WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain2003

There are many good wrestling games, but few come to WWE SmackDown for me! Here comes the pain. For me, it is simply the perfect wrestling game. The roster, the match modes, the story mode and the Create-a-Wrestler mode make up an overall package that I still enjoy playing to this day. In the roster, Here Comes the Pain does a lot of things right. It is simply fun to choose the familiar faces from the WWE period and to create your own dream matches. At that time, I was especially pleased with the legends. That one in a smackdown! -Game could finally get into the ring with big names from past wrestling times, I thought really cool. This made completely new dream duels between different generations of wrestling possible. Nevertheless, I miss a few superstars who were regularly seen on WWE-TV at that time. Especially when you have followed the shows from this time, you wonder why these wrestlers are not there. A few additional names would have made the already strong roster even better for me. Also in the match modes delivers the game properly. The selection is varied and ensures that it is not boring even after countless hours of play. An absolute highlight was the first introduction of the Elimination Chamber in the SmackDown! series. The six wrestlers, the chambers and the excitement when the next superstar came into the match, simply had their own atmosphere. I connect countless hours together with friends in front of the TV. We challenged each other, sent our favorite wrestlers to the chamber and experienced many memorable battles. A few planned matches quickly became whole evenings. Everyone wanted to win and, of course, no one just wanted to accept defeat. When I think back to Here Comes the Pain today, these experiences are among my most beautiful memories. The Elimination Chamber was not just another match mode for me, but the reason for many unforgettable wrestling evenings. For me, the story mode is one of the absolute highlights. What I especially love about it is that the stories are oriented towards the position of your superstar within WWE. Whether Undercard or Mainevent! It is precisely this diversity that makes the story mode so awesome for me. It feels like you’re actually going through a wrestling career. Not every superstar has to be in the main event immediately. You can work your way up and experience different roles. In addition, there is the ongoing title history, changing champions and the tag team constellations. This creates the feeling that the WWE world continues to live beyond individual matches. You don’t just play matches, you write your own wrestling story. Due to the different storylines, it is also worth starting again with different superstars. Create-a-Wrestler mode is a consistent evolution of the previous parts. You can create your own characters and let your imagination run wild. Especially cool at that time was the community around sites like CAWs.ws. There you could discover and replicate creations of other players. With a little patience, wrestlers could be created who came astonishingly close to their real-life role models, even if they were not included in the game. If a particular wrestler was missing in the roster, you could try to create them yourself. The creativity of the community has thus significantly expanded the scope of the game and always provided new ideas for their own WWE squad. Conclusion WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain is the perfect wrestling game for me. The roster features many well-known superstars and, for the first time, legends in the SmackDown! series. Only a few very present wrestlers at that time I would have liked to see additional. The match modes are varied and the introduction of the Elimination Chamber has provided countless hours together with friends. The story mode is a real highlight for me because it offers different stories for Undercard, Midcard, Main Event and Tag teams. Together with the ongoing title story, a wrestling world is created in which you can write your own stories. The Create-a-Wrestler mode also impressed and was further enhanced by creative sites such as CAWs.ws. Many wrestling games have appeared since then, but few have achieved this overall feeling for me. Here Comes the Pain combines great gameplay with playful freedom and memories that go far beyond the actual game. For me, it’s not just a classic of the PS2 era. It’s the wrestling game where I measure other titles. An absolute wrestling pearl that remains almost unmatched for me to this day.

Translated from German·Show original