Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This at Home

"Backyard Wrestling is a terrible game, and huge waste of money, time, and space."

Backyard Wrestling seems like a good idea, and yeah it probably is. But it's just not a good idea leaving Eidos in charge of it. Backyard Wrestling is a terrible game, and huge waste of money, time, and space. It's cons outweigh it's pros by an unbelievable amount, it truly is ridiculous. I went into this game, knowing it would mostly be fighting, and unrealistic maneuvers. I didn't mind. I thought it still might be fun, but I wasn't prepared for this horrible let down.

GRAPHICS: 4/10

What can I say? They're a train wreck, a huge train wreck. They're bland, dull, washed out, and unnecessarily blocky. Sometimes walls will disappear, and reappear due to bad clipping, and everything just looks gritty, not in a good way either. The character models look similar to No Mercy to me for some reason, except with better textures. Think of No Mercy models with Attitude skins on them, and you've got Backyard Wrestling. I really have to say that Backyard Wrestling's graphics are outright ugly. Check out Nintendo 64's WCW Backstage Assault, the graphics look about as bad as those, except their slightly clearer in Backyard Wrestling. The only thing that the graphics in Backyard Wrestling has going for it is the damage system. As the fight progresses your character will take, and show damage such as scrapes, scars, bruises, and so on. That's definitely a plus in any fighting game.

CONTROL: 5/10

Simple? Yes. Good? No. Sloppy. You betcha'. The controls are simple, but they are clunky, as in they're unresponsive at times, whereas other times it's too sensitive. Sometimes while in a grapple you will hit a button to do a move, but you character will not do a thing except stand there until the opponent breaks free from the grapple even after additional attempts at hitting the buttons. Or if you just try to tap the d-pad/analog slightly to move a tiny bit, you'll end up running clear across the screen at full speed. It's rather annoying.

SOUND: 7/10

Bad voice acting, and muffled sounds. Moves don't sound as brutal as they should thanks to the muffled sound, so that hurt the presentation of the game. There isn't much else to hear, especially not anything that would impress you. But thanks to the awesome sound track, I will give this area a slightly higher rating. This section of the game seemed to have received the most attention, as they spent the time to get the licenses to, I think, over 40 songs. Besides the sound track there isn't much to look forward to in the sound department.

GAMEPLAY: 4/10

I've got plenty of bones to pick with Eidos in this area, and this might be the longest section of my review. Anyway, here is goes. I'll start with the things I liked most. My favorite part of the, without a doubt, is the ragdoll physics. The characters bodies have this limp look to them, so they look like ragdolls when they bump into things, or are thrown from high places. For example in most wrestling games, the opponent would be Irish whipped into a table but it would have no effect on them, they'd just turn around and go back after you. But in Backyard Wrestling if say their knee clipped the table many things could happen, for example they could collapse against the table or slid over it and crash into the ground. It makes some moves look more brutal, especially when it comes to Irish whipping opponents into things. This really helps with the interactive and destructible environments. You can interact with, and/or destroy practically anything you see. In the strip club you can destroy a huge fish tank, and watch the water spill out over the floor, or you can get kicked in the face by a stripper swinging on a pole. Or in the backyard you can set fire to a mattress laying on the ground, however it seems more like concrete than a mattress, or ''accidentally'' knock a mans face into a grill while he's cooking up some burgers then afterward he will bitch slap you with his spatula. Sometimes tables will be leaning against walls to throw opponents through, or you can toss them into the gas pumps, which may explode, on the gas station level.

