WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

Ask wrestling game players which entry was best and this is still the most common answer, twenty entries later. Yuke’s added a body-part damage system that tracked limb injuries independently, rebuilt the grappling into strong and quick variants, and gave the roster a stamina model that made long matches play differently from short ones. It is the deepest wrestling simulation of its era, and it runs well on PCSX2, AetherSX2, and ArmsX2.

Storyline

Season mode runs a full year of programming across both brands, with rivalries developing over weeks, title shots earned through results, and branching choices at backstage segments that shift your character’s alignment.

The writing is broad, occasionally absurd, and it captures the era it depicts — the Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle main events, the Attitude Era holdovers, the brand split still being new. Playing as a created wrestler through a season, working up from opening matches to headlining pay-per-views, is the mode most people remember, and it holds up better than the story modes that replaced it in later entries.

Gameplay

Grappling is split between quick grabs and power moves, with a targeting system that lets you work a specific body part. Damage accumulates per limb and is visible on the model, so a wrestler with a worked-over leg moves slower and becomes vulnerable to submissions aimed at it. Submission holds resolve through a rotating analogue-stick struggle rather than button mashing.

Stamina drains across a match, which changes pacing considerably — an early flurry leaves you exhausted for the finish, so matches naturally build the way real ones do. The roster is large for its time and includes legends alongside the active card, and match types cover Hell in a Cell, Elimination Chamber, ladders, tables, and the bra and panties matches that date it. Create-a-Wrestler is extensive, covering appearance, entrance, move set, and attributes.

Playing Experience

The body-damage system is what separates it: matches develop narratives on their own because working a limb has mechanical consequences, and that emergent storytelling is exactly what a wrestling game should produce. Controls take some learning, particularly the reversal timing, and the AI is aggressive enough on higher difficulties to punish careless offence. On PCSX2, AetherSX2, or ArmsX2 it runs smoothly, and multiplayer maps well to controllers on both desktop and Android.

Conclusion

Later games added more modes, better presentation, and larger rosters, and a great many players still consider none of them an improvement on how this one plays. The systems underneath are simply better designed. To run it you will need the PS2 system firmware, which you can download here.