TNA iMPACT Story Mode Hands on

[ALL STAR]

US, August 8, 2008 - Believe it or not, there's a part of everyone that wants to don spandex and leap from the top rope, but it's a sad fact of life that not every human being has the athletic talent and mental fortitude to take a chair shot, bleed from the head, and know the difference between a snap suplex and a German suplex.

Luckily, the create-a-wrestler feature in most wrestling videogames let us put our work-a-day world on hold and live as a God for at least a moment or two.

TNA iMPACT! is, of course, no different. When you're done playing as legendary grapplers such as Christian Cage, Kurt Angle, and Shark Boy, you'll be able to hop in and create a wrestler you can play as in exhibition matches or the game's original story mode that takes you from the top of he industry to the gutters of Mexico to the top again.

After entering the name of your would-be champion, you're treated to an extended movie featuring a brawler named Suicide -- if you choose to create the guy in Story Mode and not the straight-up character creator from the main menu. Apparently, Suicide was the greatest thing since sliced bread in TNA and was tearing the federation apart. After it was announced Suicide would get a title shot, LAX popped up and demanded he throw the match. Suicide says "Screw that," wins the title, and LAX pounds the crap out of him. The chosen one wakes up completely bandaged in Mexico and without his memory. Thankfully, Mexico has so many pro bono plastic surgeons that the hospital offers to reconstruct the injured man in any way he sees fit.

So begins TNA's character creation. Now, A majority of IGN readers would quickly lose consciousness if I was to sit here and list each and every option for a creation tool, but you're not the majority of IGNers. You're the dedicated wrestling videogame fanbase that I'm proud to call myself a member of -- so, let's get to it, but keep in mind that this is a preview build of the game. Any of the specifics mentioned in this article could change by the time you get your hands on it.

From the first creation screen, you should feel pretty much at home. Your wrestler pops up on the right side of the screen (rotate him with the shoulder buttons and zoom in or out with the right stick) and a list of three things you can modify hangs on the left -- Body Type, Flesh Tone, and Wrestling Style. There are three body types (heavy, athletic, strong) with three types of muscle tone to choose from. With a body built, you'll have 12 flesh tones to choose from along with a light or dark modifier for each. Now, choosing a wrestling style might sound like a big deal, but it's pretty much just a title that comes with an ability. Midway says that a High Flyer can pull off an aerial move others can't, Grapplers perform more technical-like moves, and the attack of a Brawler hurts a bit more; however, in my experience today, changing the wrestling style did not add or subtract moves.

With the first screen done, you've got your final five categories in front of you -- Clothing, Head, Tattoo, Introduction, and Wrestling Moves. Inside each of these are the breakout categories we're all familiar with. In Clothing, there are 30 shirt options (singlets to dress shirts) that pack preset colors as well as decals; 23 pant options such as chaps and a kilt; 20 pairs of shoes and boots; seven elbow options; 14 knee accessories; and 13 hand wraps and gloves. All of those knee, hand, and elbow options can be set to just one limb if you like.

When it comes to your noggin, the game breaks creation into the standard parts of a face. There are 24 mouths, 24 noses, 23 sets of eyes, 11 eyebrows, 24 brow types, 14 pairs of ears, 42 hair styles that range from simple parts to cornrows, 18 types of facial hair, 28 jawlines, 21 pairs of sunglasses, and 11 necklaces. From there, you can tattoo your arms, torso, and paint your face. I had ten introductions to choose from, but there's no way to preview them in the creation mode. You have to select one and head into a match to see if you like it. Same deal with the moves.

Obviously, the biggest part of any created wrestler is his moves. There are 17 categories of attack for you to modify in TNA -- stuff like punches, kicks, grabs, and more. Even though you'll be starting from square one, you're going to be able to see every move that is available to you. Thing is, every one of these moves is available to every one of the wrestling types -- at least in the build I am playing. Everyone can do a Mexican head scissors, and everyone can do Death Valley Driver. You have a total of four types of strikes to choose from for your two types of punches, there's one type of kick, three aerial attacks, and 27 finishers.

Earlier this week, message board readers were objecting to my videos of TNA iMPACT! because I use the same moves over and over. I countered with the fact that TNA's moveset is limited and that's why they were seeing so many of the same moves when scoping their favorite TNA-Lister. Now that I've gotten to dig into how moves are setup in create-a-player, I can talk a bit more about that. Earlier I said you had four grapples, but upon further investigation, you have seven grab moves to pick in create-a-player -- grab button by itself; towards plus grab; strong modifier, towards and grab; grab while locked up; strong modifier plus grab while locked up; towards plus grab while locked up; away plus grab while locked up. How did I miss the three additional grapples? Well, the problem is that there are only a total of 14 moves to choose from (seven for your first three grab types and seven for your last four grab types). This means that some wrestlers have the same move mapped to different buttons because it wouldn't make sense to see them doing a move that they'd never really do.

Once you're through the creation project, you're tossed right into the thick of TNA's story mode. Your character tells you in a voiceover that after getting out of the hospital he felt compelled to go wrestle. You enter a gauntlet match in Mexico where the winner will head stateside for an international competition. Of course, you win the gauntlet competition -- which is just three completely separate matches in Mexico that do not share body damage or anything else to let you know you've wrestled three matches in a row -- and head to America. There, you beat another created jobber, but after the match a TNA-er comes out and challenges you to a Foot-in-Door match (if you win, you come to TNA tryouts). In Orlando, Kevin Nash takes you under his wing and even sets you up with a deadly tag team partner named Eric Young. I don't want to ruin the whole thing for you -- if you like, the ton of videos I've uploaded to the gallery will be happy to tell you details -- but the game goes on, you keep climbing the ladder of success, and slowly the plot thickens.

I'm only 40 percent through my primary story -- after creating the secondary character you see here and playing for a little more than an hour, I'm a quarter of the way through that installment -- but the tale seems solid. It's probably more linear than people were expecting (there are no choices as to what you say to people; no branching storylines; if you lose a match, you have to replay it until you win; etc.), but the story seems interesting enough. I know some fans are going to be disappointed in the inability to adjust your created player's height, weight, and sex, but the fact that you have to remain close to the same size of Suicide is a story-device that doesn't make the limitations feel too bad. My most immediate complaint would be that I feel like the Eric Young arc of the story goes on too long. Nash teamed us together, and from there on out we were fighting other teams -- most of the time without a cutscene of any story progression between matches. Eventually, Nash pops up to talk about the future of the team and things start happening, but it's still after a number of unsatisfying tag matches where the AI doesn't get in the ring quick enough to break up pins and then just walks out when the pin is over.

If you've been patiently waiting for the last two years to get your hands on TNA iMPACT!, it's almost time to tear off your shirt and run at the game with your favorite steel chair. Whether or not the game's more than 20 wrestlers, Story Mode, and Ultimate X Match will be enough to make iMPACT! the undisputed champion remains to be seen, but keep checking IGN for a near-daily glimpse at what's happening with the title.

Edited August 8, 2008 by ALL STAR

[bigpoppn]

Nice, but indeed too linear.

I dunno about it.

It isn't possible to play with a TNA character, right?

[Big Bizang]

From all that above it seems like you can't do story mode with an established character. Kind of like Day of Reckoning's story which was unsatisfying in my opinion. Hm.

[bigpoppn]

I'm not too keen on this story mode thing.

But untill I've played it, I won't know.