If you wanted to bring the pageantry and bone-crushing moves of professional wrestling to your console of choice, there's pretty much been just one game in town for the last several years. However, that's all about to change.
TNA iMPACT! is here to officially end the monopoly on licensed professional wrestling videogames.
If you need a quick primer, Total Nonstop Action was founded in 2002 by former WWE and WCW star Jeff Jarrett along with his father. Since then, the organization has moved to a six-sided ring, landed a Thursday night spot on SpikeTV, and picked up a number of big time professional wrestling stars such as Kurt Angle, Sting, and Kevin Nash. Now, Midway is bringing the high flying moves of the federation to videogame fans across the world.
The first time I got the chance to sit down with the developers behind iMPACT!, they admitted that they couldn't match the competition's feature set their first time out of the gate but were focusing on bringing a brand-new, fun gameplay experience to the market.
In more than a few ways, Midway succeeded.
iMPACT! utilizes a simplified control scheme in an attempt to nail that "pick up and play" experience. The face buttons govern punches, kicks, grabs, and actions, while the shoulder buttons reverse, run, taunt, and modify moves to be stronger. The left stick moves your guy (sorry, gals and guys starved for female contact, there are no lady competitors), and in multi-man battles, the right stick changes targets. When you're pinned, you'll need to rock your joystick side to side to fill a kickout meter.
You take these easy to use/difficult to master controls into seven arenas and nine match types that are all no count out/no DQ as one of about 25 TNA wrestlers in front of several crowds. The results will be impressive at first.
Right off the bat, iMPACT! looks good. The character models are detailed with the shine you'd expect from their real life, sweaty counterparts but more impressive is the animation system iMPACT! deploys. In the game, moves and grapples blend together so you can go from a suplex to an arm bar submission to a couple of stomps without having to stand there for a second while a reaction animation plays out. Anytime you're playing, you can break up a move or deal out an attack.
Now, when you're playing you'll have a three part heads-up display on the screen -- a silhouette to manage limb damage, an iMPACT! meter above your name, and a stun meter behind your name. As the match wears on, all the parts will change -- the silhouette parts will change from green to red as you take attacks, iMPACT! will slowly fill with yellow as you pull off moves, and the stun meter will slowly fill with red as you get tossed around by your opponent. When the iMPACT! meter is full, you can execute a strong grapple and pull off your finisher; every wrestler gets one finisher and it's preformed from the standing grapple. When the stun meter fills, your character will be left defenseless until the bar drains of the red juice, which you can supposedly expedite by rocking your joystick. Sadly, you and your opponents will never move any differently no matter how red your silhouette is.
When you get your opponent in a submission hold, a button combination will pop up below each of your HUDs. If you, as the guy in charge of the hold, get your combos in first, you execute the damage and maybe get a tap out if the limb you're working is damaged enough. If you're the dude in the hold and get your buttons in first, you break the attack.
Yeah, Shark Boy!
This breath of fresh air is carried over to the reversal system. iMPACT! uses one button to get out of moves, and you can pretty much reverse any move outside of a finisher. If Shark Boy leaps off the top rope, you can reverse his cross body into a slam. If AJ Styles is spinning around your head on his way to delivering a side-Russian leg sweep, you can reverse the move into a shoulder breaker. If you're quick enough -- the shoulder button pops up underneath your HUD when you need to tap it to turn the tables -- you can reverse most reversals and chain together spots that are no doubt impressive.
Most of iMPACT!'s nine matches will be familiar to anyone who's jumped into a wrestling game before. There's a singles match, tag team, Free For All (a four-person bout where the first pinfall or submission wins), submission (the only way to win is to get the opponent to tap out), Falls Count Anywhere, Falls Count Anywhere tag, and a two-on-one handicap match. However, there is one exception to the match formula that only TNA fans will know about -- Ultimate X.
In an Ultimate X match, a big red X is suspended above the center of the ring by two ropes connected to four posts. The first opponent to get up there and untie it wins the bout. The catch is the fact that there are no ladders. To get the X, you have to climb one of the four turnbuckles that has a X-supporting post behind it, grab onto the suspended rope, shimmy out, and untie the X while hanging above the center of the ring. Of course, your opponent or opponents (you can have a one-on-one bout or a three-way dance) can grab you while you shimmy and yank you to the mat, leap from the turnbuckles, or climb up to the ropes and battle you from there. This match also adds another meter to your HUD that tracks your progress in untying the X. See, when you get up above the ring and start fooling with the X, a mini-game will start where you need to stop a triangle that's bouncing side to side in a specific sweet spot. When you nail it, progress is added to your progress meter. If you miss it, you have to restart the game but keep any progress you've already earned. When the meter's full, you drop to the mat with the prize and are declared the winner.
