Legends of Wrestlemania

May 19th, 2009

Don’t let the title fool you.  This game is not legendary.   It is however loads of fun if you allow yourself to look past a couple of things.   The development team that brought you the now iconic Smackdown series, came together in the name of nostalgia to present WWE Legends of Wrestlemania.  

First of all.. The roster.   If you woke up every Saturday morning in the 80’s to watch WWF television like I did, prepare to take a trip down memory lane.   There are 42 playable characters including everyone’s favorites like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Ultimate Warrior, The Undertaker, “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, and Bret “Hitman” Hart.   From a personal standpoint, I was ecstatic to see characters such as Mr. Perfect, “Ravishing” Rick Rude, and “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes included.   That’s only scratching the surface.  All the legends are here, folks.  Well… almost all.   The roster provides a few disappointments with the omissions of “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Harley Race, and Owen Hart, and Jesse “The Body” Ventura.  Another cool little perk is that you can import the entire Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 roster.   So you can have John Cena wrestle Hulk Hogan in an ultimate match of bad wrestling moves.   Or, you can have Randy Orton wrestle Jake “The Snake” Roberts in what would probably be one of the most memorable matches of all-time.   I have to admit though, I was a little unhappy with the addition of Hunter Hearst Helmsley on the original legends roster.  Legend?  Really?  The guy who laid down for the Ultimate Warrior in 8 seconds at Wrestlemania 12?   Hey, Triple H will be remembered forever, but Hunter Hearst Helmsley sucked as a character and an idea.   I dig the young Shawn Michaels as much as the last guy, but did we really need him in the game when we could import him?  Little things. 

The appearance and presentation of the game is fantastic more times than not.   The arenas are built to match the environments presented in the actual Wrestlemania events.  For example, if you play Wrestlemania III, the wrestlers will be brought to the ring on the mini-ring floats that were made famous in the Pontiac Silverdome.   As your character is coming to the ring, you will also notice that the name graphics that come up are identical to the primitive graphics used in the 80’s.   It just feels right to see these things culminate on your screen.   However, what don’t feel right at times are the proportions for these wrestlers.  Hulk Hogan looks bigger than he actually was at any point in his life, which is saying a lot.   I took one look at the character model for Dusty Rhodes and was shocked to see “The Dream” looking like he was ready to bench press a gorilla.  Dusty didn’t have huge arms or a nice physique.  That was the reason he was worshipped as “The American Dream”, a regular guy, a plumber’s son… see what I’m getting at? 

The gameplay itself is Jekyll & Hyde.   The main controls are the basic face controls you see on the controller.   It is yet another throwback element in the game, except this time they are trying to go back to the old school feel of the old WWF arcade games.   A single direction and any of the four face buttons will perform a move.   Those are pretty much all the commands you will need to use throughout the game.   It’s easy to learn and adjust to, but also makes for some repetitive moves and unintentional actions.   There have been times where I’ve made Andre the Giant submit with a bear hug when I was Big John Studd.   Oops.  The chain sequences can be fun and are actually pretty cool when it comes time to pull of your finisher… the first time.   The only downside?  It doesn’t have that spontaneous feel of a finisher.   I’ve had many fantastic matches in the Smackdown series that featured finishers being countered and performed out of nowhere, adding to the moment.   After all, we’re all looking for the best simulation out there and not every finisher performed comes after two set-up moves. 

Legends of Wrestlemania doesn’t exactly have a career mode.   “Legend Killer” is the only mode in the game that slightly resembles a career, but even that falls way short.  Basically, you create a character and use this mode to raise his attributes.   I, for example, created Randy “The Ram” Robinson, the character portrayed by Mickey Rourke in what was this years best film, in my opinion, “The Wrestler”.   Creating the character was fun on its own.  I took Snuka’s “Superfly” finisher and made it into “The Ram Jam”.  I even imported “Sweet child o’ mine” by Guns ‘N Roses and applied it to my characters entrance.  What is disappointing is that there is no real prize to fight for. There's no championship, no “Wrestlemania Moment”, nothing.  You just get better. 

The other mode that slightly resembles a career mode is “The Wrestlemania Tour”.  This mode allows you to “relive”, “re-write”, or “redefine”.  So, in “relive”, you get to pick the character that won that particular match and re-do all the moves and actions that he did to win that match.   For example, if you want to  “relive” the King Kong Bundy Vs. Hulk Hogan match from Wrestlemania II (who wouldn’t, right?), you’d have to go through all the key moments of that awful match and perform all the amazing moves that Hogan unleashed in that match.   In “rewrite”, you basically pick the loser of the match and try to reverse history.  In “redefine” you can take a Wrestlemania match and add a new stipulation to it.   It can be pretty fun, but again, it lacks the replay factor that grips players.  

Bottom line… I’ve always loved professional wrestling.   I’ve always loved professional wrestling video games.  For me, it wasn’t all that hard to have fun with this game, but in no way, shape, or form, is this game a hit.   If you like nostalgia and Jake “the Snake” Roberts, you might enjoy Legends of Wrestlemania.

Review By K.G. Blikian

 





 

Submitted by: VoreekMAN