Just when I thought that Smackdown vs. Raw 2008 on the Wii was the worst wrestling game ever, Midway came along and proved me wrong. Over the past few months, as news about TNA iMPACT! on Wii leaked out, I began to despair. I tried to believe (or rather hoped) that I would be proven wrong but it just wasn't to be. The lack of an online mode is bad enough, although this is perhaps slightly understandable due to Nintendo's seeming lack of interest in supporting online play. What is truly inexcusable though is the lack of a Create a Wrestler mode - and that's just the tip of the iceberg that's about to sink the good ship TNA. Midway's previous attempt at a wrestling game - Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game - was so bad (it had The Undertaker throwing ghosts at his opponent) that it was deemed worthy of induction into Wrestlecrap. Is this attempt any better? Yes - but not by much.

When the Wii was released, the TNA game was top of my wanted list and it seemed like it might pip WWE's Smackdown to the post for the first wrestling game on the system. It didn't. In fact, it's almost a year behind and this is the end result. For starters, there are the controls. Many games seem to be struggling with the Wiimote, especially those ported across from other systems or developed across multiple platforms, but in this case they're so bad that you might as well give up right now. At least Midway did do one thing right in supporting the Classic Controller; TNA can be played with the nunchuk and Wiimote but I wouldn't recommend this as the maximum of eight hours you might get out of the game will be reduced by about seven hours and forty minutes before you get so frustrated by the fact that you have no idea how to do anything.

This is not an exaggeration; I still have no idea what to do and even after following the instructions carefully, I'm still confused. Ready? The movement of your chosen wrestler is controlled with the Nunchuk stick, countering is mapped to the d-pad, as is your action button, C button is run, Z button allows you to modify moves to make them stronger, A and B are your punch and kick, to grab you must swing the Wiimote and to Irish whip you swing the nunchuk. See any problems there? Well, for starters, unless you have the coordination of a Jedi you'll never manage to pull off an Irish whip, because the nunchuk also moves your character, so you have to move your character while swinging the nunchuk. Intuitive it ain't. The only plus point is that the countering system works perfectly, although you may find that you can only reverse a move every so often whereas your computer opponent reverses almost everything you attempt. The animation of each move is perfectly recreated and some of the cut scenes are as good as, and perhaps better than, anything the last Smackdown had to offer. My biggest issue with the controls is that the action button is used for so much that you may find that you want to go for a pin but if your character is too close to the ropes then he decides to leave. With opportunities to pin so few and far between, this is brain-hurtingly frustrating. There are no wrestler-specific taunts, apart from their build up to their finisher, but considering the major flaws in the controls this is hardly a big deal.

that, despite Midway's boast of including thousands of moves, you will find yourself performing the same old moves no matter who you are. I know that a lot of wrestlers use the same moves but this is ridiculous when you have someone like AJ Styles, who has a very distinctive style, using the same moves as Jeff Jarrett. I understand that the developers may have been unable to include a unique move set for everyone, but this could have easily been solved by selecting Face- (Good Guy) and Heel- (Bad Guy) specific moves and allocating them accordingly. As it is, other than finishers and a few bits and pieces, there really is no difference between playing as Sharkboy or Jay Lethal, which is a shame to say the least.

Longevity isn't just an issue for TNA iMPACT! on the Wii - it's a death blow. I played the game for two days and then I was done. There is no reason why I should ever play it again. When I heard through the rumour mill that there would be no Create a Wrestler mode, all I could think was that surely there would be a story mode on offer that you could play through with one of the twenty-five wrestlers, perhaps with unlockable characters available upon completion. If Midway had implemented this then I would have played through the story mode a few times, just so that I could experience everything. But they didn't do this - instead you have one generic wrestler who cannot be modified and is unlikely to excite you in any way. I had no desire to be this character for more than a few matches and yet there is no other choice! Worse still, only one arena and a handful of wrestlers are available to begin with so you have to play the story mode to get a new location and a few new wrestlers to fail to have fun with.

The story mode suffers from the same issues that WWE Day of Reckoning has and to some extent the Smackdown games: it's linear. It tells the tale of the aforementioned generic wrestler, an up-and-comer who works his way through the ranks in TNA to earn himself a title shot. Before the match he's told to take a dive by LAX, but he refuses and wins the title, only to afterwards be left an unrecognisable mess with amnesia in Mexico. Upon waking up he decides to work his way back up through the indy circuit to the big time.

The story mode follows a similar structure to Day of Reckoning and Legends of Wrestling (uh oh!) with matches marked with Style Points for various elements such as successful strikes, reversals and grapples. Once you're through the first few matches you meet Kevin Nash, who acts as your mentor and pairs you up with Eric Young (no Super Eric?) in a series of tag matches. Unfortunately the tag matches aren't fun to play for a variety or reasons and it's like that the more that you are forced to take part in them, the less and less you will enjoy them, which is a shame; considering the excellent tag teams that TNA has to offer (Team 3D, Motor City Machine Guns, LAX) this should have been a great aspect. However, the tag matches are ugly in every single aspect; there are no double team moves - none that I could find a way of carrying out at least - and when you have a team like Motor City Machine Guns whose main selling point is their explosive and at times beautifully synchronised double team offence then you wonder just how much Midway understood what they were doing during the creation of all this. Tag matches are also a sad example of just how bad the AI is; your partner doesn't help you, he attempts to stop you performing moves and he doesn't even come to break up a pin when you're down. On the other side it's even worse with your opponents running into barriers and also not helping their partner - at one point I was pinning someone and his partner ran over to just stand there and perform a taunt. It was all very surreal.

