Gamespot reviews Wrestlemania XIX

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

It's so much better than X8.

 

Wrestling matches are actually...FUN!

[Guest Anglesault]

Bought it today. revenge mode sucks.

 

No WGTT and once again no Jazz bothers me.

 

Otherwise, fun

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

I have a feeling HCTP will outclass based on good gameplay, a good story mode, and a roster that is a bit closer to the current WWE.

[LaParkaYourCar 0]

Oh I'm sure HCTP will probably be better, but as a Gamecube owner I am quite content with this game.

[Fökai 0]

I had the most fun I've had in a wrestling game playing as Rey Rey in a Royal Rumble.

 

Recap, please?

[LJSexay 0]

so.. what kind of stuff is unlockable? Wrestlers? I need to know! Hopefully some specifics

[Jesse Badass 0]

I chokeslammed Lesnar of the stage through a table with the Undertaker. I connects and everything. It even looks better with the double repley's. Very nice.

[LaParkaYourCar 0]

Hey you can't fault a game that has a Springboard SSP to the outside as one of the moves to choose from when making a CAW.

 

Some things you can unlock: new Weapons, new hairstyles (including a mullet), new entrance stuff (pyro, etc.), new arenas (I think), new moves (I've already unlocked a Shining Wizard), and new costume parts.

[claydude14 0]

I'm playing revenge as Goldust, and suprisingly I like it alot. It'll hold me over till Viewtiful Joe as a beat em up. The actual wrestling is pretty good too. Had to get used to it after playing Def Jam for so long, but I like it.

[Just call me Dan 0]

Revenge mode seems passable at first, but just wait until you get to like the fourth stage on each level. then we'll see how much you like it. I don't think there is any way possible to keep them from messing with the controls on the level where you have to prevent 2-3 guys from climbing a cage for 4 minutes. I don't think I can possibly beat it.

[Guest John Dub]

I had the best match in any wrestling game I've ever played, and I've got everything from Fire Pro to Wretlemania the Arcade game.

 

It was a triple threat match. I was Matt Hardy, playing against Benoit and Eddie. It went 27 minutes and change, and it was just all sorts of good. We were rolling out of crossfaces, slipping out of powerbombs, and kicking out of specials. Every pinfall was broken up but the odd man out, and there was instance, about 20 minutes in, when I hit a top rope legdrop on Benoit while Eddie was down. It was as close as close can be with the three count before he kicked out. We were just going back and forth, bleeding and nailing specials. It ended anticlimactically, as Benoit put me in a simple headlock and I tapped, but it made sense as my head had been taking quite a pounding and I was holding it. I was blown away.

[Guest KJ Brackish]

Id like to add my two cents. We at Game Crazy decided to put the game in the night before release in one of our cages. So thus at closing time I decided to give it a run. I find this game lacking compared to the SD series and ESPECIALLY SD:HCTP, but overall, I enjoyed the game because it brought anticipation. My first match was a 3 way HIAC. I was HBK whilst I faced HHH and Orton. I seriously kicked big arse! I kept doing his "superkick" before finally getting the chance to do....."THE BIG ONE!" I metered myself up all the way and taunted for my finisher and was surprised at seeing HBK "Warm up the band." I of course made an ass out of myself by warming up along with him (while getting awkward looks from my co-workers), then proceeded to dominate HHH and Orton with 2 superkicks to Orton and 1 to HHH. I did see how they double team, but the difference is that I'm a hardkore gamer, thus, they cannot double team me. I have precision button pressing, and regularly reversed moves. Overall....I give this game a 8.0 due to the fact that I thought it was pretty fun, I didn't get to experience season mode yet (Thank God!), and I kicked ass!

 

Downfalls were:

Graphics sucked HUGE arse! I mean, they could have done better. Brock looked like he roided up for the game!

 

End of my column!

 

DFA

[Boner Kawanger 0]

Brock is fucking scary and unstoppable. I dominated Eddie with him (not sacreligious, I thought it would produce a good match). Eddie didn't get one move in.

[claydude14 0]

God damn Revenge gets ass hard. I'm the level before last on the first world, and you have 10 minutes to get on top of this 20 foot high thing you must climb, all while 2 gaurds at a time (if you knock one off a new one replaces them) are battling you, making it damn near impossible to even get up there. And once you're up there, you meet a wrestler, and must throw him off. But of course the 2 gaurds come up too, so it's 3 on 1 in a narrow passage way, and it's just impossible.

