Loved
The Story: An amnesiac ex-wrestling champion who undergoes facial reconstruction and then wrestles his way from a backwater in Mexico all the way to the very top? It's the stuff RPG plots are made of, and it's rather funny at times to boot. "You smell like bananas" is one of my new favorite phrases.

The Graphics: With a few notable exceptions due to hairstyle issues, the wrestlers in TNA Impact! look absolutely amazing. Having met some of the talent up close, I can almost smell them while playing.

The Animation: TNA has some of the smoothest animations I've ever seen in a wrestling game. There's the odd glitch now and then, but for the most part the wrestler's movements are extremely fluid and realistic.

Hated
Limited Movements: The animations do look amazing, but there really aren't that many of them. Midway originally boasted more than 2,000 moves, but wound up scrapping a large chunk of them. As a result, outside of signature moves everyone pretty much has the same limited move set.

Cheap Enemies: The reversal system in TNA Impact! works very well in multiplayer, but is an exercise in frustration when facing off against the computer at even the lowest difficulty level. You will learn to both love and hate the reversal sound effect.

Create A Gimped Wrestler: The Create A Player mode in the game is extremely limited. You have a set height and three body types to choose from instead of varying weights and heights to truly customize your look. Once you create your look you start off the game with extremely limited moves, having to play matches to gain style points in order to beef up your creation. You can't even take them online. Boo.

Online Play: Strictly one on one (or Ultimate X) matches using the premade characters included with the game. No tournament options or ability to play with your created wrestler. Online matches run really well, but I wanted much more.

TNA Impact! is a game that showed a great deal of potential during the early stages of development but didn't quite manage to reach the level of greatness it once hinted at. From a technical standpoint it has everything it needs to be an amazing wrestling game - silky smooth animations, a combat system that's simple to grasp, and some of the biggest wrestling talent around - it just needed more time. If they had put more work into the Create A Player mode, beefed up the online options and somehow managed to cram in a larger portion of the promised move set, TNA Impact would have been the best thing to happen to wrestling fans since they opened the new Walmart down the street (I kid!). Perhaps it's best to look at the game as a hint of things to come should the partnership between Midway and TNA continue.

TNA Impact! is a beautifully rendered, technically proficient yet ultimately average wrestling game that might have achieved greatness with a bit more work.

TNA Impact! Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, developed by Midway Studios and published by Midway Games was released on Sept. 9th for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation2, Sept. 11th on the Wii. Played Xbox 360 version. Retails for $59.99 (PS3, 360), $49.99 (Wii), and $39.99 (PS2). Played through story mode at Backyard Difficulty, played at least one exhibition match with each character, played multiple online matches.

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I’ve played most of the wrestling games from the Playstation/N64 era, so I think I can tell the good wrestling games from the bad ones. Like with the rest of the Midway games from today, I didn’t have a lot of time and go over every feature, so consider this some sort of lightning preview.

For me, what makes or breaks a wrestling game is the grapple system. It was great in the Nintendo 64 games, but not so much in, say, WCW/nWo Thunder for PSone (remember that game?). But luckily, the developers for TNA iMPACT! patterned their game after WWF No Mercy for N64, which is often considered one of the best wrestling game ever made, so that’s good to hear.

Something that still bothers me about a lot of games today is the animation, especially in sports games. I’m always down for better textures and more polys, but if the animation is sub par, then why bother? Not only do the wrestlers in TNA iMPACT! look great, they also animate realistically just as they should. Oh, did I forget to mention the game is 60 frames-per-second?

As for the controls, I found them to be very welcoming. Sloppy controls in a wrestling game are a no-no, but TNA got them right. They aren’t sluggish or unresponsive. There are three different types of attacks: grapple, kick, and punch, simple. But if you hold down the left bumper/L1, you can do strong attacks for each. You can also do all the basic moves when the opponent is on the ground or in the turnbuckle. I didn’t play a ton of matches, but it passed my initial test.

