WWE WrestleMania 21

"Best Wrestling Game on the XBOX"

After playing this game for 2 hours last night, I was truly pissed off by the replay glitches and slowdown from menu to menu. I was getting ready to take this back to Gamestop this afternoon. I figured to give this one more chance. The more that I played WM21 this morning, I enjoyed for what this game is. It is a bit on the harder side to reverse moves, but time will tell. Yes, I will compare this to some of the other WWE games that have been released recently.

Graphics
I have played every wrestling game ever released in the U.S. and almost every Jap. import, and I have to say that this is the most beautiful wrestling game I have ever seen. The only other game that comes close to this is Day of Reckoning for the cube. Each wrestler has been recreated very nicely. They have that plastic-action figure look to them, but it is not that bad.

The entrances are simply amazing for most of the roster that I have seen. I hear that there is a discrepancy with Triple-H's, Ric Flair's, and a few others. I will have to check out their entrances to find out if it is true. Yes, Batista is wearing earrings like he did a long time ago. I guess not everything is perfect. Even the arenas have been recreated very nicely and haven't noticed much wrong with them yet.

The menus are very ugly, and I wonder who in the world designed them. That designer needs to rethink their strategy next time. I even get a bit of chugging during my menu selections which I'm not too sure if it is the disc, my dvd drive, or the programmers screwing things up. Even the loading sometimes can be horrendous which does not make any sense. I'll get times when the loading comes up fast and other times when it's taking it's time.

I am amazed by the blood animations as this is finally the first wrestling game in the U.S. that actually allows the blood to flow throughout the match. It would have been cool if the blood would stain the mat. I also found the replays after a match to be really nice with showing off the final move that lead to the pin really cool. But, this is where all the suttering and hiccupping comes into play when trying to view this. TIP: don't try to skip past the replay when it's skipping, I did a few times and it would just lock up my XBOX.

Gameplay
I find the gameplay to be pretty solid, as there is some issues with a bit of collision detection. I didn't notice the crazy amounts of collision that people are complaining about. I guess with more time spent on this game, I may run into more problems. Nothing compares to the problems that occurred with Showdown: LOW 3 or RAW2 with my initial impressions of WM21.

One thing that I don't understand is that when THQ has 3 separate developers working on WWE games, why not try to work a deal with the WWE to release 1 title per year as a cross platform? Yukes has done a good job with SD series, and the DOR team is a part of the Yukes team, and Studio Gigante has just arrived. Why not combine the gameplay from SD and DOR to create 1 good wrestling game a year. If it is for profits to have 3 per year, why not also just create a WWE Hall of Fame Wrestling Legends game with only legends and give that to another developer and make it cross platform. This I will never understand.

Back to the gameplay; this feels more like a No Mercy clone with the very simplistic button configurations. If I could just learn how to pull off reversals than life would be much easier!

Features/Options:
One thing that Studio Gigante did right was the Create A Belt defenses during exhibition. Finally we are able to defend our belts and they stay with the current champion. But I hear that there is a problem with tag belts only appearing on one tag wrestler and titles can't be defended against another human player. Don't quote me on that last sentence as I don't know if it's true. It's nice that we don't have to buy the parts to actually create a belt like in SDvR which took forever to save up money. When the wrestlers come out with the belt around their waste, it actually looks nice and snug on them unlike SDvR where you could fit a second person around the strap. There are a lot of belts that need to be purchased or unlocked which is cool besides the freebies.

Create A Wrestler is not bad, but its nowhere near as extensive as SDvR. I can't stand the fact that we are not allowed to view what we are putting on our wrestler till after the fact. Then you have to go back and undo what you did. I only tinkered with this a little bit while setting up my character for season mode. There seems like there is a lot of parts to unlock.

Season Mode has been tried before in DOR, and I think it is a bit better in WM21. Studio Gigante was actually able to get the voiceovers correct compared to SDvR where you thought everyone was in a bathroom recording their voices. Even though it's nice to take one of your CAW through this mode, it stinks for replay value. You are going through the same story over and over if you want to replay this which blows. The last 4 wrestling games (RAW2, DOR, SDvR, & WM21) have had a season mode which doesn't constitute replay value. I wish these companies would use the formula that was used for SD:HCTP, it was almost perfect and with a few tweaks could have been awesome for SDvR or even this game. RAW2 was onto something with the good/bad formula which is something like Knights of the Old Republic, but was never fully realized.

THQ, we need an open ended season mode with elements from SD: HCTP + KOTOR mechanics of turning good/bad through the season mode.

Custom Soundtracks are in, but I haven't played around with this feature yet.

XBOX Live does not work either.

There's much more to this game, but I dont want to write a novel since this is my initial impressions. What we have here is a very beautiful wrestling game under the hood, but when you start playing you notice all the flaws that could have been corrected with 1-2 more months of development time. THQ/SG, look at KOTOR 1; it was delayed so much just to make sure that a flawed game wasn't released. I would love for THQ to have 1 development team that only makes 1 wrestling game cross platform like I stated before. THQ + the developer could put all their resources into the one title. If profits were an issue, release 1 more title called WWE Hall of Fame Wrestling Legends cross plat, and watch the dough come in quicker than this type of strategy.

Overall, WM21 is not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. There are flaws, glitches, and other problems that brings down this package. I don't blame people for complaining either since we are tired of paying $50 for a wrestling game on each platform that doesn't live up to expectations. Again, if there was one game out with all the best features combined we would not be at this predicament right now. If you are a die hard wrestling fan, I do recommend that you rent this first to make sure you can deal with the problems. IGN and Gamingring weren't too off on their reviews as I would say this game does deserve a 7.0 in my book, but the dude at IGN kept on talking about SDvR every other paragraph. I was hoping for a more professional review.

If THQ/SG can release a patch to fix XBOX Live and some of the little glitches that might be programming issues, than this game could be really good. We will have to wait for them to release a statement.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/05