I so wanted to like TNA iMPACT!. Despite doubts caused by the game being delayed time and time again, there was always a part of me that was hoping for it to surprise me and knock this out of the park. Did it?

No.

In fact, it's still circling the block, trying to find a parking space so that it can actually get into the park.

Wrestling games are my love; it doesn't matter which company or which system, I buy them all. Because of this, I know what I like and I know what makes a great wrestling game: excellent controls, convincing graphics, challenging AI and a lengthy story mode. TNA iMPACT! is almost like a bronze medal for all of these aspects and every time I find something to commend it on, it goes and slaps me in the face. TNA iMPACT! has been in development for over two years and I was hoping that this was so the developers could get everything perfect, rather than needing extra time to fix some fundamental flaws. I prayed every day that it would be the former and when viewing the amount of work that Midway has put into the game - motion capturing, taking detailed layouts of arenas such as the Impact Zone, taking body scans of all the wrestlers - there was plenty of evidence to suggest that a lot of effort was going into the development. So what went wrong?

Well, to start with a positive, TNA iMPACT! is very nice to look at - in fact, if I was marking purely on aesthetics then it would be a glowing score indeed, as this is one beautiful game. The twenty-five wrestlers on offer are eerily lifelike and their movement is excellent. Throughout the game and during certain moves we're treated to little cut scenes of the move being performed and the damage caused. One of the reasons the game does this is that you are unable to grapple your opponent from behind, a slightly bizarre omission, but this is a clever way to cover this up. During the story mode, the cut scenes are beautifully rendered, aided by convincing vocal performances from many of the wrestlers.

Sadly, the quality in the visuals doesn't entirely translate to the audio; 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. 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.

However, the presentation isn't why we're here - it's really all about gameplay and Midway almost got it right. It's so sad that they missed it by a centimetre, although it could, of course, have been a lot worse. The controls work well, the developers using a very simplified pick up and play ethos. The face buttons cover punches, kicks and grabs, as well as a few other actions, leaving the shoulder buttons to reverse, run and taunt, plus you can also use these to give a move a stronger effect. As it should be, the left stick moves your character while the right stick is for changing your intended target. My only issue with this is the decision to make your action to kickout of a pin motion sensitive, rocking the analogue stick side to side to fill the kickout meter. This just brought back the horrors of the Smackdown game on the Wii! Overall the control system works and the fluidity of the reversals is perfect, 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. Another niggle I have is the lack of wrestler-specific taunts, apart from their build up to their finisher. This is slightly disappointing but certainly not a big deal.

However, while the controls are pretty good, the problem is 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.

There are nine match types to play. Yes, nine. Compare that to the last Smackdown, which offered up to sixty match types, and you might start to feel short-changed. 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. However, your opponent can stop you by trying to pull you down or attacking you. 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.

The story mode suffers from the same issues that WWE Day of Reckoning has and to some extent the Smackdown games: it's linear. You can create your own character (though you are absurdly only given five slots and a handful of options to begin with), but no matter what you do you are still following the tale of a wrestler called Suicide, 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. Just like the aforementioned games, your results determine what you can unlock and how successful you become throughout the mode. The main problem with all this is that until you unlock more moves and features, the actual wrestling is very dull, though the good news (if you can call it that) is that through your early matches your opponents are also hampered with these limitations and so you won't be playing with just a suplex and slam in your arsenal while they are breaking off tornado DDTs and piledrivers.

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, only five CAWs to create and with such a limited amount of options you can't exactly recreate who you want or try to bring a WWE superstar to the Impact zone. All that is left is to challenge the world online.

When THQ launched their Smackdown games online we all laughed at the pitiful amount of options, but the development of the past two games has seen this improve vastly. TNA iMPACT! it seems has followed the same idea and so I can only assume that in two games' time there will be an adequate online mode. All that's on offer at the moment is a singles mode using the TNA wrestlers; you cannot use your CAWs. Despite all this, the online mode is fine in general, though the fact that there's a leaderboard and yet nothing to fight for, other than pride and fun (what there is of it), is disappointing; the novelty is likely to wear off pretty fast, just like it is with the rest of the game.

TNA iMPACT! isn't a bad effort for a first attempt but it's nothing to get excited about. The longevity is abysmal and the content is woefully limited, while the controls and overall gameplay are fine for a weekend rental. Beyond that, it's doubtful that TNA iMPACT! can hold your interest in the mid to long term - there's possibly a day's worth of gameplay from the story mode and though two-player and online extends this somewhat, there is still too little to discover and do to make this a Smackdown beater.

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