WWE Day of Reckoning 2

"A bit of a let down, but an excellent game nonetheless"

Introduction-
Gamecube owners were left with sub-par wrestling games until WWE Day of Reckoning (DoR) was released. Although this was a great game with many great gameplay features and an incredible Create-a-Wrestler(CAW) mode... it did have many flaws such as a small roster and fairly cartoony graphics. WWE Day of Reckoning 2 fixes many of these problems, and although it feels a little bit too similar to the first game, its still great.


Graphics- 10/10
The graphics in this game are unbelievably realistic. Almost all of the wrestlers look very similar to their real-life counterparts. The entrances are great, the weapons, arenas, and pyros all look fantastic and the crowd is filled with 3D models that look much better than DoR's paper-like crowds. Even the blood looks great due to the new 3 levels of blood system, where the blood starts out as a few cuts and drips a tiny bit, then gets bigger and gets on your chest and then gets all over your wrestler's body and stains the mat real good. The only small problem is that the blood stains on the mat disappear rather quickly but that isn't anything too bad. I guaran-damn-tee you will be amazed at the graphics.

Sound- 8/10
The sound in DoR2 is great. All the chops and blows sound like they should, weapon strikes sound very powerful, and the sound of your poor opponent being crushed onto the mat sounds just as painful as it should. Every wrestler comes out to their trademark entrance song and Tony Chimmel announces their name, weight and hometown, making entrances very realistic. One thing I especially like about the sound is that there's a very loud earthquake-like noise whenever you KO someone in a regular match or Last Man Standing match. The only problem with the sound is that there isn't any voice acting in story mode and the music is just a bunch of repetitive techno-metal songs by some unknown group.

Story Mode- 7/10
The story mode is a direct continuation of DoR's story mode. I won't spoil anything for you but I will say it is a very interesting mystery story with all types of back-stabbing and plot-twists. It is however, very linear like last year. Although it does give you a few minor choices like who you want as your tag-partner in certain matches or what type of match you want to do in specific situations but nothing that affects the story. The main problem is that it isn't fun at all the second time through because of how long and linear it is. If the lack of voice-overs is a serious problem for you or if you don't like reading a lot I suggest skipping all the text and just doing the matches for fun.

Gameplay- 9.5/10
This is the shining feature of the Day of Reckoning series. Practically everything about the gameplay is great. Like last year, there is a momentum system that starts out at yellow and goes to red if your on a roll, allowing you to reverse moves easier and your moves do more damage. If your getting the crap beaten out of you it goes down to blue and if you start doing really bad and you go to a “danger” state and your given 20 seconds to do a Momentum Shift. This move allows you to take the momentum of whoever you do it too, thus putting them in the danger state. Keep in mind however that your only allowed to do this move once in a match. They also kept the whole system of light grapples, heavy grapples, grapple strikes, breaking up moves etc. They did however add some very new and unique gameplay features that allow for very realistic matches. There's a new Stamina meter that goes down when you do powerful moves and goes up when you do nothing or when you do a a rest hold, which i'll explain later. If it goes all the way down, your wrestler stands around unable to move for a few seconds and does tired motions, making it very difficult to control. But a lot of different things make the Stamina bar very complex and realistic. For example, if your a heavyweight wrestler you lose more stamina doing high-flying moves then a smaller wrestler would, and a small wrestler loses more stamina doing heavy grapples then a larger wrestler would. Also momentum, how damaged you are, how much your bleeding and many other things go into the Stamina bar making it a great feature. The other major gameplay addition is the new Submission system. Whenever you do almost any submission hold, you go into a small mini-game with the c-stick. You have 4 different choices of what type of submission you want to do by choosing one with the C-Stick. You can choose Submit, which is just a more powerful hold, Taunt, which makes your momentum go up, Drain, which makes your opponent's stamina go down, or Rest Hold which fills up your stamina bar. The only catch it, your opponent can guess what type of submission you will choose and if they guess correctly they break free, but if they guess wrong it goes into the tug-of-war submission bar. The only major problem with the gameplay is that the A.I. has a bad habit of ganging up on you and breaking up your moves for apparently no reason which can get to be very annoying. Triple Threat matches often turn into a kind of handicap match. Overall, the gameplay is incredible and allows for amazing and varied matches.

CAW- 6/10
This is probably the biggest letdown of the game. DoR had an excellent CAW mode that allowed endless crazy possibilities for created wrestlers, and they didn't take very long to make unless you really wanted it to look perfect. This time around they really butchered it. It takes HOURS to make a CAW look any good. Partly because the loading times in CAW mode are ridiculously long, and also because the face and body morphing sucks. Its almost impossible to get rid of the plasticy look of your created wrestlers face and they all end up looking weird. If you really do have the time and patience, you can make a great CAW but its just not worth it. There's also a lot of freezing on CAW mode so you can spend hours making a guy and then BOOM... it's all gone. I give this a thumbs down.


Replay Value-
If you own(ed) Day of Reckoning 1 and played it a lot- 7/10
If you never owned DoR 1 and haven't played it a lot- 9/10
I decided to split this category into two separate scores. Even though this game has a lot of new features its still hard to play it for a long time if you played the hell outta the last game because of how similar they are. But now onto what makes it replayable. This game has a fairly large roster with many new faces such as Carlito and Chris Masters, and it isn't missing any really popular wrestlers like last year. There is only one new match type, the Last Man Standing match, and even though its only one new match its GREAT! If you do it with more then 2 wrestlers it turns into an elimination match and its incredible. There are a lot of sick things you can do in this game that you can't do in the PS2 games like doing moves on weapons. There's nothing cooler then hitting a Super Angle Slam on a garbage can. Which brings me to my next point, there are a lot of sick weapons. You of course got your chairs, sledgehammers and tables but you also got fire extinguishers you can spray people with, brass knuckles, garbage cans you can stuff over someone's head and do moves on and so on. I suggest watching the DoR2 hard hits videos on YouTube.com to see some of the crazy possibilities. The only major setbacks are the lack of backstage and linear story mode.

Overall- 9/10
This may possibly be DoR 1.5 as many people say but it still is truly a great game. Its worth at least a rent if you owned the first game and definitely a buy if you have a Gamecube and you love wrestling.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/17/06, Updated 11/03/08

Game Release: WWE Day of Reckoning 2 (US, 08/29/05)