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Legends of Wrestling II

January 2nd, 2003 Jason Rybka Leave a comment Go to comments

Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, Rowdy Roddy Piper,
Bruno Sammartino, Bret “Hitman” Hart, Sid Vicious,
“Big Poppa Pump” Scott Steiner, Jerry “The
King” Lawler and many more. See where I’m going with this? When it
comes to wrestling titles on the Xbox the options are somewhat limited at the
moment, Legends of Wrestling II is a sequel that includes all
the finer features of the first title (Legends of Wrestling) and adds
in a couple of twists and turns. Featuring over 65 wrestling icons from the
past and enough game modes to keep your interest, Legends of Wrestling II
is an improvement on the first release, but does it have what it takes to be
champion of the world? Grab your shadiest promoter and let’s find out.

As you
would expect from any wrestling title, Legends of Wrestling II is played in
the third person view centered around a battle ring and it’s your goal in the
single player mode to conquer the world of wrestling by winning matches. Wrestling
as a sport has always been more of a show than a competition, since the outcome
of a match is predetermined by the promoters. (Call me crazy but as a youngster
in the era this game portrays, I had always known this, but tried to forget
it every time I watched Hulk Hogan step into the ring, guess I’m a bit of an
optimist and always wanted the ‘Hero’ to live up to my expectations on his own!)
The Career Mode exploits the use of promoters and fans by not
only placing you in the ring against some stiff competition, but also by monitoring
the general excitement of the fans. You need to eliminate the contenders in
a certain region to move on to the next, and keep the promoter happy as well.
The ultimate goal is to be champion of the world.

To
begin the career mode you choose one of the unlocked wrestlers, including any
wrestlers you have created in the Create A Legend mode. There
are five different regions available, each having a promoter that will decide
what matches you will take and where you will contend. There are different scenarios
that you choose through a random press of the “A” button, giving a
bit of variety to the mix. Each of the promoters are unique, choosing to start
the career mode in the northeast region yields a promoter that gives you the
feeling he’s seen The Godfather one too many times. Once you have completed
a region you can move on to the next, and once all five regions have been completed
you move on to international competition and try to claim the world belt. It
is interesting to note the level of detail they tried to put into the career
mode as I used a customized legend, Christina “Classy”
Marchitto and my promoter noticed I was female and addressed me
as ‘ma’am‘, I didn’t think I was old enough for that!

Hulk Hogan While
we’re on the subject let’s address the Create A Legend mode,
the area of the game where you create different custom wrestlers and the only
area where you’ll be able to get a female wrestler. There are plenty of options,
such as body style, hair style, introduction music, persona, name, and what
side you’re on; the heels or the face (bad or good). While it seemed
as if they tried their best to make a seamless integration with enough options
to make it a valuable portion of the title, the menu system is confusing and
lacks the ease of navigation and selection. I could not for the life of me find
a hair style that I liked and no matter how hard I looked could not find a way
to change my hair color, minimal complaints at best, but after placing a t-shirt
on and then moving to a sleeveless vest I could not remove the t-shirt. Frustrating
to say the least. Once you do get through creating your wrestler it’s smooth
sailing, but getting there is half the battle.

In addition to the Career Mode there is also an Exhibition Mode
and a Tournament Mode. Exhibition Mode in general is just a
quick way to get to the action by battling a friend or the CPU through a single
match, tag team match, 3 way dance, four way dance, caged match, battle royal
or a ladder match. The tag team matches can be set up to be a lot of fun, and
the Exhibition area is where you’ll spend most of your time once you’ve completed
the Career Mode, or if you decide to skip it all together. Tournament Mode is
a tag team tournament just as you would expect, where you choose 4 to 16 teams
to compete, only one of those teams will make it to the top.

Regardless
of the game mode you’re playing, the basic controls are fairly simple. Using
the left thumbstick and the X button will perform 3 levels of ‘Strike‘
moves, weak, medium, and strong. The same method with the Y button will perform
basic ‘Attack‘ moves. Once you have your opponent tied up pressing
an action button will begin one of the basic moves, such as a scoop slam, which
can then be more refined into a specific slam move. The whole ISP generated
move set works fairly well, but given the pace of the game, it’s difficult to
pull off a variety of moves and be effective unless you have dedicated an extreme
amount of time into the title. I played through the game and didn’t notice much
variety after the first 10 or so matches. The setup becomes a bit cumbersome
and leads to monotonous movements, not quite the crowd-pleaser. There are also
plenty of ways to use the ring, the ropes, or weapons like chairs in the matches.
Fighting outside the ring, using a variety of moves, and striking blood are
encouraged, and as the crowd grows in excitement you’ll perform even better.
Once you’ve mastered the art of reversals, as the AI apparently has in some
matches, it can lead to a very stale match, as every combo and reversal
is met by a counter-reversal of it’s own!

Wrestlers don’t wrassle for free you know, and neither do you. Playing Career
and Tournament modes will give you coins based on your performance. These coins
can be used in The Shop to ‘purchase‘ wrestlers, textures,
arenas, abilities, and cheats. There are 3 types of coins; green,
red, and blue. You only earn green coins,
you need to gamble away your green coins to get red or blue coins, both valued
much higher than the green coins. Many of the features require red and blue
coins, so gambling is required. There is also a theater where you can view interviews,
career endings, and concept art.

For all the hard work they put into this title, it’s a shame that
some of the graphics are so under-developed. Based on the first installment
of the title, the characters are cartoon like, which in my book is fine and
fits the title, but some of the animation transitions are way off. The most
saddening aspect is the 2D audience that can be seen quite easily when romping
around outside the ring. Collision detection is not quite where it needs to
be, and your wrestler will sometimes do a move at distances far greater than
would be possible, or be unable to force a tie up when in close. Pick the smallest
wrestler available and he’ll easily body slam Andre The Giant, adding the effect
of gravity and scalable weight effects would have added a much needed refinement.
All in all the graphics are definitely a notch up from the original Legends
of Wrestling, but still in need of some tweaks to become a true legend in the
realm of wrestling titles.

The voice overs for the announcer are done well, but the music through the matches
get repetitive really quickly. Luckily the use of custom soundtracks has been
enabled, otherwise I’m not sure I would have made it through the title. Whatever
tunes you choose to hear while playing, the game is presented in Dolby Digital,
and the cheers from those 2D fans can be heard from all sides. Again, the audio
has been improved from the first title.

There are a lot of different modes of gameplay, and three
difficulty settings to play it through, which does give the title a good amount
of replay value. If you’re a wrestling fan of the past you’ll definitely get
your fill here, especially viewing the interview material on the disk.

Legends of Wrestling II is
a decent game. I’ve never been a huge wrestling fan but it was a lot of fun
playing through the title with characters I remember watching when I was younger
(painfully enforced by my older brother). For the true wrestling fan,
this title may be just what you’re looking for, but if you’re a stickler for
the technical side of games, it may not be polished enough to suit your needs.
Obviously made by a wrestling fan, for a wrestling fan, besides the technical
problems it’s a fun game to play that has more to offer on the up side than
the down side!