2. Make Finishers Feel More Impactful
Stone Cold Stunner 4 in Smackdown! Here Comes The Pain might be my favorite move in any WWE game. The stunner in WWE 13 does not look cool at all---the animation after is pretty cool, where Austin talks trash to his opponent on the ground, but the move itself is just boring to look at. HCTP is the best game to showcase finishers. Almost every single finisher looks well animated and has a great slowdown effect right before there is impact on the mat. I understand that this is a simulation game, but the slowdown effect before impact is crucial for making finishers feel deadly in the game. As a kid when I played HCTP, there was never a time where I didn't get hyped up hitting a stone cold stunner or a rock bottom on my opponent. I recently bought HCTP again, and the feeling of hitting a finisher is still just as gratifying as it was when I played the game years ago. I can't say that I have the same feeling of gratification when I play WWE 13. All the finishers just feel so bland and boring with minimal slowdown and a tiny bit of a blur effect. The reason that these effects are so important to the game is because on TV, the finishes are usually always built up with a sequence of moves beforehand (like rising action) before they can hit their finisher (the climax). The game is not programmed like this, so finishers are mostly hit when it doesn't make sense. The only way to have the finishers feel important
every time is to have these effects/great sells---this way the user can overlook that the overall finish didn't "feel" right, but it damn sure will always look cool. The selling of stone cold stunner 4 on HCTP is definitely a bit excessive, but every time I hit it, I always give a fist pump and get that feeling to start talking trash to the TV. I'm hoping WWE 14 gives me that exact same feeling.