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"Monkey say..."
Regular
on 08/04/2009 at 12:29:17PM
Total Posts: 124 |
Question:
Are you the type of person who likes to dress in spandex, cover yourself in baby oil, get down and dirty with other men and get beaten around the ring?
Question:
Are you the sort who likes watching other guys do this?
If the answer to either of the above questions is "Yes" then just be the game you have been waiting for. Smutty innuendoes aside this game is pretty much what it says on the tin. It is a trip down Memory Lane, on the Rose-Tinted express, with a brief stop off in Nostalgia Avenue. This was back when wrestling acronyms got confused with saving endangered animals, when men were men (in tights) and when wrestling meant something.
Actually, let's face it; wrestling has never been anything more than a soap opera on steroids. The irony here is that there is more fighting and competition in this game than there ever was between Hulk Hogan and any of his adversaries. Yes they jumped on each other. Yes there was sometimes blood. But wrestling was always a bit of fun, as opposed to the ‘getting-the-crap-knocked-out-of-you’ you would see in boxing. This game is a fighting game based on a pantomime. And so the real question is this, does this game have enough going for it to stand up to its competitors in the fighting game genre? Or is this game just a pantomime in itself?
I have to [sadly] say that the answer is that this is not a great fighting game, unless you are looking for a something you can play with your kids. The controls feel slow and clunky, which is a far cry from the slick feel to the likes of Street Fighter 4. You labour around the ring which, although perhaps true to life, does make the game play slow. And I don't mean slow and powerful; I just mean slow. You don't feel you are controlling a 17 stone fighting machine, but more like a 17 stone couch potato who is having an argument over who was first in line at a KFC.
Special moves are another thing. Yes you get to do the stuff they did on TV, but that's just the problem. There is nothing in the game to amaze or astound. I didn't play it and think "Wow, that was cool!!", but rather I just thought "Yeah, they kinda did that". Whilst I admit that games like Street Fighter are based on a mixture of ridiculous physics and pure fantasy, the fact that Wrestlemania is based on 'the real world' simply makes it more boring.
On top of this there were other problems such as collision detection (or perhaps this was intentional given the source material).
Having said all this there were some positives to take. The wrestlers in the game did actually look a lot like the 80s superstars they were representing. There were nice pantomime edges to the game too, with special moves preceded by wrestlers doing little routines to get the crowd going. The look and feel of the game was just about right.
Regrettably for me it was just the wrong subject matter. I’m not one for spandex and baby oil, and so looking at this in terms of fighting games there are simply better ones out there to choose. If there were any boxes for this game to tick I’d say it just tickled them.
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altaranga
"Monkey say..."
Regular
on 08/04/2009 at 12:29:17PM
Total Posts: 124
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Question:
Are you the type of person who likes to dress in spandex, cover yourself in baby oil, get down and dirty with other men and get beaten around the ring?
Question:
Are you the sort who likes watching other guys do this?
If the answer to either of the above questions is "Yes" then just be the game you have been waiting for. Smutty innuendoes aside this game is pretty much what it says on the tin. It is a trip down Memory Lane, on the Rose-Tinted express, with a brief stop off in Nostalgia Avenue. This was back when wrestling acronyms got confused with saving endangered animals, when men were men (in tights) and when wrestling meant something.
Actually, let's face it; wrestling has never been anything more than a soap opera on steroids. The irony here is that there is more fighting and competition in this game than there ever was between Hulk Hogan and any of his adversaries. Yes they jumped on each other. Yes there was sometimes blood. But wrestling was always a bit of fun, as opposed to the ‘getting-the-crap-knocked-out-of-you’ you would see in boxing. This game is a fighting game based on a pantomime. And so the real question is this, does this game have enough going for it to stand up to its competitors in the fighting game genre? Or is this game just a pantomime in itself?
I have to [sadly] say that the answer is that this is not a great fighting game, unless you are looking for a something you can play with your kids. The controls feel slow and clunky, which is a far cry from the slick feel to the likes of Street Fighter 4. You labour around the ring which, although perhaps true to life, does make the game play slow. And I don't mean slow and powerful; I just mean slow. You don't feel you are controlling a 17 stone fighting machine, but more like a 17 stone couch potato who is having an argument over who was first in line at a KFC.
Special moves are another thing. Yes you get to do the stuff they did on TV, but that's just the problem. There is nothing in the game to amaze or astound. I didn't play it and think "Wow, that was cool!!", but rather I just thought "Yeah, they kinda did that". Whilst I admit that games like Street Fighter are based on a mixture of ridiculous physics and pure fantasy, the fact that Wrestlemania is based on 'the real world' simply makes it more boring.
On top of this there were other problems such as collision detection (or perhaps this was intentional given the source material).
Having said all this there were some positives to take. The wrestlers in the game did actually look a lot like the 80s superstars they were representing. There were nice pantomime edges to the game too, with special moves preceded by wrestlers doing little routines to get the crowd going. The look and feel of the game was just about right.
Regrettably for me it was just the wrong subject matter. I’m not one for spandex and baby oil, and so looking at this in terms of fighting games there are simply better ones out there to choose. If there were any boxes for this game to tick I’d say it just tickled them.
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