“A real slobber knocker” – WWE Smackdown! vs. Raw 2006

Sometimes a year in the name is just a year in the name. In 2005 it was not long until Pro Evolution Soccer would make the switch to that format and change very little about its yearly release in the process. For WWE Smackdown! Vs. Raw 2006, though, it’s a bit more meaningful. This wasn’t just a sequel, but a launch into the world of yearly updates. It came with a big expansion, and also with all the accompanying emphasis on catering to fans. And some strong ideas for which fans those should be.

Compared to the last #1 hits in the series, the first two (then) WWF Smackdown games made by Yuke’s for the PlayStation, a bout in WWE 2006 is an immediately more complex prospect. There still isn’t much in the way of combos, but there are a set of colour-coded health measures related to different parts of the body, a momentum counter which rewards you for playing to the crowd, and a stamina meter which prevents you from constantly using big moves to do so. Within my fairly short time playing it I didn’t find it as enthralling as I got to with its predecessor but, again, it was very readily apparent that I wasn’t the target audience. And the appetite for spectacle is at least undiminished, with improved processing power and some impressive wrestler models making its dramatic camera angles even more effective.

The drive for complexity in the matches, though, is nothing compared to that in the season mode. As well as a ridiculous number of different match types to keep adding new elements, there is a further emphasis on using them to tell a story. Short backstage cutscenes between each bout tell the developing story as alliances form and reputations build. Everyone has their own motives and own position in the show. The result is the best illustration yet of something which I first mentioned right back at WWF Wrestlemania in 1992 (from which Hulk Hogan makes a return in WWE 2006). That is, wrestling and video games are a truly excellent fit.

The whole idea of Smackdown! Vs. Raw, imported from the real WWE, two subsets of the entertainment franchise at carefully engineered war, shows the territory. Stories develop through individuals’ actions within a calibrated set of rules and scenarios. It lends itself to the limited and sometimes artificial interactivity of narrative of games. Of course, if you know all of the characters and their history from outside it should work better still, but I could get the idea. You play your match, you win or lose, and the story takes that into account and moves with it. It’s a rather small world that you’re watching developments within, but that’s the nature of the subject. The way the narrative works reminded me right away of Supergiant’s excellent Pyre, just without the fantasy purgatory setting.

Well, not fantasy purgatory for everyone, anyway. There are other, less positive ways that the video games mainstream and WWE were a natural fit. In WWF Smackdown!, you could play as female wrestlers in the season mode, even if their segment was smaller. In WWE 2006, there is no such option at all. But they do get a whole mode to themselves, based again on one present in the actual WWE, Fulfil Your Fantasy. Which… I can pretty much let the screenshots speak for themselves here. 

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In going through 2005, a year where a laser focus on privileging the assumed wishes of a specific male demographic keeps coming up, this is the most naked expression of the male gaze yet. It’s also another reminder that games were not alone in that focus, not that that’s an excuse. And there had to be a better way than waiting for the world to change and moving on behind it, surely.

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Top of the charts for week ending 12 November 2005:

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