The soap-opera confrontations of the WWE make their yearly return to consoles as THQ brings us the 2010 instalment in their long running WWE Smackdown vs. Raw series. As with all yearly sports titles we have a number of new additions and modes, but also a number of things staying the same and a few things missing.

The big thing about this years version is on the creation side of the game. The main addition of which is the Story Designer mode. So if you've ever thought you could imagine a better storyline than the ones seen on the actual WWE shows this is your chance to prove it. Using a multitude of preset animations you'll be able to create nearly any scenario you can think of. You can have superstars in the ring talking and then have another appear on stage and interrupt or even rush the ring and attack. You can have scenes at the commentary table to set up a match, backstage, in the locker room or even in the parking lot where you can have a car run down/attempt to run down a Superstar. All you have to do is pick the superstars you want involved, have an idea of the story you want to create and choose the appropriate animations for before or after matches. Of course you can also set the actual matches anyway you want, number of fighters, if anyone enters as a champion, if that title is on the line. Even a win or loss condition to proceed to the next "moment" and that is the easy part done.

The hard part is adding text to your scenes. While it might be relatively quick to imagine what you want your characters to say, you will need a lot of patience to actually add it to your scenes. Unfortunately there is no support for a USB keyboard to help you out which would have been truly welcome. What you have is an on screen keyboard and you use the analogue stick to select your letters. There are a few short cut buttons for "space", "shift" and "caps", but what would have really helped speed things up would have been some sort of predictive text, like the one seen in the Wii's own message board system.

So no matter how quickly you can think up your stories/scenarios you will need to set aside some free time to actually create them. As such while this mode is a large and welcome new addition to the franchise it will likely only be used by those few gamers who truly love to take advantage of their customization options. There are a number of pre-made stories on the disc for you to play and get an idea of what can be done. You can also use these as a template and edit them if you wish. You can't however overwrite or delete them and you actually only have two save spaces for your own use. Although this seems highly limited given the amount of time required to create stories chances are you won't be making too many anyway.

On a whole however the large amount of time that could be spent in creating your ultimate sports entertainment story arc would have felt more rewarding and less of chore had THQ allowed for online sharing in the Wii version. When you are limited to playing your stories with just yourself and your local friends a lot of players will find little incentive to truly use the mode. Similarly being unable to download and play stories created by other players is a massive missed opportunity by THQ. And takes away a lot of the potential of what is a great new mode. The only upside to having no online sharing option is you are not limited to the number of times you can use a "Created Wrestler" (CAW), whereas with the PS3 & 360 versions you are limited to 10 CAW appearances per story.

Another new creation addition to this years Wii version (and a far less time consuming one) is the "Create a Finisher" mode which made its PS3 & 360 debut last year. Using a number of move animations you can create your own special moves to use in matches, whether you want something short and explosive or long and painful you can chain together moves as you wish before landing the final satisfying blow. When you're finished you can then name your move or choose from a number of preset names, which is recommended as using one of these means the commentators will actually name the move when you perform it.

Of course the long standing Create-A-Wrestler mode reappears, and while on the HD consoles this mode has been given an updated overhaul allowing for actual 3D parts for clothing rather than them seeming "painted" on, the Wii version is exactly the same as last years. This can hardly be considered a bad thing as you still have a ton of options available and will be able to create any number of imagined or real Superstars not already in the game. But it is disappointing to see no effort made to change or improve on anything from last year.

What is slightly different is the way you increase a CAW's stats. While being the same as last year where a newly created CAW had all its stats at a default level, last year these could only be increased while playing in the "Career Mode". This year you can earn attribute points in any mode played during the game or even if your CAW is being controlled by the computer, which is a far better than being confined to the substandard mode that is Career. Create-An-Entrance also returns and is much improved over last years, now allowing for lighting and camera angle changes. However this is a little fiddly with changing cameras or setting off fireworks. To do these a preview of the animation plays and you must press a button at the moment you want the change or effect to happen. A highly imprecise way of doing things.

Onward to the actual gameplaying options, of course we have a quick play mode which allows you to jump into any match type available from One-on-One to 6-man matches in one-player mode or with up to 4 players. And then there are the more exotic match types, such as Cage, Hell in a Cell, Ladder etc., which we have seen over the years. New this year is the Elimination Chamber and Championship Scramble matches. And the TLC (Tables, Ladders, Chairs) match has had its rules fixed for this year's edition as last year it was all wrong.

