Showdown: Legends of Wrestling

"Hardly Legendary...."

Ah yes, Legends of Wrestling. While the first two were no where near perfect, Acclaim promised a lot for this one and completely dropped the ball. Many features were announced and not delivered. CAW(L) was promised to be much more in depth, and it is not. The engine used in the game was promised to be updated and changed, sadly, it was not. As a matter of fact the only redeeming quality about this game is the tremendous amount of old school wrestlers that range from Bret Hart, Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Randy Savage, Eddie Guerrero, Sabu, Terry Funk, Andre The Giant, Rick Martel, The Nasty Boys, Legion of Doom, and SO many more. But let us go in depth a bit and see just what makes this game so horrible.

Graphics 6/10
Ok, so the graphics themselves aren't bad. I've never been a fan of the overly slim Smackdown! character models. The characters in this game bring back the No Mercy for N64 kind of feel, which is a good thing. The characters all move fairly smoothly and the blood actually looks dang good in my book. Character models over all are not as highly detailed as the Smackdown! games, but i really did enjoy the throw back to No Mercy feel. Sadly, the fun stopped there.

The sadness of it all is that collision detection is horrid, and the game has so many glitches it seems like this is the beta version. We're talking about something like this... You are going for a gorilla press slam and you are back towards a turnbuckle, when magically you are teleported to the outside of the ring. Even after this your opponent is still in the air as if some invisible force is holding him there and even your character is still going through the animation for the move. And this is not just with certain characters either. This game has glitches all over the place and it is very distracting. To the point where you wonder if it is you and the Invisible Man against someone else. Collision detection? I have been five feet away from an opponent and hit them with a rising attack. How? I'm not too sure. Perhaps it was the wind coming off of my fist.

When wrestling a smaller guy, like a manager for instance, it looks quite funny going for a suplex when there head is well under your arm. Although, this is not surprising since Smackdown! games also suffer the same problems when it is a large wrestler vs. a small one. So I won't deduct alot of points for that.

Another high point though is the arenas. Some classic arenas are very well replicated including; Madison Square Garden, The Tokyo Dome, Pontiac Silverdome, Wembly Stadium, and more. But, when we are wrestling, we aren't concentrating on the arenas are we? Nope, we are looking at the Wrestlers. And quite frankly, there is not much to look at.

Sound 8/10
What's that you say? Commentating done by Tony Schiavone, Larry Zbysko, AND Bobby Heenan??!! Yes, the commentating in the game is good. Acclaim managed to do something Yukes has yet to master. The commentators even interact with each other.

Tony: He's a fantastic singles competitor, but has also had great success as a tag team.
Heenan: That's right Tony, he's a former three time world tag champion.

The only thing keeping me from giving this a 9 is that sometimes, SOMETIMES, you will get this...

Tony: Oh my gosh a power slam by......... Bret Hart!!

It really doesn't happen that often though. But still, the rest of the commentary runs smoothly so why can't this as well? And of course, no matter what kind of game it is, whether it be boxing, football, basketball, baseball, or even other wrestling games, the commentary will get repetitive at times. And although this game by far has the best commentary of any "sports" game I have played lately, sometimes you just want to turn the sound off. So again, sorry but I must take a point away for that as well.

When wrestling, all the punches and kicks can be heard and it's not too shabby on the sound effects. But, moves such as power slams, power bombs, pile drivers, etc don't make that much noise while you are slamming your opponent down. Yet another problem also for the Smackdown! franchise.

All in all, the sound is not terrible, but it's not enough to keep your interest in a game is it? Didn't think so.

Game play 4/10
Cage match, Table match, Battle Royal, 3 & 4 way dances, First blood. The features sound impressive, but as you will find out this is merely a sugar coated topping.

The glitches and bugs were already described above so I will leave that alone here. Let us first look at this "new " (and I stress NEW) fighting system that we have heard so much about. What??!! It's the same engine?? Yep, pretty much. The only difference here is that you do not have the little meter to tell you exactly when a counter or reversal can be done. Which to me, actually make the game more fun and realistic, but, this is not enough.

