When I got my hands on the latest edition of WWE, I was quite chuffed. Back in college, my buddies and I spent countless hours playing Raw VS. Smackdown 09/10 on the Xbox360 for hours. Suffice to say, we were infatuated with beating the virtual daylights out of one another. WWE12 builds on a game that already has all the elements to make it a popular multiplayer game. A huge real-life fan base, variety of (real) match types, all the superstars and divas from the shows (along with some classic characters), multiple ways to experience the game and the ability to create your own superstar.

So where did they go wrong?

WWE 12 is shiny. Very shiny. It’s a squeaky clean robot, fresh outta the factory looking to fight the good fight. Unfortunately it falls short in delivering the final oomph. It’s got all the right cues and assets and for the most bit, it delivers. But every once in a while you’ll notice a bug or something in the gameplay won’t make sense. While major bugs are infrequent, you’ll see minor ones from time to time. This isn’t including the reversal system, which seems to have taken a major setback.

Gameplay has whittled down to a minimalistic layout, making it far easy to switch between attacking styles. Striking, grappling and Irish whips are now one-button wonders which allow you to deal a variety of attacks as the game progresses and your opponents grow weaker. Or if you do, considering you’re getting your butt handed to you by a buddy. For the most bit, this results in pretty syngergised in-game combat, making it easy to switch momentum between fighters. The added limb-targetting feature makes it ultra-convenient for a player to target a particular segment (both arms, legs, head or torso) with his or her blows. The system is massively convenient when your opponent is someone like Rey Mysterio or Sin Cara and you want to give the quick little wrestlers a limp.

The delivery of finishers and signature moves has become easier and is no longer restricted to your player having to stand a few centimeters away from where he/she would deliver the move. All you have to do is get into the relative area, tap ‘Y’ and depending on where the opponent is, your character will kick, grab or slide in to perform the action. It’s good because you can execute your moves faster. It’s bad, because so can your friends.

I’m not sure if the reversal system was designed to be this difficult, but it definitely has some bugs. Firstly, the window to pull a reversal has been narrowed down to a split second, which is relative to the action. So a few times, I’ve gone from almost throwing a kick to having my head between the opponent’s legs and then being flung across the ring, landing face first on the mat. What now? Then there’s the indicator; it appears for a split second, but multiple times. Which is fine, you’d think. More chances to reverse, you’d think. You’d be thinking wrong. The reversal indicator appears during in-game animation, so you’d be tapping right trigger furiously while the game ignores you and continues with the animation sequence. In my time playing the game, I figured the reversals out, not by waiting for the indicator, but by taking a beating for each move and figuring out the split second that I’d need to counter. As you can imagine, this trial and error method resulted in a lot of resets.

Some of the game physics also tend to surprise you. Collisions are aplenty, sometimes even when you’re not actually running into them. Imagine my confusion as I suddenly collide into – well nothing. Misplaced and mistimed grapple animations means that a character would be airborne, about to deliver a dropkick, when he suddenly finds his head in a lock, being the recipient of a DDT. Not to mention those moments when you’d try to grapple an opponent from behind and all it would look like was you swiping at his butt. Awkward. Apart from these minor infractions, animation is smooth. However, there were a few moments when my body would levitate off the mat and start floating towards the crowd. What? Yeah. That happened. Twice.

Opponent AI is also disappointing. In tag team matches, my opponent would floor me and then run to his corner for the tag except, that they wouldn’t actually make the tag. They would stand there like zombies, waiting for me to get to my feet before having another go at me. Many times an opponent would Irish whip me into one of the corners, run up to me and then just stand there, admiring the sweat.

The storyline for Road To Wrestlemania is no longer left up to the player’s choice. They now are forced to follow story arcs and play as character ‘modes.’ You start off as the Villain, move into the Outsider and finally the Good Guy. What’s good about this is that you get to play as a variety of characters so you get a good grasp of overall gameplay with the various types of characters. You also get to chase characters through buildings and have fights in corridors, locker rooms and garages. What’s bad is that you don’t get to play with a superstar of your own creation, something omitted from previous versions and that the story lines themselves are long and over scripted.

Finally, creating your own superstar is just the same as it was in the previous games. You get to pick everything and can really go all out in creating a character. Based on the body type you pick, your character will have a limited move set. So a ‘big’ character can’t do much of the high flying stuff, while ‘small’ characters can’t do heavy lifting. Also, you don’t have to put your character through the paces to get his rating up, all you have to do is set his attributes in the creation process (which will have limitations based on the height and weight of your character) and you’re done! Easy peasy.

WWE12 is a good game, with a few dents and scratches. However, the true value of a game like this comes from the fact that you don’t necessarily play this game by yourself, but you play it with friends. The true value comes from being able to plummet your buddies over and over again through tables, cages and chairs.