WWE '12

I am making this review because I feel that there is a lot of false negative reviews out there from non WWE or pro wrestling fans. Some of the review complaints I have seen are valid while many others I feel in my opinion are unfair or just plain do not make sense, from a honest reviewer perspective. I have EVERY other wwe/wwf game ever made since PSOne. I also own all the Gamecube wrestling games. I had in the past played and owned all the N64 wrestling games as all. Graphic: Slightly better than SvR 2011, fine at PS3 standard... System: Load time / Save time - a lot faster than previous games. Thumb up for this. Menu screen look great ...however why is only Randy Orton there, plus what happened to WWE 10/11 practice moves at start screen option go??? Gameplay: A lot of people said that the predator engine was a marketing scam from THQ. I am here to state it is different enough to warrant what has been said about the gameplay feeling fresh and new from THQ. However I can still feel a bit of smackdown past engine in here but this predator engine makes everything feel much different for the better overall. Details: Good job for wrestler movesets, much improved from years past, there is always room for improvement. Universe Mode: Much better than 2011, once again the little things here is what make the game really shine. Road to WrestleMania: Fresh air! I do not understand where the complaints are coming from I only see improvements here. I think a lot of the negative reviews here (major websites video gaming sites) come from the fact that the reviews are really not major wwe fans. I think a lot of the reviewers that are clueless in SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT WORLD expect a street fighter or Mortal Kombat mode story which to a wwe fan is ridiculous. Roster: Best to date with the exception being here comes the pain. Which had a incredible roster still however with the DLC may be better in time. Online multi-players: New server, much better, a little lag at times, but THQ claims will be fixed in coming days. Overall: Ok, still the best wrestling game since Here Comes the Pain, honestly I think the best and to me goes down with the greats like dare I say it No Mercy, WCW nwo Revenge etc. I rarely ever make reviews but I just felt I had to make one from a WWE fan and video gamer perspective that has ALL PAST SMACKDOWN GAMES! So go get the game I think overall most will be very happy with it. From one to ten I would honestly give this game a 9.

Purchased this product as a Christmas gift...I am sure it wil be Great for all WWE fans.Watched video and game play, seemed to be amazing game so I bought it as a gift . After playing this game .It looks amazing and its got great graphics.However this game also has alot of glithes in it .Example : while in a ladder match, trying to hit my opponents with a ladder it goes through them instead of hitting them.The Controls show icons above the wrestler to tell you which button to hit in certian circumstances but it does nothing to help you.And no matter how much pounding i give my opponents I am worn out and they pretty much do whatever they want to you .One wrestler actually disappeared through the middle of the ring and then re-appeared.The Ladders do the same thing at times. It will take some getting use to, but They should have done a better job before releasing this game. Its fun to play if nothing else the comical factor of having ghost wrestlers ever so often makes you wonder just what you might see next. For WWE fans this is another WWE game, better graphics and looks great and more abilities to do things, but also full of Glitches that at times makes it a riot to play just to see what object or wrestler will disappear and reappear somewhere else in or out of the ring. Ghost wrestling anyone ?

Let me start off by saying that I have played every single Smackdown series game except for Smackdown 1, and SvR 2007. I've also played the N64 greats such as No Mercy and Wrestlemania 2000. I only say this so anyone looking at this review will know i'ts the real deal and not some random guy who picked up the game and wants to point out all the bad parts without saying what is good. Starting off, this game is tough. I think it's partly due to me switching consoles. I had played all the original Smackdown games on PS2, then from 2008-2011 I was always on Xbox so going to PS3 kinda threw me off. I had a pretty hard time fighting normal and easy mode AI bots. After a few games I realized that I was using the D-Pad to move which is actually the taunt button, and I was using right stick for grapples which is actually the X button. Anyway, after getting used to all the controls