It turns out that the Midway team is targeting a fluid 60 frames per second and a native HD resolution of 720p for the final product. While up-close screenshots show details that might seem too good to be true, we didn't need Davita to unlock the camera and zoom in on Kurt Angle's details to know that Impact!'s character model for Angle looks significantly better than the one in SmackDown! vs. At this point, some of the character animations are being shared until more personalized wrestler movements are implemented.Īlso, the game will be the first wrestling title to use the Unreal 3.0 graphics engine, and it shows. Oddly, while it's got an upped tempo and it doesn't pretend to be a wrestling sim by any stretch of the imagination, its mechanics feel pretty smooth for a game that's only got 60% of its movesets complete, and still has somewhere close to six months before its release. It shows in Impact!'s gameplay, which is significantly faster-paced than we've seen in most wrasslin' titles. Both Davita and cohort Mark Turmell have been at the helm of Midway's top-selling fast-paced sports titles such as NBA Jam and NFL Blitz. Scott Lowe, the head of Midway's Los Angeles studio, stepped up during the world premiere unveiling to introduce the game, along with producer Sal Davita. In the same way that TNA wrestling has carved out a niche for wrestling fans by offering an alternative to WWE's current half-baked storylines, Midway wants to attack Yukes' status quo in a big way. We still feel, however, that there's little doubt that the Midway LA team has its heart set on shaking up the wrestling game genre, which has largely become a monopoly thanks to the branding of SmackDown! vs. Calling TNA Impact! "the skate of wrestling games" might have been a bit much, now that we've had a few hours away from it.