Every SmackDown! Video Game Ranked From Worst To Best

The Good: A heavily-modified story mode made the single plater version of this game far more exciting than its predecessor. It also had very fast pace and relatively smooth interactions, at least for a game from a game that released in late 2000. It had a wide roster, different match options, and overall, interesting gameplay. For such an early game, it had decent gameplay.

The Bad: The game lacked one of the core necessities of a fighting game: a damage meter. While there were momentum bars in the game, it was difficult to determine how much damage one’s opponent had taken, especially when considering that damage inflicted differed from one character to another. After all, Super Smash Bros. was released a year earlier and it had an easy-to-understand damage calculation system.

Having such a heavily-modified storyline mode on a first-generation console had its consequences; in this case, loading times, even for the most insignificant of cutscenes, took much longer, and made the waiting experience far more tiresome for players.

Finally, laying the ‘Survivor’ mode, i.e. the elimination tournament mode, had some randomized features that didn’t make sense. For example, when two computer wrestlers faced off, a progress bar would appear, and the winner was often determined at random. The lack of an option to play or watch these matches was a rather notable limitation.