The solid "next gen" foundation that was soon to be ruined. I loved this game on the 360, it had everything you could want at the time. The graphics were amazing and still hold up to this day, it had a fleshed out GM mode and a solid roster (including Benoit and the last of Kurt Angle in an SvR game), the gameplay and controls still resembled the classic PS2 era and there were few tacked on gimmicks. This is still the purest of any of the 360 Smackdown games before they veered into boring simulation territory. Also features one of the last great licensed soundtracks too.

For personal reference more than anything else.

Played around with it for a little bit because I was in the mood for it but also so I could write this. Played this game a lot growing up and gone back to it a fair bit in the last few years. This will be quite similar to the Sims 2 thing where I am looking at it more in comparison with the other games I play from the franchise as they're all generally doing the same thing and if I ever want to play one of these games I do have a choice between a few so it'd be nice to have my thoughts on each one at hand.

That said though it is important for me to acknowledge just how important this game is as it was my first ever wrestling game and I got it at a time when I don't even think I knew what WWE was. I don't even think I used to play it properly when I was younger most of the time as I either just wanted to get the weapons from under the ring and repeatedly whack whoever I was in a match with or I'd do ladder matches, wait until two wrestlers had climbed the ladder and then push it over and these things entertained me to no end. So no matter what gets said, I think I'll always have a soft spot for this game with many happy memories attached.

As for the game itself, its not half bad but I don't exactly think I find playing an actual match fun. The control system is pretty decent and due to the low amount of moves a wrestler can do (at least compared to later games) the controls are quite simple and easy to remember. I don't have much of a problem with the right stick being how you grapple and I quite like L1 being the finisher move. The difficulty options are kind of an issue for me though as easy feels too easy, hard & legend feel way too hard and normal feels a bit too hard, like not bad enough that I can't get anywhere with it but just to the point that I'm kind of struggling a bit too much and not really having fun.

One of the reasons for the difficulty for me is how reversals work in this game, where a lot of the games afterwards only have a single button for reversing, this game has two and one is for strikes and the other is for grapples and you're just supposed to predict what your opponent is going to do and I kind of like the concept of this but it does just end up being mainly guesswork. I often struggle to successfully reverse a move and it can lead to long periods where the opponent is doing many different moves on my character and I can't really do anything which usually leads to a loss. I think its quite unforgiving and in all honesty I'm not really the biggest fan, the later games are easier but I have more fun actually playing them.

This is probably going to sound a little weird but I wanted to do another paragraph here about my thoughts on the matches as the difficulty and reversals aren't the only reasons why I don't really like them, but I can't. It feels wrong to say something and not be able to explain it properly but in this case I'm going to have to. The matches are just boring, I can't really explain why but I get far more enjoyment from the later games than this one. The only exceptions being games like 2010 as it doesn't have a HUD which I really don't like and 2K16 as it just feels slow. I don't get it and it feels weird but I think its better to state it and not explain rather than not state it at all as it would defeat the purpose of this.

Create a superstar is fine but kind of lacking in the customisation options for me, create a moveset would be at its best here due to the low amount of moves that can be applied to each wrestler making the whole process quick and painless (I like my created characters to have their own movesets but I don't really like actually making them) but the choice of moves is a bit too small for me. The soundtrack is kind of funny to me as I don't really listen to music like it but due to the amount of time I've put into the game, I've really warmed up to it and I really like the majority if not all of the songs.

Odd things that I did not originally write before I posted this but thought of afterwards:

• It might be that for a lot of other games they just auto-save but the amount of times this game asks to manually save is straight up annoying. After every match, after every time you change something in the options and after every time you create something (this one makes a fair bit of sense). I understand its optional but it constantly coming up just feels absurd.

• I didn't mention career mode because I forgot but admittedly I wasn't sure if I would anyway, I don't really use the career modes in these games as while I do find the idea interesting, I just can't seem to get into them once I start them and I remember this game being no different.

• Despite many memories of mashing every button on the PS2 controller during the 'Tap any button repeatedly sections', I don't actually like this method as its kind of annoying and can just lead to my fingers aching after having to do it a few too many times. Even now that I know I can just mash one button and it will work just the same (from what I can tell), its still crap and I am so thankful it didn't stick around for long in this franchise.

• The roster is fine although as I don't have much interest in the actual WWE not a lot of the people mean anything to me. Its not particularly big which makes finding certain people easy despite the character select only showing one person at a time.

I feel like this has been not great and I understand why but if I could come out with something better I would have done. I do like the game (even if its the nostalgia doing a lot of the heavy lifting) and I like coming back to it every now and then to mess about with it for about 30 minutes to an hour, but I think when it comes down to it, if I've got a choice between this and nearly any game that came after it I probably wouldn't choose this one. I think it was one of my favourite games growing up though and that's the main thing that's important to me.