Once you are past these events and make it through to the big time, there is one big issue: the TNA wrestlers are almost impossible to beat. Wrestlers like Sting and Samoa Joe aren't affected by any of your moves and manage to reverse everything - and I do mean everything - that you throw at them. Because of this and because of the marking of matches, you might perform brilliantly but they always seem to win based on their reversals mark alone. The first time this happens it is utterly gutting, the second time it's horrible and by the third and fourth time you will want to stop playing. Once you have completed the story mode, there's no real reason to play it again, apart from to unlock other options, because it's exactly the same every time you play through it. This means you're back to the rest of the game and the problem is that with only nine match options on offer, there really is nothing else for you to do; there are no title belts to create or fight for, no online mode and you can't even lose yourself for an hour trying to create the perfect likeness of Ultimate Warrior. The fact that there's no online mode also means that Wii players will miss out on all the new downloadable content of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions and the features that Midway has promised.

The nine types on offer include singles, tag team, Free For All (essentially just a four way match where the first pinfall or submission wins), submission only, Falls Count Anywhere, Falls Count Anywhere tag, and a two-on-one handicap match. These are nothing new and when you consider how innovative TNA has been with their match types it's a shame that there wasn't an attempt to recreate the Gauntlet for the Gold, Reverse Battle Royale or King of the Mountain. Thankfully, one thing that has been included is Ultimate X, in two variants - it can either be played as a one-on-one or a threeway. Oddly, despite the fact that four players are available, it's not possible to play a tag team version of Ultimate X, which, for the uninitiated, is similar to a ladder match in that you are essentially trying to reach a prize (in this case a red X) but instead of using a ladder you have to climb one of the posts and then shimmy across the ropes to the X. Similar to the ladder matches in the previous Smackdown game, this opens a mini-game in which you must try to stop an arrow in a specific spot, increasing your meter until it's filled and you can pull down the X and win the match. Your opponent should be able to stop you doing this by trying to pull you down or attacking you. I say should, because it seems that anyone who actually gets to the centre is almost impossible to knock down, unlike the other versions in which after two or three kicks they were down. Those who have become bored with the plethora of match types offered by WWE should enjoy this for a short time, but sadly after a few goes it loses its appeal and, given that it's an awkward and at times frustrating match type, you may tire of it even sooner.

Once that does happen you'll begin to realise how shallow the options actually are - no cage matches, ladder matches or table matches (which is absurd when you consider that Team 3D, the innovators of this match type, are on the roster), only four wrestlers maximum per match and only twenty five characters to master. Now, the lack of a roster is probably reflective of TNA as a company because when the game was first announced it released a publicity shot featuring Jeff Hardy and Monty Brown, who left shortly after. The fact is that TNA only has the twenty-five stars on offer who have appeared on a consistent basis and unlike WWE where there are always a few performers missed out, this isn't the case with TNA iMPACT!... almost! Yes, unlike WWE where the inclusion of the female 'wrestlers' has at times made me choke on the absurdity of trying to play as the uncoordinated and useless Kelly Kelly, TNA has developed into a company that nurtures female wrestling under the title of Knockouts. Wrestlers such as Awesome Kong, Gail Kim and ODB have sometimes over the past year actually outshone the abilities of their male counterparts and so it's sad that Midway decided not to include them.

Even though the gameplay is flawed on the Xbox 360 and PS3, the one thing that most people agree upon is that at least it looks good - the cut scenes and entrances look like they have been lifted from the TV show and sometimes the movement during play is so fluid that you could almost be watching an actual match. Sadly, someone forgot to transfer this quality to the Wii version. The twenty-five wrestlers look okay with a passing glance, but once you start to focus on them you realise just how poor the quality is - and it really makes the Wii look pretty weak when we all know that it can achieve some impressive visuals. At times it looks beautiful and then for some reason the whole thing seems to freak out and you end up with Samoa Joe pinning you for the three count while you are actually standing up but unable to move. I haven 't seen bugs this bad since Showdown: Legends of Wrestling, but thankfully they are rare. During story mode the cut scenes aren't as polished as they are in the other versions, but they're not awful and they are helped by convincing vocal performances from many of the wrestlers.

As for the sound, while the voice acting is great, the commentary is the same as it is in every Smackdown release - repulsive. I thought that listening to Michael Cole or Jerry Lawler's badly cued up comments was bad, but this is worse. It's kind of sad in a way, as Mike Tenay used to be one of the best commentators in the business, but his time with TNA has seen him trying far too hard to oversell and shout about what's going on and this is exactly what he does in TNA iMPACT! - no matter what you do. If you think that's bad then you will hate his partner Don West, who spends all of his time just shouting everything and anything. Suffering this during the actual TV show is bad enough but at least he is in synch with the action - listening to him interrupt his half-spoken sentences with another half sentence is just horrible. What makes this version even worse is the eerie silences that occur; you can play for a minute with no commentary at all and then all of a sudden Tenay or West just spring into life. It won't surprise me if after the first few goes you start to play the game with the sound on mute. The music in general is fine at least, with good recreations of entrance themes and reasonable background music, but nothing to blow you away.

The past four years have been very difficult for wrestling fans and with each game since SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006 it seems that the emphasis is on making sure that it looks pretty. With no competition since the closing of WCW and ECW and the collapse of Acclaim destroying the pitiful Legends of Wrestling franchise, THQ had complete monopoly over the genre. TNA iMPACT! should have been a wakeup call that gameplay and longevity are the most important aspects, not the graphics and sound! Instead, this Wii version is horrendous in almost every respect, from its atrocious controls and lacklustre presentation to the very limited content and omissions of key modes. It's not just the TNA that deserves better than this - it's Wii gamers too.

Reviewed by David Simpson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).