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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A game I was excited to try again as an adult using my PCSX2 emulator, still haven't found the right time to explore everything in-game, but I do remember having this regarded as top 3 WWE games of all time, up there with "WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw" from the year prior; having grown up during the Ruthless Aggression Era, I fell out of the WWE stuff around the return of ECW.
I have a lot of fond childhood memories involving this game and the year of WWE programming it presented. John Cena and Batista switching brands in the Draft and bringing their respective world titles along is still one of the most epic things I've seen in wrestling.
Unfortunately, when compared to past WWE games, SvR 2006 is where the general quality starts to fall off a bit. Things like GM Mode, the Buried Alive match and Backstage Brawls are all welcome additions. However, the slow shift to have this game series be more of a wrestling simulation really hurts its appeal. Things slow to a crawl whenever you have to recharge your Stamina meter, made even worse by vapid commentary lines that sound nothing like what you hear on TV.
The recipe that was perfected in Here Comes The Pain started to be tinkered with for no apparent reason with this game, and as a result, it suffers from delivering something truly great.
Unfortunately, when compared to past WWE games, SvR 2006 is where the general quality starts to fall off a bit. Things like GM Mode, the Buried Alive match and Backstage Brawls are all welcome additions. However, the slow shift to have this game series be more of a wrestling simulation really hurts its appeal. Things slow to a crawl whenever you have to recharge your Stamina meter, made even worse by vapid commentary lines that sound nothing like what you hear on TV.
The recipe that was perfected in Here Comes The Pain started to be tinkered with for no apparent reason with this game, and as a result, it suffers from delivering something truly great.
going back to the old svr games after playing the 2k ones is a struggle, despite that, it's still a fun but obviously very dated game that isn't super enjoyable going back to other than for nostalgia or gm mode
GM MODE
GM Mode ruined my life
If I was hanging out with my redneck friends there was a 50%+ chance that we would be playing this. One time this kid in my class tried to convince me his uncle worked for WWE and had let him play the next game, in which they would now have guns.