Vince McMahon established a monopoly over professional wrestling in 2001 when the WWE acquired its major rival WCW. It quickly became apparent that this arrangement was bad for the industry, and several wrestlers grew agitated. Former champion Jeff Jarrett and his father Jerry established Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in 2002 as an alternative to the WWE product. In its earliest form, TNA ran low priced weekly pay-per-view shows, meaning it didn’t need to save its best matches until the end of the month. As the company gained popularity and wrestlers with star power, it switched to the same format as the WWE, introducing the new weekly show TNA Impact, and becoming the first viable competition the McMahons had in almost 4 years.

The TNA brand of wrestling differs a lot from the more familiar WWE style by employing a six sided ring. TNA also has more emphasis on high risk wrestling with its X division, reminiscent of the glory days of WCW’s cruiserweight division. The more exciting nature of the brand’s wrestling makes it perfect video game fodder, and with the hopeless direction WWE Smackdown has taken in recent years, now is the perfect time to strike. Midway has picked up the rights to TNA Impact, and given development duties to its Los Angeles studio, which was previously responsible for the unfortunate Backyard Wrestling games.

Fortunately for us, TNA Impact is nowhere near as bad as Midway LA’s last effort. It does, however, lack many of the features that have become staples in other wrestling game series. The game’s roster is pretty small, each wrestler has a pretty limited moveset, and there are many annoying omissions and oversights. Yet there seems to be a lot of promise in TNA Impact, most of it which will, unfortunately, not be realised until its inevitable sequel.

Over 25 of the TNA superstars are playable, including WWE and WCW alumni Kurt Angle, Christian Cage, Booker T, Scott Steiner and Kevin Nash. Many of the other wrestlers like A.J. Styles, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels and Chris Sabin made their mark in other federations or TNA. It seems like a pretty slim selection, but it does reflect the best of TNA’s roster. That is unless you were looking forward to playing as one the Knockouts, TNA’s female division. There is a create-a-wrestler feature, but it has some baffling restrictions. Players are entitled to only five slots for their creations, and movesets are restricted to defaults until more advanced techniques are unlocked through earning style points. Even the decade-old WWF War Zone had a more detailed system.

Midway has put a lot of effort into TNA Impact’s visual presentation, taking highly detailed scans of each wrestler’s skin and attire for the most realistic digital representation possible. Many of the wrestlers including A.J. Styles, Samoa Joe and Jeff Jarrett participated in motion capture sessions, producing authentic animations for the majority of the wrestling moves. Midway claimed to have captured over 2000 moves for the game, but less than half of that is in the final product. Still, the game is impressive to watch, with highly detailed and well animated models moving at 60 frames per second. It’s just a pity that the commentary and voice acting drags everything down. Don West and Mike Tenay are a fine team in reality, but their lines are too vague and repetitive during gameplay.

TNA Impact tries for a more accessible approach to control, with the majority of your wrestler’s moves taking little effort to execute. There are two basic attack buttons and the grapple/throw button. The shoulder button serves as a strength modifier which can be used in conjunction with each. The simplified approach is reminiscent of AKI’s legendary N64 games, but doesn’t provide the same variety or quantity of moves, nor does it control as eloquently. That’s because the move executed in a grapple is determined by moving the stick towards or away from your opponent, rather than a fixed directional movement. The game is very touchy about which way the stick is moved, resulting in the execution of a different move than intended. It’s something that will constantly annoy players throughout their experience with the game. Due to the limited movesets, it will always seem like you’re using the same moves in the same order to win a match.

Damage received from each move is indicated on a small body meter in the top corner of the screen. Midway doesn’t seem to have correctly correlated the type of move with the type of damage done; all grappling moves will do only body damage, while leg or arm damage is only done via holds. TNA Impact’s submission system is pretty straightforward; when a hold is applied, each player will have to punch in a combination of three buttons. Should the attacker punch his combo in first, more pressure will be applied to the hold, but if the victim gets the jump, he’ll break free. Success on a hold on a red portion of the body will result in the victim submitting. It’s simple, and works much better than the system in Smackdown, but the lack of different holds will disappoint. If you’re going to end the match by pinfall, the opponent’s body must be red. Pins can be broken with a ferocious wiggling of the analogue stick, becoming more difficult with the amount of damage taken.

