Cogito
01-17-2004, 10:21 PM
Someone talked about a wrestling game. Buddy of mine got RAW 2 for the XBox for Christmas, and I played around with it. The extent to which you can customize things is quite amazing, and they've also replicated the wrestlers moves in a very accurate way. It's got some flaws though: the user interface is quite poor, so you end up just pressing the green "A" button to confirm things over and over and over again, because there are these pointless cut-scenes. Also, when you create new wrestlers and add them to the roster, so that they can fight in WWE season (the Raw, Smackdown and all pay-per-view events, year after year), the interface is so incomprehensible that it took eons before we even figured out how the hell it worked.
THE WAY THE GAME WORKS:
Every “round” is a show: Raw, Smackdown, or a pay-per-view. In each show, you have at least one match scheduled. For those matches where you aren’t fighting, you can do other things: You can do a surprise attack on a wrestler in his/her locker room. If you win, your popularity will go up -- lose and it goes down. The locker room may be empty, in which case your popularity is not affected. Whichever way it goes, your “Spirit” goes down: empty room 5, win 10, loss 40 points. When your spirit is low, things generally don’t work out. You can never pin anyone in a match, for instance.
So, the other activity you have to engage in, is “resting.” Which, if successful, gains you 20 points – or, if you are attacked, you will lose either 10 or 40.
On the other hand, if a friend comes by to encourage you, your spirit will rise, but only 5 points (but your friendship with that person will increase). You may also go and encourage other wrestlers, yourself (which costs spirit points—which doesn’t make much sense, but basically, all activities except resting costs spirit points).
Another activity you can do, is to lay a trap for a wrestler. This can really destroy his spirit a lot, but it can also go wrong, if the trap doesn’t work out – in some cases it can completely backfire, and you end up dropping an anvil on the skull of a dear friend, which causes no end of trauma :).
You may also conspire and try to fool your enemies into attacking people, or have “neutral” wrestlers attack your enemies. If all goes well, you manage to create animosity between your foes. But it can backfire, too.
If a fellow wrestler is particularly friendly, you may ask him or her to be your manager. It may be a coincidence, but I found that I seemed to get more title shots, with a manager – as long as my manager was very, very friendly with me (I had to do a lot of encouraging), but when I forgot to do this, I got no title shots at all. You may also break up with your manager (although I found that I could just ask someone else to be my manager, and that worked out just fine – which is a better thing, because firing your manager will automatically move him from your friend list, to the top of your foe list).
You may also steal from the wrestlers, which both costs spirit points, and popularity, but you will gain a wrestler’s costume this way. You get one wrestling costume, one back stage costume, and then you get their video, after three successful attempts (and after that, just “dirty laundry”).
You can interfere with matches. When you play, you have a “voltage meter” that is charged up more and more, when you execute powerful moves, and when it is at the top, and your opponent is weakened, you can execute your signature moves. When you interfere, your voltage is automatically at the top, and stays there for a very long time. However, you are only allowed about half a minute in the ring. The rest of the time, you have to wait outside, and if the wrestlers go outside the ring (which they normally do), you can attack them there. Since you aren’t actually in the match, you can use weapons without fear of being DQ’d, and beat the living beyjebus out of people. You can normally hit the wrestlers with weapons if they are close to the edge of the ring. And if it’s a tag-team match, you can drag the waiting tag team partner down from the outside of the ring and wail on him to weaken him, or stop him from interfering when his team mate is being pinned.
You can call someone out, which is the best way to get a title shot: keep attacking the champion in the locker room, interfer in his matches, laying traps, and then call him out.
Finally, you can also “complain,” which has a similar effect to attacking someone in the locker room: it creates animosity, but without the fighting, so there isn’t so much loss of spirit points.
The game has just about any type of match: royal rumble, king of the ring, tag-team, TLC, cage match, hell in the cell (and yes, you can throw people off the cell, and through it, Mick Foley style), street fight, hardcore – just about everything, save a bra-and-panties and catch-the-midget match.
Okay, some points –
GOOD THINGS:
- Nearly all wrestlers are included. (Also, Goldust and Hogan.)
- Wrestlers' moves very accurately recreated: their moves (including their big special moves), their walk and mannerism, their entrances (including music, pyro, music etc), their clothes.
- Amazing customization abilities: You can create wrestlers with a nearly indefinite variety of looks, from face and body types and colors and proportions, hair, facial hair, body hair, markings, tattoos, scars, etc., and clothing, jewelry, hats, gadgets, masks (which in its own right has a whole separate customization section). You can also obtain the wrestlers’ special clothing (by stealing from them in the game! -- now, what kind of family values is this form of entertainment supposed to teach us, uh? :) ) and use that, as well as an amazing range of other clothing.
