Just Bring It is one of the oddest blends of excellent and execrable graphics on PS2. Its core is obviously an upgrade or derivation of the PlayStation graphics engine, rather than an entirely new creation, and this holds it back in several ways, although aspects of its presentation well outstrip the Xbox-powered RAW.

On the up side, we have excellent animation, including a gigantic library of moves, superb camera direction, which makes up for a lot of the deficiencies in modeling and texturing, and some very cool lighting effects, adding immeasurably to the intros for wrestlers like HHH. The roster of competitors isn't complete considering time considerations, but there are over 50 wrestlers to pick from and plenty of different arenas in which to do battle. Essentially, the good stuff that could be carried over from the PlayStation games with ease and the basic effects that could be implemented on PS2 without much trouble are here, while the presentation aspects that the lemmings clamor for (entrances first among them) have gotten the most direct attention in the PS2 development cycle. This game has dynamite animation and direction when the wrestlers make their way to the ring.

On the down side, the modeling ranges from smooth to terrible, some textures are warped or very blurry, and there simply doesn't seem to have been a lot of concentrated effort to make the wrestlers themselves look substantially better on PS2. Any character with long hair looks ridiculous -- they've got flat single polygons with badly alpha-channeled textures clipping through their chest, back, and shoulders (see: Rhyno, Chris Jericho, either Hardy, Lita) -- and facial animation is all over the map, with some characters looking fine and others with a strange 90-degree joint in their upper lips. Most clothing is still textured on instead of modeled in 3D, making many wrestlers' trunks and pads look very silly. The central arenas also haven't changed substantially, aside from a higher resolution and the addition of the 3D entrance ramp. The crowd is still flat, with very simple animation, and the instances where you can fight in the crowd just look silly, the two-dimensional fans moving aside according to some hidden, inexorable force. Backstage, on the other hand, has gotten a nice tune-up, with bigger and better-looking areas like the boiler room and parking lot. WWF New York is pretty impressive, too, although it takes a lot of effort to go all the way out across the street.

One final issue with the the arena graphics can't be overemphasized. I've played both games in complete or near-complete form, and there isn't any competition of any kind -- the Xbox's RAW has much, much better signs. Both games have an excellent variety of fan-made placards, and the selection in the crowd is tailored to match the wrestlers in the ring, but everything in Smackdown is just generic lemming crap like "HBK" or "I AM THE GAME" and all that sort of nonsense that would only be brought to an event by some brain-damaged twelve-year-old with a permanently atrophied sense of humor (unfortunately, a class which also sends in most of our Smackdown e-mail). Where are the "WHAT'S KAYFABE?"s and "BIG SHOW STOLE MY GIMMICK"s? Let me see signs created by someone with creativity in the next PS2 WWF game.