by Chris Buffa on Friday, September 12, 2008
Kurt Angle, Sting and A.J. Styles invade the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in TNA Impact!, Midway's user friendly and beautiful wrestling game. Based on the promotion Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling, it allows you to control various grapplers in a variety of matches as well as embark on a neat story mode. However, despite its good looks and easy to learn controls, numerous glitches and cheap artificial intelligence DDT this game into the mat.
At first, it seemed like Impact! was a winner. Its gorgeous visuals, powered by Unreal Engine 3.0, display life-like wrestlers in all their polygonal glory, as well as detailed rings and a realistic looking crowd. In addition, we marveled at the animation. Punches and kicks look good, and the more complex maneuvers, such as catching someone after they leap from the top turnbuckle and slamming their bodies into the mat, are excellent.
We're also fond of the simple controls that let us mash the face buttons and bust out crazy moves guaranteed to hurt our opponents. It's especially enjoyable during frantic multiplayer player bouts, as we and our friends compete in free-for-alls, tag matches and TNA's ultimate contest, Ultimate X, where everyone attempts to grab a big red X suspended above the ring. The mini game to grab the X is a bit awkward, but knocking each other to the floor is good for a few laughs.
That being said, TNA Impact! isn't championship material, mostly because the computer plays dirty. In any given match, it'll reverse more than 70 percent of our grapples, punches and kicks. Midway sometimes gives us the option of reversing the reversal, but that's not always reliable. What happens is, after destroying the artificial intelligence for several minutes, it'll perform a few reversals and win the match. This ruins the game.
On top of that, there's a bunch of annoying glitches that anger us. During tag matches, our computer-controlled partner will stand on the ring apron while an opponent pins us. In single player bouts, the AI will constantly run into the steel steps and punches sometimes fail to connect while fists that are at least a foot from our heads register. Diving into the ring near a standing opponent will stun them for a bit, it's impossible to pick someone up if they're on their belly and it's hard side-stepping opponents, as their running clotheslines are somehow impossible to avoid. Now factor in the B button, which instructs our character to pin or leave the ring depending on his position, and TNA Impact! becomes the type of game that should have a high blood pressure warning.
A lack of content doesn't help. We know that Midway didn't have the time to program lots of stuff into the game, but it failed to include things we've seen in previous wrestling games, such as a deep move list, multiple weapons (it's chairs only, and you cannot run with one), a visible referee and the ability to battle up and down the entranceway. Even something like blood (which pops up in the 10-year-old Nintendo 64 game WCW vs. NWO World Tour) is absent. Sorry, but us wrestling fans expect a little more from these games.
Story mode is cool, but creating a character eats up one of the game's five slots. You also don't have a lot of moves. If you play Exhibition for a while additional moves become available, but if you jump right into the Story campaign you'll have a bunch of defaults, none of which are viewable. Same goes for entrances, as the game forces you to pick them blindly. Entrance one sounds good, we guess, but only because we love the number one. That's the kind of logic you'll employ while creating someone.
We were inclined to award this game a six out of ten, simply because those four player matches (you can only do two player online, by the way, and it's lag-tastic) are cool, but the irritating AI killed us. We can't play a game that won't let us play, so while Midway did a great job with the controls and the visuals, TNA Impact! is much too sloppy to warrant a purchase, let alone challenge THQ's WWE SmackDown vs Raw franchise.
TNA Impact! Xbox 360 Game Guide
TNA Impact! PlayStation 3 Game Guide
This game Is bad the most idiot thing about it is the glitches also it the controls are a little delayed and the games reversing system is really bad. Good Review
Good Review. However you can play two player mode with two people on the same system. Two player mode is not bound to online only. There are lots of moves to choose from, lots of which you unlock as you rack up points. More wrestlers are also unlockable as you progress through the story mode. Ultimate X is by far the coolest part of the whole game, and something you will not find in any previous wrestling title. This is their very first attempt at a wrestling game for a company that was only started in 2002. I must say for a first time effort they delivered massively! The graphics and sound are amazing, the controls are very easy to learn. It's a much more arcade style which makes the entire game play experience much more pick up and go. The story mode actually involves a plot with twists and turns. It smartly uses Kevin Nash as a mentor, which he plays on the show, and nicely makes LAX fit perfectly into their roles. This game gets so-so reviews because it is always compared to the WWE games and all the WCW/ECW/WWF games of old. Anything is better then Mayhem and Backstage Assault, anything was better then the Acclaim ECW game and the Acclaim WWF Attitude games using the exact same engine and battle system. Sure SD vs. RAW is an ongoing franchise, but this is TNA's very first attempt, and in my opinion they delivered big time.
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