- The alliances of WWE tends to be preserved in the game.
- You can screw around and create your own entrances -- and you can rip your own entrance music from CDs, which is pretty cool. You can use the entrance move/behavior of one of the wrestlers, or use some other, pre-defined moves -- there are a few good ones. But you can’t actually change the actual entrance moves, though. You have completely control of pyro, laser, smoke, light (to extreme detail). You can also give your character a nickname, from a large list of words, that the announcer will actually read out as your character walks out.
- You can also customize the existing wrestlers, which means you get to see what their most common moves are called, and how they work. You could give The Rock one of RVD’s moves, or have the Big Show do the People’s Elbow -- not that this would be a good idea of course. But you can give your own, custom made wrestler whatever moves you like. For instance, I started off playing The Rock, and when I created a custom made wrestler, I grabbed The Rock’s set of moves, but when I noticed that his jumps from the turnbuckle were never long enough to hit a stunned opponent in the middle of the ring, I could just swap those moves for a frog-splash, or whatever else is available. And for another wrestler, that I tried to make as much of a punk-bastard-heel as possible, I would not pick the most powerful moves, but the most devious looking ones, like low blows etc.
BAD THINGS:
- Poor user-interface, which makes for very repetitive game-play.
- Bugs: when your enemies interfere in your match, they will actually attack your opponent, and not you! It isn’t the worst of bugs, because if they really did attack you, it would get extremely hard to win any matches (I joked about this, saying that it was just an amazing example of how realistic a recreation this is, of the real thing: they have even recreated a plotline that makes no damn sense). You will always have enemies -- when I tried to placate all my foes, the computer just threw new ones at me; characters that I had never interacted with me. Another, worse bug is that
- There are a few wrestlers that aren’t included. Not a huge deal, though.
- In tag matches, it is unusually hard to win, because the opposing team’s teammate will ALWAYS walk out and kick you, when you try to pin your opponent. And, YOUR teammate will often help him (probably related to the bug described above), and attack you. In table matches, you are pretty much screwed, because you can’t do squat, to stop your teammate from getting tossed through the table... Pretty frustrating.
- Ladder matches are completely hosed. The computer can get up the ladder and get the belt (or whatever item) easily enough, but it’s just about impossible for a player to do it. I never managed to get to the item, and I’ve read that even if you do manage that, it’s very hard to do the key combo needed, to pull it loose and drop to the floor.
SOME FUN THINGS I DID IN THE GAME:
So first time I play, I’m getting my ass handed to me. So I try attacking someone in the locker room. I get whopped again. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t go after Goldberg, maybe I should try someone less powerful. Shit, Shannon Moore kicked my ass too. Damnit, I wanna kick SOMEONE’s ass!
Who is the absolutely weakest, easiest to beat? Who gets a beating from EVERYONE, in the WWE? Stacy Keibler, of course!
Stacy Kiebler beat my ass down too... Oh man, this sucks. I remember being beaten up by a girl when I was a kid, which really sucked, and was really humiliating -- but I couldn’t fight back, because hey, she was a girl. This time I DID fight her, hell, it was I who attacked her. I’m a puny girlie-man.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. From that moment, she ended up on my enemies’ list, and would attack me whenever I tried to rest (which just increased the animosity of course), and interfere in my matches – which looked particularly sad, because of that bug, since it made it look as if this lithe girl would come out and fight FOR me :) which was even worse than getting attacked, really. And then there was the occasional sneak attack after the match, when Stacy would appear out of nowhere and clothes-line me from behind and kick me to the curb. Good freaking grief.
So I had go and do a LOT of “encourage” to her character to get her off my back. Pretty funny.
Another thing that happened, is that I created a custom-made wrestler, that was very, very small. In fact, he was as small as they could be: about 4 foot tall...
And by accident, I ended up including this little wrester in the rooster for the season (because the user interface is so screwed up), without me noticing it...
So, there I was, relaxing in my locker room, and lo and behold -- an enraged, 4 foot tall wrestler named SAMWISE comes rushing in, and starts laying down the smack on me! And I can’t fight back, because the bastard is too short! I was THIS close to getting beat down and losing 40 spirit points before a championship match, when I realize that I can kick him, which works pretty well, and I finally managed to dump him with the rock bottom move. Whoa, close one!
I didn’t want to delete Samwise, but I didn’t know how to remove him from the rooster, since he only got included accidentally. So there’s nothing I could do about this bastard. And sure enough, a little while later, the computer arranges a match between me and Samwise (if a new wrestler is added to the rooster, the computer will attempt to include it in the action as much as possible). But the fighting mechanism in the locker room and ring are different, and Samwise absolutely destroyed me. It completely sucked. It was hilarious, though.