The only disappointing part about the demo was finding out there is no battle damage on any of the wrestlers. No smeared face paint, no bumps or bruises. Nothing. I’m not asking for blood or Blitz 2-esque injuries, but a little something would have been nice.

I didn’t have time to get into anything else, unfortunately, such as the career or multi-player modes. That will have wait until another time. But it was a good first impression if I do say so myself.

Midway's third-party production, licensing and quality assurance groups are also in San Diego, so it makes sense they'd want the development team to be nearby them... wait, all this time Midway's quality assurance has been in a different city than its wrestling franchise development team?

...Hmm! Full announcement after the jump.

Midway to Combine Southern California Development Studios
Combination of Los Angeles and San Diego Studios Will Allow Greater Synergies and Coordination in Support of TNA Wrestling Franchise and Other Projects

CHICAGO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Midway Games Inc. (NYSE:MWY), a leading interactive entertainment publisher and developer, today announced it will be combining the operations of Midway Studios – Los Angeles, located in Moorpark, CA, with Midway Home Entertainment, located in San Diego, CA. The newly combined operations will be located at Midway Home Entertainment’s current San Diego facility. The majority of Moorpark employees, including the entire development team for Midway’s TNA iMPACT!™ franchise, are being offered the opportunity to transfer to the San Diego facility. Midway expects to complete the transition out of the Moorpark facility by September 30, 2008.

Combining the locations will allow the TNA iMPACT! development team to further leverage synergies with Midway’s other development studios in Chicago, Austin, Seattle, and Newcastle, UK, and work in close conjunction with the third-party production, licensing, and quality assurance groups that are currently in San Diego. In addition, the San Diego area has a strong interactive entertainment talent base that will greatly help fuel Midway’s future growth.

As part of this move, Midway expects in the near future to look for new talent in its San Diego studio. For a list of available positions please visit www.midway.com.

The thing that sets TNA Impact apart from other wrestling games is its pace. While not quite the frantic pace of a fighting game, it finds a nice middle ground that makes it comfortable to control. The other thing that really made the game spectacular was the graphics. Truly some of the best I have seen in a game like this. The backgrounds were fully 3D rendered, great dynamic lighting and character models so detailed that at times they seemed almost photographic.

As to the game itself, it contains over ten different modes including Full Metal Mayhem, Tag Team and the infamous Ultimate X which has players trying to grab a big red X that is chained over the ring by large cords. This mode was particularly fun because it gets the wrestlers off the floor and hanging off the giant cords above. While grappling the cords, the wrestlers can still kick each other off or if one is on the ground, he can reach up and pull his opponent down. Pulling off any wrestlers special moves will give you style points that can then be used later to unlock all sorts of goodies from clothing to special move sets.

Of all the things I saw from Midway, TNA Impact was overall the most impressive and you can expect to see it available for your PS3, PS2, Wii and Xbox 360 this summer. You guys can have your Lara Croft and Kasumi, just give me the beefcake.

Hometown Advantage
Since I started with Kotaku, I've been all over the country covering game launches, press events, and industry conventions. While Atlanta hosts an increasing number of development companies thanks to tax cuts aimed at creating a welcome atmosphere for game creators, I've haven't had the opportunity to attend an event in my own hometown since E3 98, before they moved the trade show back to Los Angeles due to Georgia being too damn far away. The worst part of traveling to out of state events is the long journey home, and with the TNA event being held here in Atlanta, my journey home would only be about a half hour tops. Of course, being local does have a couple of drawbacks, the first of which being waking up at 6:30AM to get ready to take the train into town while the rest of the press rolled out of bed around 8:30 and headed down to the hotel lobby...where incidentally I had been loitering for an hour, having overestimated my travel time severely. By the time Midway piled us into the bus for the first event of the day, I was ready for a nap.

