WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010 Featuring ECW [PS3]

In short, as already stated, this system is awesome. There are animations of people pushing each other, people getting flowers from one another, people begging for forgiveness, people being found unconscious, people getting carried out on a stretcher, and so much more. The cast of characters you can use includes every Superstar you've unlocked in the game, but there's also people you'll never get to play as – people such as the ref, Lilian, and the ringside doctor. Want Tony Chimmel and Jericho to be best friends so that when Triple H hits Chimmel with his car Jericho's got a main event feud? Go ahead – literally, the sky's the limit here.

You can adjust the length of these segments, slap on the end of show logo, and pipe in sounds more that 290 sounds that range from Superstar entrance themes to "You suck!" chants to "Shhhhh!" reaction noises.

For me, it's this mode that makes WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010 stand out from the versions that have come before it. After covering LittleBigPlanet user-created content for the better part of this year, I know how amazing this stuff can be, and I can only imagine the stuff you players are going to come up with. I know I'm going to put up a bunch of goofy stories with no real point (see our video gallery for examples), but to think of how you fine folks are going to push the idea of what this thing can do with created characters, in-depth tales, and so much more boggles my mind.

Now, these stories can go on for ten years -- yes, you could have a decade of Mickie James feuding with the Bella Twins -- but there are some restrictions. One story can only use 50 scenes. This means that if you're trying to tell a massive, multi-part story, you should think ahead as to how many backstage arguments and in-ring contract signings you are going to have. Beyond that, your match count is "limited" to 450 bouts and you can only put ten of your created Superstars into any tale.

Personally, all of the weird, cookie-involving stories I want to tell are pretty specific, so the restraints really don't concern me, but I can understand how people planning on uploading opuses will feel the pinch. As someone who's incredibly interested in playing your stories, the easiest way around this that I can see is to plan ahead and upload your tale in chapters.

One thing I've noted in other previews is that the load times on the PlayStation 3 version of SVR 2010 are nonexistent, but they are a bit more like the old days with the Story Designer mode. Don't get me wrong, the loads are understandable and they aren't terrible (about 7 to 14 seconds), but they appear between each segment or your story, so if you're peppering in short scenes, they can get annoying when you compare it to how quickly everything else loads.

With the release of WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010 so close, my dive into Story Designer has done nothing to quell my desire to lock myself in a room and play the wheels off of this game. Even without the in-ring gameplay improvements and upped presentation value that we've talked about before, Story Designer would be enough to get my blood a-pumpin' – and it should have you all fired up, too.

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