Genre: Fighting; Sub-Genre: Sports Sim, Wrestling
ESRB: T (Lots of shirtless dudes getting hit with stuff)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 8/2
Developer: Yukes
I'm done with this game series. Get a new developer, please. Many games are accused of just releasing the same game over and over but with minor tweaks so they can call it a sequel (Call of Duty, Madden, Dynasty Warriors, etc), but this series takes the grand prize for it. Why? Because the games have gotten WORSE. I should be able to put "infinite" up there for gameplay hours, but it can't even hold my attention through the campaign. And the 2 hour mark is just the amount of time you can spend screwing around in create-a-character before getting bored since that's the best thing to do in these games. I'm guessing the only reason other critics don't pan it as much as I do is because there aren't other wrestling games out there to compare it to. Unless you have a freaking memory like I do. Just from starting this game up I found six major things to be missing from previous iterations:
1. Create-a-taunt
2. Explore 100% of backstage area
3. 4 player campaign mode
4. Targeting that worked
5. Hit point system that made sense
6. Full UI
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| Tearing it up backstage...yes! And this is PS1 era! |
Here's an inherent problem with any wrestling game: they don't care about hit stun mechanics. See, in a proper fighting game there is attention to how easy it is for one fighter to lock the other down with a barrage of attacks. Typically attacks will push the fighters apart so eventually they can't reach one another and the recovery from being hit leaves enough time to evade damage from improperly timed combos. In a wrestling game, EVERYTHING can be used to stun lock an opponent. And, of course, you can hit your enemy when they are on the ground or getting up. The only feature in place to prevent every single battle from devolving into "he who lands the first punch wins" is an incredibly awkward and random counter system. And WWE '13 has done nothing to improve on this situation. On top of that, the targeting system in this game is remarkably unresponsive, slow, and ultimately useless. Seriously. If I'm targeting my opponent and perform a grab I can accidentally grab my own teammate if he's close enough. Instead of the game understanding that I seriously do not want to DDT my tag partner, leaving myself vulnerable and alone, my guy just follows through while thinking, "Oops, might as well. Not like I could just let go of him or something." The best way to avoid this is to fight in one-on-one, but then you'll still subject yourself to all the other terrible gameplay decisions. Animations are more "realistic" these days, so that means they are stupidly awkward, lethargic, and difficult to connect. Damage is not explained at all. Back in the day everyone just had a life bar like in Street Fighter or what-have-you. Hit a guy in the head 35 times with a steel chair and he still will get back up after being knocked out for approximately zero seconds. Oh, but he'll clutch his temple in pain, I guess.
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| Generally the audience believes that this would hurt. Video games disagree. |
For some reason it was decided that campaign modes would be added to recreate the mid to late 90's storylines going on in the WWE. There was a heated ratings war with WCW and it lead to an amazing jump in viewership for the program, sure, but why is this the foreground in a game named after the current generation? Games like Legends of Wrestlemania are a celebration of nostalgia, and that's cool, but why drag the kids through this when they paid to see CM Punk or whoever? My best guess is that the people who watched back then were teenagers and are now adults. Or, more specifically, adults within the specific demographic that spends the most money on video games. So... marketing. Whatever. What does this mean for the game? Nothing much, really. It's an idea. But I really didn't care about it at all. I want to run my create-a-character around and mess up the WWE universe. If you don't do the objectives it's fun to think that you're messing up history by ending matches differently than they're supposed to and causing paradoxes, but time won't actually implode on itself. Missing objectives just means missing unlockables. WWE has some good archivists to dig up all this stuff, so I'll give them that.
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| Oh man! Do you remember when this happened? Do you, huh huh huh?! REMEMBER!!! |
One great thing about modern gaming is online multiplayer. Unfortunately I don't have a code to access it fully so I was limited to the trial stuff. It doesn't matter, though, because in my first match I realized that my opponents were taking the fight seriously. So I picked up the steel steps and hit the ref with them, rendering myself disqualified. I did this because I had already had enough of the game and this was just the last stop. It's unplayable, in terms of being a fighting game, so my patience for trying to actually fight anyone had run out.
I also want to add real quick that the graphics in this game are bad. Vince McMahon looks like a mutant, no one has detailed texturing, and the audience is as blocky and fake as ever. This seriously looks like a last gen game with HD resolution. Garbage.
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| Conan, Val Kilmer, and a caveman in a suit? Who? (Supposed to be Triple H, HBK, and Vince McMahon) |
Conclusion:
Don't play this game. Either get an emulator and pick something out from the past (like RAW for SNES or Smackdown 2 for PS1) or wait indefinitely for some other developer to make a wrestling game that's actually fun.
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