Life has taught us many things and, more often than not, it’s good to get the bad news out the way first – TNA Impact! has indeed been delayed until September. If you were sitting next to us as we write this, you would hear us booing. However, a game postponed is better than a bad game entirely, so we’re pleased TNA Impact! will get that extra development time it needs to make it as good as it could possibly be.

As we’ve said before, TNA controls quite differently to the SmackDown series, meaning the two should coexist quite nicely. Of course, we don’t want them to happily walk alongside each other through a field of daisies, oh no! We want blood, tears and a rivalry so strong, it increases the quality of all wrestling titles tenfold. To do this, innovations need to be put in place, and one of Impact!’s comes direct from the promotion itself: Ultimate X.

To bring those who aren’t wrestling buffs up to speed, imagine a six-sided wrestling ring with cables coming from four of the posts and a title belt or a red X suspended from the middle; whoever grabs the prize first wins. To try and replicate this in a game is more than tough. The majority of Ultimate X matches contested result in athletic, death-defying moves being executed from these cables to the mat below – it’s incredibly impressive. To shift this into the videogame sphere, Midway has tried to make all manner of manoeuvres available while you’re hanging 15 feet up in the air. If you’re shuffling along using just your hands, your opponent can grab your feet and throw you back down to the mat, a particular spinebuster we saw was beyond devastating. To try and avoid such tactics, you can whack one of the triggers to hang from the rope with both your feet and hands. While this solves the aforementioned problem, there are still ways to get your ass handed to you, especially if another wrestler is coming at you from the other side. A range of attacks can be thrown and, more often than not, whoever gets the best of the brawl will be sent down to hell (note: no one goes to hell). With the dangling trophy now obstacle-free, a mini-game of sorts comes into play. A meter pops up on screen and stopping the moving icon in the right place a few times will see you grab that which you desire and celebrate your illustrious win. Not only is the match type extremely refreshing to play, it allows Impact! to stand out. Midway knows it can’t compete on every level with a franchise that has the history of SmackDown, but when it comes to gameplay and a whisk of originality, there’s no reason why it can’t try to trump it.

TNA Impact! is looking really impressive at the moment and should appeal to the wrestling videogame fan, and beyond, when it’s released. When we can get our hands on a version with all the kinks ironed out, we have every confidence we’ll be very pleased. Rage wrestling game war, rage like you’ve never raged before! Ahem, sorry!

Simon Miller