WWE RAW 2

Overall WWE RAW 2 for the X Box is excellent and i personally like the controlls better then Smackdown HCTP. This game has alot of variety of matches and characters and has awsome graphics and this time around it has a season mode which lets you do what you want.

Upon trying THQ's first attempt at WWE RAW, I thought the game was fantastic - the graphics were impressive (mostly), the entrances were cool and the music was great....all until I actually tried to play the game. Unresponsive and frustrating would be how I could describe it. So when I heard about RAW 2 I had high hopes that these areas would be improved upon.

And they were. Just about.

The first thing you notice about this game is that the already impressive graphics have been improved. The wrestlers are just SO lifelike. For users of RAW 1, you may have laughed at the atempts THQ made of HHH, in the sequel he is frighteningly realistic. On the actual RAW program, when they plug an upcoming fight they always superimpose both wrestlers on to a screen where they pose-down, this is also included in RAW 2. They've tried to make it as close to an actual RAW broadcast as possible and by and large it works. The commentators are noteably absent and there's no in-ring commentary, although the announcer's table are there complete with chairs to use in a match.

The wrestler's entrances are mostly accurate, only a few are mysteriously different from the real thing (for example when Matt Hardy comes out, you hear his music but there's no "ohhh yeahhh" at the start like on TV) but this doesn't really affect enjoyment levels. One thing this game is sadly lacking is any backstage action. Your wrestler can interfer with another's entrance though, which is pretty cool. All pyros and special effects are included, such as the Undertaker's motorbike and RVD doing the thumb-sign. One thing which does get annoying is the ring-announcer's voices. The Fink sounds okay but Lillian Garcia sounds like she's just woken up and really can't be bothered. It's little things like this which get on your nerves, unlike the whole gameplay of the first one. Speaking of which, Raw 2 makes HUGE leaps forward in this respect. In the original you'd smash your oponent over the head with a chair, put him through a table and do your finishing move on him and he'd STILL get up! I could never tell when the best time would be to do my finisher in Raw 1, in the sequel it's easy: wait until your voltmeter turns red and hit the 'special move' buttons.

Unfortunately THQ still have a few bugs in the system as sometimes this doesn't work (I once tried about 6 times to do Shawn Michaels' "Sweet chin music" and it wouldn't happen) so things aren't totally improved - but they're getting there. I can only hope they learn from their mistakes and do a better job with Raw 3.

All your favourite characters will be there, including 'recent' ones just as Goldberg, Rey Mysterio etc complete with special moves and 'secondary' moves, such as Mysterio's 619 as well as his "West coast pop" and The Rock having both "Rock Bottom" and the "People's elbow".

Matches include King of the Ring, TLC, Streetfight, ladder matches and more. My favourite from the 'Smackdown' range, the Hell in a Cell match is also included but it can be really annoying trying to get your character to climb to the top. Sometimes he just stands there, looking up. Also included is the obligitary season mode where you aspire to win the WWE and/or Heavyweight championships. Interestingly, you don't qualify to a title-shot just by beating people up, you also need certain levels of popularity. These can increase and decrease depending on what you do before each match, whether you set a trap for someone, suprise-attack them, encourage them, break up a tag-team etc

All in all THQ have certainly improved in areas where RAW 1 was lacking, but clearly there is still some work to do. They don't need to do much to the Create-a-wrestler feature which is incredible, but as long as they fine-tune the gameplay, speed it up a little and give us some backstage action, the next version of RAW should be awesome.