BitSnark

In the grand tradition of annual updates to their WWE licensed franchise, THQ has today unveiled this year’s iteration of the series, Smackdown Vs Raw 2011.

Not much in the way of specifics have been released regarding the title, but one new feature which THQ is keen to harp on about is the new destructive physics system that foreign objects and weapons now enjoy. In previous titles, if you have wanted to for instance say, chokeslam someone through a table that you weren’t stood ontop of yourself, you would be greeted by an shoddy looking animation which would awkwardly move the table out of the way, even if you thought you were bang on target.

With this year’s game however, any objects left around inside or outside the ring can be dynamically interacted with. For example, set up a table next to the turnbuckle and you can suplex them through it from the top rope with splinters flying and chunks of table being left behind. Change that table for a ladder and the suplex basically crunches the back of your foe across the hard steel as they crumple up in pain on the mat, leaving the ladder bent and contorted where the impact took place.

There are seemingly a multitude of different applications that objects can now have and only a few of them were shown in the GameSpot preview video (linked at the end of this article), so it’ll be very interesting to see what other fiendish things you can dream up and do and is certainly a big step in the right direction when it comes to trying to mirror the ad-hoc brutality of ladder matches, table matches and so on.

There are obviously a raft of other new features that THQ can’t talk about yet and so for the rest of it, tune into the THQ presentation at E3.

Smackdown Vs Raw 2011 is expected to release this year and will arrive on the PS3, 360, NDS, PSP, PS2 and the iPhone.