The last time I played a wrestling game (rasslin’ game?) was back in 2005 when I picked up Smackdown vs. Raw 2006 on the cheap and proceeded to create myself so I could virtually pummel some juiced-up superstars with some awesome high-flying moves. There’s a particular charm to any game that allows a created version of yourself to smash a created version of your flatmate in the head with a chair before throwing him through a table by my reckoning, and with that logic in mind I was quite looking forward to firing up the 2009 edition when we picked it up last Friday.

Having spent a good few days exploring match types, running through stories and creating some curiously freaky characters (my flat mate has returned to wrestling, complete with a top hat and monocle no less), my thoughts are mixed. See, in some ways the series has added new touches and ideas that work very well – the control system feels better than the old one, the create options have been expanded upon and there are more match types to delve into, but on the other hand a few fun features have fallen by the wayside and some old problems continue to rear their ugly head. It’s a decent game, sure, but it’s not a great one.

Featuring a reasonably up-to-date line up of wrestling folks and lasses as well as Inferno matches and a refined career mode alongside the Road to Wrestlemania storyline effort, the first thing to hit you is that since the old days the wrestling still feels slightly light and floaty. You can run around more freely rather than in straight lines this time and it feels slightly more organic in nature, sure, but you still fail to really feel like you’re in a heavyweight contest with two massive wrestling powerhouses. The other annoyance is that the game still lends itself to cheap reuse of the stomp and elbow drop moves that can, if used quickly enough, effectively pin your opponent to the mat for over a minute whilst you hammer away.

There are positives to be taken, though. The first most of these is that when you battle against harder AI they now act ‘properly’, as in they use their finishers at appropriate moments, attack certain areas of your body to weaken them and generally give you a proper good fight. Jay tried last year’s version of the game and didn’t like the control scheme at all, but I personally found the use of the left analogue to move, the right to initiate grapples and the shoulders to counter to become second nature very quickly, thus making the wrestling part of the game flow along much better than it used to. A quick return to the 2006 game confirmed just how clunky it felt by comparison.

There are a couple of other neat little touches lumped in there too, which mirror the way that real wrestling matches tend to flow. Certain characters have certain abilities than can help them throughout the match – some, for example, get a finishing move if they take enough of a beating to wind them up. Each individual wrestler has a handful of these abilities and as such it adds great value to the individual selection and choice of who you are going to use. In tag matches your tag partner can now build momentum from the side if you are taking a flogging, and should you manage to crawl to the corner and tag your mate in he will have a quick sequence of buttons to press in order to use the momentum to clean house. It captures the whole show aspect of the WWE really well indeed.

In terms of modes, it was initially somewhat disappointing to find out that there’s no longer an option to take a created superstar through a story of their own; instead, the main storyline beef is cut into a number of individual two-hour chunks tailored to a selection of wrestlers such as Triple H, Chris Jericho and a tag team effort with Batista and Rey Mysterio that you can work through with a chum. The disappointment was subdued a great deal, however, when it became apparent that the WWE story writers had plumbed in a number of great storylines into these modes and managed to make each seem authentic to the real thing itself.

Take, for example, Chris Jericho’s story. I initially started it late at night so I could run through a couple of chapters to get the general idea of the stories and how the mode plays out, but then found myself delaying going to bed just so I could see who the mysterious masked man who screwed me out of my championship win was. In going for smaller storylines they’ve been able to make use of the talent in more suitable stories that don’t have to cater for a generic created character, and the results are very positive. Still, you can’t help but think that perhaps a separate chapter for created wrestlers could have been added in.

The other main mode is Career, but to be honest it’s rather too clinical and lacks any kind of real hook other than allowing you to level up created superstars’ initial basic attributes via a sequence of one-off matches as you chase each title belt, with a neat feature being that your character’s abilities will rise in accordance to what you do in the ring, so using weapons will raise your hardcore skills, taunting and posing your charisma and the like. You begin with one title – the Intercontinental – on offer and have to battle through a number of opponents to earn stars, more of which can be gained by making your matches exciting and entertaining. When you have enough you can eventually take on the titleholder and win the belt, but to be honest with no drama or intrigue underpinning the thing it becomes somewhat dull very quickly.

Other than this you have your exhibition mode, in which you can pretty much make any kind of match that you are wanting. The new match type added is, as mentioned, Inferno, in which you boost the temperature of a ring surrounded by flaming ropes by using your most brutal moves and then set your opponent on fire by whipping them toward the flames. Don’t worry, folks – your favourite wrestlers won’t then proceed to run around with their skin melting and potentially nasty burns forming; only their clothing can be set alight. It’s an incredibly silly match type, of course, but then if you wanted something sensible you should probably have bought a boxing game instead.

It all works pretty nicely, and the create options are still decent enough even though the create-a-finisher mode is somewhat limited as it restricts you to using certain linked moves rather than being anything particularly freeform. You can also use your own tunes for you entrances (which you can again create yourself), so those who dream of running down to the ring to the tones of Barry White, J-Pop or something similarly unsuitable can get your fill there.

Then there’re the issues that have plagued the series for a while, which take what could have been heading for an eight and drag the game back down to a seven. Clipping issues rear their big fat face on many occasions and see items of clothing going through body parts, belts hovering around characters’ waists rather than hanging around them and weapons occasionally go through people rather than into them. The characters look decent enough and are pretty much like their real-life counterparts, but the surrounding scenery is somewhat basic and some of the crowd look more than a little basic. How much this will spoil your enjoyment of the game is down to you, of course, but they have had plenty of time to correct this kind of thing and it’s a little disheartening to see them still cropping up. The online mode is still rather simplistic too, and lag was annoyingly frequent during my matches with the game.

Still, it’s a decent enough effort, and one that’ll amuse wrestling fans and people who just enjoy a bit of slightly over-the-top fighting action. Whilst it’s not particularly a giant step in the right direction, Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 sees the series keeping its head above water and packing in just enough thrills and spills to keep you playing as the months tick on. With all that said and done, I am now off to create Jay and slam him through a table for forgetting his copy of Gears of War 2 for the second day running. Fun times!