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For years, fans of the “WWE Smackdown” series have found several reasons to rant. Despite their attempts at appealing to the public, THQ and Yukes have struggled to gain the standing ovation they may or may not have deserved. It seemed as if buggy game modes (WWE ’12’s Universe mode), lacking features (alternate attires, create a custom title, match options, etc.), lackluster DLC, and even the poor internet servers that haunted WWE ’12, would haunt them forever. But, let us not discourage you, because in WWE ’13 the revolution is upon us. Let’s jump right into the awesome.

THIS GAME HAS ATTITUDE

The overplayed and drawn out idea of the Road to Wrestlemania has been scrapped from the series due to popular demand. In it’s place? A similar game-style known as the Attitude Era Mode where fans will get to rehash and relive the real revolution in professional wrestling – the Attitude Era. Whether it’s the wars of Austin vs. McMahon, the origin of Degeneration X, or the debut of the Undertaker’s demonic and destructive brother, Kane, the Attitude Era mode will relive all of these great moments. To top it off, players will get to unlock several alternate attires, characters, actual video footage of the attitude era events, and more by completing special challenges and tasks. This mode has been covered a lot so far, and therefore we won’t spend too much time discussing it. The basic awesomeness here is reliving the revolutionary time period of pro wrestling – er, sports entertainment. Attitude Era mode is just the start of what this game has to offer.

NEW AND IMPROVED MATCHES

The game has already been filled with several great match choices in the past, but some were removed to be overhauled – and have been greatly missed by the fans. Two of the biggest new/returning matches are the Special Guest Referee match – where you can pick a superstar or diva to referee the match, and the I Quit match – where the objective is to make your opponent say “I Quit!”

SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE: In this match, you get to pick a superstar or diva to referee the match. While this match type was in past iterations of the Smackdown vs. Raw series, it was removed years back and has been gone for some time. Now that it returns, it holds a new feature to maintain fairness to the match. As the guest referee, you’ll have a fairness meter that will either increase or decrease depending on how you call the match. If you play fair, you’re meter will build, giving you the options to attack someone with your finisher or to screw them over, Montreal screw-job style. If you don’t play fair, you’ll end up getting thrown out of the match and replaced with a regular official. The feature adds a bit more realism to the match and is not really a nuisance unless you’re trying to be unrealistic to begin with.

I Quit Match – the I Quit Match is basically a hardcore falls count anywhere war between two competitors where the referee (or at times in the match, one of the superstars) will hover over a downed opponent and ask them if they quit – which, in the game, brings up a special meter, similar to the pinning meter that has been in recent iterations, but slightly more advanced. A stored finisher can help make the game more difficult or make it easier if on the speaking end of the microphone!

On top of these new matches, more new and improved matches will be seen, though press won’t reflect on them much due to much bigger things being revealed. The steel cage match, Hell in a Cell, and Inferno match have all seen some improvements and adjustments, among others.

CREATION SUITE

One of the most enhanced and detailed features in the WWE game series is the diverse creation suite. While the creation suite features obvious things such as the improved Create-a-Superstar (and other creation modes that compliment this one, such as Create-an-Entrance and Create-a-Moveset) the mode also features Create-a-Finisher, Create-an-Entrance Video, and Superstar Threads – a mode where you can edit the colors of in-game superstars. If you want John Cena to wear pink wristbands for Breast-Cancer awareness month as he’s been doing on television lately, you can make that happen with Superstar threads. While minor details to threads have been set into motion, the ability to edit entrance attire is still not available. Hopefully, this is something we can look forward to seeing implemented in the next installment of the series.

Along with the already great creation suite, players can now edit the in-game championships, strap colors and more. This will help add to the game for those who don’t find the 30 in-game (and 10 DLC) titles to be enough or fitting to their needs -or simply want the in-game titles to have a new, fresh look and feel to them. More details to come about this mode soon!

On top of all of this, Story Designer has been enhanced and now features over 300 new cutscenes! All of the scenes you see in Universe can now be used in Story Designer as well.

Create-A-Superstar has also seen some improvements, with a new Super-Heavyweight Skeleton that’ll make your monstrously big superstars look and feel more realistic. Along with this, the mode sees new patterns and other adjustments that help the creation process be even more enjoyable. Top that off with the fact that the color selection wheel has returned, and fans can rejoice in knowing that customization will be more manageable and intense than ever! Plus, Playstation 3 owners will be happy to know that they finally get the same amount of creation layers as the Xbox 360 players! One last note about this we’d like to mention is that the blank background used in the past games has been done away with, and your created superstar or diva now appears inside of a ring. There are a few other notable improvements, such as some new parts and such, but we’ll let you check those out when you get your hand on the game!

Create an Arena has been improved as well, as we now have the ability to edit the stage and to use several different templates (custom and actual templates included, such as the old Smackdown Fist arena – 20 templates total). Editing the stage gives us the ability to place images (custom or in-game) just about anywhere realistic we can think of, remove titan-trons from the stage, and more! We are also given the ability to change the arena lighting – so if you want an entire PPV arena to feature blood-red lighting similar to the lighting of Kane’s entrance, you can do it! Overall, players are given the ability to edit arena size, type of audience (Attitude Era or current), and arena style (indoor or outdoor). On top of that, the arenas can be uploaded for others to download as they could last year – but now, can also be used in online matches. If you see one but see something off about it, you can also download it, fix it, and then upload the fixed or edited product to the server. This can also be done with all other created content.

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