Seeing as the long awaited wwe 13 is now out I thought I might as well do a review for its predecessor, WWE 12. WWE 12 is one of the newest games in the formally named Smackdown Vs Raw series. Developer THQ dropped the name Smackdown Vs Raw because wwe got rid of its Bragging Rights pay per view which is what inspired the original idea for Smackdown Vs Raw.
Gameplay
The overall gameplay of wwe 12 handles well but THQ have made some sloppy mistakes along the way. For example, sometimes when you go to run at your opponent and hit them most of the time you just harmlessly knock into them and nothing happens. Also, yet again when you go to hit your opponent, you miss and just hit thin air when they are right in front of you, which can be a little annoying and times and makes the game look unrealistic and of poor standard. However, I must say that the improved cutscenes during the wwe universe mode makes the game feel more real and sometimes makes you feel as if you are actually in the game. Also, the fact that people get injured more often makes the game yet again feel more realistic although I think that the said wrestler should be out for more than one week, just to add effect.
New Features (or lack thereof)
During the build up to wwe 12, THQ promised some new features for the game, I found that there really isn't any new features at all, they just seem to have added some more characters and added more cutscenes to the wwe universe mode, as stated above. Also, the thing that annoys me the most is that there is no longer a training arena. The disappearance of this feature completely took me off guard when I first fired up the game. I feel that the arena was a key part of the Smackdown Vs Raw games because you could try out some new moves that you created for your character before using them in a match and if you had a friend coming round who had never played the game before, the training arena was a great place to show him/her the controls and give them a chance to fight you without you fighting back and risk losing.
Also, the new road to wrestlemania storylines in this game were a little bit confusing and took up most of my time when playing through the game, I didn't really like the idea of all the separate storylines being crammed into one! I much preferred the style that was used in the Smackdown vs Raw games where you had separate areas within the road to wrestlemania mode for each wrestler which made the storylines easier to play through. Secondly, the create a story mode is very boring as it has always been and they could have at least made an effort and added the wrestler's voices in rather than keep on using the stupid text boxes because it just takes the atmosphere away from the game.
Graphics
There isn't really that many changes to the graphics from Smackdown vs Raw 2011 to wwe 12 but they have improved the likenesses of the characters and as always the creation of the TNA wrestlers and Ring of Honor wrestlers are outstanding but I can't really credit THQ for that as they are community creations, maybe they should get some community creators to help with the development process!
Final verdict
Finally, I think we can see from what I've written and from playing the game itself that THQ needed to do a lot more than just drop the SVR name. I give this game 4/10
