Raw Deal

There’s also a lot of button bashing. The good news is that there are plenty of moves (including signatures and interactive submission holds) and eight different fighting styles, each with primary and secondary abilities that make the game a little more interesting. Each superstar has 2 characteristic styles. For instance The Undertaker can be a powerhouse or brawler, while Rey Mysterio can choose between high-flyer and showman. The bad news is, the styles aren’t equal.

You’ll encounter the imbalance if you play online, which is neatly divided into 3 sections according to your rating, but one-on-one matches are rarely an even contest. You might then think that SVR2008 would come alive in multiplayer, where up to 6 players can compete in one match. If you’re prepared to accept a random, haphazard brawl, then it does. If however you want anything more than that, such as the sense that you have any meaningful control over your wrestler’s actions or the eventual outcome, then you’ll be disappointed, as the abysmal automatic targeting system leaves you helpless to discriminate.

Almost everything in the game is customisable, from skipping entrances, to the impressively deep “create” modes (including superstars, move-sets, entrances, tournaments, stables, belts etc.), or even difficulty, down to how frequently the AI will use certain moves. The difficulty is a bit of a problem as it’s just too open, making some of the Hall of Fame challenges (potentially the game’s toughest achievements) a bit meaningless. There’s almost every conceivable match-type and plenty of weapons that are as irksome as they are fun to use because your wrestler drops them randomly. All match-types work, with the distinct exception of ladder matches, which draw together all of the game’s inaccuracies and injustices, making for an embarrassingly sloppy experience.

24/7, the greater part of the solo experience, includes many of those match-types. It’s a career mode that spans an entire year, and you can act as manager, use your own superstar or choose from just 18 regulars from Smackdown or Raw.