Platform: Sony PlayStation 2Publisher: THQ
Developer: Yuke's Media Creations
Release: 13/11/2002
As you might have fathomed from the first two entries, I've been a Nintendo fanboy for about twenty years now. So when I started to get into pro wrestling in the late 90s, my first exposure was through the WCW vs. nWo and WWF No Mercy games on the Nintendo 64.
When the next generation of consoles came out, something went sour with Nintendo and rasslin'. Wrestlemania X8 was a disappointing premiere, and furthermore, it was released half a year after the PS2 had already got its own inaugural WWF title; the third edition in the SmackDown! series.
On that note, Just Bring It was a disappointment in its own right: as soon as it hit shelves, it was dated. It lacked any presence of the WCW/ECW 'Invaders', an angle that had begun roughly nine months before the game's release.
Couple that with ugly graphics and dreadful commentary, and JBI was a gruesome beast. But hey, I enjoyed it at the time (the omission of the Invasion angle being my biggest disappointment), and when the next title, Shut Your Mouth, surfaced, it was, in my mind, the biggest advance in the series, and a complete wrestling experience.
The WWE games generally don't seem to offer a whole lot of advances from title to title (a streamlined story mode and retooling of the counter system the highlights of the next title, Here comes the Pain), so in all likelihood, the fact that SYM was just so much better than JBI might glorify it in my mind.
The story mode was given a complete rehaul, and it remains the only prolonged wrestling story mode that I've played all the way through. The graphics were, for their time, magnificent. This was especially evident in the character model for one of the game's most significant inclusions; one Hollywood Hulk Hogan.
On that note, this was the game's major selling point for me: its roster. It was released during the ill-fated nWo angle, which meant that long-absent classics like Hogan, Shawn Michaels and Kevin Nash made an appearance, plus all of the WCW/ECW guys missing from the last game; primarily, my boy Lance Storm. Oh hell yeah.
The formula may have been done a little bit better with each title that came, but the pinnacle for me was easily SYM. The intense multiplayer skirmishes friends and I engaged in remain fresh in my mind, our once-laughable created wrestlers now looked respectable, and we didn't face the same disappointment after sifting through the available characters.
Furthermore, the real superstars were given the highest stat total. Guys like The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin. They were the best of the best, just like they should be, and not the later whelps like Brock Lesnar, John Cena or the horribly disappointing Goldberg.
SYM was WWE done right. And as it was released during what was possibly the height of my passion for wrestling, it maintains a glorious sheen no wrestling game will likely ever recapture in my eyes.
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