Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This at Home

"Be Like Mick"

Admit it, you always wanted to be like the Hardcore Legend Mick Foley and jump off roofs onto people… What you neither? For the few insane people whose idea of fun is getting hit over the head with light bulbs, steel chairs, and trash cans, boy do I have a game for you. As for the rest of us, if we want a wrestling game we stick with the much more popular WWE series.

Story 7/10

Ok I do got to admit this game actually has a story mode… kind of. It’s called Talk Show mode, which may be slightly funny at 1st gets old seeing it again and again and again with no variety. But on the plus side it does beat the god awful Revenge Mode in Wrestlemania. The story starts off as a cheesy Talk show where they bring in a bunch of people to talk about backyard wrestling, and then you fight the scenes the people were talking about. For example a butcher comes on the show and talks about this fight he saw in the meat locker, next thing you know, you are up against three opponents in a meat locker, no joke!

Game play 6/10

Wait is this a wrestling game or a fighting game? Backyard Wrestling seems to have some serious identity crisis. On one hand there’s grapples and pins just like your every day wrestling game. On the other hand you are missing a ring (as you would have guessed) and submissions are sadly missing. Oh and you can forget there is even a pin button, the majority of the time; you knock your opponent senseless until they are knocked out, no need to even pin.

Every grapple you can possible think of is in this game under some ridiculous name or another. Stone Cold Stunner= The Execution. Rock Bottom= Free Falling. Unfortunately with only 4 grapples for each wrestler you feel kind of cheated. But then again who needs grapples when you can K.O most opponent by hitting just 1 button.

The CAW (create a wrestler) is a joke. You get a choice of 15 bodies with 12 costumes each. If you don’t like any of them choices, you are out of luck. To make things even more complicated, you can’t preview the moves in the CAW screen, you have to exit out of the CAW menu, go to a totally different menu to view what the moves look like. Then you have to rely on your memory to remember what moves you want on your CAW (or be like me and write it down) If you want you can created 6 CAWS (compare that to 16 in most wrestling games) With the Caw as limited as it is, I can’t help but wonder why they even bothered.

Graphics/Sound 7/10

Ever seen Celebrity Death Match? If so you got a good idea what the people look like in this game. The characters have a distant claymation look to them, which while not bad, does not really suit this game. Further adding the unrealistic ness is every small tiny little hit draws gushing blood. I can’t help but wonder what the creators were thinking, they slap Don’t Try this at home warning all over the game yet they make the game looks cartoonist making any kids who plays think its ok to hit people over the head with whatever you can get your hands on.

The environments are well done; all look very realistic as opposed to the characters. Virtually everything in the level in interactive, smash people through tables, pick of heavy chairs and throw them at people, pick up a lighter and light a mattress on fire are just some small example of what can be done. But my only question is where’s the ring? Real backyard wrestling is done with a ring, regardless if they stay in it or not, so why is it strangely absent in this game?

Replay Value 6/10

Theirs plenty of stuff to try to do in each level, but still with only 7 levels, you will probably grow bored of stuff to try fairly quickly. The story mode is really only good for 1 play though, so there’s 0 reliability there. The games only saving grace is multiplayer, but after a few hours of playing this they will probably want to move onto a real fighting or wrestling game

Overall 7/10

Backyard Wrestling isn’t a bad game per say, it just got a serious identity crisis going on. Are you a fighting game or a wrestling game? Sadly it fails at being either one. Perhaps a sequel will turn out better but this game is sadly only a weekend rent.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/20/03