Returning for its second year is the "Road to Wrestlemania" mode, which is the games story mode. Like last year you have a number of stories to choose from each focused on a particular Superstar and presenting a fully fledged story arc with full voice acting as provided by the actual superstars themselves. Each story starts about 83 days away from Wrestlemania with each "level" presented as a "show" as it would be on the TV and progresses from "week to week" as the TV shows do. Little touches such as firework intros for each show followed by the commentators giving a recap of what happened previously or what is to come, the shows logo appearing at the end of the "show" as it does on TV help capture the feel of watching the real thing. The stories themselves are quite good, with Edge's being the best (ed: in this reviewers opinion), even if you are playing the bad guy. There is also a story for your CAW with a choice of 6 voices to give him so you should be able to find something to suit. And also for the first time a story for the Diva's which better than expected. Long time WWE fans however may notice some parts of some stories have been borrowed from past WWE tales; this is slightly disappointing after the fully original set of stories from last year's game.

The "Career Mode" makes a return from last year also, though one wonders why? Last year it was used to increase your CAWs stats, but as explained previously this year you can do that in any mode. Because of that there seems little use for the mode to have remained in this year's edition.

The actual controls have taken a big change this year. While over the last two editions THQ have tried utilising motion controls which this reviewer feels worked well last year and was looking forward to see how they could be improved this year, THQ had other ideas and ditched them altogether. That's right Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 is purely a button based affair again. While it is disappointing to see motion controls dropped completely THQ have allowed for a greater choice of control. Not only can you use the Wiimote/Nunchuck but also the Classic Controller and Gamecube controller. All three set-ups work fine so it really just comes down to whichever you feel most comfortable using. Everything controls smoothly and all buttons are responsive. The one and only flaw seems to be with the targeting. It can be set to automatic but even that doesn't always target the opponent you want. Choose manual and switching targets should be as easy as a push of button but oddly it isn't. Sometimes you'll find yourself pressing the button a number of times before your character faces another opponent and sometimes (if there are 4 or more fighters) he'll probably switch to the wrong one.

You'll have a number of moves at your disposal with the number of various grapples a superstar can perform upped this year over lasts, which is certainly a plus. To add a little bit of extra dept each superstar can have up to six special abilities. These range from giving you a greater chance to kick out of pins or escape submissions, the ability to perform strong strikes, leap outside the ring and many others. Difficulty wise it is a bit of a mix bag. While we criticised last year's edition for being too arcadey and easy the same can be said this year when playing in One-on-One games with the CPU, you'll often find fights are short and take little effort. Yet in tag matches or single matches with three or more superstars, fights can be much harder to win as you'll often find your pins or submissions interrupted very quickly. Keeping people down while trying to make a pin can be hard; this likely comes from the limit you've got on finishers preventing you from seriously damaging multiple people quickly. Once you build up your "momentum" to about 80% you can perform a signature move, do one of these and you momentum meter fills and you can perform a finisher, however you only have a limited time to use it and once used your momentum returns to 50%. There is a special ability that will let you use three finishers in a row but this can only be used once and is till time limited.

The HUD is also much improved in that it has been stripped to a bare bones minimum. The only gauge you have on screen is a small blue meter under your characters feet which represents momentum and health. If playing with the CPU you will see no gauge for its character(s) only an "S" or "F" symbol if they are able to perform signature or finisher moves. It certainly improves the display not having it cluttered with gauges and meters for everyone. Graphically it is the exact same as 2009, using the same character models (for the superstars that reappear but updated clothing), which isn't as bad as they do look good and realistic. It's just hard to believe THQ have already reached the ceiling in trying to push the Wii's graphics for WWE games. The crowd like last year look ok from afar but when the camera closes in on them they are an ugly mess. Like last year I feel the need to point out the crowds in Day of Reckoning 2 on the Gamecube still look better.

As for how the game sounds it really depends where you're playing. Sound effects like grunts and "hits" don't sound great, but if you're competing in the ring you'll hardly notice as they are covered up by the sound of the crowd and the commentary. But compete in a backstage fight and you'll be fighting in silence, no crowd, no commentary, not even any background music, only the "grunts" and "hits" effects and it's then you realise how poor they sound when they're all you can hear. Musically the game of course has all the theme songs of each superstar plus a few extra tracks which get played during menu screens. What is somewhat odd is while in previous years you would have been able to use these extra songs as a theme song for your CAWs you can't this year. You are limited to either using the same song as a superstar or one of the three show themes (Smackdown, RAW, ECW). This wouldn't be so bad had THQ finally given Wii players the option to use songs from an SD card but yet again we have been denied this option.

Online gameplay has also been removed this year. 2009 saw the first time a Nintendo WWE game took to the online stage and it made a decent effort but was hampered by lag issues. It is highly disappointing that rather than try improving on this THQ have apparently just not bothered with it.