The People on the Bus

Of course, getting press people together in close quarters isn't very conducive to sleeping. As the bus headed north towards the Gwinnett Technical College for a TNA fan meet and greet, we discussed everything from Japanese strategy RPGs to where the German journalist on his first trip to America could buy DVDs. As I only had a passing familiarity with wrestling as a whole and nearly no exposure to TNA, I was extremely fortunate to sit next to the fine fellows from WrestlingGamers.com, who were an absolute wealth of information on the subject. Seeing as many of you displayed a similar lack of information on the league in the trailer post yesterday, perhaps a brief primer is in order.

Total Nonstop Action Wrestling

TNA was founded in 2002 by the father and son duo of Jeff and Jerry Jarrett in response to the buyout of World Championship Wrestling by World Wrestling Entertainment. At the beginning the company was a part of the National Wrestling Alliance, promoted as NWA Total Nonstop Action. In 2004 TNA withdrew from the NWA. A weekly television show, TNA Impact! Was launched in June of 2004 on Fox Sports Net, but due to low ratings it was dropped, with the company continuing to broadcast via their website until Spike TV picked up the show in October of 2005. Along with the two-hour show that now broadcasts Thursday nights on Spike, TNA also runs monthly pay-per-view events. It is on the eve of the largest of such events, Bound For Glory 2007, that our bus pulled up to the Gwinnett Technical College in Duluth Georgia for a fan meet and greet session and the debut of Midway's TNA Impact! video game.

Fan Service

Wrestling fans are certainly a diverse bunch. As I entered the main hall of the George Busbee International Center for Workforce Development I was struck by the sheer variety of fans milling about, buying action figures, videos and t-shirts from the merchandise table, and waiting for a chance to meet their favorite heroes and villains in the flesh. While there were a fair amount of your stereotypical, flannel wearing, scary-looking fans in the crowds - enough to make the gathered press initially huddle together for fear of their own safety, once we began making our way through the auditorium we discovered that men and women from every race and class were represented to some extent. No matter what their background, once TNA ring announcer Jeremy Borash took to the small stage set up in the back of the room they were united as one.

The Main Event

Borash came up on stage to do what he does best - get the crowd worked up into a frenzy. After a brief introduction to the event, touching on the debut of the game and the next day's Bound for Glory event, he passes the mic off to TNA president Dixie Carter, whose name is almost as stirring to young, Southern men as her body is.

As Dixie thanks everyone for coming out to support TNA wrestling, a voice from the back of the crowd shouts out.
"It's the best wrestling in the world!"
The crowd goes wild.
She continues after the masses calm, saying she's proud to be able to introduce the first TNA wrestling video game.
"It's the best wrestling video game in the world!"
Again with the cheering. I'm convinced that Carter could have ordered the crowd to storm the mall down the street and bring her back furs and the finest jewelry Zales has to offer and they would have obeyed her every word. Thankfully she gave up the stage to Midway before the mob was mobilized.

The Game Revealed
Scot Lane, the head of Midway's LA Studio might not have received the same level of cheering the wrestling personalities did, but what he had to show the crowd of rabid fans certainly did. I know I've posted the trailer earlier, but here it is once more for your viewing pleasure.

From The Creator of Smash TV

As the wrestlers were introduced and the crowd broke itself off into orderly lines to get their merchandise signed, I took a a few moments to speak with one of the game developers on hand, Mark Turmell. While Turmell has worked on NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and Mortal Kombat 4, he is probably best known as one of the co-creators of Smash TV, one of my favorite games of all time. We talked a bit about how the team is using tools already in place from classic Midway sports titles like Blitz and Jam in conjunction with the Unreal Engine 3 to create a wrestling game that focuses on realistic, fluid motion, the lack of which being what has been putting me off such titles for years now. Mission accomplished, I'd say.

The People on the Bus Revisited
The ride back to the downtown Atlanta hotel hosting the event is even more informative than the first, as the wise men of WrestlingGamers.com school some of us on the finer points of the wrestling business. It seems the success of the TNA Impact! video game is quite important for the TNA folks. With their television show on a somewhat obscure cable network and their videos only on sale in select outlets, a video game appearing on every major gaming retailer's shelves could be very big for the growing league.

