tna-mainCan’t say I’m a big fan of wrestling, and the last wrestling game I’ve played would have been on the N64. Even so, I still have fond memories of creating wrestlers and 4-player battle royales with mates. Well, kiss both of those goodbye as we look at TNA Impact on the Wii.

TNA appears to be some sort of smaller WWE, with stars such as Sting and Kurt Angle battling for whatever it is people fake-battle for. Money, I suppose. Certainly not credibility, with wrestlers such as ‘Sharkboy’.

Regardless, this game kinda takes away a lot of the fun stuff associated with wrestling games. Gone are detailed create-a-wrestler features and multiplayer is restricted to two-players. A shame, because battling against the AI is just not fun. Fighting opponents is a repetitive mish-mash of grapples and punches, with the only real skill coming from timing the reversals properly (left or right on the d-pad at the right time). The AI, however, seemingly reverses at random. This has always given me the shits in wrestling games, but at least WWF No Mercy had a reversal success probability that decreased with character momentum. Here, the AI has just as much chance of reversing something after you’ve been wailing on them for ages. So your choice is risk a reversal, or just keep punching/kicking until you stun your opponent. Not particularly fun.

Lance Franklin on weekdays

Game modes are limited to standard, tag and Ultimate X. Ultimate X is pretty much a ladder match without the ladder, in which you have to climb ropes to grab a giant X hanging over the ring. None are particularly exciting, and considering games of 10 years ago had more variety, something is seriously wrong.

Story mode has a decent story in there, but you are forced into the role of an unknown wrestler, and, as stated previously, there is no customisation to be had. So you are not playing as your own creation, nor are you playing as a famous TNA wrestler (which would be an attraction for fans, I assume). A real kick in the balls comes from a cutscence that was obviously set up to segue into the ‘create-a-wrestler’ option that must be present in other versions on other consoles, but, for whatever reason, was not included in the Wii version. Why the hell not? Are they aiming this game at wrestling-obsessed grandmas who find all these options ‘confusing’? It makes no sense.

This is a legitimate wrestling move. Minds out of gutters plz.

Controls are equally bad, unless you have a classic controller. Wii-mote waggle can change what grapple move you execute, however it’s as bad as most superficial waggle additions are. Functions are also doubled up to down on the d-pad for no real reason. Expect to go jumping out of the ring when you try to pin your opponent, and more! But don’t expect to find anything interesting outside the ring, since chairs are the only weapons available. Also, these are magic chairs that vanish after you use them a few times. Sigh… I miss the giant cheese from WWF No Mercy.

Presentation is also of a low standard. Wrestlers animate quite well, but look quite poor. Special mention to the crowd for being especially terrible looking – they jump around like grasshoppers with ADD and have three frames of animation. Music is barely noticeable, and when it is it’s because it’s the same sample looping every 10 seconds – ugh.

"This is where I go to think..."

So, who is this game for? No-one, probably. There are certainly better wrestling games out there – hell, even the N64 games of yesteryear are better in nearly every way – so it isn’t for wrestling fans. Surely this game is much better on the other systems – so TNA fans should probably look into those. So I guess it’s for TNA fans who own a Wii only (kids?). I would think this would be quite a small market, but then kids buy anything…. If you really think you’d be interested in this, I urge you to try it first. Otherwise, give it a big fat miss. Also, it should be noted that TNA isn’t as raunchy as I was hoping for – it actually stands for Total Nonstop Action, which is also quite disappointing!

By watchers_eye

Graphics: C-

Functional, but in no way attractive.

Sound: C-

Horribly repetitive noises and music.

Gameplay: C-

Repetitive, dull and only a 2 player multi-play option!

Overall: C-

One for TNA fans who only have a Wii.