The ring, the pyro entrances, and the wrestler creator you spent more time in than the matches themselves.

Let us not sugarcoat it, the gut verdict is brutal: WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010 only edges ahead of 3% of games. That is low. Really low. And the detail rescues nothing. Attachment, bottom of the pile. Desert island pick, bottom of the pile. The wish to rediscover it, the soundtrack, the art style, same basement. Only fun and controller feel lift their heads a little, ahead of roughly a fifth of the field, never close to the middle. Several lines rest on few votes, but the picture is perfectly consistent: nothing diverges.

This is not unfair, it is a mismatch. The game was an annualized simulation of a TV show, built for the WWE fans of that exact season, with its roster and its storylines frozen in time. Questions about emotion, lasting visual identity or soundtracks simply do not measure what it existed for: replaying your favorite match with your favorite wrestler, in 2009.

So, who is it for? For you if that wrestler is still in your head and that console is still in the closet, and nostalgia does the rest. Much less so if you want a game that stands on its own, stripped of its era.