PlayStation 2 Critic Reviews

The fact that Smackdown! Vs RAW manages to both encapsulate the essence of the WWE while also delivering a highly skill-based and technical beat-'em-up means that even those without a taste for wrestling will be able to enjoy at least most of what the game has to offer.

This is indeed the best version of WWE Smackdown there has been yet. To be honest, it's really the best wrestling game out there right now.

Some of the changes are hits, others are misses, but the bottom line is that this is another quality effort from Yuke's and THQ. [Dec 2004, p.102]

Even with all the minor and major issues I have with this game that aren't fixed for the umpteenth time, the core gameplay is very, very good and improves on the Here Comes The Pain engine in every way, bringing back all the match types (some with modifications) and the all new and great Parking Lot Brawl.

A wonderful new edition to the SmackDown! family, serving up slick graphics, vastly enhanced gameplay, and lots of other bells and whistles that make the whole package shine. Online play is a bit of a disappointment, but better than not having any online play at all.

The best wrestling game on the market, period, exclamation point.

It’s a very good game, but there’s just not enough improvement, and the big new features like online play and wrestlers’ voices couldn’t have been done any worse than they were.

A very good game that any WWE fan should play. However, those looking for a leap as huge as "Here Comes The Pain" introduced will be disappointed. The much vaunted online mode isn’t nearly as great as it could have been.

On the one hand it’s a fantastic game, and on the other, so was Here Comes the Pain, which has a good deal of what SvR does and some things that it doesn’t.

This is the best game yet in the Smackdown series, and the best WWE game on any system. It has its share of problems, but when taken as a whole, this game is almost impossible not to enjoy.