Smackdown Shut Your Mouth Season Mode

[Rosalia Kemme]

Seasonmode was re lengthened to two game years, as opposed to the abbreviated season mode in its predecessor. It was the first game to feature the Brand Extension featuring Ric Flair's Raw and Vince McMahon's SmackDown! Players compete exclusively on the show they are drafted to for the first few months of year 1, consisting of four Raw or four SmackDown! events, plus a pay-per-view event per month. If the superstar is a created superstar, or if the original superstar is below a rating of 60, he will start (or be demoted) to wrestle on Sunday Night HEAT. Eventually, the player will have the freedom to fight on the two major TV shows, appearing on two RAW and two SmackDown! shows and the PPV event, even if he did not hold the Undisputed Championship. One of the major angles featured is based on a nWo storyline featured in early 2002 that included Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, and X-Pac, who replaced Scott Hall from the original televised storyline, after Hall was released for his problems arising from his alcohol-related actions. This was also the first game in the series in which female wrestlers could not participate in season mode.

Like its predecessor WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It, Shut Your Mouth's championships cannot be contended for in Exhibition mode and can only be defended in season mode. All of the major titles of the time, except for the Women's are included in the game: WWE Undisputed, Intercontinental, European, Tag Team, Cruiserweight, and Hardcore championships.

Televised and pay-per-view events are televised from the SmackDown! Arena, which is based on Madison Square Garden, as seen from outside the arena and within the main foyer. Though each week, each event takes place from a different city (as announced by Jim Ross at the start of the events), the areas outside of the arenas remain in Manhattan, New York. Notable areas are a New York Subway stop named SmackDown! Station, Times Square, and The World. Although this game was seen as a vast improvement over Just Bring It, it still had several problems and limitations, many of which are corrected by its successor, WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain. The game features several arenas that WWE held events at in 2001 and 2002. There are also arenas based on each WWE television show. In certain arenas, players could make their wrestlers scale the TitanTron and jump off it. In addition, The Undertaker's motorcycle could be ridden in some matches.

In terms of graphics, some wrestlers were greatly improved, and included realistic facial features. Fully animated entrances for each character are featured, with their entrance video playing on the TitanTron, and their respective themes playing in the arena. The only exception is Maven, who instead was given the SmackDown! theme (although an instrumental of his real theme can be unlocked with a cheat device). The title belts are also displayed in the entrances realistically (i.e. if The Rock held the title, he would carry it to the ring and toss it above his head in his salute to the people, as opposed to wearing the belt on his shoulder or around his waist). The belts move according to natural physics, as well. This game was also the first to include alternate attires which the player could unlock through Season Mode (the game also holds the record for most alternating costumes in the SmackDown! series with 37 individual superstars collecting either one or two extra costumes).this game was good in comparison to previous smackdown games.

For wrestler entrances, most of the themes used in the televised and house shows were incorporated into the game. Along with the in-house music from Jim Johnston, remakes of Johnston's originals from bands such as Breaking Point (for Rob Van Dam), Our Lady Peace (for Chris Benoit), and Saliva (for The Dudley Boyz) were featured. Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler provide sporadic commentary. However, ring announcer Howard Finkel returned to provide his voice for match introductions and wrestler entrances.

Create-A-Superstar mode gives the freedom to manipulate any part of the superstar's body. It also offers over 58 move sets from a combination of wrestlers in WWE not featured in the game or working in different promotions. A gripe, however, is that it is impossible to give CAW's teeth.

We've been looking forward to the latest SmackDown game ever since its lauded predecessor first arrived. Although Just Bring It was extremely popular and sold enough to justify a Platinum re-release, we weren't exactly piledriven into loving it, as it suffered from a number of irritating niggles which conspired to spoil the illusion of 'real' wrestling. Nevertheless, we knew Yuke's would return with something bigger and better, and it has. In fact, Shut Your Mouth is arguably a more enjoyable spectacle than the TV series, which continued to shed its regular viewers throughout this year.

