Awhile back, I posted a small rant on how I find wrestling games have changed and not for the better. At the same time, I'd been mulling over a way to review games based on personal experiences rather than have any sort of unbiased opinion. Accentuate said opinion in order to make it the center piece of the review. Thus, I bring you the Haterade review of WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011. Be warned, this is biased, and the whole point is to see whether or not this can change my bias of the series itself.

I didn't come in the 2011 edition of this game with a positive outlook. Personal opinion states that the 2010 edition was quite fun and solid, but it definitely had some troubles, and I hadn't played it since May. We are now November. That's quite a gap. However, these games change very little and I was very quickly within familiar territory. In addition to the tutorial mode that you simply cannot miss. In fact, unless you press start, you'll be permanently stuck there. I've my reservations against this tutorial, but all in all, it did it's job as a refresher for the controls.

Now, since I'm on a 3 day rental, I go to Road to Wrestlemania in order to unlock the most of what I can before having to hand it back. This is when I start noticing that THQ has definitely pushed the concept of dishonest marketing.

Before going further into the most infuriating part of the game, I must mention that there's a WWE Shop section, where you can purchase DLC and the Online pass.  You can't help but notice that there's a code you can buy for 99 cents that unlocks everything without having to do anything. This is good, as it is an alternative to having to do things you do not want (like, say, playing as John Cena for those of us who dislike the use of the character on TV) in order to unlock everything.

However, nowhere does it state that you will need a step-by-step guide to do so if you do not pay. Within the Road to Wrestlemania stories, you can walk and talk to various superstars, as well as push them for impromptu backstage brawls (which only add 50 superstar points so it's not even a reliable way to level up, and even then, the upgrade system isn't worth it as it resets between storylines). However, in order to unlock the legends at the end of the road, you need to do all of them. This is mentioned nowhere in the game other than a "locked" on an obscure part of the menu you will likely never notice. Same with the Time Machine, which is a necessity in order to unlock everything without too much hassle, which is even more obscure as it is only available at one precise point in the game, and if you miss it, you have to re-do the entire storyline again.

In short, they gated content in order to have you shell out 1$. Well, at least they're not forcing you to pay for something that's already on the disc, but they might as well, considering how well hidden it is. The game boasts over 60 superstars, with... a good portion of them locked. In order to unlock some of them for use, you must participate in the much improved career mode named WWE Universe. Simply put, you have a calendar which you can control, inserting your creations in there as well as pushing who you want to push. This is probably the best thing they could have done as it legitimizes what fans have been doing for years with this series, but this still angers me as you already pay full price for the game (if you buy it) and find out you only have access to half the content, and likely not the half you want.

As I'm not currently a fan of the WWE, the roster as it stands does nothing for me, although I do appreciate them putting Terry Funk in as a legend. The Funkster's a favorite of mine, after all. So, we go to the create modes... which changed very little. The Create a Finisher mode added a opponent in corner option, which allows for even more grandiose created finishers, but otherwise remains unchanged. I didn't try the Create a Storyline this time around, so I can't really comment on that part, even though it's one of the areas they improved the most, I hear.

Ultimately, it's all about how the game feels in your hand, and I must admit that something happened between last year and this year. Something unholy seems to have taken a hold of the controls and sent them spiraling in a sea of mess. Then, Yuke's fished them back up, washed them and told us "Good as new!" In short, it's the same thing, except I noticed some glaring weaknesses. In most matches where you have more than one opponent, manual targeting is a must, but is implemented so badly you'll likely switch back to auto. If you slog through them, you'll get used to it's requirements (cannot change targets while on the ground, in the middle of a move, and cannot select targets that are behind you, and sometimes it won't let you change targets just because it wants you to press the button one more time.) but even then, the targeting system isn't user friendly, and it makes multiplayer matches much harder than they should be. On Yuke's corporate website, you can see "We Want Ecstasy" alongside a cartoonish Vince McMahon. I have to admit wanting some E while playing this.

Final Verdict : Hater's Gonna Hate

I'll recognize the few improvements they made, but if I can be entirely honest, so little changed that the 2011 edition is the poster child for "roster update". It doesn't help that the WWE hires and fires wrestlers so fast that the roster is outdated by the moment the game goes gold, and sometimes even before that. In addition, THQ's attempts at nickel and diming the consumer do not go unnoticed in my eyes. I didn't like my time with the game much, as much as I really wanted to. Too many problems with the series in general and this entry in particular that bog down a not exactly honest effort. I'll be skipping this effort until they stop skipping the return to the drawing board the game so desperately requires. 

Haterade is a opinionated personal review feature detailing whether or not a chance should be given to a game series that has disappointed me in the past, or genres that I simply do not like. There are two possible outcomes : Stop Hatin' when a series offers something that goes above and beyond what it could get away with and genuinely entertains me, and Hater's Gonna Hate, when it somehow manages to go under my already low expectations.