Vomit Comet

Here’s a lil review of a game I’ve been waiting for for a very long time…

Just to make sure there is no misunderstandings here, I have absolutely no problem with the premise. I review a game on it’s own merits and not based on hackneyed opinion pieces from “concerned’ parents. As a concerned parent myself, I know the difference between playing a game where people are diving off of houses and kids actually diving off of houses, and when my son gets old enough I’ll make sure he understands the difference too.

Now, on with the crappy.

First sign of a problem (and yes, I know I’m doing this on a PS2 so I should expect this, but): ……really……..slow………load………………………times.

Okay, so I’m finally into the game. I decide to give the Create-a-Wrestler feature a spin, first-thing. I mosey on over there, put in a name, and go to edit my appearance. That’s when I find out that there is no editing your appearance in this CAW. No, you have sixteen character models to choose from. No, seriously, that’s it. There’s no modifying these models for size, clothing, hair color, nothing. Sixteen models. Oh, but each model has something like 12 different costumes! Except that the costumes are basically color scheme changes to the same freakin’ model, and some of the models only have four costumes, but the programmers were too damn lazy to change the menu to say four costumes instead of 12 (or whatever. I didn’t write down exactly how many there were. I was in too big of a hurry to get this big, steaming pile of DVD out of my house) so they just repeat the four costumes over and over again. Ta-da! Four costumes become 12. Pathetic.

Okay, so I take my “custom character” and start a single-player game, known affectionately as “Talk Show Mode.” Now, we come to one of those things that made me really look forward to this game. They run a cut-scene, and a really well-done one at that, of this talk-show where this redneck character comes on and gripes about his brother (cousin, mom, whatever) wrestling in his backyard and slamming him into his barbecue grill. Funny stuff. Finally, we’re ready for the first fight. (I’ll assume that, had I progressed any farther in the game, the different stages would have been punctuated by cut-scenes such as this. If I have one regret for returning this game so fast, it’s that I didn’t get to see the other cut-scenes. Had I tried, I’d probably still be trying to get to stage 2.)

Another…………………really………………..slow……………………..load…………………

And we’re off….

GAMEPLAY

I get punched down right off the bat. I get up, but I’m met with a flying tire to my skull. I get up again, and I get a brick in the gut. Up again, and I try to dodge the car battery, but apparently the fat, loser prick I’m wrestling has the throwing control of a young Pedro Martinez and I get clocked again. Next thing I know, I’m knocked out. Game over.

So I try again. Every game has a learning curve, right?

And again.

And again.

And again, and I’m beginning to suspect the A.I. of being a little cheap.

And again, and I’m looking for a difficulty setting. There is none.

And again.

And again.

Repeat until sanity melts away. Then eject, get back in car, and go back to video store to trade in for something less frustrating, perhaps Myst.

First of all, the fat rednecks in this game move with the speed of Rey Mysterio on a cocaine bender. I hit the button to throw a punch while my opponent was ten feet….TEN FEET away from me. I didn’t miss, I never completed the punch. In the time it took my character to punch, the computer character traveled ten feet AND successfully grappled me. Once he performed one of his grapple moves on me (one of EIGHT, count ‘em EIGHT at his, and your, disposal) he ran to the opposite side of the backyard and proceeded to throw all manner of junk at me until I was knocked out. Dodging is not an option, you just try to cover as much ground as possible between foreign object shots. Oh, but I grabbed this long PVC pipe once (actually about ten different times) when I had somehow knocked my opponent down. As he got up, I swung the 8 foot long section of pipe. Apparently, PVC pipe exists in a nearby dimension relative to the computer opponent, because it passed right through him without incident.

It’s not bad enough that the A.I. is cheaper than an NBA Jam game. The collision detection (as described above) derives itself from the Shadowcat school. This is the same feature as in many schoolyard games of Cops ‘n’ Robbers: “I shot you!” “Nuh uh!” And what’s worse, the computer opponents no-sell worse than Hogan. I hit my opponent with a barbed-wire wrapped baseball bat. Actually HIT him this time. Before I could take a second swing, the opponent recovered from the hit, closed the distance, and grappled me. I’m not kidding.

As for the controls, there was a button for punching, a button for kicking, a button for grappling, a button for picking things up and putting them down again, a button for pinning, and a button for the ubiquitous “dash” which didn’t travel at a speed discernibly faster than the normal movement rate of the characters. Handling the controls themselves were easy enough, it’s just that you spend so much of your time on your freakin’ back that 99% of the button pushes you perform are to either try to get up or reverse something.

And here’s a short bit on reversing. This is yet another game that tells you which complex of buttons, pads, sticks, whatever you can use to counter, but gives you absolutely ZERO instruction on just how to counter. You use the directional pad (or stick) and the circle, Square, and X buttons, but THEY DON’T TELL YOU WHICH BUTTON BLOCKS WHAT. If it were JUST the buttons, then you could figure it out pretty easily, but adding the directional aspect, which pretty much cubes the number of reversal combinations, insures that, without a Prima guide, the user will have no idea how to reverse anything for the lifetime of the game.

As for the moves, as I said earlier, you have EIGHT grapple moves at your disposal, and most of them are lifted off of “traditional” pro wrestling or blatantly ripped off of certain WWE characters. I know, what’s supposed to make this game unique is the interaction with the environment. The problem is that it’s pretty damn hard to concentrate on suplexing a guy through a window or slamming them through a table when you’re just trying to avoid getting clubbed with flying objects 90% of the time. Oh, and the only ground moves are stomps or splashes or that kind of thing. No submission moves or even knee stomps or anything like that.

I’m not kidding. The gameplay is basically you getting things thrown at you between periodic slams by one character or the other. Then you lose.

There were supposedly some unique game modes you could play (provided you unlocked them) like King of the Hill. Admittedly, I never played this against another human. Maybe it’s terrific to beat on your friends with, but with the glaring holes I’ve described I see a huge opportunity for just pissing off your friends by exploiting the loopholes in the physics model.

Enjoy, Gamers