Each move will earn a player style points (used to unlock moves and wrestlers) and help to fill their Impact meter. Any given move is more effective the first time it is used - an attempt by the developer to encourage players to use a variety of techniques. It’s a bit annoying though, given the limited moveset. Frequent re-use of moves makes you more open to reversals – another thing TNA Impact handles much better than Smackdown. The reversal system owes a lot to AKI’s N64 efforts; a well-timed press of the right bumper will reverse just about every move – even reversals can be reversed. Once the Impact meter is filled, you can use your wrestler’s trademark move, which is usually strong enough to spell the end of the match.

As fun as TNA’s basic play is, it has a number of serious issues and annoying quirks. The game suffers from a variety of clipping and collision detection issues – you’ll try to hit a wrestler as he is getting up, and nothing will happen. That gets really old, really quickly, particularly in close contests. Wrestlers never seem to stay on the mat long enough either – you can hit a wrestler with your finishing move, and unless he’s in stun status, he’s likely to be back on his feet in three to five seconds. The way the stun meter is implemented is very annoying, because certain events, like being tossed into the ring from the outside, will always result in a stun situation. So effectively, you can be thrown into the ring, stunned, and then be stunned again by the next hit – and the CPU just loves to exploit this.

That’s because TNA Impact runs on what we older gamers like to call “Midway AI” (that’s the polite version, anyway). Being an arcade manufacturer, Midway used to make computer AI as cheap as possible in their games to maximise the number of coins you’d pump into the machine. Unfortunately, it’s something they’ve never quite gotten over. The AI has abilities that you do not, fills its Impact meter faster, and has a near perfect reversal rate. Even when you knock the game down to easy, you’ll still find yourself using the steel chair to even the odds a bit.

TNA Impact is at its best when played with human opponents. The game’s single player side is rather tragic, relying on an absurd story to attempt to give your series of 20 odd matches more meaning. You play as the wrestler Suicide, an up-and-comer in the TNA leagues who is brutally beaten by LAX, and left for dead in Mexico. Due to Suicide’s beating leaving him unrecognisable, you have to give him a new appearance and persona via the limited create-a-wrestler facility. From there you’ll wrestle matches in Mexico, Japan and America under the tutelage of Kevin Nash, while trying to get revenge on LAX. Things start out fairly balanced – you’ll win your early matches without too much trouble. Once you’re in America, the game has a nervous breakdown and introduces a superpowered version of the aforementioned Midway AI. Opponents will shrug off chair shots, reverse anything you throw at them, and take minimal damage from successful moves. The only way to win is to exploit the little holes in the AI, like their tendency to trip on the ring stairs. It takes patience to get through the story, and the payoff at the end isn’t worth the trouble.

Aside from the story mode, TNA Impact offers up an exhibition mode and online mode, with only a handful of match types between each. Players expecting the wide array of gimmick matches associated with Smackdown in recent years will be sorely disappointed to find that TNA Impact only employs one unconventional contest – the Ultimate X match. This match has a number of ropes hanging above the ring, with a big red X in the middle; the player who climbs across the rope and unhooks the X wins. It’s alright for a bit of a laugh, but players will quickly find themselves participating in the more standardised singles, tag team, triple threat and four way matches. Online play works fine, but takes an incredibly long time to start a match. Most of our matches were with overseas players, which resulted in some lag but not enough to detract from the overall experience.

TNA Impact will leave players with mixed impressions. Once you get over the fact that there’s finally some competition in the wrestling game arena once again, the chinks in the game’s armour will really begin to show. TNA Impact lays a good foundation for a future series, but we’d expected more, given that they had three years to develop the game, an amazing commitment and level of input from TNA Wrestling and pretty solid middleware in the form of Unreal Engine 3.0. With more wrestlers and moves, better AI and presentation and a bunch of balance tweaks,we have no doubt that the inevitable sequel will be much better. In its current form, however, TNA Impact is only worth a quick rental for the very curious.