
There was a time, just a few years back in fact, when it seemed as if you could barely find a working tag team in the WWE. For whatever reason, the two-man team had fallen out of favor with fans (or at least, it seems, with WWE management). As a result, tag teams were practically nowhere to be found. That's changed recently and, if the upcoming SmackDown! vs. Raw 2009 is any indicator, tag-team wrestling is going to be a big part of the future of the series going forward. As we discovered today during a THQ press event in Orlando announcing SVR 09, working as a team in the ring is one of the central focuses of this year's game.
That focus on tag-team wrestling will emerge in a number of different ways. Key to the new tag-team approach is a number of different ways to interact with your partner in the ring. These can be things like "illegal" partner actions. (You know, choking an opponent while the ref's back is turned, holding the rope down while your partner tosses your opponent against the ring, thus tossing him out of the ring, and so on.)
In addition, the developers are working to ensure that even if you aren't in the ring, you'll still have plenty of opportunities to interact with the game. For instance, you'll be able to rally the crowd or distract the referee. Then there's the always-popular hot tag, used to describe those moments in a match when a wrestler who's spent a good deal of time getting his butt kicked manages to tag in his partner, who runs into the ring like a wild man and destroys anyone who gets in his path. Of course, not all tag teams are smooth partnerships, and SVR 09 will also let you mimic that aspect of the real thing, be it blind tagging your partner when he's not looking so you can hog some of the glory, or flat out turning your back on your teammate and launching an attack on him.