WWE '12 is actually pretty great once I figured it all out. Of all the years to take out the training portion, it's the one where you change the control scheme? Still, they wouldn't be THQ if they managed to fix 15 things while breaking 15 others from previous years. Sigh.
Control scheme-wise, I'm not totally sure why exactly this set-up is any less complicated than the previous year. To me, the stick thing was actually pretty intuitive... I kind of just feel like I'm pressing 'A' and things just happen without any sort of consistency. Or, at least, none that I've grasped yet. Once I re-trained myself (which admittedly may have been the source of my issues), I really started enjoying the game.
Things that make no sense: So, you can vacate titles in exhibition mode, but WWE Universe requires you to either use them or stick them on someone you don't care about. That would be fine if there weren't like 20 titles in the

ing game. They give us the ability to set the major titles to use for a brand, but not to just turn the titles off? Bizarre. Still, at least now Kozloz is CHAMPION OF EVERYTHING, so I guess he can't complain.
Speaking of titles... I love the old titles. I love that they're announced simply as WWE Title or Intercontinental Title. Problem is, I'm anal enough that I just can't get past the entrance nameplate reading "Attitude Era's WWE Champion".

it. Still, I get to use the Undisputed title instead of the Spinner, so that's a plus.
Since I'm a huge HBK mark, some quibbles. One, they broke the DX entrance. They have the video and the song, but the entrance just plays the video full-screen the entire time. Whoops. Two, they had the announcers record entrance announcements for The Mean Street Posse, Pretty Mean Sisters, and the Varsity Club... but they didn't include D-Generation X? FFS. Three, by making HBK downloadable, you can only 'easy edit' his entrance. I thought this was bullshit last year, so the return doesn't help. Four, it's nice that HBK's signature-move elbow drop makes him, uh, stay on the mat afterwards like he took the move. That needs fixed.
Anyway, for all the complaints, I am enjoying the game. It's got a good mix of people, the presentation is great, and Universe mode actually seems to have been freed of enough of the contraints that hampered it last year. Gameplay itself doesn't feel as smooth as previous years, but I'm assuming it's because they
built a whole new engine bolted the changes onto the previous engine.
Still, for all the issues, it's at least a showing that reveals more effort than I've felt from any of the past 5 Smackdown games, so that's a positive.