WWE All-Stars Review: Ladies and Gentlemen, the "Soulcalibur" of wrestling games....

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.

Building castles gets expensive after a while.

Let Wrestlemania Weekend Begin Again...

As a wrestling fan, there just is no weekend of the year for me quite like Wrestlemania Weekend.


This year is particularly bittersweet, though. This marks 20 years almost exactly from the time I fell in love with the wrestling business not long right after seeing Hulk Hogan vs. Sgt. Slaughter for the (then-WWF) Championship and the Ultimate Warrior vs. "Macho King" Randy Savage in the company's first "Career-Ending Match" at Wrestlemania VII. 


In that intervening two decades, I've watched the evolution of both professional wrestling and its popularity. I was a loyal fan throughout the early-'90s transitional period when the business was finding its new way. I shook my head in puzzlement with the meteoric, unprecedented, and never-equaled explosion of wrestling's popularity when WCW Monday Nitro and WW(F) Monday Night Raw engaged in mortal combat during the "Monday Night Wars" when every Monday night really was wrestling night. But when that boom ended, there I remained during a time when I'd say that I'm a wrestling fan and like Pavlov's most annoying dogs, those bandwagon fans that jumped on board in the late '90s said that they stopped watching when the careers of Goldberg, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock came to an end.


Which, to this day, always makes me think one thing: "No, you're not a wrestling fan. You're a Rock/Austin/Goldberg fan. There IS a difference."


But through every high and low wrestling has endured, Vince McMahon and Co. bring the A-game in the three months leading up to this one weekend. And almost every year, there's one storyline -- two, if we're really lucky -- into which the now-WWE production teams pours their every drop of creativity to build the drama that reminds fans like me why we're fans: because every great, memorable moment I've witnessed was one that I never saw coming. And I never know when that next one will hit that will change the business like some bald Texan telling an opponent that "Austin 3:16 says (he) just whipped your ass" or maybe just a match so good, it lives forever in my memory (there's a Shawn Michaels-Chris Benoit match from Raw that fits that latter description which, sadly, will probably never again see the light of day.)


When I think about those moments, I think of three great promo videos that aired leading up to marquee Wrestlemania match-ups. Whether you're a fan or not, you cannot deny that these three are more like trailers to grand epics with music and footage paired as perfectly as any combination of those two could be paired to generate goose-bump drama.


So if you're a fan, please enjoy these. On these three occasions, WWE reminded me why I'm a wrestling fan and probably will be for life. If you're a bit of a noob, watch 'em anyway. Maybe they'll get you just curious enough to dip a toe on Sunday and maybe enjoy this form of entertainment as much as I do.


******


"In time, your time will be no more . . ."


Those unexpected moments I mentioned? Behold Exhibit A.


I grant that this isn't even a week old, having aired just this past Monday. But a feud has been built between these two last remaining giants of wrestling's last boom period. With Kurt Angle now wrestling elsewhere, Steve Austin and The Rock retired, Mick Foley a nostalgia act, Shawn Michaels entering the Hall of Fame this year and Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit tragically dead, Triple H and the Undertaker are the last two titans standing -- each wanting to be "the last outlaw." They are WWE's two John Marstons -- the last two cowboys at the end of a dying, lawless, wild age.


I've enjoyed this match's build-up, particularly since they met at arguably the greatest Wrestlemania ever produced exactly 10 years ago in Houston. It's a sense of history, and of a full circle. But then I watched this promo and heard Mark Collie's eerie, tense, whispered vocals and the hair stood on the back of my neck.


If you've ever seen the Thomas Jane version of The Punisher and read the sub-head, you have a pretty good idea what's coming.









"There ain't no grave, can hold my body down . . ."


In a very, very short time, this two-year saga of the two greatest performers wrestling has ever known or may ever know has become already the stuff of immortal legend.


Heading into Wrestlemania 25, the Undertaker was 16-0 at Wrestlemania. Shawn Michaels had already cemented his reputation as reaching a different performance level that one time per year. But he had one thing he hadn't yet achieved: he wanted to end what has become known in reverent terms simply as The Streak.


At Wrestlemania 25, he almost did what 14 others before him hadn't. But where fans thought this great feud had reached a climax, the people writing it knew that was only the penultimate chapter. For the next year, Michaels would plant seeds for the true climax by acknowledging that he'd wrestling a "near-perfect" match and only made "one mistake." He started telling the world he believed -- no, he knew -- that he could beat the Undertaker on the one stage where no other had.


Finally, after months of goading, the Undertaker laid down one final challenge: Streak Versus Career.


In twenty years, I've never seen long-term booking and story-planning quite like this. And it will probably never happen again. But in the meantime, I witness the second greatest Wrestlemania-hype video in 20 years following this business.


And I never expected who would provide the soundtrack . . .









The Best. Period.


I saved the best for last. 


Sadly, this video also puts me into a tough position. If you didn't come of age as a fan during the late '90s, you just can't fully appreciate what Steve Austin and Dwayne Johnson shared as performers. The two greatest, most popular, entertaining performers of their era, who each helped launch wrestling to unprecedented and yet unequaled heights and became almost bigger than the business itself, actually wrestled comparatively few times but every single time was magic. Their charisma and ability told a story every time the two locked eyes. This was Joker and Batman. This was Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas. This was Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.


Austin was returning to Wrestlemania after taking off nearly a full year to finally repair a legitimately long-broken neck. In the meantime, The Rock had become arguably -- depending on who you asked and the day -- either the company's most popular star or a damn-close second. One more spark to light the fire? Austin would main-event Wrestlemania in his home state of Texas. It was a moment at a time in the wrestling business that words just don't do justice. You can't define it with verbiage to someone who's never seen it. And those who are seeing it just now, can't really appreciate its full context because it was the end of an era they never experienced from its rise, to its fall.


But few will ever forget this one video. It may be the only truly awesome contribution to humanity Limp Bizkit have ever made. Top to bottom -- pacing, footage, cuts -- it is promotional, hype-building genius.


But it speaks for itself better than I ever could for it. Enjoy.







This year won't be without its sad moments, though. For the first time since Wrestlemania 22, I won't be watching with some combination of my best friends, whom I've affectionately dubbed The Horsemen -- Chris Faughn, Jeremy "J-King" Hulshof and John Inman. Finances and circumstances just put a bullet in a once-a-year tradition that always involves home-cooking, watching both the annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony on USA and tons of past wrestling matches on DVD, and a yearly four-handed poker game in tribute to our departed friend, fellow wrestling fan and tournament poker player Steve Black, who passed away between seeing Wrestlemania 23 live in his hometown of Detroit with Jeremy and I and being able to see Ric Flair's *ahem* "retirement" match at Wrestlemania 24. I'm unemployed and cash-strapped, Chris has a baby on the way and John will be watching on pay-per-view with Jeremy. For the time being, I must hit the pause button on a tradition about coming together with my band of brothers over something we've all loved for years.


But what this weekend is about won't change. At 6 p.m. Sunday night, I know where I'll be. That's because I know where The Miz, C.M. Punk, Randy Orton, Edge, Alberto del Rio, Triple H and the Undertaker will be. Once a year, everything culminates. And once a year, I might witness that next great memory's birth. You never know.
I'm Sleepless Colin. You're not. And that's the bottom line.