[Just call me Dan 0]

God damn Revenge gets ass hard. I'm the level before last on the first world, and you have 10 minutes to get on top of this 20 foot high thing you must climb, all while 2 gaurds at a time (if you knock one off a new one replaces them) are battling you, making it damn near impossible to even get up there. And once you're up there, you meet a wrestler, and must throw him off. But of course the 2 gaurds come up too, so it's 3 on 1 in a narrow passage way, and it's just impossible.

That one is pretty hard, but wait until you get to its next level. You won't beat it.

[cbacon 0]

Levels? WORLDS? Wrestling game? These do not compute

[Just call me Dan 0]

If you've read the past info on the game, you know what we are referring to, and it is no secret no one likes it. We have to play through it to get money to buy parts. Bitching about the fact that it is in the game is long over.

[Downhome 0]

Does ANYONE like the Revenge mode?

 

It sounds pretty damn cool to me, it's something I've always wanted in a wrestling game, ie, going through stages kicking ass like in a beatemup.

[Lightning Flik 0]

Does ANYONE like the Revenge mode?

 

It sounds pretty damn cool to me, it's something I've always wanted in a wrestling game, ie, going through stages kicking ass like in a beatemup.

From what I've read, no.

 

I still have to wait till Friday to find out for myself how this will go.

[Just call me Dan 0]

Downhome, you and I are a lot alike in our approaches to near about everything as far as I've read over the last year on the board. I went into it with an open mind and I kind of enjoyed it at first, seeing as I only played an exhibition match or so before beginning. I smiled at first, seeing new moves from a new character I'd never played before, and I felt like it was final fight with cooler moves. Then the AI kicked in and my pessimism kicks into overdrive.

 

You hate it, and you get flustered, and you KNOW you have to play it to get money. You could start over with someone new and just keep getting money, but you HAVE to beat it. It gets even dumber and even harder and VERY repetitive. I will beat it one time and NEVER set foot in there again, as I don't usually screw around with the CAWS anymore because they aren't like No Mercy's.

[Just call me Dan 0]

Just beat revenge mode. Sigh, thank God. If anyone beats it with goldberg, tell me who you see standing there in the hall just before your MX match at the very end.

[Guest Sakura]

The game feels very cheaply made. Like even though the gameplay is better than SD, it still feels really tacked on and half-assed.

 

The game looks and feels just...wrong. The models are like little toys or something. Animated poorly and cartoony looking. None of the moves are intense or anything, they're so weak and lifeless.

[Ripper 0]

Well my review.

 

The Wrestling portion: I love it. The gameplay has a little bit of all of the wrestling engines. I love the strong and weak grapples, the variety of moves and the reveral system. Everything works well in this portion of the game. I get to have long and fun matches, the opponents ACTUALLY stay down (I can not stress how annoying it is when you hit someone with 5 finishers and they just pop up like in other games)...Just a good all around experiance. It is fun.

 

The Graphics: I love the graphics of this game. They aren't going for photorealism, and I actually appreciate it. The animation is obviously not motion captured, but they did a great job on it. Think how movement in No Mercy worked and thats pretty much what you have here. The entrances are gorgeous as the lighting and particle effects are wonderful.

 

CAW: Not bottom of the well deep, but deep enough to create ALOT of different characters. The move list is fairly deep and I love how you can use alot of the finishers as strong moves. The EX finisher is a nice addition(so your created characters can have more than one finisher from the same position ie: You can have a F5 and a Stunner as two of your finishers).

 

The Entrance Editor is something you can get lost in. You can spend forever chosing lighting, pyros and camera angles for you entrance. I do wish they had a more real time preview of the different camera angles and they really do need a couple of generic Titantrons (they have one that just flashes the WWE logo, but more would be great). BTW, the complete version of John Cenas entrance music...*Thumbs Up* The movements, entraces and such of Jeff Hardy, Rhyno, and Raven are obviously there...probably more if I actually paid attention.

 

ShopZone: I have bought all of the entrances, most of the clothing, all of the moves from ShopZone so far. i also love the fact that you can buy ability points for your CAW characters. The entrance taunts are nice and varied as are the moves, although they could have used a few more vicious ones like No Mercy had.

 

Revenge Mode:

 

*Sigh*. Okay, imagine playing any of your average 3rd person adventure games. Now toss on the No Mercy method of moving. Thats what you have in this abortion of a gaming experiance.

 

I have SO much hate for it. I didn't lose one Mission due to the difficulty or its challenge. It all came from the fact that the controls are not set up to do what you need to. For Example, there is a stage where you have to destroy a car. Now in a wrestling engine, you can only focus on your enemies. So as you are trying to destory this car, you character just stops hitting it and kicks off into the other direction trying to hit the enemy he is focused on.

