Adam Ryland

Retirement age is based on their hidden & random Destiny statistic. Knocking years off their age would help, as the lower the age, the less likely they are to be near a retirement point.

Well said timmayy, you've just summed up my feelings on the game perfectly. It drives me crazy that they go to the effort of having detailed stats for each player, but then they just seemed to be ignored for large parts of the game.

And just like that, another rival crushed I find that few can survive in the face of my ultimate weapon; gentle mocking of spelling and punctuation. Not many people know that the real reason Adam Jennings didn't make Promotion Wars 2 is that I destroyed his will to live after a particularly vicious observation about a mis-placed comma. True story.

Just an observation, but "wrestling" is spelt incorrectly on the screen shot.

What about someone like Brad Imes? He has the TUF name value, doesn't have the ground game to cause any trouble, will want to stand, and with his height he seems tailor made for Brock to do a spectacular takedown for the highlight videos?

Has anybody heard any news on a UK release? Everything I've found has only mentioned the US, which is worrying :ohwell:

For those interested, there are new screen shots out over at GDS.

No he didn't, he said "they do good for what they expected" - really? Without knowing the sales OR what we expected, how the hell is that comment anything but a pile of crap? I'm not arguing that TEW is anywhere near Smackdown's league, I'm arguing that people shouldn't make sweeping assumptions and try to pass them off as fact.

I don't see what that has to do with it - of course I'm not, but I haven't said anything like that. I just don't like the fact that Matzat's thinks he can just start making stuff up about how TEW is selling with absolutely no basis whatsoever.

Uh....WTF? You can't possibly have even the faintest idea what TEW's sales are like, because we've never released any figures. All you're doing is making an enormous assumption and trying to pass it off as informed comment. What's PWX?

From the IGN videos, the new style-specific moves seem to be a big contradiction; they're meant to add to the realism by making characters act like they do in reality, but nearly every single example shown was very unrealistic. For high fliers, they showed the weird "shoulder roll" dodge - rarely, if ever, seen in WWE. Brawlers have the MMA full mount - hardly ever seen in WWE. Hardcore have the Arabian facebuster (not really used by anyone but Sabu), triple jump moonsault (same deal, and ridiculous when performed by someone like Sandman), chair punch (not used by anyone but Big Show), and "beat yourself over the head with a chair" (?!). The only ones that looked even close to reality were the high flier's springboards and the rule-breaker referee grab, and even they'd get old, really quick. On the surface it seems like yet another "one step forward, two steps back" decision from THQ.

Biggz, if you weren't aware, the dimensions for the fighter graphics have been announced over at GDS. I figure you and your team are going to have to find a lot of appropriate photos, so it's probably good that you have many months to do it!

Best place to look is the official forums. I believe one is being worked on, and DOTT has been out for ages if you like (awesome) historical mods.

I'm almost certain they were simply called the "Desktop Adventures" series, and were by LucasArts. If you do find them, please let me know - I'd love to get my hands on them again, it's been a while since I played them too.

Oh, I understand that - I wouldn't be surprised if they did throw in a few suggestions if asked. All I'm saying is that if you look at it logically, all the signs are that it's primarily a publicity move. If they wanted a "voice of the fans", there's no reason to pick either of those two (other than for publicity reasons), because they'd have a far easier time actually getting a regular fan. Just basic logistics backs that up - as wrestlers, they're probably travelling a lot of the time, so they're hardly going to be popping in to see the development team, or anything like that. Whereas it'd be far easier to just hire a few fans to come in for a few days, pick their brains, and then continue. I'm not trying to crap on this or anything, I hope this does turn out to be a good game, I was just trying to point out that it's probably not worth putting too much faith in "Joe and AJ are involved, so it's got to be good" line of thought, as it's far far more likely that they've had minimal input than they've played a major role. That's just my two cents, based on some logic and some understanding of how games are made.

Just guessing here, but I'd imagine that having AJ and Joe on board is merely a smart piece of PR on Midway's part - by repeatedly name dropping that two wrestlers who are likely to get a good reaction from the IWC (as oppose to Jarrett for example) are "involved", they've instantly created a positive first impression, a little bit of a buzz, and gotten some good will from fans. I would seriously doubt that they would be playing the game and giving feedback, as by the time the product was at the stage where it's in any way playable, it'd already be quite far into the development process - they're not going to rip up the engine and start again, throwing away months of work, even if the wrestlers hated it. Similarly, I can't see them having much input into the initial design of the game either - I just can't see a company basing the entire engine around what two wrestlers, who happen to be casual gamers, say. If they were genuinely stuck for ideas, they'd go find a bunch of wrestling fans who have played lots of games and ask them. After all, AJ and Joe's actual ring skills aren't really relevant, it doesn't mean anything when it comes to game design. It's like designing Guitar Hero 3....would you really go and base your entire engine around Slash's input just because he's a legendary guitarist? Well, other than just for shit and giggles....