Since I was desperate, I managed to figure out how the rooster thing worked, and got Samwise removed, thankfully. But I did play Samwise against the Undertaker – and gave Samwise the Undertaker’s movies. It was pretty hilarious, because the Undertaker couldn’t touch Sam at all, except for a kick. And watching Samwise do a pile-driver on the Undertaker was a sight to behold.
THE WAY THE GAME WORKS:
Every “round” is a show: Raw, Smackdown, or a pay-per-view. In each show, you have at least one match scheduled. For those matches where you aren’t fighting, you can do other things: You can do a surprise attack on a wrestler in his/her locker room. If you win, your popularity will go up -- lose and it goes down. The locker room may be empty, in which case your popularity is not affected. Whichever way it goes, your “Spirit” goes down: empty room 5, win 10, loss 40 points. When your spirit is low, things generally don’t work out. You can never pin anyone in a match, for instance.
So, the other activity you have to engage in, is “resting.” Which, if successful, gains you 20 points – or, if you are attacked, you will lose either 10 or 40.
On the other hand, if a friend comes by to encourage you, your spirit will rise, but only 5 points (but your friendship with that person will increase). You may also go and encourage other wrestlers, yourself (which costs spirit points—which doesn’t make much sense, but basically, all activities except resting costs spirit points).
Another activity you can do, is to lay a trap for a wrestler. This can really destroy his spirit a lot, but it can also go wrong, if the trap doesn’t work out – in some cases it can completely backfire, and you end up dropping an anvil on the skull of a dear friend, which causes no end of trauma :).
You may also conspire and try to fool your enemies into attacking people, or have “neutral” wrestlers attack your enemies. If all goes well, you manage to create animosity between your foes. But it can backfire, too.
If a fellow wrestler is particularly friendly, you may ask him or her to be your manager. It may be a coincidence, but I found that I seemed to get more title shots, with a manager – as long as my manager was very, very friendly with me (I had to do a lot of encouraging), but when I forgot to do this, I got no title shots at all. You may also break up with your manager (although I found that I could just ask someone else to be my manager, and that worked out just fine – which is a better thing, because firing your manager will automatically move him from your friend list, to the top of your foe list).
You may also steal from the wrestlers, which both costs spirit points, and popularity, but you will gain a wrestler’s costume this way. You get one wrestling costume, one back stage costume, and then you get their video, after three successful attempts (and after that, just “dirty laundry”).
You can interfere with matches. When you play, you have a “voltage meter” that is charged up more and more, when you execute powerful moves, and when it is at the top, and your opponent is weakened, you can execute your signature moves. When you interfere, your voltage is automatically at the top, and stays there for a very long time. However, you are only allowed about half a minute in the ring. The rest of the time, you have to wait outside, and if the wrestlers go outside the ring (which they normally do), you can attack them there. Since you aren’t actually in the match, you can use weapons without fear of being DQ’d, and beat the living beyjebus out of people. You can normally hit the wrestlers with weapons if they are close to the edge of the ring. And if it’s a tag-team match, you can drag the waiting tag team partner down from the outside of the ring and wail on him to weaken him, or stop him from interfering when his team mate is being pinned.
You can call someone out, which is the best way to get a title shot: keep attacking the champion in the locker room, interfer in his matches, laying traps, and then call him out.
Finally, you can also “complain,” which has a similar effect to attacking someone in the locker room: it creates animosity, but without the fighting, so there isn’t so much loss of spirit points.
The game has just about any type of match: royal rumble, king of the ring, tag-team, TLC, cage match, hell in the cell (and yes, you can throw people off the cell, and through it, Mick Foley style), street fight, hardcore – just about everything, save a bra-and-panties and catch-the-midget match.
Okay, some points –
GOOD THINGS:
- Nearly all wrestlers are included. (Also, Goldust and Hogan.)
- Wrestlers' moves very accurately recreated: their moves (including their big special moves), their walk and mannerism, their entrances (including music, pyro, music etc), their clothes.
- Amazing customization abilities: You can create wrestlers with a nearly indefinite variety of looks, from face and body types and colors and proportions, hair, facial hair, body hair, markings, tattoos, scars, etc., and clothing, jewelry, hats, gadgets, masks (which in its own right has a whole separate customization section). You can also obtain the wrestlers’ special clothing (by stealing from them in the game! -- now, what kind of family values is this form of entertainment supposed to teach us, uh? :) ) and use that, as well as an amazing range of other clothing.
- The alliances of WWE tends to be preserved in the game.
- You can screw around and create your own entrances -- and you can rip your own entrance music from CDs, which is pretty cool. You can use the entrance move/behavior of one of the wrestlers, or use some other, pre-defined moves -- there are a few good ones. But you can’t actually change the actual entrance moves, though. You have completely control of pyro, laser, smoke, light (to extreme detail). You can also give your character a nickname, from a large list of words, that the announcer will actually read out as your character walks out.
