I’m not a core wrestling fan. I occasionally will watch one of the weekly shows on cable, but I haven’t ordered a pay-per-view in my life, nor could I name off 10 “new” wrestlers that weren’t around when I used to watch wrestling in high school 10 long years ago. Yet, even though my wrestling fan status is questionable at best, I’ve always enjoyed wrestling video games. They usually combine fighting games with brawlers, and they usually provide great multiplayer sessions. Keep in mind that I’ve only extensively played one wrestling title since the N64 days, so Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 is relatively new ground for me. I’m not sure what the series has done or failed in prior iterations, so I’m coming into this on a fresh slate. On my fresh slate, I had generally low expectations. I found recent wrestling titles to have control schemes that were too complicated, and the matches themselves often lacked something, be it in the presentation, flow, or AI. Thankfully, Smackdown vs Raw delivered a great wrestling title with only a few flaws.

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