"Some strange controls, a bit limited, but still has some fun in it"

WWF Warzone was one of the first wrestling games released for the N64, the first wrestling game I played (even my first contact with the sport) and one of the games I played most multiplayer back in those days. While you find a game to be really fun to play, sometimes you're just blinded with features or functions that are new and fresh to you at the time, which might hide the fact that the game in reality isn't as good as it should be. This game is not totally in that category, but definitely has some tendencies towards it.


Graphics

This is pretty much what you'd expect from an early N64 game. The menus are nice and look good and has a surprising amount of detail (being based off an industrial elevator, for some strange reason), but the gameplay doesn't look as nice. The backgrounds consist of the ring and the audience, and while the ring has some nice reflections going on, the audience isn't even the paper cutouts that we're so used to from similar games, but instead the whole audience SECTIONS are textures in themselves. At least they tried to light it up a bit (sorry for the pun) with camera flashes spread out over it from time to time. The walk-in scenes looks more like some temporary catwalks for a school play than something out of a big wrestling show.

The characters don't seem to consist of many polygons, but they are surprisingly nicely animated. Most of the clothing and accessories are just "body paint"; textures just drawn on the 3D model instead of an extra model being added. You won't notice it much in normal gameplay with the wrestlers included, but when you're creating your own it can become very apparent when the muscles can easily be seen through a thick jacket. The characters look nice when fighting, with the only problem being that they sometimes "sink in" a bit into each other, but that only becomes a usual sight if you make a really fat custom wrestler, in normal gameplay with normal wrestlers at least it won't be irritatingly common. Speaking about body types, I find it interesting that the famous wrestlers included are as similar as they are. It's probably to avoid the sinking-in problem, but it still seems like they used just a few basic models with almost the same length and fatness for all different wrestlers, which is kinda boring. This is made especially obvious as there is a biography section where you can read up on wrestlers. One of the things you get to know there is how tall they are, and the differences in text doesn't seem to add up with what you see on screen.

Of course, a lot of this can be attributed to the age of the game. Though I must say that the graphics are on par with many early N64 platform games where they've squeezed out big areas (like Super Mario 64). Considering that, it must have been possible to get better graphics for the extremely tight spaces presented here.


Sound effects and music

One of the biggest drawbacks with the N64 compared to the Playstation was that the disc-based format of the PS gave those games the ability to have crisp CD quality music. With the N64, we're still stuck with the MIDI-like format of the SNES (even if it sounds better). This game is no exception to that; the wrestlers theme music is there, but these versions of them isn't very good sounding. Given what they had to work with, I must say that it sounds like the developers really tried to make the best out of it.

While the music needs to be MIDI to take up as little space as possible, there are still plenty of voices in the game. Everything from the wrestler taunts, to the crowd chants - we've even got two commentators to listen to. This is pretty impressive for an N64 game, and it doesn't matter that it's mostly one-liners since there are plenty of them. Especially the commentators are a great addition, since it helps the game feel more like a real wrestling event.

The sound effects are a bit strange. As everyone knows, wrestling isn't as bad as it looks (even if it can be pretty hard sometimes - The Wrestler is my movie tip for today), but in this game the sound effects make you believe it. For every move you make, every grapple coming out on your end, you'll hear the bones of your opponent breaking. It's a bit strange, but it adds a bit of humor to the game. Also, it shows that the game wants to show wrestling as it is supposed to look, rather than to show it the way it really is. It can probably differ from person to person if you like it or not, but I find it pretty amusing. And satisfying when you land a hard-hitting blow.


Controls

The controls are one of my main issues with this game, since there are some solutions that are outright stupid. But let's start off with the general overview - you can always choose to steer your character with either the D-pad or the control stick, and it's a nice choice to have. The A and B buttons are used for kicks and punches respectively, while the <C is for doing a tie-up. The rest of the C buttons are for running, blocking and climbing.

What's interesting with this system, compared to later wrestling games I've played, is that it plays out more as a traditional fighter when it comes to moves. Most moves you make are made from button combinations. Even in a tie-up, both wrestlers have to make a button combination to be able to pull of a move, and the game will use a formula to calculate who "won" the tie-up. Compare that to later wrestling games, where it's more common to have one button for grapples, one for kicks/punches and the effect of the move chosen with a simultaneous tilt of the control stick. Here, you instead have to press up-down-B to be able to make a hard-hitting blow. This makes the game a bit slower than the new gameplay, and also harder to get into for beginners since you have to learn separate combinations for each character.

Of course, you can't just play a wrestling game taking all the hits. There is a blocking/avoidance system present, but I find it pretty hard to use. You can sidestep to avoid attacks by pressing L/Z or R, and you can block by pressing C Down (which can also be used to counter grapples, but it's really hard to get the timing right). I don't think it works that well, since holding your fingers constantly on L/R puts some strain on them, and the C button is almost impossible to reach easily and "hover" over since you're using both A and B. They did the best they could with the controller, but I'd rather take a beating (which I do, and I do just fine playing the game, thanks) than holding the controller this uncomfortably.

