The first game was great. What I really loved was the pre-season mode, where you started as a 'jobber' (A wrestler who has no particular gimmick, and usually gets beaten by everyone), but gained exp, built up your stats, until you became a WWF Superstar.
The second lost the whole experience gain, but added a never ending season mode with plenty of fun storylines and such added to it, and was generally considered to be the best of the series.
Smackdown 3 was a massive let down. After all the hype, and the switch to the Playstation 2, it was such a disappointment. A new 'walk round the arena mode' was added, but turned out to be really badly done, with you generally wandering around a few small rooms, with people to interact with always being in the same place. Gone was the season mode, instead you played the walk around, which generally resulted in at most 5 or 6 matches before it ended. And the loading/saving times were interminable. Minutes could pass between one screen and the next. And finally, to top it all off, the save file used up about half of a standard PS2 memory card, about 4MB.
Smackdown 4 did much better, a lot of the problems from 3 were fixed. The walk around mode was added into a proper season mode, and wasn't the be all and end all of it, the loading times were shortened quite drastically, to those of a normal game, the save file became a manageable size, and best of all, the slots for Created wrestlers were increased to 32 (as opposed to previous 8). The only real let down was the length of the season mode, being only a single year.
SD4 has learned well from the problems of it's ancestors. Especially on the difficulty front. The last set of games really suffered from a lack of difficulty. Even on the hardest setting, the game was still far too easy to beat, and stopped giving you a challenge, even against the toughest superstars. SD4 is actually difficult. This is in part due to the addition to the season mode....experience!!!! Woo.
Now, I am an RPG addict, so I love experience in games. As my friend Joe says, it's just great when you have numbers that go up and have an effect on your toughness. With SD4, you gain experience in matches (or even by interaction with other wrestlers backstage), which you use to increase your stats. What this means is once again, you start off as a rookie, getting beaten quite a lot, but slowly building up your stats, until you can take on the real superstars. And a very nice addition is you can play the real WWE superstars with beginning rookie stats, building them up the same way (But they are always available with original stats to play). The season mode itself seems to be only a year long, like before, but it seems to take longer to play, because there are very immersive storylines you can become involved in (All apparently past storylines used in the WWE).
Another new addition is what I've dubbed the 'move tree' Previously, each direction on the controller had a move. What has now been added is the 'pre-grapple'. Each direction corresponds to a general grapple move, up is power moves, left is signature, down is submission, right is quick. These further lead off into four further moves under each description, one for each direction. This makes the game a lot more fun, as you have a much better repertoire of moves than in the previous games.
Also, there is no more unlocking required for the CAW (Create a Wrestler) mode. Previously, you had to unlock body parts, which was very annoying if you had got a formula from the web, but hadn't unlocked the parts required. Now, every body part and accessory is already unlocked. Some movesets are still locked, but pretty easy to unlock.
And the wrestler inclusion is bigger than in any previous game. There are loads of available superstars, and some old legends, including Jimmy 'Superfly' Snuka, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Hawk and Animal, and 'Old School' Undertaker.
Overall, this is by far the best of the Smackdown series. It still has some problems, but most of the real gripes have been fixed, and it now stands better than it's number two sibling.
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