this game got a lot more fun. My only gripe is that it is hard to do reversals, but i'm sure i'll get used to it as I play more. But my biggest dislike is the way you kick out of pins. You have to hold the X button to move up a meter and stop it on a precise spot on that meter to kick out. Sometimes i'll lose a match early just because I mess up on accident. Again i'm sure i'll get past that. Another downside (for me, a fan of the attitude era) is the horrible roster. The only good people you start off with are Triple H, Undertaker, and Kane. I do have The Rock which is great, and I have also unlocked Steve Austin who is my favorite wrestler. I used to watch WWF/WWE every week back around 1999-2004 then stopped because it got boring. I have nothing against people who like John Cena or Randy Orton but personally I think they're just boring and overrated. I'm glad I get Steve and Rocky, but I'd like to have some of the other legends. The graphics are great this year, i'm pretty impressed. They seemed to have not put much thought/effort into Steve Austin though. He is without a doubt the greatest WWF superstar of all time and should have had more effort put into him. There is just something about him that doesn't look right to me. There are two ring announcers from what I can tell. One of them is alright, and the other one is TERRIBLE. I don't know how this guy got a job at WWE. I guess i'm just nostalgic for Howard Finkel. All the little cons here and there aside, this is a great game. You just have to put the effort into getting used to the controls and it's smooth from there. ----Update 11/24/11 I've now had the chance to play this game a bit more. Reversals are starting to get a little easier, you just have to really anticipate the opponents move, requiring a bit of skill rather than just pushing a button constantly. Kicking out of pins is a little easier for me now too, but I find that later on in a game when your guy is worn down it is pretty hard to do the kick out. I just wish you could do some button pushing instead of ONLY using the meter system. I looked over another review that said the AI bots are too easy. Playing a little more, I now play on the hardest difficulty which is legend. I do find it easier than the maximum difficulties of the other games, but this game has a cool little option that can fix this. You can go into the options and increase the AI abilities. By this I mean simple things like raising their percentage of reversing your moves, and other things that make the AI harder. I would assume if you max everything out then you would have an unstoppable AI force. Online play is pretty smooth, the WWE '12 team posted an update today that said they're fixing server issues that are causing lag. I'm glad the team is working hard on this. As usual, there are player matches and ranked matches. It kinda sucks that with the millions of people who get this game, you'll only see like 15 servers up at a time for each section. I really recommend you to play offline and learn all the controls and be able to beat legend mode computers before playing online. I lost a few matches online to horrible players just because they could reverse all my moves and I sucked at it. I cannot stress enough that the reversals are hard!

so I purchase WWE 13 a few months ago, I enjoyed it or Mon but then became frustrated. my Playstation 3 must have froze proximately 20 times due to the unfinished product that was WWE 13. my biggest gripes with WWE 13 were as follows... freezes, unable to get a to count, the easy AI, the AI obsession with OMG moments, and the frustration of downloading c.a.w online. so I sold the game and shortly after decided to purchase WWE 12 in order to satisfy my wrestling game needs. the results were as follows.... no more 1 count glitch, a vastly improved and competent AI, I have not had not even 1 freeze issue, I was able to download 50 created wrestlers in less than 2 hours... unbelievably satisfying. yes WWE 12 lacks the Attitude Era Superstars and it lacks the cool created custom stage, but this game will be played by me until probably WWE 14 comes out if it any good. also in WWE 12 alberto Del Rio's ring announcer is property inserted in the game but in WWE 13... they screwed that up asmong other things. in my opinion even the presentation in regards to the opening cinematic or the main menu out does WWE 13. in closing buy this game you won't be disappointed as I was when I played WWE 13. The AI is great compared to WWE 13 crappy AI, no more 1 count bug, also the online works way better than in WWE 13. also I no longer have to unplug my Playstation 3 or restart it because of the rushed an unfinished product that was WWE 13.

