Stepping Into the Six-Sided Ring
When you first fire up TNA, many of the twenty-five total wrestlers are ready to go, but several will need to be unlocked through the Story Mode or by earning Style Points which you get from playing through Story Mode and playing exhibition matches. That said, from the main menu, players can partake in one of several exhibition matches including Tag Team, Free For Alls (four wrestlers at once), submission only, falls count anywhere, and TNA’s signature Ultimate-X match. For most, myself included, you’ll want to jump into the Story Mode, because just doing Exhibition matches, beyond the practice and earning of Style Points, doesn’t really net you much satisfaction.
The Story Mode puts you in the shoes of currently-fake wrestler, Suicide. Suicide, it is rumored, is going to be a real TNA wrestler soon, but at least for now he’s a fake and fairly generic wrestler. The first of many cutscenes in the Story Mode sets the stage with you refusing to take a dive in a title match and instead you win it all. When you leave the arena after the match, LAX, a very good and real tag team, jumps you and you wake up in Mexico, beaten to a pulp and with no memory. Some friendly plastic surgeons offer to help, and this is where you can create your wrestler. You can only create a total of five wrestlers on your console, which seems like an odd and arbitrary restriction, but for most gamers, five should suffice. You can choose from many different body types and clothing, with dozens of shirts, pants, tattoos, masks, hats, and pads for your knees and elbows. You can also pick from three generic types of wrestlers, including high flyer, grappler, and brawler, but ultimately these don’t’ make a great deal of difference in my experience. Your initial batch of moves is limited, but as you earn Style Points other moves become unlocked. Unfortunately, this is a decidedly rigid way for your created wrestler to distinguish himself because you’re on a predetermined path rather than being able to more freely customize your skill set.
Once you’ve created your character, you enter a local Lucha Libre contest where you get to fight some generic wrestlers. You win the local crown, and this earns you a trip to a local Army Base where you will fight your first TNA star, James Storm. Beat him, and you’re off to Orlando to start your career back in TNA. After another brief one-on-one stint, you team up, unfortunately, with Eric Young. The Eric Young in the game is that annoyingly paranoid and jumpy one that was current several months ago, not the Eric Young in TNA today who is at least tolerable. Anyway, once you get through the tag teams, you’ll spend time in the X-Division, and then eventually the Heavyweights.
It’s interesting, and I think limiting, that the Story Mode forces you to create a generic character and stick with him. What’s more is that you can’t team up with a friend even during the tag team portion of the Story Mode; it’d have been a lot more enjoyable if you could have. Also, it’s too bad you can’t just choose Sting or AJ Styles or your favorite TNA star and go through a Story Mode or heck, even a championship run of some kind with them. Speaking of which, there are no championship matches in this game, except for those that you play in Story Mode, and even these are scripted and don’t change. How cool would it have been to be able to take your created wrestler or one of the real TNA stars and play through an average two months or even month of the real TNA? That is, get involved in some kind of feud and then go to one of their twelve pay-per-view events? That’d have been awesome for a fan like me.
Dusty Matches
There is a term that wrestling fans use for a sketchy, or shady match, or finish to a match; that term is ‘dusty,’ and it means when all or part (usually the end) of a match wasn’t fair or something illegal happened. In essence, it means the heels, or ‘bad guys,’ did something to cheat to win. While you won’t see that outright in the game, you certainly will feel cheated many times. This problem has several causes, and I suppose it’s just as well to start with the pin system.
When your player is getting pinned by the CPU, you’re in deep. The only hope you have besides your tag team partner, if you have one, is working the thumbsticks. After several hours of play, I still don’t know how best to manipulate the thumbsticks, or stick, to get out of a pin and I’ve actually yet to manage to get out of a pin without the help of my tag partner. This is extremely frustrating when you’ve beaten the hell out of a CPU enemy, only to have them counter and reverse one of your moves, and pin you as you play the thumbsticks like a mad man. I’ve tried different combinations of working the thumbsticks, but I never seem to have any luck. What’s worse is in Tag Team play, when you’re getting pinned, maybe your CPU partner will help out, and maybe not – there is no way to call him in for help.
Being stunned is almost as bad; you’ll stun the CPU players as well, but when you get stunned, that same thumbstick animation pops up next to your health meter. Once again, I can’t seem to get my character to come to any quicker than if I just press nothing at all. It’s a real pain, because when you’re stunned, you’re completely vulnerable.
Another irritant is countering. The CPU seemed to counter about half of my grapple moves. For me, I can counter about one in every twenty or so opportunities. The way to counter a move is to press the right bumper; just like with the thumbstick prompt, an icon appears by your health meter for a moment when you can counter. My friend and I practiced this in a tag match for several minutes, just trying to figure out what this game is looking for; precise timing? mashing? luck? I wasn’t haven’t any, and when not even half way through the Story Mode you find yourself on the mat and the CPU opponents are constantly dropping moves on you, and you can’t get the darn counter system to work – well, you can imagine that’s really frustrating, and your only hope is to get lucky and get up, or roll towards the apron.
One thing that Midway did right in this regard was in getting out of submissions. When you’re in a submission, a series of three face button icons pops up by your health bar, like XYA. Simply type these buttons on your controller and your wrestler will break the submission. Why couldn’t they have used this same, simple, reliable, system for dealing with being stunned or heck, even being pinned? I’m not saying just give a ‘puzzle’ of three face buttons for being stunned, but how about a dozen, like three sets of four button sequences? And maybe for getting out of pins, instead of trying to work the thumbsticks, have a button sequence again or something just plain more reliable; something that the player can be consistent at, we all know that the thumbsticks are the least reliable method of input on a controller.
