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Legends of the Fall – WWE Legends of Wrestlemania By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman
I really try to stay away from fanservice type games. In fact, I think the last one I bought was that Dragonball Z game for the Wii (the little Asian kid on the back of the box doing a kamehameha with a Wiimote and nunchuk sold me). However, I felt very compelled to pick up WWE Legends of Wrestlemania at launch and have been pretty happy with it.
While many 3-D wrestling games are known to have ridiculous gameplay mechanics (most of them being button mashing, tug of war type games), the Legends of Wrestlemania plays more like the old Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game. The fighting system is pretty in depth. It's no Street Fighter (or even Soul Calibur), but you can do a lot more than just slamming your opponent into submission with same stupid attack. Since this is a wrestling game, most of the attacks are grapples and throws. You have 3 types/strength levels of throws (double tap A, press A once, press and hold A) with a number of different throws for each level at your disposal (by tilting the left joystick as you hit A). The variety of attacks and ease of chaining moves leads to some potentially spectacular classic wrestling action. Despite the fact that the game is a bit more action based and more in the fighting game style, it suffers from a few of the same problems as wrestling games of the past. One of the major problems of this game is how it’s so quick time event heavy. Even though it does work for the game’s mechanics (since the QTEs offer determine if you’re going to do a reversal/counter/momentum change), it would be nice to just see Bret Hart put someone down without worrying about pressing A,B,X, or Y at some random time. However, in the game’s defense, this is a video game and not a DVD copy of Survivor Series 1987.
Another problem with the game is the roster. I will admit that it’s pretty good overall, but some of the additions and omissions to this game are wrong and semi-blasphemous. Honestly, why is Koko B. Ware in this game, but Capt. Lou and Macho Man Randy Savage oddly missing from the cast? This is more of a point of fanservice and less of matter regarding actual gameplay (even though some characters in this game are pretty boring, I’m looking at you, Yokozuna).
Aside from these two problems, the game is very solid. I do feel a bit biased by nostalgia as to why I like this game so much; however, this is a huge selling point for this game. THQ could have just pumped out another Smackdown vs Raw title with wrestlers that I don’t even know or care about (aside from John Cena, since I hear he’s a huge classic game collector), but instead they chose to release a game for a gaming crowd that’s older than 15. They chose to make a wrestling game based on the modern golden era of wrestling, an era where a pro wrestling event was family friendly fun and not about sex and calling people “bitch.” Having not played a wrestling game in over a decade, I was floored by the overall look of the game. The graphics are very good. THQ does an excellent job making a bunch of sweaty musclemen look impressive without making you feel homosexual or disgusted. The audience could have been designed a little better (especially after seeing that good the audience looks in that “fight club” stage in Street Fighter 4). However, complaining about the audience in a wrestling game is almost as stupid as making a critique on the way they drew the grass in a soccer game (unless of course, the grass just looks horrendously out of place). The audio is very well done as well. The quality of the sound effects and songs are all great. However, some of the songs are kind of cheesy (I never realized how campy Hulk Hogan’s Real American was), but this game does represent a time where people thought pastels and bold colors was the height of fashion. Oddly enough, the game lacks a “storymode” found in older wrestling games. While this would be a huge disappointment, we’re given 3 new single player modes to make up for it. In Relive mode, you play classic Wrestlemania matches with recreating the original match as your main objective. You’ll get to relive epic moments such as Wrestlemania 3’s title match, where Hulk Hogan became the first person to ever body slam Andre the Giant. Rewrite mode is basically the opposite of Relive mode, where you’re to change history and make the loser of a historic match come out the winner. If the game had the ability to let you make the Montreal Screwjob right, I’m sure Bret Hart would be playing it daily. Redefine is basically a mix between: quick match mode, Relive, and Rewrite. You play through historic match-ups done with different rules; including playing as either Yokozuna or Bret Hart in the famous Wrestlemania 9 match in a steel cage as opposed to the standard submission match that actually happened. Though this is a pretty amazing wrestling game with an amazing cast of classic wrestlers, a huge strong point of this game is the create a legend function. I know most if not all contemporary wrestling games have a create a fighter mode, but this one is simply amazing with what you could make with it. I remember watching my cousin play No Mercy on N64 back in high school and all his created characters would end up looking half assed, but not in Legends of Wrestlemania (however, my cousin wasn't the most creative boy in the world, so they could have just been really crappily made characters).
If you're a fan of classic wrestling (or if you're a male that was born between 1975 and 1989), then you seriously need to be checking this game out. At least give it a rent (since I'll admit, I can't see myself playing single player non-online for very much longer. The one player mode goes by pretty quickly).
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