Well, that's all that I have to like about the game. Here's the negatives. Like many games there are glitches, but these are hardly overlookable in an all ready bad game. Getting stuck in walls, characters loading up without any textures, getting stuck in a running motion until someone hit you out of it, and most of all random freezing. It's all very irritating. Then there is an unnecessary amount of load time for such short fights, especially when the game looks the way it does. If that wasn't bad enough you have Heat Seeking Weapons, that's right! The weapons actually chase you around until either they fall to the ground, or nail you in the back. Usually they'll be hitting you as it's very hard to dodge. They'll even chase you up a ladder at times. Then there is the computer's AI which is cheap, and stupid. Most of your fights will consist of them doing a hit and run tactic, usually them throwing the heat seeking weapons, other times it's just running attacks. Both of which they will do over and over again. Also, they sometimes run aimlessly around in circles before attempting to attack you. I'll just try to cut this short to save your eyes from bleeding. Bad collision detection, lack of modes, only single matches are allowed, and terrible camera angles at times.

Now, to move on to the two major modes of the game.

Talk Show Mode - This is Backyard Wrestling's equivalent of a season mode--I guess. Before each fight they show a cutscene of people talking about how Backyard Wrestling has effected their lives, and what they think of it. Funny sometimes, most of the time boring. You are never actually included in the storyline, they just hint at ''your'' involvement by saying these backyard wrestlers did so and so, which caused so and so. It's pretty basic. Each level they give you a few ''Tony Hawk'' styled goals, but they fail miserably to imitate them on any level. The most common goals they give you are finish under a certain time, and finish with a certain amount of health left. Other times they tell you to do a certain amount of harm with certain moves, for instance they may give you a goal to set where you must get 1,500 points worth of Slam Grapple damage, or Weapon Damage, etc. Other times it's a simple as break three things. Kind of dull if you ask me. I mean real Tony Hawk styled missions would be like telling you to successfully complete an aerial attack onto an opponent through a table, or something more challenging than having to keep doing grapple moves over and over again. This mode flat out blows.

''Create-A-Wrestler'' - If I remember correctly, they actually delayed the game to put this in, but why? It is easily the worst part of the game, and it makes you wonder why exactly did they even bother trying to put it in to begin with if they weren't even going to put any effort into it. If you've played the first Smackdown! and seen how bad that CAW was, this one is actually worse, maybe much worse since in that you could at least give your guy more of a moveset, his own finisher, and you could at least adjust the size of the guy. In Backyard Wrestling though you pick from 15 pre-made models, then choose from 12 pre-made colors/textures, give it a name, pick a fighting style which also automatically selects your finishing move, pick 4 Attack Grapples, then finally pick 4 Slam Grapples. That's it. About as deep as a Snapple cap. Also, thanks to all of those weird names each move has it'll take some time to find which move you're looking for. You have to exit the Create-A-Wrestler and go to the extras (or whatever that section is called, I forgot) where the videos are and look up the moves there.

REPLAY VALUE: 2/10
FUN FACTOR: 3/10

Not much to the game. It takes maybe, if you're good enough, at least an hour to unlock everything in the game. You get a few worthless, and boring videos of people hitting each other with weapons or doing crazy stunts. You unlock three more modes to play in. Survival, King of the Hill (2 Players only), and Tag (2 Players only). Tag is nothing more than an actual game of tag, and I found it quite disappointing that this was there but no actual Tag Team matches were. These modes were pretty boring, even with friends playing it's just not fun. This goes for every other portion of the game, nothing was fun about it. A lot of the weapons have the same attack properties, as well as grapple attacks. It's kinda lame when you think about the fact that this game is supposed to revolve around these things.

OVERALL: 3/10

After you finish the game, unlock everything, and see everything there is to see, which really isn't that much. You most likely won't want to touch this game ever again. It's really pointless, and since a lot of the wrestlers share the same finishers and moves it won't take long to become bored. Buying this game, especially at it's current price, is a complete was of money. After watching the credits it seems obvious to me the production team spent more time playing with each other than actually working on the game. This is truly a novelty, one that wore off about two days in.

This is a nineteen dollar game with a forty-nine dollar price tag.

DO NOT waste your money, wait for a big price drop if you have to get it, or if you can't rent it.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/22/03