They also gave us some insight into the business model of TNA. Unlike the WWE, that pretty much owns their talent, TNA wrestlers function more like independent contractors, free to promote themselves as they please while enjoying a schedule far less grueling that the largest organizations 300 days a year touring timetable. Quite enlightening, and once discussion turned towards viewership numbers and statistics I got in a very lovely nap.

Hometown Disadvantage
After a lovely lunch at the downtown Hooters, which seemed oddly appropriate, I discovered another disadvantage to being local to a gaming event. It was 2PM, and the final event of the day wasn't kicking off until 7, so while the rest of the group adjourned to their rooms to digest information and various forms of fried food, I found myself with five hours to kill. Luckily for me, Gus Mastrapa of The Onion AV Club and I were both working our way through Final Fantasy Tactics on the PSP, so after a quick trip down the street to check out a bookstore we settled in the lobby of the Westin Peachtree hotel, surrounded by men in important suits conducting important business, trying to save chocobos from poachers in co-op mode. It was one of those delightfully geeky moments that seems to define my life, and 7PM seemed to come far too soon.

The Other Main Event

While the fan meet and greet earlier in the day was for fan and press alike, the night time presentation in the conference room of the Westin Peachtree was purely for the press. The room was decorated with TNA Impact! banners with a large screen setup at the front of the room and an open bar in the back, which brings me to the last disadvantage of being local to an event. Having to drive home at the end of the evening meant that the open bar was off limits, save for the occasional Coke. While I am sure I could have found crash space for the evening, I wasn't keen on losing the novelty of sleeping in my own bed that night, so I soldiered on.

Once everyone got settled in, the trailer was shown once again, as well as the motion capture featurette. Wrestlers AJ Stiles and Chris Daniels then took the podium to talk about TNA in general, showing a promotional trailer for the league. I was beginning to get caught up in the whole wrestling thing, to the point where I actually regretted not attending the Bound For Glory event the next day. The wrestlers were really interesting people, and I would have loved to see them in action up close. If you had told me I would write that last sentence five years ago I would have laughed in your face and then asked you what you were doing in my house, but there it is.

Next came Midway LA Studio head Scot Lang, who explained their goal for TNA Impact! "We really want to set the next-gen bar for wrestling games." Considering the next-gen wrestling games released so far I think they're well on their way to achieving said goal. As if we needed more proof of this, Creative Director Sal Divita was up next to give us a live demo of the game.

Mortal Kombat!
As well as being the creative director for TNA, Sal Divita has also appeared in figure and voice in several Midway games, most notably as Nightwolf, Cyrax, Smoke, and Sektor in Mortal Kombat 3. I mainly capture this shaky video of his presentation just in case he got angry and shot missiles out of his chest. Sadly this didn't occur, but the fact that the Xbox 360 demonstration looks this good on my crappy camera on a giant screen speaks volumes about the game's level of polish.

Hands-On
The game stations were set up with flat panel televisions and Xbox 360s. Sadly we weren't able to photograph or video tape our gameplay, but on the bright side it left no proof of Gus Mastrapa beating me two times out of three, other than me saying it just then. You know what? Ignore that. What I meant to say was that I completely destroyed Gus round after round until he left the couch crying. I've gone over my impressions of the game in a separate post, so I won't say too much about my experience other than you don't often hear gaming journalists having as much fun as I was seeing them have playing TNA Impact!. There was definite whooping going on, and we don't whoop easy.

