Review: Legends Of Wrestlemania

I have been a die hard dedicated wrestling fan since around 1990. Before that I was a casual fan, catching it on TV whenever I could. I have remained a huge fan to this day. And back then I played every WWF game I could get my hands on. My first one being WWF Wrestlemania Challenge on the NES. Since that game I have bought every WWF game that has come out.

Lately, it has been Smackdown Vs. Raw games every year. And I started to wonder if I would ever see a game dedicated to those legends I watched as a kid. Well I got my wish, and Legends Of Wrestlemania was announced by the makers of the Smackdown games. The countdown began, and last night, it reached 0....

Which sadly... is what this fucking game is.

For some, insane idiotic reason, THQ and Yukes, took what was working, and ass raped it. See the graphics are AWESOME. The music rules. The look of the game is great. But then you actually PLAY the game.... See they decided to just drop the ENTIRE control scheme from the past few Smackdown games and come up with something new. They wanted this to instead play like an arcade game, instead of the simulation that we are already used to. Well guess what, go find me mother fuckers that still go to the arcade. NO ONE DOES. Why? Because arcades fucking SUCK now.

You know the buttons on top of your controllers? Like on the Playstation you got, R1, R2, L1, L2? Yeah, those are worthless now. No seriously, in the tutorial for this game, there is nothing those buttons are used for. The game is BUTTON MASHING. Seriously, when the hint pop ups during the match, it basically tells you to just mash fucking buttons. Yeah that's fun. Just mash some god damn buttons, no skill really involved in this at all. Oh yeah and now there is a BLOCK feature. Yeah, BLOCK. Not reversal. If you're thinking, what does he mean, BLOCK? Like in Mortal Kombat when they would just sit there and hold down block and sit in the corner like a fag? YES, THAT IS WHAT I MEAN. I mean SOMETHING, THAT NEVER EVER HAPPENS IN WRESTLING, IS IN THE GAME. You sit there, hold down triangle, and just block. Can you imagine Wrestlemania 15 if The Rock just sat there with his hands up and held his hands in front of his face and that blocked everything Austin did to him?

Press square to punch, press a direction and hold down square to punch HARDER? There are so many crazy insane button combinations to do in this game that it will be impossible for anyone to just pick up this game and start playing. I mean the Smackdown games were a LITTLE confusing at first, but nothing like this. Smackdown you can at least get a friend over and they can pick up and start playing and halfway into the match they got it down. With this game? Fuck that, half way through the match I was ready to just throw the controller on the ground and use my toes cause it would do just as much good. There is no point to anything in this game. MASH BUTTONS. That is it. There is constantly hint pop ups going up on the screen that instead of watching and playing the match, you're always looking around for the next hint so you can figure out what the fuck to do. Gone is any type of real timing and skill that the old games took for you to win. This is button mashing then just pin the guy. I played about 4 or 5 matches, I won a couple, lost a couple, but none of the matches actually lasted any longer than 2 minutes.

This game is the biggest dissapointment in the history of my video gaming life. So much hype and build up for an awesome game to come out only to be ruined by its pointless and assanine control layout. No wonder THQ is going out of business. Everyone over there has their heads up their ass.

4/10