 

Then you have the sequential focusing thing. Say a man is standing directly in front of you with a sledge hammer. You are focused on the man you just knocked down. You hit the change focus button and you focus on the guy across the freaking parking lot instead of the guy DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU. Once again, what works in a wrestling game does not work in revenge mode.

 

The AI is extremely cheap in this mode which is VERY annoying. It took me forever to beat all the missions the first time through, although I didn't lose any the second time through. The only reason you would play this is to get money for Shop Zone and get secret characters.

 

Secret Characters:

 

Remeber all of those secret characters from Revenge? Yeah, Ming Chee, Black Widow, those guys. Well they are all in this game. The only problem is that you can only unlock 4 of them each time you complete the game. There are aparently 20 "Boss" characters in the game.

 

I would have loved to have cut some of them and added the REAL WWE roster, but then again, MING FUCKING CHEE!!

 

All in all, this would be a much better game with a real story mode (something that HCTP will no doubt smoke it in) because Revenge mode SUCKS. The gameplay is wonderful (I think it will win the best gameplay out of the 3 games this year) and the graphics are not attempting to be photo realistic and in that sense they are great. If you are expecting photo realism, then Raw 2 will probably be your best bet.

 

Over all, I give this game a 8.5 due to the great gameplay, fun wrestling, great CAW but that damn Revenge mode just stops it from being a higher score.

[Ripper 0]

Just beat revenge mode. Sigh, thank God. If anyone beats it with goldberg, tell me who you see standing there in the hall just before your MX match at the very end.

I beat it with him, but I wasn't paying attention. It isn't the same black guy everytime?

[Insane Bump Machine 0]

If you are expecting photo realism, then Raw 2 will probably be your best bet.

Have you SEEN some of RAW's models? They're awful and look nothing like the real wrestlers.

 

WMXIX seems to be surprisongly good from what I read here. I'll at least rent it.

[Ripper 0]

OK, well if I were to create a Kane from scratch, where the hell is his attire?  Is it not in the game?  I can't find a shirt or pants or kneepads even remotely close to that.  I think the CAW sucks.  why can't they just make available everything already in the game (the wrestler's items) and just a few more additions?  Probably take up less space and be easier.  Fuck!

What? Its all right there. You can even have the towel over his head.

 

You have to get teh generic shirt and go to the logo section of it. You can make a very good bald Kane.

 

 

Edited September 15, 2003 by Ripper

[Ripper 0]

If you are expecting photo realism, then Raw 2 will probably be your best bet.

Have you SEEN some of RAW's models? They're awful and look nothing like the real wrestlers.

 

WMXIX seems to be surprisongly good from what I read here. I'll at least rent it.

In the last few movies of the game, when they showed them with the complete lighting and texturing, they are the best looking models. Smackdown has great looking textures and such, but they don't have the poly count to pull off what Raw has done graphics wise.

[Insane Bump Machine 0]

In the last few movies of the game, when they showed them with the complete lighting and texturing, they are the best looking models.  Smackdown has great looking textures and such, but they don't have the poly count to pull off what Raw has done graphics wise.

Of course they have a better polycount, but they don't look like the real wrestlers. Just look at RAW's Goldberg model. I wouldn't even recognize him if he didn't have his tattoo. RAW can have flashy lightning and shiny models all it wants, it still looks like ass if your texture artists suck.

[Ripper 0]

In the last few movies of the game, when they showed them with the complete lighting and texturing, they are the best looking models.  Smackdown has great looking textures and such, but they don't have the poly count to pull off what Raw has done graphics wise.

Of course they have a better polycount, but they don't look like the real wrestlers. Just look at RAW's Goldberg model. I wouldn't even recognize him if he didn't have his tattoo. RAW can have flashy lightning and shiny models all it wants, it still looks like ass if your texture artists suck.

Oh I agree that their texture artist sucked ass. The way there was no adjustments on the specular levels and such, horrible. But they seemed to have fixed the SHINEY GUY problem, and other things in most of the more recent builds that I have seen. I have to believe that they got rid of the last texture guy, because that was laughably bad.

 

See I hate the "Oh, look at the texture" models more than the "look at the polycount" models. I hate when modelers use textures to try to hide their lack of good model work. Maybe it the artist in me that is nitpicking.

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

Ripper just doesn't want to admit how smoking HCTP will be. I mean the graphics already blow WM XIX and RAW 2 out of the water and it isn't even finished.