Good Eats
At some point during the hands-on time, the food had arrived, and nothing makes a member of the gaming press hungrier than free food. We will seriously eat anything you put out buffet style - it's gotten to the point where I cut up my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into little cubes and set them on a bookcase when I have lunch, just to get that whole buffet vibe. What Midway brought to the table was thankfully much better than pb & j. There was a table of finger food like fruits and cheeses, spring roll wrapped shrimp, and asparagus wrapped in something which hardly matters since asparagus is the devil's veggie. Also on hand was a turkey carving station, complete with cranberry sauce, and a table filled with pecan pie, cheesecake, and various other bastions of sweetness. Nerves bolstered by good eats, it was time to chat with the wrestlers on hand.

Sizing Up The Wrestlers - As Gamers
For some reason I had thought wrestlers would be huge. Somewhere in the back of my mind logic had always told me that men my size do not often do back flips off of wrestling ropes, but I suppose the larger-than-life nature of the sport had simply been messing with my perceptions. The tallest wrestler there that evening barely came up to my nose. Mind you I still wouldn't want to wind up in the ring with them. In fact, not knowing much about wrestling in general, I was a bit nervous about talking to them until I found some common ground: gaming.

Senshi - Socom Player
Senshi, perhaps better known under his previous wrestling name Low-Ki, is pictured here standing on a chair beside yours truly. Having appeared in one of the Japanese King of the Colosseum games (against his will under a different name to avoid licensing), TNA Impact is the first wrestling game he has actively had a hand in creating. Senshi also has a voice so deep that Tay Zonday would be jealous. His game of choice? "My dad got me hooked on Socom." Senshi's father is a military man, and after Senshi gifted his parents with a PS2, dad discovered the Socom series and went on to get his son hooked. Days when Senshi isn't on the road are spent on the exercise bike in front of his PlayStation 2.

Samoa Joe - Gears, Madden, and Halo 3

AJ Styles - We Found The Stuntman Fan

The Evening Comes To A Close
After a wonderful evening of discussing gaming with professional wrestlers, munching on appetizers Soon the train back to my car would stop running, and with the rest of the press either heading to bed or hitting the bars, I thought it was probably a good time for me to make my exit. On the way home I kicked myself for not purchasing a ticket to the Bound for Glory event the next day. Having seen how down to earth the wrestlers were, it would have been interesting to seem them flying high from the ropes of TNA's trademark six-sided ring. Over the course of the day I had developed a newfound respect for the sport, and who knows - maybe next time they come to town I'll snag a seat to see what I've been missing.

Ultimately the key for me here lies in the animation. I've played too many wrestling games were highly detailed portrayals of the sport's superstars promise amazing action only to discover that they ultimately move as they are marionettes controlled by an arthritic puppeteer, jerking from one motion to the next. It's like typing in a cursive font...everything looks pretty but nothing really connects. Midway has taken there impressive animation tools from titles like NBA Ballers and Blitz and applied it to the wrestling genre with pretty sweet results.

As far as control goes, the game is easy enough to pick up and play that I looked like an old hand at it by the time I played my third bout. Unfortunately my opponent looked like an even older hand, but I'll chalk that down to the fact that he'd been drinking and I had not. Drinker's luck is real I tell you. Characters were quick to respond to button presses...another pet peeve of mine from previous games taken care of.

The graphics, despite being not quite in a finished state, were quite impressive indeed. Along with the highly detailed players themselves, almost everything was rendered. Crowds, the ropes themselves, shadows...all dynamic. When a wrestler is launched out of the ring the lights playing over the crowd play themselves over the character's skin as well, and as he climbs back in the ropes realistically part and spring back into place as he passes.

A few of the more acrobatic moves brought a little bit of slowdown, but the game is still being tweaked and for the most part runs at a lovely 60FPS throughout.

All in the only real problem the game faces is consumer familiarity, but with former WCW star Sting becoming TNA's World Heavyweight Champion at yesterday's Bound for Glory event (at nearly 50 years old no less!), buzz can only grow for the relatively young wrestling organization.

I feel really good about TNA: Impact!. Once all the moves are finished and the stadiums are complete, it truly has a chance at being one of the best wrestling video games of all time. However, winning critics over is one thing. Winning over fans is something else entirely.