Am I impressed with it? Well.... let's go through 10 points of the game, at a maximum of 10 points apiece and find out. THE AI - 4 It sucks. There is no real improvement on it. Basically, on top of reversing everything you do the higher up you go in difficulty... NOW all they do on top of that, is try to spam running grapples. It's ALL THEY DO. You simply cannot have an intelligent, well-paced match against the AI. Multiple person matches are ridiculous to try, as the AI will break up most moves you try to do. I did a 6 man battle royale, and ended up hanging back, because I couldn't do anything. Every single move I did, another AI would walk over and break it up. Some improvement, Yukes! ENGINE - 5 Now come on... Yukes and THQ spent the last several months hyping this up as a revamp... a "do over" of sorts with the WWE video game franchise, and this... the basic set up of the game... a decade old engine that cannot POSSIBLY be screwed up... was indeed screwed up. How you may ask? I have no idea. 2011 was probably the best showing they made with the engine ever, and they managed to take that good coding, and make it worse. Firstly, the new weapon physics from last year are just about worthless now. Wrestlers bounce off weapons like they're being thrown into a wall, instead of simply landing on them. Several times already, I have dropped people on chairs, only for them to stop before hitting the weapon, and bounce like they were thrown into a wall at 30mph. Winning Table Matches are borderline impossible now, as now the moves are harder to turn with. I spent over half an hour in a Tables Mtch as Jack Swagger last night, not able to EVER turn the gutwrench powerbomb towards a table... the engine just would not let me do it. The new rope physics? The ropes now act like taffy... moving where ever, and when ever they please, and it's looks very unrealistic. I do not know how they managed to mess all this up! CHARACTER MODELS - 7 Most of the roster looks relly well done. How ever, you still have your normal issues. Natalya looks about 100 pounds soaking wet... Mark henry is nowhere near his real size... Brock Lesnar has an added 100 pounds of muscle mass than he really has... Triple H sports a 6 pack he could only wish to EVER claim to have owned... Nash's hair looks matted to his head... Demolition look like the early 90's figures that were 1 solid piece of plastic... and Rock has no hair on his head or face at all. The models as always, are mostly well done, as Yukes only ever seems to be interested in making them look good, as opposed to playing well. I have not yet gotten all the wrestlers unlocked, and I do not have any DLC though... so I cannot comment on the DLC, or LOD, Vader, Booker T, or Vince McMahon MOVES AND MOVEMENTS - 5 Even more backwards than 2011. As I already mentioned, an almost perfected method from 2011 was bastardized and ruined this year. You can rarely get what you want out of a move, unless it's a slow set-up, such as the Tombstone Piledriver. Hit detection is beyond horrible as well. As The Rock, I tried to throw his trademark punch after dazing my opponent, but it missed 5 out of 6 times. Top rope moves... which were fixed in 2011, to hit no matter if the wrestler was looking at you or not... gone. It is back to the old routine of "if you're not lined up perfectly, it will not hit." Even running attacks have taken a step back, because if you're not lined up, you will miss entirely. How does a company like Yukes praise their game before release, when playing it is this difficult? Taunts look better, as when I performed a taunt with Kevin Nash, he had a full facial expression including eye movements... how ever, THIS is the biggest compliment I can give for this portion. AUDIO & VIDEO - 3 Wow. I cannot begin to tell you how bad this is. This is another thing Yukes hyped up for months... saying they spent hours reviewing WWE footage to make it a "real experience." Let me tell you, the whole 3 points I gave this section are JUST because the camera angles are realistic. Entrances? Turn 'em off... they're unbearable to watch. Everything sounds like it's playing down a 400 foot hallway with you on the other end from the speaker. I guess this is part of the "realism," but half the time I can't even tell if the music is playing for several seconds. The echo just makes this whole experience terrible, as even the ring announcers can barely be heard sometimes, IF they even speak, because there is a bug where they randomly do not intrroduce the wrestlers. The other major "hype" by Yukes was where in Universe, the opening of the show would play while the first match was loading. This is probably the worst thing I have ever seen. First, the opening video for the show is less than standard definition, and it skips and freezes every 2 seconds! While this would not be so bad... in Road to Wrestlemania, you HAVE to see this EVERY single show! To me, this is an unforgivable thing from Yukes... there's no way this should have gotten so bad! NEW FEATURES - 6 The "all new Breaking Point Submission" system... is crap. I won't even try to insult your intelligence on this one. All they did, was remove the system from 2011, and replace it with the button-mashing crap the fans begged to be removed from the previous versions. There's no skill involved in forcing someone to tap. You wear them down, lock 'em in... and button mash. Absolute crap! The grappling looks better this year, though after about 50 matches... you do get frustrated with it, as there are only about 20 animations altogether for it, with most being previous animations just looped into a new system. The belts are indeed fixed, and most look incredible... though if the belt was always ugly... it still does, you can't fix it with a video game. Community Creations is said to be a little different, but I would not know, as it has been down since I bought the game. I have dabbled a little bit in Create An Arena, and it's about what I expected... a little hype for something that will need a LOT of future work. For what it is... I guess it's ok. Until the community starts getting into really detailed custom logos, we won't see anything unique, though making Starrcade for use in Universe is a go for me. Finally... being able to break up moves, has ups and downs. You can be trying like hell to hit a finisher, but the AI will STILL walk over and throw random punches, even if it's your own team-mate! Backstage brawls are SLIGHTLY improved, though your moves are weakly limited still, but there are actually environmental grapples this year, unlike last year. But... only having the ONE backstage area does not make it fun once you've done it once. UNIVERSE MODE - 6 I would not call this year's a