I think it was because she died falling through the portal that Glory had created to her own world, which has been established to be a hell dimension. So it wasn't that she was going to hell rather than heaven in the "good vs. evil" sense, it was that she may have been trapped in a hell dimension. So there was logic to it.

I thought the 06 version was absolutely awful; not just in execution (which, don't get me wrong, was atrocious), but the actual concepts used seemed rushed and badly thought out. I can usually find at least one positive about most features they've added, but that totally beats me, I've no clue why anybody would find that experience enjoyable. I haven't actually played 07 yet - from reading everybody's reaction it seems the negatives outweight the positives, so I'm going to wait and get it second hand for a lot cheaper instead - so I can't comment on that GM mode. I did read somewhere that writers and storylines were in this year though, which boggles my mind - if that's legit, then that would sum up what is wrong with Yukes development process to me. The game is meant to treat wrestling as a competitive sport, so adding writers and storylines is a really dumb move, as they're contradicting themselves by admitting that it's scripted (incidentally, does anybody else wonder if the WWE knew that was being added? I don't recall them ever having admitted that writers were involved in the product before?). I've always felt that Yukes seem to be like an excitable kid - I can sort of imagine them having a meeting and somebody saying "how about having writers in the game, it's an insider reference and it'll make the cool kids on the Internet love us", and not having anyone saying "yeah...but it also makes no sense". It's that sort of philosophy that troubles me, as it would explain why they are more interested in simulating sweat drops and adding management modes than doing the dull-but-important stuff like fixing basic AI flaws like tag team partners not working

Not sure I understand the point you're trying to make there - are you saying people should be easier on Yukes because it's tough to produce good quality games? Isn't that what they're paid for, to do a tough job well? Incidentally, unrelated to that, I've noticed a lot of people stating that the WWE has final say over the roster for these games. Does anybody actually have a source for that information? I'm just curious, as I'd always thought that the signs pointed to it being mainly a decision from the developers.

What's the heel AI like in normal matches? In 2006 there were two items that annoyed me. One was that the opponent would walk around taking the turnbuckle pads off to begin with to increase his energy bar. The second was if you got a big advantage over them, they'd spend the rest of the match repeatedly leaving the ring to get weapons so that they could get themselves DQed. Is either fixed?

timmayy rave, would you mind telling me if the AI in tag matches has been improved any from last year's version (i.e. partners actually helping by breaking up pins and also stopping the opponent's partner from making the save, rather than standing around doing nothing)? And also whether people stay down long enough for top rope moves like the Frog Splash to actually hit, unlike 2006? I'm still on the fence about whether to buy it, especially given that the reviews from users have been pretty underwhelming so far, but those are the two big points for me.

To be fair, they got their act together with Ed - the last two runs they did of it were both month-long and one-episode-per-day, so you got the entire season without interuptions. I agree that it was a nightmare the first time around though, they seemed to pop it into the schedule at random :ohwell: Brilliant show though Have they ever shown the last season of this? Whenever Ed is on it seems to always be the penultimate one. Yeah, last year. If Channel 4 follow their normal pattern, then the final season will gets its first set of repeats in the February \ March 2007 morning slot.

To be fair, they got their act together with Ed - the last two runs they did of it were both month-long and one-episode-per-day, so you got the entire season without interuptions. I agree that it was a nightmare the first time around though, they seemed to pop it into the schedule at random :ohwell: Brilliant show though

I'd add "Norm" to that list, Channel 4 used to show it late at night. I've seen people raving about it, but having watched several episodes I'd put it well below most of the ones on your list, it's possibly the worst written mainstream comedy I've ever seen.

I'm surprised nobody has picked up on that gem from the preview of season mode. Often I was playing 06 and thinking that magic wand related storylines were the only thing keeping it from being a truly awesome game... The tone of the review worries me a little - it sounded to me like it's yet another typical Smackdown release; for every new feature they've added, there's something else that has annoyingly gone backwards (looks like loading times this year).