The biggest problem with the controls, however, are the context sensitive commands. While no real problem in normal vs matches, in weapons matches you use <C to pick up weapons. Remember what <C did? Yeah, it's the tie-up button. It's also the button you use to pin. Since you're never in a situation where you can both tie-up and pin, that never becomes a problem. With weapons lying around the ring, it's not that good. You'll be effectively locked out of doing grapple attacks, since the game will mainly register it as you want to pick up the weapon. Meaning that you'll turn around, which makes you totally defenseless, and get attacked. This leads to you using a lot of punches/kicks to win the match, and the audience cheering your opponent instead. It's really irritating, and while you rarely lose because of it (after all, you can use the weapon once you get the opponent down on the floor!) it's really a strange flaw to be left in the game.


Gameplay

When the game starts, you're in a cool menu which looks kinda like an industrial elevator. Make your choice, and you'll go to the according "floor" for more choices. Since this is the main menu, here you'll find the usual stuff that need no real explanation - high scores, options, training and most important of all; the matches. Also featured in the game is a nice Create-a-wrestler mode and small biographies of the real wrestlers included.

I'll begin with the create-a-wrestler mode, since it feels like a pretty good thing to start out with the first time you boot up the game. Starting out with the appearance, you can choose from a set of different male/female (you'll have to unlock females) body types, ranging from muscular to obese. You can also choose a skin color, face and haircut. After that you work your way down the body with clothing until you reach the shoes. What makes me a bit disappointed is the lack of good things to choose from. Sure, I understand that you can't customize the length of every body part like in later games, but the clothing could be better. Instead of including many neutral clothes, they've included things in sets; like the doctor pants/shirt which doesn't look good with anything but the rest of that set. Sure, it's nice to be able to create a doctor, but I'd still rather take some more normal clothing to get some more variation going. Same thing with masks, there are a lot of different masks, but most of them are never used. I'd rather see more things like glasses (only 3 sunglasses available) and other small extra equipment. Still, I'm pretty impressed with the fact that they managed to get so much stuff into the game as they did, it's only a shame they focused on the wrong things. Another strange thing is the color bar where you're supposed to be able to change colors with the C buttons. For some clothes, it works just as it should, but for some it hardly changes the color at all. Very strange.

After you've chosen the looks of your wrestler, there are some more customization you can do. You get to pick both first name, last name and an alias for your wrestler, and you also get to choose theme song and moveset, no ability to choose individual moves in this game. Most of the themes and movesets are taken from the real wrestlers in the game, even if some original stuff is thrown in to spice up the CAW mode. You also get 25 points to distribute into five different stats - strength, toughness, speed, recovery, charisma (max 10 for each). What's fun with the stats points is that you can get an additional 15 by winning different match types, encouraging playing with your created wrestlers to see them become better instead of just letting them be forgotten. After selecting moveset and stats, you can just save 'em down to your memory card.

Speaking of memory cards, I must say I like the way this game handle savefiles. Of course, an N64 game without any means of saving to the cart is a bit cheap, but here it works that well, so as long as you've got a memory card inserted you won't even notice it. Taking up 1 note and 54 pages on a card, it might sound like pretty much but you'll get a lot to save on it. There are 30 slots available for you, and you can choose to save either custom wrestlers or progress through championship mode and high scores with real wrestlers to those slots. Championship progress/highscore with custom wrestlers is included in the slot that wrestler is created in. It might sound a bit complex, but when playing the game you'll hardly notice, since there's a great little feature you can turn on in options which is called autosave. With it on, it'll save your stats and progress after every match, and the only time you'll notice it is when you pick a real wrestler you've already played as, since then you get to choose if you want to continue on that stat/progress file or if you want to start on a new one. As I said, it might sound complex but it's very easy to use and works very much in the background, so as long as you've got a memory card with space available it's easy to forgive that you can't save to the game cart.

Now we've reached the main part of the game - the actual matches. After selecting it from the main menu, you get to choose from the different match types. Which types are available differ between how many players you choose, but I'll focus on the ones for one player now. On the top of the list is the championship mode. This is where you battle through 11 mandatory standard matches to become the world champion, and at times you get thrown into grudge matches (mostly weapon/cage matches) against sore losers you've beaten earlier. It's nothing that fancy or interesting, the overview of the championship is a bunch of TV screens with wrestlers faces, and each grudge match is introduced with your opponent saying a one-liner while hitting a punching bag. There's no story or anything like that, just the matches. Still, it's here you'll spend most of your time as a lonely player since it's here you do most of the unlocks. Since it's just a string of standard matches with some other types added at random, championship does nothing to enhance the gameplay in any way, but at least you have a goal here, unlike in single matches.

