Be Excellent To Each Other

For some baffling reason, THQ keep sending me Wrestling games, and I think Wrestling is bullshit.

Is there anyone who would like to review "Legends of Wrestlemania" for me. It has that actor from Mr. Nanny and Santa with Muscles in it. It also features "Violence".

Yeah.

ah man I wanted to. be honest ive probably got too much to play although so does myp, and I cant write well good.

Is King Kong Bundy in it? Or Little Beaver? They were the best wrestlers. The former (who was 450 pounds) sat on the latter (who was a dwarf) and ruined his career. This is the only WWF factoid I know.

And myp has it.

I was going to suggest a royal rumble to see who got to review it.

I noticed that one of the Wrestlemania games has a 'bra and panties' match - I'm glad you didn't suggest that.

I've just thrown you pretenders over the top rope. Can you smell what myp is cooking?

It's lasagne.

I could imagine a topless match would cause more distress.

I'll review one in the future, if this one is already taken.

Never been much of one for Children's Drama, but I enjoyed the recent Harry Potter game so this Wrestling Mania stuff should be quite good fun as well, I'd imagine.

be fair wrestling games are pretty turgid single player but get 4 people in a room playing and its one fo the best multiplayer games out there.

Indeed. Some of the best multiplayer gaming I've ever had was Ladder matches with mates on #WrestlingGame years ago — three players being the sweetspot we found, where two could get into an intense battle, while the other sneakily makes for the ladder and tries to grab the belt before anyone can react.

I'm not a fan of wrestling, but the games can be an awful lot of fun with the right people.

I played Smackdown 2009, and a large proportion of the game was it telling me to "mash buttons repeatedly".

I then decided that I did not want to play wrestling games.

To be fair, I can't speak for any of the recent games. It's been about five years since I last played one, and I can't for the life of me remember which.

The only thing I can remember really well is making a massive mexican named Carlos Delgado, who had a hook for a hand, an eyepatch, a bushy moustache, wore zebra-skin pants and entered the ring in a shopping trolley.

I haven't played a good once since Ultimate Muscle on the Cube which was great. Really well done cel-shaded graphics too. Plus, for the obsessives, you get to collect all the little plastic M.U.S.C.L.E figures too. Shame it didn't get a Pal release though.

The character creation is pretty much the best thing about the last five years of WWF games.

I got an old Smackdown vs RAW for a couple of quid. It was worth what I paid for it but only one mate liked playing it as much as me so it was only played a few times while everyone else looked for videos of the Ultimate Warrior shouting gibberish on youtube.

The wrestling mechanics have never been any good since AKI left the scene. The smackdown series still remains too lightweight and poorly animated. They throw a shedload of special matches at it but fail to get the basics right.

I've already reviewed it. It's absolute rubbish.

I enjoyed the demo. But then I like wrestling. I even watch the shit that TNA put out occasionally.

Here you go then:

http://savygamer.co.uk/2009/03/wwe-lege ... eview.html

You've clearly never played No Mercy on the N64 if Legends of Wrestlemania is the best wrestling game ever... Still, good review man! I'll be tempted by this but only when it comes down in price.

That shouldn't be long.

Oh, and TNA is awesome a lot of the time!

So how do they explain all the wrestlers from different eras fighting in the same ring? As you mentioned, half the appeal lies in the terrible soap opera melodrama. Is there a story mode? Or is it just a series of unrelated vignettes? Good review by the way.

You just replay choice matches from each WrestleMania - there's no coherent story mode to speak of, because as a concept it wouldn't work. the video packages are superb.

I've never played No Mercy on the N64—I might have to pick that up.

As Choccodo said, it plays you a video clip of a particular match from history, and then instructs you to recreate some of the moves that actually happened. The game is light on content compared with SvR, but I think it's much more fun because of it. I feel that the fun of the game will be getting some friends around and setting up interesting exhibition matches.

It does have a creation mode as well. I've made a guy who wears a face mask like Hannibal Lecter, but is in the colours of the union flag; he's got a flat-top and wears a red and black all-in-one bodysuit.

I love No Mercy to pieces. The solidity of the moves, the exciting (but slow) fighting system. Of course the graphics are terrible by today's standards but that doesn't matter. The CAW was quick to use but thorough. Unlike modern smackdowns which take ages to load in the textures. Another great thing was being able to assign four (I think) different appearances to each CAW.

I find the idea of re-creating a match interesting. Anyone with an hour to spare for Hogan Vs Warrior Wrestlemania 6? Anyone?

Does anybody not accept this?

But yeah, you don't need to like wrestling to play the games. I hate skateboarding, but Allah knows I spent enough time playing Tony Hawk's games at the start of the decade.

No Mercy is a fine game, but it gets weird amounts of praise among the hardcore pro-graps gaming fraternity. Some elements of it are unparallelled (working the bodypart, quite literally, ftw), but it can also be really annoying. I remember loathing ladder matches. Overall it's not really better than, say, WWE: Here Comes the Pain. Haven't played the last couple.

Also haven't really played that much Fire Pro, which is supposed to be awesome.

No really, it is better than that because it plays better and has more solidity. Ladder matches can be a bit crap though. I hate the glitching animation in the Smackdown series. No mercy has either far less or none. I seem to recall somewhere it was hand animated rather than motion capture but I don't know how true that is. Def Jam Vendetta uses the same fight system, which is straightforward, gives you plenty of options and works.



It is supposed to be but I found it quite unpenetrable. The weird camera angle is a bit off putting for a start. Getting any move to work I find really difficult as well.

I struggled with Fire Pro too. I had 'D' for the Dreamcast and used a saved data file to add a load of wrestlers and westernise a lot of the wrestler names. I then printed out translations for most of the menus. When it came to the actual gameplay though, I just couldn't get anywhere. If I remember rightly, there was a bit of a knack to the grappling which I just couldn't get right so I'd just lose repeatedly. I like the idea of it being done on a small scare though so you've got masses of wrestlers with lots of little details here and there, like having lighting tubes in the corners to smash your opponents into.

Indeed, great in principle, terrible to play.

You're lucky I've already counted to ten because that statement is a very wrong statement indeed.

Never mind, Like a typical No Mercy fan I'll just go off grumbling to myself about how great it is and how I played one match for nearly an hour to beat Dude Love in a steel cage.

And firepro.. If I recall, it was all about the timing. I remember the grapples would work best when you pressed the relevant button when your hand touched the opponents shoulder. It was quite confusing though. I know people who swear by it.

Did anyone ever play Giant Gram on the Dreamcast? This was an awesome game with tons of depth... most inaccessible to anyone that didn't speak Japanese though!

No Mercy fans always hate me

That was another I tried to get into. Seemed to have great potential - I loved the slow motion stuff when you worked over a body part and it showed you how much damage you'd done to it. Sadly, I didn't really know how to play that one either so that was guesswork for me too!

I thought Royal Rumble on the Dreamcast was decent too.