they looked like with the early Smackdown games, but with much crisper animations, smoother counters that themselves have counters, and matches which move at a brisk pace and just feel right. This is a game where you always get the sense that you’re in control.

Spot monkeys

But going back to what I mentioned before about movesets, the problem of a lack of moves spills into the existing wrestlers too. Namely, how there seems to be only three movesets -- athletic, average and powerful, and these movesets are divided amongst the entire roster of characters. Except for the animation for each wrestler’s finishers, every single character here fights the exact same way, and it sucks out all of the novelty of playing as these wrestlers. TNA’s biggest strength as a promotion is how it brings to the table exciting wrestlers who are allowed to work a faster, highspot-ridden style that the WWE wouldn’t allow, but you wouldn’t know it playing with this game’s homogenous roster. Oh, it also hurts that said movelists are small in of themselves, as you’ll find yourself repeating the same 3 or 4 grapple attacks over and over. Without the ability to wrestle like his real life stiff self, Samoa Joe is every bit the fat bastard Scott Steiner claims him to be. I mean look at him.



This deserves its own paragraph, but why is the same button that does grapple attacks the same one that performs an Irish whip? It’s baffling how many accidental Irish whips one will perform within the span of a match.

I guess you can say the issues with the TNA video game boil down to the high demands it takes to make a wrestling game. The many fans who constantly cry for hundreds of moves, an updated roster with every current superstar past and present, a create a wrestler/belt/move/stable/league/turnbuckle post and a 40 hour branching story mode take for granted the time and energy it takes to create a single move animation for a punch, or the care and attention needed to craft the small tattoo on somebody arm.

Summary


Like with any sports game, many of these issues need more time to deal with but are bogged down by the demand to release yearly iterations of the franchise. I would’ve gladly accepted the smaller roster of fighters and the lack of extra (and usually needless) gameplay options that other wrestling games have in favor of tight gameplay. Had the team spent more time polishing the individual TNA wrestlers, then I would recommend Impact as a multiplayer experience, and push it more so as a purchase if the Story Mode was more tolerable to play. However, the final product feels more like a glorified demo than a game, something that has promise to be great but ultimately feels too shallow, lacking in replay value and content. It fails to catch everything that makes TNA unique, but catches everything that makes TNA feel second-rate.

And with Midway in financial peril, the odds are doubtful that the next game will even exist.

Pros: Mostly good voicework. The online play is mostly lag-free and functional. For what its worth, the Ultimate X match is more interesting than most gimmick matches found in wrestling games.

Cons: Bad commentary. Half the roster is locked, and some of the locked character choices are rather illogical; why is Brother D’Von available at the start but Brother Ray is locked? Not an in-game fault, but the actual TNA Impact TV commercial has become a 2 hour infomercial for the game.