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TNA iMPACT!, which stands for Total Non-stop Action Wrestling, is not your ordinary wrestling game or wrestling company. There is no square circle for this wrestling franchise made up of mostly former WWE and WCW stars. You now wrestle in a six-sided ring, which to me is more entertaining to watch as now there is more space available to pummel your opponents. Over the last few years we've only had one wrestling game really worth mentioning, and that was Smackdown vs Raw. Is TNA iMPACT! worth the money? Also, is it as good or better than Smackdown vs Raw?

Well first off, TNA iMPACT! lifts the bar up high and will surely give Smackdown vs Raw some competition this year and in years to come. This game is not as easy as Smackdown vs Raw which is sometimes a good thing, but simultaneously can be very frustrating and make you wonder if it's really worth the time to play the game. But after you get the controls down and play it for a few hours, iMPACT will start to grow on you and you will surely get better at the game.
 

The roster of pro wrestlers is fairly expansive, with most of TNA's big names included, but they did leave out a few that I hope will come later in future DLC. Only time will tell though. There are a total of 25 characters in the game including:

• Abyss
  
• AJ Styles
  
• Alex Shelley
  
• Booker T
  
• Chris Sabin
  
• Christian Cage
  
• Homicide
  
• Rhino
  
• Sting
  
• Shark Boy
  
• Sonjay Dutt
  
• Brother Devon
  
• Robert Roode
  
• Eric Young
  
• Hernandez
  
• Jay Lethal
  
• Kurt Angle
  
• Christopher Daniels
  
• Jeff Jarrett
  
• Samoa Joe
  
• Scott Steiner
  
• Tomko
  
• Kevin Nash
  
• James Storm
  
• Brother Ray
  

So there is a solid variety of playable characters, most of whom are unlocked by playing through Story Mode.

Story Mode, the main game mode in iMPACT, is probably the best storyline to ever be featured in a wrestling game. There is a total of 6 Chapters in the Story Mode, but trust me they're not short by any means. You start out as a wrestler named "Suicide", who was the #1 contender for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. LAX or 5150 then tells Suicide to take a fall in the Championship match or you'll face some serious consequences. Well, he did not take the fall and won the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. LAX then blind-sided him and beat the tar out of him. You then are in a local Mexican hospital, with bandages all on your face and two doctors talking. After the doctors get done talking, you will then re-create "Suicide" and make him look however you'd like. You can change his shirt, pants, shoes, hats, masks, etc. You will basically get to create your own character. After you create your wrestler, you will then start out wrestling in a little town in Mexico. You will have to work your way up the ranks and get into the TNA. Once in the TNA you'll have to beat some pretty tough talent on your quest back to the top.

Over time while playing through the game you will earn what are called Style Points. You will earn Style Points for landing certain punches, kicks, chair shots, and by executing your signature moves. Now you can't use these points to buy anything, but after you get so many points you will unlock new wrestling moves, which will help you improve your created superstar. You will also unlock a few real life characters and a few created characters that the developers put in the game. You will unlock arenas by just simply playing in them in Story Mode, except for one. The England arena will be unlocked by accumulating a certain number of Style Points. Every other unlockable thing, from characters, to arenas will be unlocked by just simply playing through the story.

Of course the biggest and best match in TNA, both in the game and in real life, is the Ultimate X Match. In an Ultimate X match, there are four cables all connected in the center of the ring to a big red X. This match is unlike any other match in wrestling history. The goal is to climb the turnbuckles, jump up and grab the cables, and slide across the middle to the X. The first person to grab the X and fill up his/her meter will be named the winner. This match is by far the most fun and entertaining to play. If you have a couple of friends over one day, have them play an Ultimate X Match with you and you're guaranteed to have a good time.

The other game mode is just an Exhibition mode where you can play against the CPU or against a few of your friends. The matches you can choose from in Exhibition Mode are: Standard Match, Tag Team, Free for All, Ultimate X, Ultimate X FFA, Submission, FCA Match, FCA Match Tag, and Handicap. Most of these matches are extremely fun to play either by yourself or with a couple of your buddies. There are also some TNA Extras in the game as well, which are available from the main menu. You can enter the training mode to improve your skills by getting some practice in, or you can watch 2 matches that are exclusive to the TNA iMPACT! game. One of the matches is a Knockout Gauntlet match, the other match is a X Division 6 way matchup. These matches are really fun to watch, especially if you've never watched TNA before.

The graphics in this game are superb to say the least. Side by side with Smackdown vs Raw, iMPACT! just blows SvR away. The entrances are down to a tee and are almost identical to the real TNA superstar entrances, but they are shortened a tad bit. One bad thing though, is once again in a sports game the crowds don't interact enough and you can tell that Midway did not really concentrate on the crowd at all. But the visuals in this game, from the superstars' chiseled bodies all the way to the chair you hit them with are just excellent. There are a few parts that could use improvement, but what game does not need improvements?
 

Audio in this game is not the best, but certainly not the worst either. You do have the TNA announcers in the game, but yet you will never see them as for some reason their bodies are not in the game, only their voices. The intro in this game has great audio that is sure to get you pumped up to play this game. The rest of the soundtrack is really not that bad. It has a few good songs that really start to grow on you. The custom soundtracks that are used for every superstar in the game did not get utilized to their full potential which is a shame.

Online is just plain dreadful to play because the Midway servers are just absolutely horrible to play on. Hopefully by the time anybody reads this, they will have fixed the servers as it's hard to even start a match on these servers in their current state. The screen will sometimes freeze right before you're able to pick your online fighter. Then it will take a few minutes for the match to start, which is painful to just sit there and wait. There is also hardly anyone online to play against, which is just sad seeing as how the game just came out last Tuesday. Now I don't know if this was just me that is having this problem online or not, so you might want to try it out for yourselves just to be sure. The leaderboards also are a little slow, and it seems like it takes the leaderboards a couple of hours to update on some days. Once you get in an online match, there is very little lag, but it's just a drag having to wait 5 minutes or more just to start a match.
 

The achievements in this game are pretty easy. There are only about three achievements that will actually take some time and dedication to get, "Planet Jarrett", "Underdog Wins", and "Best of the Best". Planet Jarrett, you will have to beat a real life TNA wrestler or somebody who has. The other two require you reaching TNA Champion status online and beating somebody who has achieved Champion status, which are two very hard achievements. To even get TNA Champion Status you must be ranked within the top five in the World on any of the online Leaderboards which is also just ridiculous. Other than those three achievements, you will get 18 of the achievements by simply playing through the Story Mode, which to be honest is not half bad. The rest of the achievements you can simply get by playing Exhibition matches or online matches. This game's achievement list is okay, but it would have been much better without the handful of nearly impossible to get achievements.

Overall this game is not great. Surely in the coming years this game will rival Smackdown vs Raw and keep getting better and better, because there is some potential visible here, but right now it's just not there yet. This game is definitely not worth a buy unless you're a die hard TNA or Wrestling fan. You can easily beat the Story Mode in a few hours over a couple of days. With the online part of the game seemingly dead at this point, I would wait a few weeks or months to go out and get this game. But this game is good and it will only get better with time. It's still not as good as Smackdown vs Raw, but it will surely give it some competition in the near future.