So, while I was waiting for the inevitably awesome UFC 2009: Undisputed to come out, I needed to fill some of that custom-fighter-gaming need. As I work in a video game store, I had a lot to choose from. Being as I, in a former life, was very interested in wrestling and the games had entertained me as recently as two years ago, I decided to try out the new WWE game.
WWE Legends of Wrestlemania (2009) is the latest installment in the WWE franchise as made by THQ, which is funny, because it plays like the very first THQ wrestling game. The only buttons that do anything are the face buttons. The triggers, bumpers, and dual analog sticks do literally nothing special, as if I was playing this on the PlayStationOne again. Despite the antiquated control, the game was actually really fun. The importing of the roster of WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009 (including the Create-A-Superstar) adds a lot to the game in the way of entertainment and gameplay to the story-absent game. The Relive, Rewrite, and Redefine matches were all really fun, as are the Legend Killer gauntlets. I didn't have the game long enough to play online, but I'm sure the constant quick-time events with potentially laggy connections would suck pretty hard. Oh, yeah. All the finishers, irish whips and chain moves are done via quick time events. They get super old, but work relatively well. The game has literally no replay value as far as I could tell, but thats just the way it is, I guess.So, that game was super fast. I got all the Xbox 360 achievements for it in a day without even trying. Then all I had to do was wait for the UFC game to come out, which finally did and I played literally for a week straight.
UFC 2009 Undisputed (2009) was first written about here when I played the SICK demo. Since then, I would just play the demo when I got bored, waiting for the chance to play the full game. So, the game was released at midnight at my store so when I got home from work, I played until about 6am. I created a character and brought him straight through career, making an undefeated muay thai knee-throwing jui jitsu submitting middleweight. Sick. Then, I made a knockout-artist kickboxer/wrestler heavyweight with thirty-three wins and only one loss. After the career, I brought him online and knocked out sixteen people, then went to my middleweight and submitted seventeen people, only losing six times along the way. Assholes still find a way to drop out when they're losing, mostly by signing out of their profile or just turning off their Xbox when they're about to get tapped, which generally ruins the fun for everyone, but they're not super frequent from what I've noticed.The aforementioned career mode is pretty fun, starting with creating the fighter you want to proceed in a relatively in depth create mode--one of those ones that takes forever to get good at, but easy enough for anyone to mess around with--then playing roughly thirty-five fights before being forced to retire. In between each fight, you have a certain number of weeks to spar, train, and attend special events. Then the fight occurs, followed by you winning or losing any number of ways and repeat. Training raises your strength, speed, and cardio and sparring gives you points to add to any of your lets say several stats which include all forms and positions of striking offense and defense, plus grappling, takedown, and submission offenses and defenses. You meet the top ranked fighters along the way, fight them, and move up the ladder until you get the championship of whatever weight-class you're in and then defend the belt until the end.
Which brings me to one of my gripes about the game. Weight classes. I was looking forward to beating the hell out of Brock Lesnar as BJ Penn, because I figured it would be funny and Lesnar deserves to get beat by someone 100 lbs less than him, but there are no catchweight fights. You can online fight in one given weight class at a time. Some of the fighters are in two weight classes, but that's not really the same. It's a little problem, but something they should fix as you can play in cross-weight-class fights in things like Fight Night.
They have a classic fights mode, which I honestly haven't played yet, but the basic premise is the same as the Relive matches in WWE Legends of Wrestlemania and you have to exactly recreate the outcome of the matches, which I can imagine will get a bit frustrating as I have on several occassions accidentally knocked someone out or been knocked out when I was going for a submission or decision--especially when you have to win by one particular submission, like a rear-naked choke in the Griffin vs Rua fight that you can only do from one position that doesn't usually yield an actual win, even with huge ranks in submission offense. But whatever, I'm sure those matches will be fun to play eventually.
In the long run, I enjoy both games, but have only kept UFC and intend to keep it and continue playing it until I grow so bored of it that I can never watch another UFC match or until the next one come out, making it my sports game to buy every year like a stupid ass lemming. In other words, I'll be keeping the game.
In an unrelated review, I have the best girlfriend ever. She gave me Earthbound for the SNES. I'm going to play and review it eventually, depending how long it takes me. Sweet deal.
-Evan "Dez" O'Connor
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