massive improvement. Basically... you can do what ever you want on a card, and it will now count towards rankings, unlike last year. Plus, you can put a Title on the line when ever you please. It's pretty straight-forward all around. How ever, I have noticed that while you can pick which belts you want on your brand, as well as customize RAW and Smackdown to something else... there are glaring issues. First, as you unlock Titles, you can vacate them in Exhibition, but you cannot in Universe. I have several unlocked, but I cannot pull them off the wrestlers in Universe Mode... why? Did no one think of this when they programmed it? Unreal. I am also seeing the same matches... over... and over... and over. Every week on RAW, the Main Event is Stone Cold vs. Randy Orton. EVERY WEEK. I have not come across the injury feature yet, though I have read complaints about it being too frequent, a complete 180 on what Yukes said it would be. Interfering in matches is not as easy as it sounds, either. Basically, you have 1 minute while the ref is down to do what you want to do. The issue? Good luck doing it! I interfered as Punk on Santino vs. Triple H, to help Marella win. But, I could not attack Triple H! Every time I picked up Hunter for the GTS, Santino would walk over and randomly take swings at Hunter, and I would lose the move. The match ended up getting thrown out because I couldn't even leave the ring due to the AI getting in the way every time I got near the ropes. ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA - 4 It has it's own purpose. How ever, you have to repeatedly do the same things over and over, to the point of where you wonder why this mode isn't so much shorter. Basically, I am over 6 hours into it, and still not even through the Outsider Story. This mode has 3 parts, which are almost never-ending. There doesn't even seem to be any kind of a set schedule with it, either. One week you will just have a random match... another you do a backstage segment... then you do multiple backstage brawls. What kills this mode, aside from length, is that it's built around cut-scenes, which would not be so bad if done in a regular way. How ever, in this Road in WWE '12, almost every match concludes with the triangle button flashing over your opponent's head when they are beaten down enough. You hit the button... and we commence to a cut-scene, which most of the time, doesn't even make a whole lot of sense. Without giving much away, Triple H has been in 4 WWE Title Matches already... and every one of them ends in interference. The story takes so long to progress, that I keep getting bored with it, and do some Exhibition. At one point, I swear to you I went through 3 PPV's without the story EVER going anywhere. I still have a story and a half to go... and I'm running out of patience with it. If it weren't for several wrestlers needing to be unlocked in the Hero Story, I would not even bother with it. It's too long... too boring... and nothing ever happens that is note-worthy. Anyone who has this game will know the "beat him to the right of the vending machine" shows up every 3 to 4 shows... there's no creativity in the story, or in the programming. CREATE A WRESTLER/FINISHER/ARENA - 8 The highest score out of this whole review... and to be honest, it's mostly because the Wrestler and Finisher modes were more or less completely untouched. I haven't made a wrestler yet, as I want to unlock everything first, but I looked through everything, and if there are things removed, I don't notice them... everything looks pretty much the same to me. As was my thought, and confirmed by people online, Create a Finisher was not touched at all. No new moves or animations at all... I can fully see this feature being removed... because to be honest, it serves no purpose other than kids creating painfully long finishers to spam online to laugh at. With Arena... it serves it's job, and as I said, hopefully good artists will come up with some neat designs down the road. REPLAY VALUE - 6 I will be honest, playing as a lone person against the AI... you will only be able to stomach it for so long. With me, I have a few friends who love to sit around and play these games, and we make our own entertainment out of our matches, as, unlike the AI, we pace our matches to look decent, instead of spamming the same thing over and over. When it comes to Road to Wrestlemania and Universe... only die-hard WWE fans will continue playing through these modes up until the release of 2013. Road is basically a one-time deal... if you go through it twice, you either LOVE the WWE Kool-Aid... or you're a glutton for punishment. Hopefully with a patch, Yukes will at least fix the constant rematches un Universe Mode to make it more enjoyable, but I see myself sticking to Exhibition when playing alone... as the added headache of changing every other match can be done by me, outside the mode. Personally, if I hadn't gotten this for free, and paid full price for it... I would be very upset, and probably returning it within a couple weeks, and continuing to play 2011. It just.... doesnt feel improved, it feels like a rushed, broken-down lump of attempted fixes, that when broken, were never attempted to be corrected. OVERALL SCORE: 54 out of 100 Seeing the videos online... seeing the hype for it... I knew not to expect a great game. How ever, I didn't expect it to be THIS bad. Yukes took about 5 steps forward with 2011, a leap they had never bothered to try and make in 12 years. This year how ever... seems to be the year they send out a broken down game in order to hype up WWE '13 as "all new and improved," where they will put back in the features they took out, and fix the issues they purposefully broke. No one can tell me they didn't do these things on purpose... as there was NO reason to remove the fixed top rope attacks... nor make colliding with a move, punch or kick so hard to do. Business is business... and Yukes knows how to play people. The selling is also faster, which means escaping the cage takes good timing, as the AI will always be up before you are halfway up the cage, no matter what you do to them... it's just horrible timing, horrible programming... and makes me shake my head at what the people at Yukes believe makes a great game. Rent it first, folks. Whether it be from a video store or an online program... RENT IT. I am far from happy from this release, and cannot believe it was ever approved to be shipped in the shape it's in. Whether people agree with me or not... doesn't matter to me. I know what I like in a video game, and being frustrated about not winning due to difficulty should be my only problem... NOT getting frustrated because half of what I try to do... will not work.

