The debut PlayStation Portable offering of THQ and Yuke's long-running 3D wrestling series. WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006 expands on THQ's popular multi-million unit-selling franchise with a number of key new features. The Buried Alive Casket match, two new wrestler attributes (Stamina and Hardcore), and a realistic momentum system all combine to turn the series away from its arcade roots and towards that of a simulation. The PSP version follows closely on the heels of its PS2 tag-teammate in terms of features and wrestler rosters, with exclusive extras including additional characters and other features for the PSP version, plus USB system link to connect the two versions together.
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These dinky ass wwe fighters are the literal funniest shit you'll ever play.
peakcore
No other Wrestling game has as great as a roster as this one, it's true! You got classics, like John Cena, Robert Conway, Steve Austin, Robert Conway, Dwayne The Johnson, Robert Conway, Jake the PSP Exclusive Roberts, Robert Conway, Kurt Angle, Robert Conway, and many, many, more! Also I like the schoolgirl match I wish they brought those back because honestly, I'd pay to see that as the main event of Wrestlemania 53 or whatever it is this year.
Upon coming back to this game (I managed to fix the cutscene problem I was having) after playing Here Comes The Pain, I have come to realize how much of a downgrade this is.
It's so slow by comparison, not helped by the fucking stamina bar mechanic which, while realistic I suppose, just slows the gameplay down to a complete fucking crawl and makes combat so unpleasant because you have to manage your stamina on top of the injuries you receive which will result in moments of just standing still and holding the select button in order to recover.
The story is nowhere near as compelling to go through as HCTP, mostly because the VN style choices are now super fucking limited, for the sake of having fully voiced cutscenes.
I'll admit I appreciate the cutscenes but at the same time, HCTP was incredibly special because of its freeness ensuring that no two playthroughs felt the same.
Creating a character for these is just the fucking worst, constant losses because of your stats on top of the neutered combat just makes it not worth it to me.
GM Mode is a neat little novelty though and I'm a bit surprised it got dropped after this game.
All in all, I don't think I'm gonna finish this one. It kind of leaves a sour taste in my mouth because of how sluggish it feels in comparison to its predecessor and all because they added something needless to the experience.
I ain't gonna go too in depth on this.
I'm not super huge into wrestling, though I think it is a solid source of entertainment (and watching a few videos on the subject has piqued my interest) but I wouldn't say this game is perfect at it.
It is initially really confusing for how it works mechanically, and there are a lot of mechanics. After you figure it out it's pretty fun, but it's also incredibly imbalanced.
Basically, just play the Undertaker. You will literally never lose with him because he does so much damage and takes very little.
I tried the Season Mode and... god it's not pleasant. If you're playing as a created character you might as well not even bother, you're fighting a losing battle most of the time. Since you barely get EXP if you lose, your character will quite literally be scraping by and sometimes the game will flat out put you in scenarios where the chances of success are insanely slim on purpose.
Also it just gets tiring fighting the same two characters back to back when there's so many other characters to face.
Not a bad game by any stretch but I think I'd rather play NASCAR... or watch the Hololive girls play 2K22.
Two words - GM Mode. Man that mode was great - amazed it took them over half a decade to bring it back. It was a great roster too and the gameplay was really fun. But it's all about GM Mode for me - still fun to this very day.