Online Onslaught, review of Smackdown: Just Bring It PS2 game

Created Characters: Making It All Better
As with all previous Smackdown incarnations, the shortcomings and irritations of the game can be overcome or ameliorated with the delights of the "created" wrestler. And the options for moves and attire are outstanding in this game.

I remember the first Smackdown game rewarding the player with the option of naming finishers. Smackdown2 took away the finisher-naming option, but it did allow you to come up with your own "yes" or "no" replies for interference requests or match options. The only thing to do with these replies was make them as horrendous as possible. I fondly recall that most seminal of characters, "Electric Sodomy," using these snappy rejoinders:
1. "I'm all lubed up!!!" (Yes)
2. "Not in my bungus!" (No)
I have no clue what responses we gave for "The Foreigner," "The Mongoloid," and "Mr. Thingy." Although I do remember that The Mongoloid was a crazed giant with a mohawk, heart-shaped glasses and a thong; and that "Mr. Thingy" had a skull for a face. But I digress....

Smackdown: Just Bring It, mistake that it was, reinstated the two-finisher option for wrestlers while adding many more moves and types of clothing. It also had great pre-created characters. I used one, rather perversely, who was a short, fat and bearded man in a gray jacket, hat and shorts. Somehow I got the idea to name him, "Enos von Hammer: The Sodo-Minister." The joke would have been much more (or maybe much less) puerile had I not given him the "Stunt-Rider Stretch" for a finisher. This move basically involves grabbing someone from behind, wrapping a leg around their waist, pulling their arms behind them, then thrusting forward with the pelvis. How wrestling — an activity already beset with a dubious heterosexuality — managed to produce a submission move best described as "The Sodomizer" I'll never know. Doubtless some Japanese fellow invented it... in a place thousands of miles away from American self-consciousness about enjoying large, underdressed men vigorously hugging one another on television. I also recall creating a demented islander named, "Otonwei, the Godless Savage," but he was much less fun because I couldn't find a finisher that shrunk heads or set people on fire.

For those whose imagination runs to the bizarre, like me, this game is a veritable cornucopia of strange. I ran to a religious bent while creating my characters, and the grappler, "Christ Jericho," was easy to make. Making someone look like Christ, in wrestling, is not terribly hard, what with wrestling's extensive predilection for long hair and long beards. I was also able to fit him out with raggedy pants and some sandals. Plus, his two finishers were easy: the "Judgment Slam" and "Christian Armlock." Other moves were easy, too, as the red mist was renamed, in my mind, "This Is My Blood," while the Frog Splash became, "This Is My Body." Christ was also prone to many bear hugs, as he embodied love.

The experiment in blasphemy broke down, as I realized that Christ really can't have much offense, and there aren't many options for solely reactive, defensive moves. In the end, he seemed to follow more of a "WWJND" path, as I began giving him moves that Jesus most certainly, if he had the choice, would not do.