With each new version of its popular SmackDown franchise, publisher THQ moves further away from the superb 2003 edition, Here Comes the Pain. Featuring easy to master controls as well as the ability to perform successive finishing moves, Here Comes the Pain dazzled WWE fanatics as well non fans. Developer Yukes's finely tuned arcade formula worked, and given the game's success, THQ should have used it to build enhanced clones. Instead, the company elected to make its games even more realistic. However, the recently released Xbox 360 game WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 proves that sometimes, realism sucks.

SmackDown vs. Raw 2007's glitches make it almost as sloppy as Courtney Love. Wrestlers teleport up ladders (five feet away from the ladder, no less), targeting one wrestler out of five is nearly impossible, characters miss elbow drops for no apparent reason, and sound effects mysteriously vanish. Furthermore, the load times, while not as long as in last year's SmackDown, continue to damage the wrestling experience. It can take upwards of 20 seconds for a match to load, and the developers have yet to figure out how to blend the entrances into one seamless cut scene. Even with the power of the Xbox 360 at its fingertips, Yukes forces players to sit through loading in between ring entrances and even worse, after a match has concluded. The fact that the game has to load a wrestler's music after winning is inexcusable. Fans want to hear music as soon as the ref counts to three. Having to wait ruins the experience.

To mix things up, THQ and Yukes made a few gameplay tweaks, but old habits remain. Instead of being able to clothesline opponents over the top rope in the Royal Rumble match, they need to be pushed out. Not only does this drag out Royal Rumble matches, but it also eliminates what makes the event so much fun; watching bodies fly from the ring and slam onto the ground. The same holds true for Stamina. As wrestlers battle they become fatigued and eventually collapse. To regain their Stamina, players press the B button. However, wrestlers can't attack while regaining this energy, making them easy targets for livelier opponents. Nothing sucks more than going for the kill and watching the aggressive wrestler crumple to the mat. Thankfully, Stamina can be turned off in the Options menu.

By and large, this version of SmackDown plays like its predecessors but with a few notable additions, the first being right analog stick grappling. In previous games, locking up involves pressing one of the controller's face buttons, but here, a simple tilt of the analog stick initiates a grapple. From there, the player can either move it in another direction to slam his or her opponent onto the canvas, put them into a head lock, or twist their bodies using an abdominal stretch, among other moves. Going a step further, when the Right Bumper (RB) is pressed, then tilting the analog stick, a menu pops up at the top of the screen that allows for a more advanced maneuver such as suplex, except in this case the player has tons more control. Not only can the player lift wrestlers into the air, they can also decide how long they want to keep them there, a decision that may or may not piss off a very anxious opponent. However, the game's interactive Hot Spots make being held in a suplex seem like a fun time.

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