Ironically, it's the soap opera style of presentation and scripting that make SYM more enjoyable than Just Bring It. Season mode starts with WWE boss Vince McMahon drafting wrestlers into SmackDown and Raw schedules, and you'll have a full card of fighters to negotiate in the boots (or indeed high heels) of your chosen wrestler. These range from typical one-on-one bouts to the more elaborate ladder and cage matches, tag team battles, Royal Rumbles and even Pay-Per-View specials, which take you all around the globe.

These days though it wouldn't be WWE without a bit of variety in location and outcome. You'll witness brawls in the dressing room area, your allies and enemies interrupting matches and swinging steel chairs about behind the ref's back, and all manner of incidents which adhere to the scripting.

There isn't really an ultimate goal in the season mode - it is what it says on the tin. You have to fight your way through a season, and if you're good, you'll be able to start thinking about challenging for belts. Indeed, if you can work off the deficit of losing the first few matches (as we did) then you can start requesting "title shots" from big man McMahon. He isn't guaranteed to say yes, but you can always go after one of the other myriad prizes on offer in the WWE.

This new season mode has proved very popular around Eurogamer, and the results are rarely the same. It isn't all text with names swapped around either - there's actual "acting" here, in all its glorious cheesiness, and different characters get very different receptions from fellow wrestlers and the crowd. And the management, too. It all depends on whom you befriend, and with whom you lay the smack down.

But apart from being the best yet interpretation of modern day wrestling with plenty of replay value, which respects the sanctity of the 'sport's stupidity, progress in season mode also rewards you with new costumes, characteristics and other options in the create-a-wrestler mode. And since you can enter your own custom bodyslammer in season mode, it's another bullet point for the replay value column.

Seasoning isn't all you can do, though. You can still opt for single matches, using just about any variable imaginable. Do you want ladies only with ladders and cages? Sure thing. Blokes versus birds in the car park? Righty ho. Men in pants only Royal Rumble? Go right ahead. In fact, if it's on the TV, or a combination of elements on the TV, you can probably do it in here. Very impressive.

The improvements continue almost unabated as we move onto the game mechanics. Even using Just Bring It's visuals and controls, SYM would be an incredible improvement, but by upping the polygon count to a level the PS2 regularly (but only marginally) strains to deliver, Yuke's has made it look almost real to boot. Okay, the animation and arena detail get most of the attention, and the models do look a bit like waxwork sculptures, but throw in improved collision detection, with only the odd blemish, more than 50 real-life wrestlers each with increased move counts, the ability to execute your enemy's signature moves if you're cheeky enough, a few control improvements (like easy reversals) and a thick coat of varnish and you have a real beauty to see and play.

Sadly though, after extensive play a number of little inconsistencies emerge in much the same way they did with Just Bring It. For example, for some reason your characters are still capable of floating in midair standing on the ring apron. And in the mechanics department, the ability to induce a dizzy state in your opponent (opening him up to finishing moves) is so inconsistent that we've yet to work out exactly what triggers it. Some reversal moves seem to, and yet huge power moves often go apparently ignored. Oh, and although we like the way the script is characteristically cheesy, Yuke's Japlish is a bit iffy and a lot of the jokes don't really work. Likewise the commentary, though an improvement over Just Bring It, still falls a bit short of 'good', and we're not quite sure why the wrestlers remain mute...

But there's so much that is good about the latest SmackDown! game that it's easy to forgive it. Multiplayer (for up to six players) is no longer limited to enthusiastic post-pub brawling - the game's mechanics lack the glaring flaws present in previous versions, so you can feel safe wheeling it out to a lucid audience. And also unlike previous games, this one offers so much for the single player that it's easy to forget about beating up your nearest and dearest.

Shut Your Mouth is the best PS2 wrestler there is, largely thanks to Yuke's success in mimicking the cheese that oozes from every pore of the WWE. We've often joked that WWE television reminds us of game scripts with appalling acting and laughable dialogue, but it really came to Yuke's aid here, because as a simulation of the WWE bastardisation of combat, SYM is hard to fault. As a piece of gaming software it's a bit easier to pick holes in, but if you're even remotely interested in, ahem, "sports entertainment", you're unlikely to come away disappointed. It's by no means perfect, but WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth is a scissor-kick to the wrestling genre's collective throat.

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