STUDIO: Midway
RELEASE DATE: September 9, 2008
CONSOLE: XBox 360
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: PS2, Wii, PS3
DEVELOPER: Midway Studios LA
GENRE: Wrestling
PLAYERS: 4
ESRB RATING: T

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay Midway about their new attempt to grapple the wrestling game genre away from the WWE, TNA Impact!, is that, while playing multiplayer, I was whisked back to the era of the neighborhood arcade and misspent days of pouring quarter after quarter into stand-up, four-player classics like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons Arcade Game. There is something really primally thrilling about getting four friends circled around a multiplayer ass-kicking game, where the moves are either a). simple enough or b). intuitive enough that everyone can bring the smackdown, provided that they’ve got a taste for some pixilated bloodlust and don’t mind mashing down a few buttons. And, at its best, TNA Impact! really does tap into that sense of early arcade fun. The first thing you’ll hear in almost every review of Impact! is that the move system is simple, fluid, and effective, and that’s really the highlight of the game. However, once the heady sensation of "Hey, I figured out how to leg-sweep in 2 minutes!" wears off, the flaws of Impact! become much, much more apparent.

Don’t get me wrong. Is TNA Impact! a great game for a fun night of all-dude bonding? Totally. I don’t follow wrestling anymore – turned in my WWF fan credentials after attending WrestleMania III back in 1987 (how can a wrestling fan top that?) – and none of my friends knew anything about Jeff Jarrett’s Total Nonstop Action league before we turned the game on, but, very quickly, we were all sucked in by the familiar allure of the ring and Midway’s impressive character animation. Granted, there were a few glitch moments when hands passed through our opponents Kitty Pryde-style, however, for the most part, the TNA Superstars look fantastic, with a real sense of weight, depth, and sheen that’s missing from a lot of fighting games. Lots of games use motion-capture tech to improve the sense of reality with their character animation – with mixed results - but TNA Impact! is a game where the value of motion capture modeling can really be seen. When Samoa Joe hits Sting with a backhand, you can almost feel the reverberations of the slap. It’s nicely done, and Midway definitely deserves credit for the work that went into it.

The problems with TNA Impact! come about when you want to move away from four-player button-mashing. Having three or four differing actions all sourced around the same button is great when you’re just learning the ropes, but once you’re ready to get deeper into the game and explore the possibilities of multi-move combinations, things get tricky and restrictive. I can’t tell you how many times I rolled out of the ring when I was trying to climb up a turnbuckle. Granted, that doesn’t speak well of my gaming ability, but the fact that I (and the people playing with me) kept making the same mistakes over and over again really speaks to some inherent design flaws. And, particularly, when you’re getting deeper into the game in single-player mode (more on that later) and your opponents get harder and harder, the “one button for four functions” problem can cost you matches. While Midway is billing their move structure as easy to pick up and play, it’s surprisingly hard to master, which can make later-game matches kind of a pain in the ass.

But, as I mentioned, the move system isn’t a game-killing flaw when you’re just goofing around with friends slamming buttons and, thankfully, there are several multiplayer game options available in Impact to do just that. The variations between the two-player matches, tag-team matches, free-for-alls, handicaps, and much-ballyhooed Ultimate X matches – billed as “wrestling’s ultimate test” – all do a nice job of keeping the multiplayer experience fairly fresh, though, I’d admit the Ultimate X matches are, apparently, a lot more fun to watch on Spike TV than play on TNA Impact! (The button-mapping is particularly hard to figure out and annoying in the X matches.) There is also an online option for the multiplayer games, though, the night we attempted to play, we were beset by lag problems.

So, now that I’ve gone on and on about how TNA Impact! is pretty fun to play with friends, how fun is it to play by yourself? Not very. In fact, “frustrating” is the main word that comes to mind. Without the multiplayer experience, the flaws of Impact! immediately rise to the surface. The Story Mode has a half-way fun concept – you’re a former TNA superstar called Suicide who failed to take a fall, got beaten half-to-death, and, following some plastic surgery, is rising back up the TNA ranks looking for revenge. However, even with such a contrived story, there’s shockingly little personality behind TNA Impact! The Superstars themselves are weirdly devoid of taunts and eccentricities – which get more to the heart of wrestling than actual moves – and, even with the Create A Wrestler customization options, Suicide is just a blank slate. Speaking of the CAW system, it’s crazy lacking, particularly for a sport that prides itself so much on individualism. And, once you stop playing against your friends, it become readily apparent how limited and repetitious the move choices and the AI are. Even wrestlers as different as Booker T and Kurt Angle move almost exactly the same once they’re being driven by the AI. I realize Midway decided to go ahead with Impact! with only 25 playable wrestlers and, yes, there is a finite number of wrestling moves, but there is far too little variation in the moves to make the “You vs. AI” matches interesting, which is a pain when you’re just trying to finish the Story Mode to unlock all of the characters.

All in all, TNA Impact! is a lot like a 1990s arcade fighting game. You’re happy to visit it occasionally with a group of friends and waste an hour or two, but there’s not a whole lot of point bringing it home with you. If you just want a beat-em-up multiplayer game to keep around the house when your non-gamer friends feel like getting their smackdowns on, TNA Impact! might be the game for you. But if you’re looking for anything deeper, maybe wait for Midway’s next attempt at bringing Total Nonstop Action to your Xbox.