I'M A WRESTLING FAN SINCE I WAS 4! N' I LOVE THIS GAME... I LOVE THE STORY MODE, GRAFFICT, N' THE FACT THAT THE CPU ARE SUPER HARD! I LOVE THE WRESTLERS THAT ARE N' THIS GAME TOO... THE UNDERTAKER THE ROCK EDDIE GUERRERO, N' BROCK LESNAR! N' I CAN'T WAIT TO JANUARY DLC LEGEND PACK TO ARRIVE?? CAUSE I REALLY WANNA PLAY WITH THE LATE LEGENDARY RANDY "MACHO MAN" SAVAGE (R.I.P) OHHH YEAHHH... I RECOMMENT THIS GAME TO ANY WRESTLING FAN THAT LOVE THE WWE LIKE ME! O?? N' AMAZON DID A GREAT JOB ON DELIVERING. I RECEIVE THE GAME 2 DAYS AFTER I ORDER IT!

I was very excited to play the new WWE 12 Game so I per-ordered on Amazon and it came the day of release. Needless to say, the game is not very good, and I thought it would be amazing as per the hype and great reviews. The main issue I have is how the game plays, it just doesn't feel fluid and it's still ridden with bugs and annoying AI issues just like the past 5 games. Matches go on for way way to long which could be good if moves flowed into one another and the AI's moves made sense, and the controls seem to limit you, for example as John Cena I couldn't stop doing the same stupid headlock move no matter which direction I pushed the left stick. Regardless of whether it was user error, I never had this issue with the previous controls. Opponents also never stay on the mat for longer than 2 seconds, gone are the days of No Mercy where opponents could be on the mat for 10+ seconds (Which is more realistic). Graphically, it looks good when your using a top superstar (Randy Orton, Cena, Etc) but try using Mark Henry or The Miz and it just seems like they stopped trying after creating the Main Event Superstars. I played with WWE Universe Mode and it was mostly the same as last year, with some neat graphical touches and changes to how you start matches, set titles, etc. The graphics and camera angles are all great as well during matches. All of this doesn't matter though when the AI sucks (still), there are constant clipping issues and the controls seem confined and too button mashy. Not to mention the most annoying problem with the game, the commentary...Good god, please, PLEASE redo the commentary system or get rid of it. I had to turn voices off due to how annoying and repetitive King and Cole got which ruins the entire entrance experience since you can't just turn off commentary in matches, it turns off every single voice in the game. Please rework this or get rid of it and replace with Music. Until THQ and Yukes can go back to a game at a Wrestlemania 2000, No Mercy, or HCTP caliber, I will not be buying these anymore even if the hype machine gets my interest. Update: And looks like this game has officially killed my PS3. It outright froze the system and required me to reset into safemode and run the file system utility to fix the corruption and now the disk drive won't read discs. Thanks THQ, now I will never buy another WWE game again!

If you love WWE wrestling, then you'll love this game. With a HUGE roster of wrestlers and a massive amount of DLC you'll be in redneck heaven lol. My only complaint is (as of this review) you still can't log in to community creations and download anything. But THQ assures us they are working on it. But with the ability to create your own wrestler, arena, import your own entrance music, make your own move sets etc... This is worth the money. As long as you don't care much for online play.