Under championship, we've got the normal versus match, where you need to pin or make your opponent tap out to win. Then we've got cage, tag and weapons matches, if you're a wrestling fan you'll know what those are about. There is a Royal Rumble available where you are put up against 20 different wrestlers (only 4 can be in the ring at the same time) and need to throw all of them out of the ring to win.

When playing a match, you need to keep a close look at the meters available. It's as I said; this game borrows some things from classic fighting games. So you've actually got a health meter here, but unlike in a fighting game it's constantly refilling slowly and the match isn't over when it hits the bottom, but that's only when the wrestler passes out, and the meter turns into a decreasing meter instead. When the countdown meter is emptied (which happens faster if you attack the wrestler while he's out), the health is refilled and he can battle again. As the fight goes on, and more damage is dealt, the health meter changes color. When it's turned red, not only do the stun meter get longer, but you can also knock out the opponent and pin him or use a submission hold and hopefully you'll win the match. The only bad thing with this system is that gameplay gets pretty slowed down by passing out, since there's no good counter system in this game all you can do is wait.

What's interesting is that those meters decide more than just the health for the wrestler. In a cage match, where the goal is to get out of the cage before your opponent, for some reason you can't climb down on the outside of the cage unless an opponent is in red health. If you press the down button at the top of the cage when your opponent isn't in red, you'll just jump down to the ring again. This is just stupid - make the cage harder to climb or something, don't let us get up there and then not being able get out! What's strange is that this is the opposite in royal rumbles where it should be applied. Your first attack towards an opponent can be tossing him out of the ring. At full health.

The health meter can also take on some other shapes. When you pin your opponent, a countdown meter starts much like for passing out, but here the referee has to count to 3 before it runs out. A very similar meter is used for holds, though without the referee counting, of course. The last type is the submission hold meter which goes up - if it reaches the top, the wrestler will tap out. What makes all these meters interesting is that the attacker can prolong the time of holds, pins and submission holds meters by mashing the buttons, and by doing the same the receiver can shorten the times of those as well as the stun meter.

Two other meters are available - the first one being damage gauge, which only shows the damage you dish out and if it's multiplied, so it's mostly for you to learn which moves are the most powerful. The other "meter" is the tie-up-boost (that's probably not the technical term, but it's how it works), which is the color of your name. First of all, you attack your opponent with punches/kicks a few times in a row without letting your opponent strike you. This makes your name go bluer (3 levels of blueness) and the deeper blue, the more advantage you'll have in a tie-up situation, which is otherwise a kind of rock-paper-scissors game between the damage of the moves selected. This gauge is reset whenever a tie-up move is done or a wrestler passes out.

Hidden behind the scenes is also the stats for crowd cheering. If you do well, mixing up the moves dishing out a lot of damage to your opponent, you'll get the crowd on your side. This has a lot of positive effects. First of all your health bar is refilled, then you do extra damage, and if you get in a hold or get stunned, those bars will deplete in minimum time. Also, if you stun an opponent while the crowd is cheering on you, his stun bar will start at max no matter how healthy he is. The crowd cheering aspect is an important strategy factor, and can make or break a game. The only problem I find with it is that it focuses on some wrong factors. The only thing that matters are the moves pulled off, and if you do too many of the same move the crowd will boo you and cheer on the opponent. The problem with this is that if an opponent blocks a lot of your moves he'll be getting the advantage. Now, I'm not living in a country where wrestling is popular, but if I went to a wrestling match and somebody constantly blocked or avoided moves, I'd probably think of him as a damned coward and not the person I'd prefer to cheer on.

Overall, the matches can get a bit slow-going, much because of all the countdown meters where you can do nothing but to mash buttons to get back on your feet. Other than that, I like the gameplay, even if using button combinations to perform attacks feels a bit weird for a wrestling game. Sometimes there are some strange glitches with attacks not connecting when they obviously should, but it's not a big problem. The AI works good most of the time, though sometimes when playing against hard the computer controlled characters are blatantly cheating by checking inputs for tie-up situations, and it also sometimes avoid or block attacks a human, no matter how good he or she is, wouldn't suspect. Even if those things only happen on hard, and even if it's still winnable if you keep pushing on, I still prefer hard to be simulating a very good human instead of feel like it's cheating.


TOTAL

Even though this is one of my most nostalgic N64 games, even I can see that this has aged very much. But even though there are some strange control solutions and limited customization, there are still some hours of fun packed away in this game. Going through championship mode with the wrestlers to unlock more cheats is a great way to make something useful and a goal out of it instead of just stringing together random matches. Still, I'd only recommend you to get this game nowadays either if you're very interested in old wrestling and wrestling games, or if you have nostalgic memories to it. It's a decent game, but it surely isn't the best available for the N64 (I like Wrestlemania 2000, but I heard No Mercy is good too), and therefore I give WWF War Zone a 6 out of 10.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/21/11

Game Release: WWF War Zone (EU, 08/21/98)