You can do more grapples now, and the ready move button (triangle) has been given a face lift as well. Just using the read button you can do moves from the front, back, front with opponent bent over, and back with opponent bent over (get your mind out of the gutter!!). Pressing a different direction along with triangle will yield a different move. In addition, after pressing circle to tie up, the X or circle button can be pressed with any direction as well, all giving you different moves to pound on your opponent with. When I first looked at the game I was thinking how little you could do. But after playing it for a while you realize that there are quite a few moves you can do per character. It's all just a matter of getting your opponent in the correct position.

But, the problem is we were promised and told that LOW:S would feature a new engine. It is the same exact engine, just with some advancements. This is not good Acclaim!!

One good thing about the game, as mentioned above, it features an incredible cast of characters. The fact that they got licences for all of these wrestlers is astounding, seeing as how the WWE can't get licences for a quarter of the wrestlers featured in this game.

The "story" mode, if you will, is lame as well. You control nothing about your character other than wrestling. It is a bland design and is way too short to complete. And what's this? No way to raise stats? Well then what is the point? Oh I can unlock some other legends and venues? Well that's cool.. What about after that? Nothing!! So basically we have released a game that is only good for it's memories of wrestlings past.

And what about the Create a Wrestler (Legend)? I think I counted a total of nine different faces you could select from. And there is no such thing as editing parts of the body specifically, such as eyes, nose, mouth, etc. You can change your CAW's height, weight, arm size, body size, butt size, leg size, and all that stuff. But that is about as far as it goes. There aren't many choices for hair either. No customization in attire color either. I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable. I think War zone had more options than this when making a character. The move list, while it does have more moves available to select from that previous LOW games, it is still no where close to Smackdown! or even No Mercy for that matter. We are still living in the 90 's right? Oh crap it's 2004??!! Better believe it, Acclaim, time to catch up to the rest of the world.

One thing I did like about the "story" mode (which is called Showdown Challenge by the way) is that as you are wrestling through the years your look changes to reflect the times. For instance, my first choice was Sting. In the 70 's and 80 's he was wearing his wannabe Ultimate Warrior paint (different versions during the 70 's and 80 's though) and in the 90 's he was wearing his "Crow" gimmick attire. I thought that was a pretty neat feature. But as stated before, these little things just aren't enough to make you want to play the game.

Although it really will not help you that much, the game does have a training mode narrated by none other than Bret Hart. It's just a video with him talking over it, you can't actually practice moves that they cover, which would of been a good thing.

The controls, at times feel very clunky and not very responsive at all. And I forgot to mention the fact that you have to be breathing down your opponents neck in order to get them in a grapple? If you hit them with a punch and expect to grapple them afterwards, you had better take 2 or 3 steps towards them before the attempt. Again, the glitches really hurt this game even when it comes to overall control. You could be pressing a direction towards your opponent for an attack and magically appear behind them, and the attack you perform turns your back to them leaving you wide open to have a move performed on you. Sad, sad, sad, sad. To think a well known game company lets stuff like this get through and onto store shelves.

As I said above, it's a horrid attempt at a wrestling game with a nice sugar coated topping.

Replay ability 4/10
Really, a 4 is being nice. After Legends mode what then? You can try to recreate some classic match ups in the "classics" mode, but what are the chances of that with all these glitches? I couldn't see playing this game with friends over either. We would probably all get frustrated at the glitch's and uninspired engine and end up putting in something else. To me, I'll probably do some versus match ups so I can see how the finishers look for all my favorite wrestlers from the past. Afterwards, I will attempt to set a new record for disc Frisbee chucking.

Fun Factor 5/10
Being able to do match ups you would never see again, such as Sting vs Andre The Giant and Sabu vs. The Macho Man may be fun for a day or two. Being able to do the Hogan Leg Drop or Jake The Snake's DDT can hold your interest for MAYBE another day. After that you won't ever touch the game again. There is nothing here that has not been seen already, or that you can't do in Smackdown! Here comes the pain.

FINAL WORD:
If you are still curious after reading this review, then for the love of god please rent it. Do not under any circumstances buy this game. I bought it and I must say in all honesty this is the only game out of the 58 that I own for PS2 that I regret buying.

Video game companies are lucky. Video games are really the only thing sold in the USA where if something is promised and not delivered you can't take it back to the store and get your money back. I'm half tempted to look into suing for false advertisement because I want my $54 back and I know Acclaim will never give it to me. They showed us all everything we wanted to see except the games shallow game play and glitch's.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/24/04