For the past 4 years THQ and Yukes have worked on producing the WWE licensed games. Each game that has been released has been an improvement on the previous game in the series. WWE Smackdown 4 Shut Your Mouth, takes the Smackdown series to new levels. WWE Smackdown 4 Shut Your Mouth is easily the game Just Bring It Should Have been. The roster itself consists of 65 wrestlers ranging from Stone Cold, Rock, Triple H, RVD, Brock Lesnar right down to the lower card wrestlers. Everyone currently on the WWE roster is set to be included in the game making it the largest roster in a WWE game yet.
The graphics have been improved greatly each wrestler is made up of 3000 polygons, most people might not know what this means but if you look at a character in this game and the previous one you'll see a remarkable improvement.
The game also includes new features to make the wrestling action for the first time in the Smackdown series you can do moves with weapons. I don't mean hit someone with a chair, I'm talking about doing moves like the Van Daminator, Taker's Chair to Throat and DDT's on the Chairs. Also the game features a much better reversal system which means you can now counter your opponents moves and even go as far as stealing your opponent's finishers to use against them.
What this game has is attention to detail. Every Wrestler has several outfits, their entrance movie and music are as you would find on WWE TV programs, the entrances are accuratly modelled for example RVD has his pyro and famous 'R-V-D' taunt, Triple H has his usually entrance but in this game you see the water being poured from the bottle and when he spits it out it is greatly improved. Wrestlers also have character specific title entrances, Austin drags his belt to the ring, Taker wears his round his neck as he rides to the ring. Plus in this game champions will wear the belt in any match, not just title matches, to add to the realism.
One of the things that I truly like about the game is how individual the characters are. Every wrestler is modelled exactly on their real life counterpart, even going as far as how they stand, walk and move has been re-created. The movesets each wrestler has is designed to be specific to each wrestler, for example RVD has a lot of high flying moves and his signature kicks and flips. Also the way counter and react to moves is specific, throw a punch or kick at RVD he'll catch the arm or leg step over it with his left leg and go into his trademark heel kick. The Undertaker will take the punch or kick but not react to it, instead he'll shrug his shoulders and return a shot of his own. Hogan will do the famous 'Hulk Up' routine.
This is incredible and it makes you wonder what the next game in the series will like. How can they top this?