The beginning of the end of WWE games being "good"
Once the year was slapped onto the title of Smackdown vs Raw games, there was a small, but realistic fear that this would lead to the games becoming the same. That's something that was called the Madden syndrome.
In the case of WWE games, it started right here for me. The gameplay was still fairly similar to the previous SvR game, but the pace feels slower. More importantly, the AI got noticeably dumber in this game. If you play the game at higher difficulties, the AI will not be very aggressive - instead it will reverse A LOT of your moves. That's not much of a challenge, it's just annoying to play. It doesn't help that the referee gets in your way during matches, and with strikes, you can end up hitting him. 3 strikes and you're DQ'd.
Now, if you got friends that will play this with you, it's a fun time for sure. But these days, good luck finding people who will want to play this with you. Also, if you want to be sure you'll have fun, turn off the stamina meter. This is the game where the stamina meter made its debut, and it was not a great debut. Matches will rarely be short, so as you're taking your opponents down, or trying to as the AI reverses your moves, you'll be losing stamina. If the meter is depleted, you'll go into a tired state, giving your opponent a free hit.
Now, if both you and your opponent somehow get empty meters after a certain type of grapple move, you can get into the epic double 10 count mini game. This sounds neat on paper, but most of the time, you won't get to it. There are also new match types, lots of unlockables, the controversial inclusion of Jake "the Snake" Roberts (you had to use a PSP copy of the game to unlock him - screw that), season mode, manager mode...it's a lot of content in general, and that's great. However, when the core gameplay isn't great unless you're playing with another human player, then that limits the appeal of going through the grind to unlock stuff.
For the next 5 years, they didn't truly "fix" the AI. It only got more brain dead. And it's a damn shame, because all of those Smackdown vs Raw games could have been good, or even great. Hell, some of the flaws just can't be helped, like the rosters being outdated because WWE is run by the maniac that is Vince McMahon. But some of it, namely the gameplay, definitely could have been helped.
