Showdown: Legends of Wrestling

"Not what you'd expect"

Showdown: Legends of Wrestling sounds suspiciously like Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain. That's irrelevent to this review, so forget it.

The Legends of Wrestling series has been average to poor in most gamer's eyes to this point. Two previous games with only a few real legends (Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, Andre the Giant), and lots of guys you've never heard of from the 70's and early 80's. There was also cartoon-like graphics and no visible championship belts. The gameplay was slow and methodical, mirroring wrestling of the time.

These games were moderately popular. The gameplay was weak if played like Smackdown, but after a while it's own methods become clear. Once you know how to play LOW, it's fun. It's deliberately old style.

Nevertheless, LOW was no match for Smackdown. Until this game. Suddenly LOW deserved to be called Legends of Wrestling. Macho Man Randy Savage was in. Sting was in. Jake 'the Snake' Roberts. Mr Perfect Curt Hennig. Ravishing Rick Rude. Diamond Dallas Page. And of course, the Ultimate Warrior. Coupled with the previous characters, Hulk, Bret, etc, this made the greatest wrestling roster ever. Regardless of somewhat improved graphics, these guys were the selling point.

And the only real point of the game, to be honest. The previous games in the series had effective story/season modes, where a chosen wrester would fight through different regional wrestling leagues to eventually become world champ. Many matches were involved (I'd guess around fifty, and that's if you won every match), with different stroylines and promoters. Showdown has for some reason ditched this, and has a 'Showdown Challenge'. You fight five matches in the 70's, five in the 80's, five more in the 90's, and....well, that's it. It's supposedly feud based, which ammounts to reading a paragraph of hype and seeing a picture before the match. For goodness' sake, guys, we had this stuff on the SNES! I can remember exactly the same thing on WWF Superstars on the original Gameboy! Not good enough.

There is also a Classic Match mode, where you can intervene in famous bouts from history and change the outcome. This is fun in theory, but if you want to play Bret Hart vs Rowdy Roddy Piper, you can easily do it in Exhibition Mode. It seems thrown in to pad out a lightweight game.

Here is one of the biggest mistakes of Showdown. Given how great the roster already is, if the Create-A-Wrestler mode was also great, you could have any wrestler you wanted. Ultimate Warrior vs the Rock. Andre the Giant vs Goldberg. Huge potential overlooked - because the Create-A-Legend mode is awful.

Graphics are acceptable. No way near the level of Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth, let alone the latest Smackdown game, Here Comes the Pain. The sound features okay commentary - but the same commentary team did a better job on WCW Mayhem, which was released in 1999 on the PlayStation 1! It's disapointing to say the least.

Okay, onto the gameplay. It's methodical arcade style, if that makes any sense. It reminds me of the likes of Streets of Rage and Final Fight. There are blocks, counters, special moves, everything you'd expect. As I say, you have to really play the game for a while to understand how it works. Once you do, chances are you'll have some fun with it.

Some other one-line gripes:

1. Winning the match. After the pin, does the crowd roar? No, they DON'T EVEN REACT! Like they haven't seen the pin. Do you see your wrestler stalk the ring, standing over his beaten foe? Nope. You see a generic animation of your wrestler repeating the same taunt animation (which he does during the match) over and over. This is pathetic.

2. The pin. You see the ref slap the canvas, and the numbers appear on the screen. Fine. Except the '3' never appears. So you don't know if you've succesfully pinned your foe for the 3-count, or just the two. Acclaim, WHY DO YOU DO THIS?!

3. The glitches. Although they really haven't caused me much bother in the two days I've had the game, some people get very irritated. To me, they don't make much difference and are very easy to overlook. But that's no excuse.

4. The selection screen. It's confusing to choose and find who you want to play as/against. Again, WHY?

5. Lack of reward, I've completed the game on Hardest, what do I get? Nothing. I've won the title from Hulk Hogan, do I atleast get to see my wrester with the belt? Nope. Do I atleast GET TO SEE THE BELT? Nope. I am rewarded with a picture of my wrestler. ACCLAIM! What were you thinking?

To sum up; could easily be THE best wrestling game. But Acclaim have committed a very, very lazy product. Before the release, I was looking forward to defeating Hulk Hogan with the Ultimate Warrior and then holding the World Heavyweight belt aloft. The fact that you cannot do that says it all about Showdown; it has the basics but nothing else.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/03/04