Review: TNA Impact (360)

One thing that the Smackdown series has in its favour is the way each match and event feels like it could be happening right now with pyrotechnics and explosive ring entrances. TNA Impact seems rather minimalist in comparison. The audience might as well not be there and the ring entrances are, quite frankly, awful. Actually you can’t even call them entrances because you never see them get in the ring. They only walk a few steps down the ramp, strike a pose and then the camera enters yet another loading screen before your opponent repeats the process. Coupled with the ropey animations it’s not exactly an exciting start to the game. Loading screens in particular being far too frequent.

The real crime with TNA Impact is the lack of moves, something that in a wrestling game cannot be excused. You have your standard array of punches, kicks and running attacks. Then are the grapple moves. Pressing a direct as well as grapple and you can perform a variety of slams. Holding the LB button and then you enter the strong grapples. This probably sounds like a large enough set of attacks, but it’s not when you consider some with certain characters, are mapped to multiple directions. The introduction of new environments to wrestle in and a position specific move set could have improved it - like for instance slamming someone into the ringside wall - but that’s not the case here. It once again harks back to the minimalist approach mentioned earlier. There’s no backstage areas, no assortment of weapons apart from a chair and a distinct lack of game modes.

To be fair to TNA Impact though one of the game modes almost makes up for the lack of other options. It’s called the Ultimate X match and it’s the match type the TNA brand is known for. An X is perched above the ring held together by four ropes. The idea of the match is to incapacitate your opponent so you can climb the turnbuckle, shimmy across the rope and grab the X. It requires quick timing to grab it, and you have to do it multiple times to get it. Then you have your opponent who’ll be trying to kick you off so he can claim the prize. Other than this you have your standard exhibition and tag team matches, as well as the Story mode.

The Story mode is even more ludicrous than what you’d expect to come from a wrestling company. You start off the game as a made up masked wrestler called Suicide who gets beaten up backstage by LAX and is subsequently dumped in Mexico with some plot convenient amnesia. With bandages around his face this is the games excuse to let you create your character as you see fit. Being the classy gents we are, we opted for a mullet haired ladies man.

The plot gets even weirder as your Jason Bourne amnesia starts to slowly return and you find out about all the enemies and factions of TNA. The main problem we had with the story are the lack of characters. There aren’t really that many wrestlers to choose from, and bizarrely not a single female apart from a short Christy Hemme cut scene appearance. Which means a lot of wrestlers you come up against are fictional, so there are a lot of boring matches before you finally come up against the likes of AJ Styles and Kurt Angle. Overall it’s okay, but incredibly short and we can’t see anyone returning for a second play through.

Those wanting online fun should look elsewhere. Xbox Live can be considered a no go area with such awful lag that it almost makes the game unplayable. Button presses take seconds to register making the reversal aspect of the experience more to do with luck than timing. This being the ability to reverse your opponents moves by timing a button press at the right moment, which is when a button quickly flashes underneath your health status. Once this gets reversed though there’s always a chance it can be reversed by the computer again, something that becomes far too common on a higher difficulty. Often bringing into question whether you’re being cheated by the game.

TNA Impact has some good ideas, but there just aren’t enough of them to warrant a purchase. Even die hard TNA fans will be disappointed by Midways lacklustre handling of the brand. We’ll stick to the Smackdown series for the time being.

Rating: 5 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver