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Yuke's, Aki, and other developers have tried to perfect the concept of a wrestling season, with varying degrees of historical success. The Story Mode in last year's SmackDown! Just Bring It would probably be considered one of the failures in that regard -- it was a decent idea, perhaps, but very limited in its implementation. So Yuke's went back to the drawing board for the sequel, Shut Your Mouth, integrating new and old ideas into a redesigned Season Mode. Here's a look at the structure of that new-school Season.
Selecting A Superstar
Season Mode lets you pick one wrestler, real or created, and follow their progress through a year of WWE programming. It begins with the chance to pick that wrestler, and also edit their allegiances to a degree. The game's Stable system includes pre-existing teams with customized entrances (Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo, for example, are a team together and with Rico Constantino), but if you want to change the stable situation, you can do so in this menu:
The Draft
Next, the draft begins. This, of course, is a re-creation of the brand extension draft from earlier this year, where the WWE roster was theoretically split into two halves -- one for Monday's RAW show, the other for Thursday's SmackDown. Shut Your Mouth lets you create your own draft up through the 20th pick, assigning wrestlers to one brand or another, but if you don't want to spend that much time on it, it's possible to let the game select for you. The result in that case will roughly mirror the real-life draft, although the wrestler assignments naturally won't be quite exact.
Ranking
Now that your wrestler has a place in the roster, it's time to see where they are on the championship ladder. Superstar Points are the method used to reckon a wrestler's position in the title hunt, as well as other potential storyline opportunities. The draft determines default points -- the higher their draft pick, the more points a wrestler starts with -- and wins and losses affect the total from then on. A series of big wins will increase a wrestler's points, and with them the likelihood of a title shot or appearances in major events. For example, there's a minimum point level required to enter the Royal Rumble or the King of the Ring tournament. Vince McMahon can give an individual wrestler an update on his point total in between matches, and in between weeks of programming, you can check up on the status of the whole roster.
Let The Games Begin
Now that the draft is over, the season starts, progressing from week to week or month to month. As a rule, a wrestler competes five times each month -- four weekly TV shows and one monthly pay-per-view event. The wrestler you're playing as is always booked on the card, and it's easy to skip the other matches, which saves on the tedium encountered in the Know Your Role season mode. Here's a typical schedule for an event:
Wrestlers just beginning the Season Mode typically compete in the first or second match, although that varies according to their Superstar Points.
While checking up on the active schedule for your wrestler's brand, you can also have a look at what's happening on the other brand's program. Interference is only available as an option for matches on your brand, however.
To interfere in a match, you have to enter the stage in the first-person Roaming Mode (more on that later) and select the option to run in. Doing so can naturally lead to a shift in allegiance and future feuds, although messing with matches low on the card may not necessarily lead to significant consequences in the future.
"WHO
WILL WIN THE MATCH?"
In the middle of it all, of course, are the matches a wrestler competes in each week. Some of these are selected more or less at random -- why is Chris Benoit starting off the season up against the Hurricane? -- but as the year progresses, feuds develop and cinematics are added to give a little more rhyme and reason to events from week to week. For example, Benoit's first month led through a brief issue with Rikishi culminating into a match for a title shot at the Backlash pay-per-view (complete, incidentally, with those cool swinging hooks around the entrance).
In between matches, the game occasionally offers an opportunity to make a choice that might affect future events, like cutting a promo to call out a title holder:
This may then be followed up by other cinematics in future weeks, although the news may not necessarily be good:
Sometimes, a storyline fork may come out of the blue, without a connection to an earlier event. If you know a little about the structure of the WWE schedule, though, you can see some of them coming. Toward the end of the spring, for instance, JR will offer a shot to go on the UK tour for the Rebellion pay-per-view, leading to different matches and different issues on that little side-trip. That's also where you'll have to go if you want to snag any of the unlockable items related to the Rebellion event.
Wherever I May Roam
In between matches, Shut Your Mouth employs the same Roaming Mode as Just Bring It, but it's been improved and changed in a couple of ways. While the first-person navigation controls remain familiar, the backstage areas are more sensibly organized in Shut Your Mouth. Different areas are arranged around the arena lobby, which serves as a central hub -- you can get anywhere from there, which saves some of the time you may have spent wandering around the arena in Just Bring It. These are the areas you can check out:
Merchandise Table
The merch table delivers an accounting of what you've unlocked so far and what you can unlock in the future. Each monthly pay-per-view event is connected to five or six different items -- outfits, create-a-wrestler features, arenas, and so on. Fulfilling different conditions lets you pick an item and unlock it. The most common condition is simply winning a match at a PPV, but special events have more specific requirements for certain unlockables, like winning the Royal Rumble.
VIP Suite
This is where Vince McMahon hangs out during the event. Checking in with the boss lets you look up your current Superstar Points and perhaps beg for a title shot.
Stage/Arena
There are two entrances to the arena proper, one marked "Stage" and the other marked "Arena." Going to the latter leads directly to your wrestler's match for the evening. The former, however, offers the chance to interfere in preliminary matches on the card.
Downstairs
This path leads into the basement areas of the arena, including the infamous boiler room. It's not so significant in Season Mode, since the only reason to go down there is on the off chance that there might be another wrestler to chat with. The same goes for the exit out into the street, although it's amusing to look across the way and see the famous SmackDown! Hotel.
Locker Room
The locker room is another separate area where you may encounter another wrestler, and it's probably more likely that there will be someone to see there than there would be in, say, the parking garage. You never know, though.
Chance Meetings
When you do bump into someone around the arena, walk up and say hi. So far, these conversations seem to merely fill time, although they do so in rather amusing fashion. Tales of Val Venis' sexual conquests and Bob Holly's popularity (both presumably rather exaggerated) are rendered as always in a strange amalgam of Japanese syntax and American vocabulary.
Yuke's' new Season Mode is showing substantial improvements in nearly every area. It has the details of Just Bring It, and repairs many of the flaws of Know Your Role while keeping its basic, effective structure. It remains to be seen whether it will meet all the hopes that wrestling fans have been building over the years, but if nothing else, the dialogue never fails to entertain. Look forward to further updates on Shut Your Mouth later in the week. |
