Genre: Sports
Publisher: Midway
Developer: Midway
Release Date: September 2008

Midway wants you to play TNA Impact very badly. And why shouldn't you? Alternatives for wrestling games are growing scarce. Fire Pro Wrestling is perhaps the most perfect hardcore wrestling title, but suffers from a steep learning curve and Spartan graphics. The Rumble Roses series is too optimized as a delivery vector for bouncing T&A to be taken seriously by players primarily interested in flexible, hard-hitting wrestling action. The once-venerable and still brisk-selling Smackdown series from rival THQ has been on a slow slide downward, both in critical review scores and in fans' opinions, as dwindling move lists and shrinking rosters make "new" iterations feel like wastes of time. Sure, you could argue the TNA brand is much less popular than the enduring WWE brand, but Smackdown's sales have remained steady even as the WWE's TV ratings slide downward. It's obvious that what fans really want out of a wrestling game is a selection of big stars, intuitive controls, and a fighting system that still allows for depth and a certain amount of creativity when it comes to the actual wrestling.

Midway believes TNA Impact can deliver that, and there's good reason to believe their claims.

It was also the centerpiece of Midway's recent Las Vegas promotional event, as the most complete title (90 percent) on hand. During a presentation before the demo session, Midway brought out several of TNA's major stars: current heavyweight champion Samoa Joe, Jay Lethal, A.J. Styles and tag team the Motor City Machine Guns. Together, all spoke about creating the game in various ways, which all five apparently worked on personally. (Samoa Joe, being a heel champion, made a point of making fun of key Midway staffers.) Journalists were even invited to battle it out with the wrestlers during the demo event, usually to quick losses.

Footage was shown of various wrestlers in mo-cap suits performing moves to be scanned for the game, and lots of footage hyping up Impact's unique Ultimate X match rule set. An Ultimate X match calls for the wrestlers to try and climb across an X-shaped scaffolding to grab an X-shaped goal (or, for championship matches, the champion's belt) that's suspended above the ring. The match type emphasizes using the scaffolding to create high-flying spots during matches, and to build tension as both wrestlers race across the scaffolding to try and grab the prize. This aside, the game lets players take control of 25 of TNA's top wrestlers, and is set to be available across the 360, PS3, PS2 and Wii platforms. The version used for hands-on play was the Xbox 360 SKU, suggesting this may be the primary platform as far as development is concerned.

Wrestlers in Impact are broken into three "classes": acrobat, brawler and grappler. While submission holds are in the game, they aren't emphasized as a major way of winning a match. Instead, submissions and several other classic wrestling maneuvers are used in Impact largely to build up "style points," which can be used to purchase various unlockable characters, moves and venues. Performing more advanced maneuvers like top-rope jumps, submissions and character-specific finishers rack up style points far more quickly than simple punches and bodyslams, and by themselves give players the incentive to try and consistently perform stylish maneuvers that most wrestling games lack. Simply flogging a single high-point move won't pay off, either, as repeating moves during a match causes their style value to diminish over time.

The way to optimize style points is to make sure you're using all of your wrestler's abilities and not just mashing the same buttons over and over again. All that is known about unlockable characters thus far is that if you pre-order from Amazon, you're rewarded with your very own unlockable Mike Tenay, so it seems unlikely that anyone will get their copy of the game from anywhere else. Style points also apply to unlocking character creation options in the game's create-a-wrestler mode, so you'll have to be creative in the ring if you want to have the full range of available options when you want to create your own wrestler.

That said, the game is still accessible for casual play, since kicking and punching your way to victory is possible against an opponent ... provided your opponent doesn't start reading the timing of your moves and interrupting them with the Reversal command, triggered by pressing RB. The Reversal command is interesting in that it makes your wrestler, if the timing is correct, automatically counter or reverse any move, if possible, with a context-appropriate move. An attempt to suplex may get turned around into a reverse DDT, while a simple flurry of punches may get interrupted with a quick knee to the cojones. The Reversal command is something that feels very natural and even essential when playing Impact, and yet it's a feature with little precedent in other wrestling titles.

Otherwise, the controls for Impact are fairly basic and natural. Each player has a grapple, kick, punch and action button. Combining button presses in various ways in different situations results in varying types of maneuvers, individualized to the competitor. Hold down the right trigger to do moves while running, and the left button does "strong," more potent versions of your wrestler's usual moves. A heavier fighter might do a flying punch off the top rope with the same set of input commands that send an X-Division competitor into a hurricanrana or corkscrew plancha. Generally a wrestler's basic move selection is dictated by his "class," but finishers are individualized and can be done when the appropriate meter on the screen is full.

Overall, it's a strong system, promising depth for someone who wants to study the controls, but easily accessible to first-time players and mere button presses. Midway is even promising individualized animations for each of the wrestlers in various situations, so the fact that, say, Sting always sells submissions and suplexes in a certain way is reflected as realistically as possible in his animations. The simple controls also make gimmick matches like the Ultimate X easy to compete in, since the win conditions usually call for applying the action button in various ways that aren't possible in standard matches.

For instance, in Ultimate X, you need to use the action button to climb the corner turnstile, climb up and across the scaffolding, and then try to grab hold of the object suspended over the center of the ring. Of course, grabbing it successfully involves playing a rather difficult timing minigame, so winning gimmick matches isn't too easy. While you're trying to hit the target in the meter, your opponent is free to use his action button to jump up and pull you down, or to climb up to you and start kicking and punching you in the head until you topple downward. In addition to the Ultimate X, Full Metal Mayhem and King of the Mountain are confirmed for Impact, in addition to more traditional variant rules, like tag-team and four-way matches. Exactly how much tag teams are going to be emphasized in the game remains to be seen.

TNA Impact's graphics are smooth and impressive, making the deep and specific controls all the more impressive. The developer promises 60fps action, and appears to have successfully delivered without compromising the game's action in any way. Everyone's moves "look right," and you don't get any of the silly move mis-matches that occasionally plague characters in Smackdown. All of the wrestlers consistently do the moves you're likely to see them actually do in the ring, granting a much greater feeling of realism. Likewise, individual wrestlers resemble their real-life selves with a level of fidelity that is unprecedented in wrestling games. This isn't just a matter of pushing more polygons and making textures shinier. Faces and bodies are sculpted perfectly, giving everyone just the right noses and cheekbones, and making them muscular or barrel-chested as appropriate.

With TNA Impact, all of the right elements are in place to create a wrestling game that could topple the Smackdown franchise in the eyes of wrestling fans who aren't quite hardcore enough for Fire Pro, but who still want a game with some substance and sense of realism. This is something designed to be easy to pick up and play, but to still reward fans who spend lots of time with tons of options to explore. The main question that remains with Impact is one of polish, so hopefully Midway is going to put their six months until the U.S. release to good work to get every aspect of the title as fine-tuned as it needs to be. The potential for fun is there, and all it needs now is to be fully realized.