Games: WWE All-Stars (Wii)
Posted on 6th Apr 11 by Mike McGrath Bryan | 
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WWE’s mixture of athletics, pageantry, morality play, vaudeville and sheer spectacle, has, while creating its own niche, even in wrestling, never mind pop-culture, seen it alienate both sporting fans and fans of legitimate drama for being neither or.
Yet, in the best sci-fi tradition, WWE‘s 60-plus years of ancestry has given it a rich back catalogue of characters, stories, matches and memorable moments that often lend themselves to fantasy talk among fans. Who would win in a match between this legend and this current star? What would happen if the tables were turned in this situation? It is on this relatively untapped mine of material from which THQ’s arcade-style wrestling effort WWE All-Stars draws. 15 current WWE wrestlers (Drop-d refuses the term Superstars, and Universe, for that matter) are pitched against 15 WWE legends, in what has to be possibly the most ridiculous wrestling game ever conceived.
All-Stars goes for the gusto with its fantasy line-up concept: the game itself is styled as a cartoonish brawler, discarding the serious simulation of its sibling, the WWE Smackdown series. As such, wrestlers possess action-figure physiques, toss each other ten feet into the air and play keepy-uppies with them as they land, and airborne attacks land from anywhere else in the arena. In short, it’s a wrestling game as imagined by a six-year-old. And it works to a point.
The roster itself is plentiful, the initially diminutive turnout of 15 quickly expanding with a bit of play. Today’s wrestlers are well-represented, with current main-eventers John Cena, Randy Orton, The Miz and Edge ably backed up by younger mid-card talent, such as Drew McIntyre, Jack Swagger and Kofi Kingston. Meanwhile, the Legends roster will more than satisfy any long-term fan, with Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Roddy Piper and more joined by stars of the nineties and noughties, such as Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, The Rock, and Stone Cold Steve Austin. The roster is compact yet comprehensive, and while many Legends in this game have been featured in myriad other games, the addition of lesser-seen legends, such as Randy Savage and Ultimate Warrior more than compensate.
Meanwhile the presentation works amazingly, capturing the bombast of the WWE spectacle perfectly. In the spirit of complete overkill, the arenas are monoliths of pyrotechnics and gaping screens, while the wrestlers themselves have, as noted, been given action-figure proportions. John Cena and Hulk Hogan are gigantic muscle-masses, while Andre the Giant is a lumbering Brobdingnagian creature. Meanwhile, the likes of Rey Mysterio and Randy Savage are lithe acrobats, easily defying gravity without a second thought.
The modes of play are also enough to please both veterans and new fans, with standard exhibition matches; a Fantasy Warfare mode that presents 15 dream matches, replete with excellently-crafted video packages compiled from WWE’s nearly-bottomless media archive; and the Path of Champions mode, an old-school arcade mode that places the gauntlet of 10 matches between you and championship glory. Three storylines are on offer, as The Undertaker issues his Gravest Challenge (in an excellently-campy rendered sequence that hams up the character circa 1994 perfectly, replete with a sleeper blinder by Paul Bearer), Randy Orton plays the current roster against each other in the lead-up to WrestleMania, and D-Generation X talk trash about being the greatest Tag Team in history (a contentious claim at best, as they rarely tag-teamed in their glory years and all their titles came as singles performers).
So while all the bells and whistles are in place, great expectations are rampant for the gameplay itself. And this is where things begin to fall short. This could have been, nay, should have been the holy-shit beat ‘em up to end them all. The urgency of Street Fighter, the ridiculousness of Mortal Kombat, the speed of SmackDown!, the bad-ass moves of the older WWE/F games. Hell, they could have even included ridiculous finishers like WWF In Your House. The potential was through the roof.
What we have here, though, is a regrettable rehash of 2007′s TNA Impact game, a sluggish beast with even more regrettable collision detection. The engine itself isn’t bad, reminiscent somewhat of the Nintendo 64′s WWE efforts, but the speed such a game is lacking definitely takes away from what’s meant to be a no-nonsense arcade basher. The physics are also lacking, with combinations most definitely underused to disappointing effect, while certain finisher maneouvres are impossible to do. As in, the game won’t let you, as any attempts at executing said moves result in a ghost dance of blocking and retreating, a fatal error in a game that revels in smashmouth, brutal action. Between this, the relative ease of landing big aerial attacks, and the resultant temptation to just go off the ropes all the time to get an easy victory, the gameplay on offer here is equally frustrating and shallow, as victory becomes a matter of going through the motions unless you’ve set the difficulty to All-Star, in which case it’s still a bit easier than is any good.
Meanwhile, matches go on far too long for a game of this kind, graphical bugs and glitches aren’t uncommon, and the unlockables system means dredging through the arcade mode over and over and over again, repeating the same motions and enduring the same problems to the point of putting the case through the screen.
In short, a wasted opportunity of a game, though a WWE All-Stars 2 would go a long way towards remedying a lot of the issues on display.
Drop-d Rating: 6/10
Tags: iwantwrestling, Nintendo Wii, THQ, WWE All Stars
