WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

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Game Information
Name: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain
Genre: Fighting, wrestling
Release Date: October 27, 2003
Console(s): Playstation 2
Developers: Yuke's
Publishers: THQ
Age rating: 16+
Modes: Singleplayer, multiplayer

Synopsis
Any fan of previous entries in the SmackDown! series should absolutely not hesitate to give Here Comes the Pain a try, as it is truly the best one yet.

Gameplay
This is the fifth wrestling game made by Yukes and definitely outdoes the previous installments. This game contains both single player and multi-player features. The singleplayer features including creating your own wrestler, season mode with different storylines and shopzone. Creating your own wrestler allows you to design the ultimate wrestler designing his appearance, profile and attributes to your own preferences. Season mode consists of you going through the life of a wrestler and interacting with his weekly life at WWE and fighting as him/her during the wrestling season. The season mode story lines are often repeated as there are not that many of them but they are all interesting. Multiplayer allows the player and a companion to control one wrestler each in the ring at the same time. You can fight together in tag team matches, against each other in a one on one or alone in the highly anticipated royal rumble in exhibition mode. This game brought in new in-game features such as body damage meters which show how damaged each part of the wrestlers body is, breaking out of submission cutscenes/meters and new finishing cutscenes. New game modes and arenas were also introduced including Elimination Chamber and Bra and Panties which can be played in arenas such as Insurrextion 2003, Rebellion 2002 and Survivor Series 2003.

Graphics
The graphics on this game were considered impressive when the game was released and a major improvement from the previous WWE installment by Yukes. The game had great sound content which including the voices of the actual WWE superstars voice acting for their characters in the game as well as WWE commentators recording conversations to play over matches. The music that was played was from the entrance music played when each wrestler entered the ring which was a great idea. Nowadays the graphics would be considered very poor but for a game released in 2004 these graphics were fairly impressive.



Controls
The controls on this game can be classed as either very simple or quite complicated. They would be easy to use for a non-serious as it is easy to move and and attack other wrestler using the basic few attacks. However, for a more serious gamer the basic controls would be very easy to pick up but on the other hand lots of new combos were created in this game which were fun to learn but hard to remember all of them. Each player has different combinations for different moves which keeps the players entertained for hours trying them all out.

Ratings (Personal)
Game play: 9/10
Graphics: 8/10
Controls: 9/10
Overall: 9/10