Smackdown vs Raw 2008 (2007) All PS, DS, Wii, 360
Now, Playstation 3, Wii and the DS had got in on the act and ECW was featured as a separate entity while previous games only had one or two of its main stars. Maybe because of this, the number of available weapons and weapon moves was upped in this installment. Along with ECW game the first video game appearance of CM Punk, who as you know went on to become a huge star and grace the cover of a later WWE game. And did I mention you could now set things on fire? You could now set things on fire. I'd wanted to do that in wrestling games since the late 90s. Unfortunately, though it looked cool, it was disappointing in that you couldn't hit just ANY move through the flaming table just a set number of allowed ones. Gameplay introduced a struggle submission move, using pressure on the analog stick to decide how hard to apply a hold. Each wrestler now had primary and secondary attributes in certain fighting styles. This was done to differentiate characters but it was a tad frustrating in that it actually limited it them a bit. Having only two fighting styles meant that certain actions could not be performed by certain characters. This included some smaller wrestlers being unable to perform springboard moves, despite being able to in real life. Each style had its own powers. Technical could reverse any move for a time, power could not be reversed, submission ones could escape from holds easy and so on. This new move did stop wrestlers doing weirdly out of character moves but in some ways limited them as well. For this game, season mode was merged with GM mode to create a new WWE 24/7 mode. This gave the choice of playing through as a wrestler or Created wrestler, or playing the mode as a General Manager. Despite appearing on the game's title, ECW could not be chosen as a brand probably due to its lacking roster size. Career mode was also more than just fighting and interacting as you now also had to decide when to train, exercise and relax. It was an interesting attempt to flesh out the career to make it more like a wrestler's real time spent on the road. Really all they did was make it more tedious. What's fun about relaxing in a fighting game? These changes were eventually scrapped, due to being almost universally hated. Apart from these small changes not much else was added though of course the story mode was again completely new stories and an enjoyable experience if you could ignore all the resting and training. The Xbox finally now allowed for custom songs and gameplay additions were mostly a step forward. 24/7 mode was a bit of a frustrating step backward but it was without a doubt a fun game particularly the addition of ECW matches. It just didn't add enough to keep the series a MUST HAVE game.