WCW Super Brawl Wrestling

"This game doesn't want to be played. Leave it alone."

Most people are aware, in one way or another, of the ending to the epic film "Citizen Kane," where they have to kill Rosebud to put her out of her misery. I'm pretty sure that's how it goes, at least. Regardless, the idea of killing something or someone to end its pain is something that cruelly plays with our human sentiments. The clash of empathy versus hope can do frightful things to the mind.

I didn't expect to be drawn into anything like that when I first played WCW Super Brawl Wrestling. I expected, at worst, to play yet another wrestling game trying to be a fighting game. This is a problem because, and I don't mean to burst any bubbles, professional wrestling isn't competitive in the same way that football or boxing is. My friend Steve once told me that wrestling, at its best, tells a story. This concept doesn't usually translate well into video games, but even so, wrestling games can be fun in their own right. No Mercy for the N64 is a superb game, and the SmackDown series has been highly popular. They're not "accurate" wrestling games, but they're still entertaining, and that's what counts. I had these same hopes for this game, that it would at least be entertaining for what it is.

The game starts inanely enough. You have the WCW logo, and some SNES-quality digital photos of Brian Pillman, Ric Flair and others. The menu system is simple. However, things change drastically as you get to the character select screen. Twelve convulsing images of WCW wrestlers assail your eyes, sometimes leaping from their cells and spouting catchphrases at you. I should have paid more attention to Johnny B. Badd who kept coming out and saying "I'M BAAAAAAAAD!" I realized later that this was the essence of the game trying to give me an important message, but I didn't catch on.

I decided to play as Ric Flair in a match versus Ricky Steamboat. What ensued was one of the more inexplicable gaming experiences of my young life.

The characters looked like their backs had been broken, and they moved like it too. The animation was some of the worst I've seen in a Super Nintendo game: blocky, awkward, and physically impossible most of the time. Moves have a long delay on them, their range is hard to predict, and they are so poorly animated that they bear little resemblance to anything I've ever seen in roughly fifteen years of watching wrestling. Tony Schiavone's commentary was just unnecessary. His wild gesticulating didn't lend anything to the game and just served to emphasize the fact that, indeed, someone was flat on the mat. Thanks, Tony.

The best tactic I found was to avoid using any of the long-delay moves and stick to button-mashing the quick punch and the grapple. Any game where that kind of nonsense is the key to victory doesn't do much for me. I eventually beat Steamboat with Flair's devastating Figure Four Leglock, which for some reason caused the referee to count to ten. Whatever.

Two-player mode is no better. I conned one of my college pals to try it out with me and all we could do was shake our heads in disbelief at just how sloppy this game is. The timing in the game is so poor that things were happening seemingly at random. I don't know if he's forgiven me for the three minutes of his life that I wasted, and I don't really blame him. It was stupid and selfish of me.

The game was a lesson in "just because you can doesn't mean you should." Digital photo graphics and voice were cool in their time, but they don't make a game good. The fundamental systems of this game are completely wrong, despite the fact that it was in development for around two years. What ensued was a tortured game just wants to be put down as soon as you pick it up.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 08/10/04