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.
