When you mention Playstation and wrestling games a plethora of titles spring to mind but the main and probably the best has to be the Smackdown series. Yuke’s first attempt at the Smackdown series was good but never really achieved its full potential. Shut your Mouth goes a considerable way to rectifying this little problem.

To begin with the graphics are just an incredible leap on from its predecessor. Hogan and the Undertaker don’t just look like their real-life counterparts but could be quite simply mistaken for the real thing. The facial expressions are minutely intricate and have been delicately nurtured into really stunning likenesses.

This likeness is continued into the areas which you can fight, which include the Raw and Smackdown sets which are picture perfect as well as the PPV areas. Unfortunately the crowd has not been given the same loving treatment, which is a shame as you are continually confronted with them during your battles.

They also annoy during the entrance sequences which otherwise would be all but perfect if it wasn’t for the fact that some of the wrestlers bear more than a passing resemblance to robots when they walk into the arenas.

The actual look of the wrestlers has come a long way with their body structure and the sense of blocks making up the body shape you got from ‘Just Bring It’ has all but been eradicated. The true proof of this is the beautifully lifelike way in which the hair now moves as the character moves.

The flaws that have not been sorted are ones that have been with us since the dawn of wrestling games such as with the difficulty of interaction with the ropes and the really annoying paint effect of the clothes on the wrestlers bodies.

The wrestling roster has been impressively updated with the inclusion of Booker T and the likes. It is quite amusing to see the likes of DDP and Steve Austin still playing, however.

The ridiculous amount of game modes have remained relatively unchanged with usual the suspects of Single, Tag, 6-Man Tag, Special, Survival, Hardcore, King of the Ring, Royal Rumble, Handicap and Season. The Season category is a remarkably impressive offering, a real selection of gimmicky but essentially quite amusing battles such as Street Fight with bins and baseball bats to pick up, etc. There is also cage, elimination, hell in a cell, I quit, Ironman, Ladder, Last man standing, Table, TLC, Lumberjack, Slobber Knocker, Special Referee, Submission and 3 Stages of Hell.