Most wrestling titles in the current generation have developed into bits of eye-candy goodness, and Midway's TNA Impact is no exception. Everything looks great, from the ring environments and realistic crowd to the player models themselves. While all of the wrestlers look good, it has to be noted that there is a visual difference between the jobbers and the stars, with the wrestling stars and legends looking eerily lifelike, approaching the Uncanny Valley of videogames, especially during their entrances when the lighting effects hit them. Adding to the realism are the stellar animations that bring a lot of personality to the characters.

In the same way that TNA Impact gives you lifelike visuals in the form of player models, it also gives you their voices. It's great to finally hear them speak during the Story Mode, including your own created wrestler. Kevin Nash at the helm as your mentor, back-stage interviews, and being jumped outside of the ring are all great examples of how the lifelike audio helps drive the story. As far as in-the-ring action goes, Impact's audio is a bit lacking during the first few Story matches, but in retrospect, that is exactly what it needed, before getting into the TNA scene (see more on that below). Once they start talking, the commentators do a fairly good job in keeping up with the action. Unfortunately, there aren't enough phrases for them to speak, so the repetition does get a little annoying. They also lack the emotional impact when big moves happen at key times, as opposed to the real thing, where the commentators are a big help in driving up the viewer's emotional intensity level.

When it comes to wrestling games, or the fighting-genre in general, the thing that makes or breaks a title is absolutely, one hundred percent the gameplay. TNA Impact does a great job of combining ease of use with fun gameplay, with a super grappling and reversal system to lead things off. The biggest problem with TNA Impact is actually that of the gameplay between the single-player game and playing against friends (or on Xbox Live). Unfortunately, when playing against another human opponent, the match tends to favor quickness more than muscle, so the true feeling of a wrestling match goes out the window. Regardless of who you are playing, you really have to learn to block and perform reversals against human players, whereas you can sometimes pound your way to victory against less-intelligent computer foes.

TNA Impact has only three truly different modes of play, Exhibition, Story, and that of online matches via XBL. The offline Exhibition Mode contains no-holds-barred matches for either a single player, or up to four players, depending on the type of game selected. You'll be able to choose from standard matches like Singles and Tag Team, to Submission, Handicap, Falls Count Anywhere, and my personal favorite, Ultimate X matches. The game could use a few more different types of matches, however, to be able to compete with the WWE wrestling titles.

TNA's Story Mode is the heart of the offline affair for single players. Here, you take control of Suicide, a wrestler who was supposed to throw a championship match, but when he didn't, ended up in the hospital with amnesia and a reconstructed face (explaining how your Create-A-Wrestler can have any look that you choose, a subtle, but neat way to help with the storyline). It is your job to bring Suicide back to stardom and up through the ranks of the TNA. The story itself is entertaining because of the cut-scenes and all-too-familiar style of wrestling acting, but lacks any kind of branching and is extremely linear in nature. In fact, you only end up with the option to Rematch after a defeat instead of going into another cut-scene or some other storyline. You will get a little bit of everything throughout the story, however, so while sometimes it seems like it is just match after match, other times you'll be refreshed with a different type of match. Finally, the Story Mode feels way too short, which could also partially be a result of the linear storyline.

When you mix it up online over Xbox Live, you'll also notice a few things. First off, you can't take your created wresters online. However, the main difference is that matches seem to take less time. This may be a feature to allow users to play more matches, but in my opinion, it kills the wrestling mood because if you get down early, it is often hard to come back. The biggest reason for this is that trying to break out of a pinfall is much slower than it is offline. Reversals are likely your way to victory against many opponents, because once you get the timing down, they are somewhat easily available to perform. Fortunately, some moves can have reversals of reversals (and even more). Another feature of the game that changes online (or at least against human opponents) is the Submission system. This is one of the cool aspects of the game, as it pits your speed of pressing button combinations in succession faster than your opponent. Against the computer, it is generally easy to do, but this may be a strength that you'll have to deal with when playing against a fellow human.

There are some great things in TNA Impact as far as gameplay goes, but it goes to say that it is not perfect by any means. Some kinks need to be worked out for next year's title (and I do hope that Midway releases another next year to expand on the Story Mode and gameplay idiosyncrasies) to help TNA compete with the Raw vs. Smackdown series. One of my biggest gripes is that as your opponent stands from a knockdown, and he is clearly standing, trying to power-kick him will result in your character trying to leg drop (or some other jumping move) an empty mat, leaving you vulnerable to an attack. Another annoyance is that when multiple opponents are around, it is sometimes hard to know who your focus is on (your character will look in their directions), so often one can intend to mix it up with opponent A and end up trying a move on opponent B, allowing A to come from the side and work you.

With that said, the biggest issue that TNA Impact has in the ring is that against human opponents, the gameplay dynamic completely changes and doesn't resemble wrestling as much as it should. Tweak this fact and next year's title will be one thousand times better. Another thing that needs fixing is the tag team aspect of the game. Even with countless matches under my belt, I have yet to see any true team moves out of the partners, which is an important part of the Tag Team mentality.

TNA Impact is a funny game. It has a huge range of difficulty when considering that of between you and the computer A.I., and that of you versus another human opponent. Against the computer, especially in Story Mode, it won't take long to learn how the Artificial Intelligence of your opponents perform. When it comes to the jobbers, they are generally easy to beat without a problem after learning the controls. Like a good jobber should, they go down easily and don't necessarily impact you all that much. (Of course, if you don't try, they will still beat you.)

Against the stars and legends of the TNA, however, you may find that they pose a bit more of a challenge. The biggest difference between the stars and the jobbers is that those names you know are much, much faster out of the gun than their flopping counterparts. However, once you weather their initial storms (and occasional come-from-behind flurries), they aren't that difficult to pin either. The biggest key is to beat them down until you can perform moves at will. Be careful, however, because doing the same moves over and over will often result in many reversals and heartache for you and your character.

Against human opponents, both offline and on XBL, you'll have to learn each player's trends and counter them to the best of your ability. Unfortunately, the wrestling action sometimes becomes more of a scrapping match and doesn't feel as fun as with other titles. There tends to be a lot of running with flying moves because they are hard to defend, but ultimately learning to block and reverse moves is the only key to victory.

TNA Impact is surprisingly easy to pick up and play. The developers have kept the basic controls very, very simple, yet manage to also allow for a variety of cool moves, depending on the wrestlers' positions and areas of the arena. I do have mixed feelings about performing finishing moves, however, because it is actually too easy (a standing lock-up and pressing the (B) button) with respect that a finisher should be a bit more complicated since the result has a huge impact on the receiving end of it. With that said, the game also has an Impact Meter that fills a little with each landed move. Once filled, the player has a certain amount of time to perform their special move. What I don't like about this method is that you can punch and kick your opponent to fill the meter, and don't necessarily need to build up a few great moves before the finisher, which doesn't build the emotion that you would see in the real thing.

TNA is on middle ground in the wrestling genre. In retrospect (and despite the comparative scores that I have given them), it is way better than Legends of Wrestling ever was, but still not up to par with the WWE Smackdown vs. Raw series. TNA Impact has a lot of potential, but this year's version may be more of a rental than a purchase, especially if you plan to have a go at the very short Career Mode. For multiplayer, there are some good things, but there are also a lot of things that I didn't enjoy, mostly stemming from the loose wrestling that took place, as opposed to the technical wrestling that you watch on TV. The combat system is quite workable, with only some minor tweaks needed beyond that. If Midway continues to churn out these wrestling titles year after year, look for good things in the future from this new TNA franchise.