July 9, 2007 - We paid a visit to THQ's Southern California headquarters last week to see the E3 build of the company's star pinup, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008. Guiding us along was the newly promoted Creative Manager Bryan Williams and his boss, the Senior Creative Manager (and familiar face to the IGN faithful) Cory Ledesma.

"This year it's all about playing like your favorite superstar," commented Williams. "Fighting styles and character-specific moves are what we really want to stress and that's a big deal for us. We have new strategies that haven't been in the game before and cool match-specific advantages based on style."

Bryan isn't kidding. When we selected the freshly-announced ECW legend Sandman and put him up against the smirk master Randy Orton, we could see the advantages of being a "Hardcore" wrestler in an ECW Extreme Rules match. Sandman's proficiency with weapons helped us own Orton all over the squared circle, while putting chairs on our opponent's neck or pulling off conchairtos added a little extra oomph.