Another aspect of every match is that there are no count outs, no refs, and no disqualifications. So hopping outside and finding all three or four chairs that seem to find their way conveniently laying around the ring each match isn’t a bad idea. There is no penalty for using them, and they do a whole lot of damage to your opponent’s torso region. Heck, there have been several occasions where I had been beating the fire out of the CPU, putting his torso in orange, only to have him reverse a move, hop out and get a chair, and bash me until the chair just breaks and disappears (which is about five hits) and suddenly I’m in as bad of shape as he is; except for the fact that I can’t counter for anything or get out of pins.
Other Concerns
TNA, just like the WWE, is host to a wide variety of wrestlers, each with a distinctive look and persona; I mean, there’s no confusing Kurt Angle with Jay Lethal, right? In the TNA game, the wrestlers certainly look their part thanks to the nicely detailed visuals, but the distinctive qualities pretty much end there. With the exception of the authentic finishing moves, the wrestlers share nearly every move. That’s not to say you’ll see Bubba Ray do a Moonsaw off of the top ropes to the outside of the ring; but all of the basic moves look exactly the same from one wrestler to another and there really aren’t that many moves to perform or see anyway. There are very few, if any, voice overs by the real wrestlers themselves, and I don’t recall hearing any talk during the matches whatsoever; just grunts and the repetitive and generic call from Mike Tenay and Don West, and not even this during the first part of the Story.
I wish the crowd were more lively, too. When you watch TNA on TV, or in a pay-per-view, the crowd is a big part of the event. The chants of “That-was-awesome!” and “Holy-sh*&!, Holy-sh#8!!” when something crazy happens like a guy jumps off the top of the six sides of steel or goes through a table are noticeably lacking, at least to a TNA fan like me. Not to mention nearly every pay-per-view, at least there for a while, the wrestlers got out into the crowd and fought around. That’d be a hard an ultimately unnecessary element to integrate in the game, but it could have been a plus.
Speaking of tables, there are absolutely no weapons in the game besides those mysterious, overpowered steel chairs that are laying outside the ring. Not being able to put someone through a table or have a ladder match is a shame, but this is Midway’s first attempt at a TNA game after all, so despite the lengthy list of both glaring and nit-picky woes, it’s something to remember.
A few other issues that I really feel are worth talking about would include tagging, load screens, and targeting. Tagging, whether you’re trying to tag in your CPU partner or your friend in a local match is too strict. You have to walk right up next to your partner and press left bumper and b at the same time. What’s more, when you make the tag, or the CPU does to their partner, both people involved are ghosts for just a couple of seconds; in other words, you can’t hurt either of them, so there is no breaking up the tag at the last second like in real wrestling. Also, there are no ‘dramatic tags’ in the TNA game, unlike the real promotion, where a wrestler somersaults over to his his partner or dives over to him with his last bit of energy; these moments in the real show are exciting, but in the game, you’re stuck with a stiff and strict method and animation.
Targeting is done with the right stick, but this doesn’t work as smoothly as it should. The trouble with targeting a particular wrestler becomes particularly noticeable when you’re facing multiple foes on the outside of the ring and you’re trying to focus on a particular wrestler who is maybe more of a threat or just weaker. It’s fairly common to either have a delay or not be able to target said wrestler and your stuck having to find another way to execute your plan.
As for load screens, for each tag match there are no less than five separate loading screens per match; this is ridiculous. Even though each load screen is about ten seconds or less, it’s a complete waste of time. There’s no need to see a wrestler’s introduction video more than just a couple of times, ever, and having to individually skip each wrestler’s introduction is a waste of time. There should at the very least be an option to disable wrestler introductions altogether, or at least have the game condense these somehow.
Kicking Out At the Last Second
I’ve given a rather extensive list of issues I had with the TNA game, but to leave it at that would be incomplete and unfair. There’s a lot that I liked about this game too. First, it’s great to see a game dedicated to TNA, which I feel is a more diverse and interesting promotion than the overly dramatic and egotistical WWE. Secondly, I like the fact that in iMPACT! the controls are, for the most part – very good and easy to learn. I’ve already mentioned my troubles with getting out of stuns and pins, both involving the joystick, and counters, which uses the right bumper, but otherwise, the controls aren’t too bad. Most moves are accomplished by pressing the face buttons and maybe the left bumper (it’s a modifier) and a direction. For example, to send someone in an Irish Whip, you press left bumper, Y, and push the thumbstick away from the opponent.
TNA iMPACT! Is also fun with a friend in local play. You can play only one-on-one online, but playing in person is more fun anyway, especially if your friend is a wrestling fan that can relate to the excitement and comedy of the action. It’s just a real shame that you can’t team up and go through a campaign, you’re literally stuck with just doing meaningless exhibition matches.
I also like that iMPACT! focuses on dynamic action instead of slow grappling. Pulling off the really cool moves and successfully hitting your opponent off the top ropes isn’t hard, but it’s also not overpowering, either, so it’s a lot of fun. Unlocking new moves and characters is neat too, and the overall cast of twenty-five characters is a fairly complete one, including one of my old favorites who has since left TNA, Senshi (formerly Loki).
In the end, the TNA iMPACT! Game has more than its fair share of flaws, but I still see a whole lot of potential. Honestly, I bet a lot of the problems I had with this game could be fixed with a patch, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. It’s a respectable start for Midway, and I do really hope they come back next year with a more refined and complete package – but for now, TNA and wrestling game fans should rent this one first, or wait until the price drops.