WWE '12

From a ridiculous story mode, to highly customizable arenas, characters, and game play, WWE '12 is able to stand tall with its various flaws and still provide a feel good game that – if given the chance – provides lots of TLC (Tables, Ladders, and Chairs) to you and your friends when you are so bored that seeing muscle-ly men try to 'take each other's backs' becomes a better option than having to go outside and find something to do.

Falling back into an old style of controls, WWE '12 is streamlined and technical, but its baiting "Predator Technology" needs to shake its ring rust.

Bigger, badder, better. WWE 12 is the game that depicts best this brutal sport, although it still has some flaws in its control that should be polished next year.

Overall WWE '12 is a solid game, but far from perfect with a dozen graphical glitches and camera issues holding it back.

Yuke's has the talent and ideas to do much more with the WWE license if it would just reset its template. [Issue#79, p.76]

WWE '12 is fun. It's a great combat game, and excellent for those that aren't marks for the innards of wrestling. You know, the "real" stuff. There's no doubt that THQ and Yuke's could make a game for those purposes, where stories are better told and interacted with, and the actual business of pro wrestling is out there for players to toy with. That's not on the cards here, as wrestling stories are told through action, and players have to connect a few dots themselves.

To paraphrase Bret Hart, it's the best there is, the best there was, but next year's will probably be a little bit better again.

Even though some things need to be tightened up, WWE '12 shows that the video game side of the franchise is still improving.

Yuke's tries to start over, but doesn't fully succeed. It's still a game full of content, but the new control and physics systems still have a ways to go.

The developers took a gamble in revamping their wrestling series, but it didn't quite pay off. Fans will love the expansive roster, variety of match options, extensive customization features, and the assortment of painful looking strikes, signature moves, and submissions. Yet the imprecise reversal system, online issues, and cheap A.I. will irritate everyone else.

The radical re-imagining promised by the creators of WWE ʼ12 does sometimes shine through some of the choices made here, but it will probably take even more future installments for us to be able to see it properly.

This WWE franchise overhaul is held back by some serious control issues.

After a few years of steady improvements, WWE '12 marks the end of that era by delivering the worst overall game in years. It does a few new things relatively well, but really messes up some things that were done very well before, like the Road to WrestleMania mode, backstage fighting and the object interaction from last year's game.

WWE 12 is a reboot for the brand, but doesn't add and improve enough on the Smackdown series. In the end, it's still too poorly animated and just not that entertaining to play.

The presentation in WWE 12 isn't exactly brilliant. Facially, the superstars look pretty close to their real-life counterparts, but their skin has the texture of store mannequins.

Still, this is the first year where I feel like I can actually recommend a WWE game in earnest. Granted, it's a caveat-laden recommendation, but a recommendation nonetheless. Considering how long it's been since one of these games actually felt playable, let alone enjoyably so, it's almost worth putting up with the various peculiarities and more antiquated elements just so you can actually have fun wrestling again.

You have to give Yuke's credit for aiming high. The wealth of content and customisation options on offer is absolutely staggering and wrestling fans that wish to ignore the game's main campaign mode will certainly find plenty to entertain them here. WWE 12, however, isn't in the same league as the series' high-water marks. It is the nucleus of what could be a great game.

WWE '12 only introduces a few welcome elements. Setting up opponents for finishers with wake-up taunts is fun, the new comeback moments are a nice way of getting back into the match, players can now target specific limbs during grapples, and new creation options (like the new create-an-arena) make the series more customizable than ever before. However, none of these can make up for the awful Road to Wrestlemania.