WWE WrestleMania XIX

".......And New Wrestling game champion!!"

This game is a great piece of work, it all really came together for Yukes on this one. The entire game is nearly flawless and makes for the best Wrestling game ever made, anyone who's still singing the praises of No mercy hasn't played it lately.

Graphics: 9.0

Beautiful characters, I mean beautiful. Everyone looks how they should and nobody looks like a gremlin or has a tiny head or stuff like that. Lighting is done well, bouncing off the wrestlers perfectly and whatnot. Animations are all amazingly accurate and will please any fan, there's no crazy bouncing around like in Smackdown 4. Flaws include, slightly inaccurate pyro and a lackluster 2d crowd.

Sound: 9.0
Great chants, great music, awesome sound effects. A few license issues came up and a few songs didn't make it into the game, but it's no big deal. Small things like sound effects fading as the camera pans out are nice. The crowd is amazing in this game and is never quiet, it's much better than X8 where it seemed like it was always quiet.

Gameplay: 9.5
Great new grapple system integrated with the awesome reversal system from Wrestlemania X8. It's actually much deeper now and you have multiple chances within certain moves to pull off reversals. Location damage is tons of fun, just picking apart at a opponents leg or arm and watching them in pain is great. Adds a lot of depth to the submission part of the game too, it's no longer just through on the walls until he quits. So many moves it's insanity I tell you and there are so many entertaining ways to piss off your friends. Just wait until you pin somebody with your feet on the ropes!
CAW is great aswell and has so many options that it would take a whole review to write about. It's a little better than Smackdown 4's in my opinion. It only has one flaw, and that is it's extremely hard to construct a face, you have to be an artist pretty much. There's just too many options in the facial area. I may grow to like it eventually though, when I get the hang of it.
The Revenge mode is slightly entertaining, but a story mode would have been better, at best it's a slight downfall. I don't know about you, but I liked the story mode in no mercy but 90% of my gameplay came out of exhibition.
Game modes include: singles, tag, first blood match, cage, ladder, tlc, hell in a cell, King of the ring, battle royal and Royal rumble. Hell in a cell has been given a boost with tosses off the side and jumping through the middle holes after you slam your opponent through the cell. I've never played a better Hell in a cell.

Replay: 10

It's a wrestling game! You'll play it until next year's comes out! Seriously though, this game is just so much multiplayer fun that you'll be at it for a long time to come. Add all the shopzone features, CAW and the extremely difficulty revenge mode and you got some single player action too!

Final say ( not an average)
9.4/10

Small flaws that are easily overlooked by the awesome wrestling that are inside this disc. Any wrestling fan should pick this up right now, you will not be disapointed.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/12/03