- You can also customize the existing wrestlers, which means you get to see what their most common moves are called, and how they work. You could give The Rock one of RVD’s moves, or have the Big Show do the People’s Elbow -- not that this would be a good idea of course. But you can give your own, custom made wrestler whatever moves you like. For instance, I started off playing The Rock, and when I created a custom made wrestler, I grabbed The Rock’s set of moves, but when I noticed that his jumps from the turnbuckle were never long enough to hit a stunned opponent in the middle of the ring, I could just swap those moves for a frog-splash, or whatever else is available. And for another wrestler, that I tried to make as much of a punk-bastard-heel as possible, I would not pick the most powerful moves, but the most devious looking ones, like low blows etc.
BAD THINGS:
- Poor user-interface, which makes for very repetitive game-play.
- Bugs: when your enemies interfere in your match, they will actually attack your opponent, and not you! It isn’t the worst of bugs, because if they really did attack you, it would get extremely hard to win any matches (I joked about this, saying that it was just an amazing example of how realistic a recreation this is, of the real thing: they have even recreated a plotline that makes no damn sense). You will always have enemies -- when I tried to placate all my foes, the computer just threw new ones at me; characters that I had never interacted with me. Another, worse bug is that
- There are a few wrestlers that aren’t included. Not a huge deal, though.
- In tag matches, it is unusually hard to win, because the opposing team’s teammate will ALWAYS walk out and kick you, when you try to pin your opponent. And, YOUR teammate will often help him (probably related to the bug described above), and attack you. In table matches, you are pretty much screwed, because you can’t do squat, to stop your teammate from getting tossed through the table... Pretty frustrating.
- Ladder matches are completely hosed. The computer can get up the ladder and get the belt (or whatever item) easily enough, but it’s just about impossible for a player to do it. I never managed to get to the item, and I’ve read that even if you do manage that, it’s very hard to do the key combo needed, to pull it loose and drop to the floor.
SOME FUN THINGS I DID IN THE GAME:
So first time I play, I’m getting my ass handed to me. So I try attacking someone in the locker room. I get whopped again. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t go after Goldberg, maybe I should try someone less powerful. Shit, Shannon Moore kicked my ass too. Damnit, I wanna kick SOMEONE’s ass!
Who is the absolutely weakest, easiest to beat? Who gets a beating from EVERYONE, in the WWE? Stacy Keibler, of course!
Stacy Kiebler beat my ass down too... Oh man, this sucks. I remember being beaten up by a girl when I was a kid, which really sucked, and was really humiliating -- but I couldn’t fight back, because hey, she was a girl. This time I DID fight her, hell, it was I who attacked her. I’m a puny girlie-man.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. From that moment, she ended up on my enemies’ list, and would attack me whenever I tried to rest (which just increased the animosity of course), and interfere in my matches – which looked particularly sad, because of that bug, since it made it look as if this lithe girl would come out and fight FOR me :) which was even worse than getting attacked, really. And then there was the occasional sneak attack after the match, when Stacy would appear out of nowhere and clothes-line me from behind and kick me to the curb. Good freaking grief.
So I had go and do a LOT of “encourage” to her character to get her off my back. Pretty funny.
Another thing that happened, is that I created a custom-made wrestler, that was very, very small. In fact, he was as small as they could be: about 4 foot tall...
And by accident, I ended up including this little wrester in the rooster for the season (because the user interface is so screwed up), without me noticing it...
So, there I was, relaxing in my locker room, and lo and behold -- an enraged, 4 foot tall wrestler named SAMWISE comes rushing in, and starts laying down the smack on me! And I can’t fight back, because the bastard is too short! I was THIS close to getting beat down and losing 40 spirit points before a championship match, when I realize that I can kick him, which works pretty well, and I finally managed to dump him with the rock bottom move. Whoa, close one!
I didn’t want to delete Samwise, but I didn’t know how to remove him from the rooster, since he only got included accidentally. So there’s nothing I could do about this bastard. And sure enough, a little while later, the computer arranges a match between me and Samwise (if a new wrestler is added to the rooster, the computer will attempt to include it in the action as much as possible). But the fighting mechanism in the locker room and ring are different, and Samwise absolutely destroyed me. It completely sucked. It was hilarious, though.
Since I was desperate, I managed to figure out how the rooster thing worked, and got Samwise removed, thankfully. But I did play Samwise against the Undertaker – and gave Samwise the Undertaker’s movies. It was pretty hilarious, because the Undertaker couldn’t touch Sam at all, except for a kick. And watching Samwise do a pile-driver on the Undertaker was a sight to behold.