Ugh. Know when I should’ve started thinking better of putting WWE All-Stars under the microscope? The moment someone first explained the game’s outlandish, stylized tone and I observed, “Oh, so you mean it’s going to be a lot like WWF In Your House?”
Second hint: when the Blockbuster clerk made the same comparison.
For those wrestling fans who don’t remember In Your House – well, first off, who’s your shrink? I’m still trying to forget.
But for those who don’t remember it and didn’t play it, it was a World Wrestling Federation title more in the style of Mortal Kombat with its motion-captures of actual wrestlers. Instead of a true in-ring experience, the Undertaker chucked ghosts at people, Yokozuna belly-bumped opponents into submission and Doink The Clown electrocuted bitches with a joy buzzer.
It was every bit as stupid as that sounds.
Since then, World Wrestling Entertainment’s games have stuck with replicating the presentation and action of actual matches, not cartoony crap. Simultaneously, for years, fans clamored for and Vince McMahon’s Flying Circus and THQ finally put together a concept of pitting wrestling legends against current talent. They first tried it with WWE Legends of Wrestlemania last year, in the style of the current Smackdown! Vs. Raw series. It wasn’t good. In fact, despite a stellar legends roster, it just wasn’t a great overall game compared with other recent ones. That castle sank into the swamp.
Then King Vinnie built another castle . . . on a different swamp. But this one . . .
Well, it fell over, caught fire, then sank into the swamp.
This time, the bites the most recent Street Fighter title’s pumped-up character outlines and ties them with controls that will make Soulcalibur fans wet themselves with joy. Whereas the Smackdown! series has at least historically employed somewhat more Tekken-like style and strategy elements with often less user-friendly and intuitive control schemes – but also with great graphics and a more true-life experience – this one combines admittedly amusing WWE caricatures with a frustratingly skill-free set of controls.
I admit, it’s amusing – if not a little off-putting – seeing John Cena, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock rendered as cinderblocks with musculature. But unlike Smackdown!, they don’t even get fully animated entrances. They cut off about halfway down the ramp, more like the old-school WWF Wrestlefest arcade game. Make every steroid joke you want, folks. In this case, there’s no reason I should stop anybody.
Not only do the combination attacks once the match actually begins look physically impossible – however amusing they are to watch – but blocking or countering takes nearly millisecond-perfect timing and breaking a c-c-c-combo will just have you wondering “Wait, how’d I do that? How do I do that again?!” No game should ever make a veteran gamer feel like an octogenarian picking up an NES controller for the first time.
It’s a button-masher. That’s it. An arcade-style button-masher that requires absolutely no skill whatsoever. Changing opponents provide little difficulty variance at all, except that predictably the Ultimate Warrior seems very nearly invincible. Sure, wrestlers have varying classes that include Grapplers, Big Men, Brawlers and High-Fliers. But unique attacks aside, they all perform about exactly the same way.
Even the game modes don’t exactly smack of originality. There’s a fantasy-warfare mode of unlockable past-versus-present dream matches like The Rock versus John Cena, Randy Orton versus Jake “The Snake” Roberts and The Big Show versus Andre The Giant. There are also three story modes, in which you must run a 10-match gauntlet to face your choice (depending on the story) of the Undertaker at Summerslam, Randy Orton at Wrestlemania or DX at Wrestlemania. Once more, it’s pretty much exactly like the Wrestlefest arcade mode.
Considering the dumb luck and wild button-mashing involved, it’s also a reasonable difficulty comparison.
It’s to your advantage, no matter which mode, to just keep constantly attacking. Keep pounding the buttons and sooner or later, you’ll pull off something cool which will give some fans a 30-second, get-a-towel fangasm watching The Rock leap about 15 feet into the air when delivering a Rock-Bottom. Ultimately, though a blind kid could play this game as well as anyone actually trying to play it well.
It’s honestly not even worth renting, unless you have a drooling seven-year-old John Cena fanatic who will just be mesmerized by all the pretty, pretty colors. Honestly, though, THQ and World Wrestling Entertainment would really be better off just once more including more decent unlockable legends with each year’s Smackdown! iteration.
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