Legends of Wrestling

"Too much hype for an Acclaim wretsling game..."

The game Legends of Wrestling comes from the company that brought us a series of wrestling games for the Playstation that included WWF Warzone and ECW Hardcore Revolution. Though these games were considered good games, they ultimately fell before THQ's WWF Wrestlemania 2000. Though Acclaim's games had their strong points, all were effectively counteracted upon by THQ thus proving Newton's Third Law of Motion: For every reaction, there is an equal or greater reaction. Legends of Wrestling was brought forth in hopes to even the playing field and stealing a monopoly away from THQ.

GRAPHICS
Graphics are always an easy place to start when reviewing a game, even if they're considered to be ''unimportant''. The graphics in this game are a step forward from the original Acclaim series of wrestling games, but are still inferior to both THQ's series (Wrestlemania and Smackdown!). This is not exactly a bad thing however. The graphics used in this game seem to give our ''Legends'' an unrealistic and somewhwta comical appearance, ie, Hulk Hogan never had muscles on his muscles and King Kong Bundy looks to be five times larger than the second largest man in the game. Adding humor to a game can always take a bit of relief off of other aspects of the game, but throwing it into the speech, a la SD!3 and WWF Attitude, can get old and tiresome and very over-played.

GAMEPLAY
A lot of people seemed to be pleased by the ''old-school'' style gameplay this has taken. Though at first I found it annoying, after playing it for one day and learning how to do things I have grown to tolerate the gameplay. I'm still spoiled on the superioristic gameplay of Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy however. The gameplay is a bit choppy and slow. If you're used to playing Smackdown or No Mercy then you will not like the difference in style. Grappling is a bit far more complex than it should be by adding in four different ways of grapplng after the ISP (Intial Starting Position) and the ability to counterattack based on your own reflex time makes the ability to grapple seem almost pointless. The computer has almost perfect reflexes and counters everything you do almost every time, except for uncounterable moves and when they're stunned.

The directions in the manual read like a Spanish 1 High School textbook: very incomprehensible. Maybe there wouldn't be as many complaints on mine and my friends parts (possibly others out there too) if the instructions were laid out better and we didn't have to discover everything like we were Christopher Columbus or something.

SOUND
The sound in this game isn't bad, but it's not what I had expected. Here I was, expecting to hear some bad-a** old school wrestler theme songs only to find out that they were replaced by cheap imitations of they're respective counterparts. Most of the music sounds kind of funny, almost as funny as the Original musics in Smackdown! 3 where the music belongs in a Mega Man game somewhere. However, the music was recorded well, and that's where LoW gets the edge over Wrestlemania 200 and No Mercy where music was recorded at like, 22 kbps, or so it sounds.

The voices in this game, as little as they are, sound good, as if you were actually standing at the arena or sometimes better (Try a regional event in a small city like mine where there's more people in the ring at one time than in the crowd). The voices don't get recycle through the same lines when a match goes on for longer than a minute because they are triggered by certain events, unlike the voices in WWF Attitude and Smackdown! 3.

OVERALL
The game is not bad. It's got more of an old-school feel and look towards it. Though the game could use some major improvements, it is a big step in the right direction for Acclaim.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/07/02, Updated 01/07/02