Expanding Your Horizons -- Use Other Organizations
The WWE archive is huge, and SmackDown should learn from EA's example and institute its licenses into its games. The WCW, ECW, and OVW brand names are all owned by the WWE, for example, which opens up a world of possibilities in terms of the career mode, possible story events, arena types, and more.
The Long Haul -- 25-year career mode
One year just isn't enough to feel like an entire career. How about a full-on 25-year experience? This would let players create a character, work him through the low-level fights, become a renowned fighter, and go all the way through retirement. Making horrible movies and acquiring a drug habit would be out of the picture, but at the least this would give the game more of a complete feel and allow players to truly develop a character even further.
To start out with the first challenge would be the Tough Enough competition. After that the wrestler would move into the OVW and compete with the crusty older wrestlers as well as other young up-and-comers. The next steps would be to graduate to Velocity and Heat before getting into Smackdown!, RAW, and PPVs.
Along the way the wrestlers would be able to develop relationships with the other wrestlers in the game that would have lasting effects. There could be alliances, rivalries, and feuds that would help to determine what the matches would be. This would complete the character truly becoming a part of the WWE world and help to take a step away from something that's "just a game" and become something immersive. Oh and for crying out loud, give us two-player seasons again!
That Old Bum Knee -- Career Injuries
It's one thing to have injuries impact a match in progress, but what if sustained damage actually carried over through the entire career of a wrestler...? What if an excess of cuts scarred a pretty face and altered crowd perception? How about if the more sustained damage there is, the more worn and feeble a wrestler becomes as the years go by?
If the old knee gets bent out of shape match after match after match, then it should fail quickly late in the career. And, what if 20 years into it all a wrestler's right arm turns useless and his limp from that ridiculous chair bashing he took two years ago causes his entrance to be a little sluggish? What if all that helped to determine what matches he was and was not awarded? Taking better care of your wrestler would then be a priority. Now that's character development, baby. And besides, cuts add character, so why ditch 'em?
Hometown Heroes -- Real Venues
Last time we checked, wrestling didn't take place in some random Hollywood backlot, so where are our real stadiums? We need crowds and hometown favorites. We need the untamed wildness of Mile High versus the downtown glitz of Staples. Where are the Universal Amphitheatres, Rod Laver Arenas, Allstate Arenas, Pontiac Silverdomes, Madison Square Gardens, Cow Palaces and Nassau Coliseums of the world? We need those and more.
If the universe were perfect, specific venues would even have an effect on wrestler performance as well as entrance routines. Since it is not perfect, maybe THQ could plaster the sides of arenas with advertisements to offset costs.
Fighting Out Back -- Backstage Areas
One big backstage area is simply not enough. Here Comes the Pain offered five or six different areas to choose from, but in the future we need boiler rooms, dressing rooms, hallways, parking lots, bathrooms, green room / lobby areas, shipping and loading docks, city streets, technical booths, and just about everything else that makes a real place a real place.
More important than all of those areas is how they could conceivably be tied together seamlessly and even present real gameplay innovations like choking a man with some electrical cord, dropping a wrecked car onto a wrestler, or stuffing the Macho Man into a port-a-potty and rolling the whole thing down a street.
In addition to a large amount of useable objects (read: weapons), every room could contain specific points of interest. Like The Punisher, the use of each point of interest could play a mini-game that, if properly completed, could result in a spectacular animation routine. Showdown: Legends of Wrestling did it, why not SmackDown?
The Pen Is Mightier -- General Management
Brawling is one thing, but for those of us on the Vince McMahon trip, where's our arena management? In the years to come it'd be great to finally sit behind the desk of greatness and wield the pen of ultimate power -- it'd be great to set t-shirt prices and establish a traveling routine!
There's so much going on behind the scenes of wrestling that it seems almost shameful to omit such a wealth of worthy gameplay from the ever-evolving genre, especially when other sports titles are integrating more advanced managerial features with each passing year.
We imagine dealing with some of the more eccentric personalities of the wrestlers by balancing headliners with no names, turning heels into faces, making stars out of scrubs, and even telling a 50-year-old has-been that enough is enough. After that, we could work on traveling from city to city making sure all of the venue details are set. We could then book TV time, set up our own events based on current audience desires, and eventually move into some merchandising. If you want to get crazy, players could actually be encouraged to start spin-off themed wrestling organizations from scratch.
Your Money's Worth -- Five Matches Per Card
Even though we can create our own events with up to eight matches per card, our extended career mode should feature the traditional, realistic collection of five matches per card, which would of course allow us to play...five matches! Five instead of three. Seems like no big deal, you know?
Flashback Fever -- Relive WrestleManias
With Acclaim's Legends of Wrestling franchise long since dead, it leaves the rights to dozens of grappling greats ripe for the picking. THQ should use this fact to its advantage by allowing players the opportunity to relive some of the greatest WrestleMania matches of all time. Who can forget Steamboat vs. Savage and Hogan vs. Andre at WrestleMania III? Or the Ultimate Warrior's stunning victory over the Hulkster at WrestleMania VI? The possibilities here are endless, and the replay value would be too if this was included.
Comeback Kids -- Superstar Careers
Speaking of legends, it would be great if there was a way to use them in career mode and even better if it was specific to their status. Imagine coming back as Bret "The Hitman" Hart as a surprise guest at the latest Royal Rumble as you fight your way back to the top of the ladder. Old rivalries (Stone Cold or Shawn Michaels anyone?) could pick right up where they left off, and with so few legends available in comparison to the regular superstars it would be easy to customize this so that it matched the wrestlers to a tee.
Shiny and New -- Enhanced Creation Features
We don't know about you, but the time for additional character creation features is long past due. Not only would it be great to expand on the weight detection system by instituting realistic body types (no more 7 foot, 400 lbs luchadores please) in addition to the aforementioned aging option, but it would also be fantastic if you could customize your entrance animations and lighting effects just like RAW used to do. This presentational flexibility would allow players to create literally anyone they'd want and would make each wrestler a lot more unique too.
SmackDown! vs. RAW 2 could also benefit from even more original music selections, generic Titan Tron intros, and realistic clothing effects instead of the painted on look of the current competitors. Just look at something like Def Jam: Vendetta as proof of the possibilities and apply that to the WWE. The potential here is amazing.
So there you have it. Twenty one essential includes that we'd like to see in the next iteration of SmackDown! vs. RAW. Will they ever happen? We can't say just yet, but it doesn't hurt to dream (or to beg, in this case) now does it? Unfortunately we'll have to wait a couple more months before we know what the new version of the game will bring for sure, but in the meantime we'd love to hear what you think of these ideas and what you'd like to see yourself. We'll be back with more on SmackDown! vs. RAW 2 (or whatever it ends up being called) as soon as the info breaks.
straight from
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