WWE: Legends of Wrestlemania Review
Arcade Horror wants to be a real American!   

Xbox 360
by Coxster 

Any game that comes out and tries to take me back to my childhood is always welcome on my shelves. Games like the recent Megadrive compilation by Sega, Scarface: The World is Yours, anything that has something to do with 80’s and 90’s always gets me excited.  Maybe I just like to regress to my childhood (who doesn’t?) or maybe I just look at the past through rose tinted glasses, either way I can’t help but like anything that has to do with the two main decades of my youth.  Needless to say that I have been looking forward to Legends of Wrestlemania ever since it was first announced way back when.  I love games that create a good sense of nostalgia and of course I love my wrestling – what more could a man ask for? 

As far as providing an accurate trip down memory lane, Legends commendably succeeds.  While the character models aren’t entirely spot on, King Kong Bundy didn’t have one identifiable muscle on his entire body and Hulk Hogan looks almost inflatable, by and large the costumes, entrance music and stadiums all feel like the real deal.  I was a little bit let down by the over the top, almost cartoon-like design to the wrestlers, but since this is obviously designed to be a caricature of those legendary wrestlers of yesteryear, I guess the exaggeration and inaccurate representation of certain personalities is to be expected, even if I would of preferred a more Smackdown Vs Raw approach to the design.  

The roster is excellent, there are plenty of big names that are going to bring back more than a few memories for the old school wrestling fan. Here’s a rundown of what’s on offer.

Andre The Giant, Animal, Arn Anderson, Bam Bam Bigelow, Big Bossman, Big John Studd, Bret Hart, British Bulldog, Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, Dusty Rhodes, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Hawk, Honky Tonk Man, Hulk Hogan, Triple H, Iron Shiek, Jake the Snake, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, Junkyard Dog, Kamala, King Kong Bundy, Koko B. Ware, Michael Hayes, Mr Perfect, Nikolai Volkoff, Ravishing Rick Rude, Ric Flair, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Sgt Slaughter, Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ted Dibiase, The Rock, Ultimate Warrior, Undertaker, Yokozuna. 

Now there is no doubt that the above list is impressive, but oddly enough there are stacks of old WWE wrestlers that didn’t make the cut, I think it’s safe to assume that it was due to legal reasons. Where is Mankind, the Steiner brothers or Owen Hart? Where is Eddie and his Latino Heat? I could sit here all day and speculate on what would be an ultimate roster of old wrestlers but at least there are enough big players here to warrant interest. Let’s hope that next time around the WWE can do a bigger roster with the likes of Hall and Nash, the Bushwackers, George “The Animal” Steele, Randy Macho Man Savage, hell there are so many names coming to me right now I could go on forever. Hey don’t worry though because at least there are some great names that are on the list and as it turns out they are all pretty darn accurate (minus one or two character models that suffer from exaggerated bicep ballooning).  

The graphics in Legends of Wrestlemania are comparable with the Smackdown series, maybe falling a little bit short when it comes to the crowds and the stadiums.  I know that the stadiums reflect how they were back in the day so of course there is less flair than we’re used to these days.  The crowds are probably the weakest part, graphically, in Legends.  They are made with a minimal polygon count and repeat far too often, but I suppose you can expect that when the large stadiums are filled to the brim with people, just a pity that it looks like the same five people multiplied a thousand times.  As I mentioned before, the character models look great even if they are exaggerated.  Sweat trickles down their bodies and the animations are first-class.  All the theme music and costumes are spot on – lots of fluro, lots of headbands, lots of 80s baby! 

Definitely the most controversial aspect of this game is the differed control scheme. I’ve been reading around and it seems like that the controls don’t seem too popular with a lot of critics; I have sadly had to agree with them. There are less moves, chains that degenerate into quicktime events and button mashes that can make some harder matches into nothing but an exercise into who can hit the X button the fastest. These problems have always existed in wrestling games, but the grapple system is far too basic and repetitious for me to really enjoy it as much as the modern day games I’m used to. Fair enough that the developers were trying to make this a more casual affair and pick up a piece of the market that lived through the 80s and wants to play as their favourite wrestler, my gripe is that it comes at the expense of alienating the huge Smackdown fan base that already exists. Once you come to grips with the controls (and it took me longer than I was expecting), there is fun to be had and you can easily pull off some great moves, but there are moments when you don’t feel entirely in control of the outcome.  

The AI can be an absolute moron during matches, but because the submission mini-games and kicking out of a pin require so much button mashing, the AI seems to almost cheat and requires that you button mash faster than any human is capable of while it seems to be able to pin you every time, it can frustrate the shit out of you for sure.  Reversals on the other hand work well and require that you hit the right button at the right moment and sure enough you can usually reverse your opponents move if you keep your cool. Each grapple move that you chain together increases you into a new tier of moves that are more powerful than the last before culminating in your wrestler’s special move which only requires that you tap the A and X buttons together when the wrestler is standing in a groggy position.  I actually preferred this over the guessing game of what position you should be in with Smackdown and I hope that they do something similar to this in next year’s title.  Taunting provides certain perks, such as being to increase your special meter or your health, depending on what direction you press when you press down the taunt buttons, but beware, you can only do them if you have your grapple chain high enough and as soon as you taunt it will knock you down another level taking a little while to rebuild before you can execute your special.   I don’t really get why they did this, it’s a great idea but it just doesn’t work as well as it should.  I like to taunt anytime I want and I don’t like the thought of being penalized for it.  However I do like that you get perks and I can see that the lack of freedom was to provide better balancing and offer a little more strategy.  

There is a whole swag of modes (admittedly not as many as you would find in a Smackdown game) but the main one is the Relive mode where you get to play out classic matches from Wrestlemanias gone by.  It’s great to watch the montage of old footage only to get a chance to play that match and complete certain objectives that are unique to that match in particular.  There are also modes such as Rewrite, where you get to rewrite history and change the way the matches went down which also stays true for the Redefine mode which allows you to play classic matches with modifiers like Steel Cage and no DQ.  Seriously these modes are great and I got a thrill after every video as I plunged into playing some old memories.  I remember most of these iconic matches like they were yesterday and it were so much fun to play through them, if only the controls didn’t occasionally let me down.  

For those that are interested there is a pretty good create a wrestler mode here that allows you to create your own 80’s nightmare.  It’s not as fleshed out as what you might be used to in Smackdown but it’s got enough to get by.  The best bit about this whole package has to be the fact that you can import the entire roster from Smackdown Vs Raw 2009.  Yep every single one!  It was so much fun to put Yokozuna up against John Cena, Batista against Bam Bam Bigalow, I want to see every wrestling game from now on support the importing of rosters from old titles.  The cherry on top is that you can also import your created wrestlers from SvR 2009 into Legends as well, saving you a hell of lot of time and effort. I’m truly impressed by these features and I hope they stick around and survive into future games. Pretty pretty pretty please! 

Overall: 

Legends fail in certain areas that it shouldn’t fail.  It does a good job at being a solid arcade wrestler, but if you’re hoping for something a complicated you’ll be sadly disappointed.  There is a positive with the controls, in that anyone can pick up and play pretty easily, but it’s going to turn off a lot of wrestling game veterans at the same time.  Online is pretty meh but functions quite well.  There are excellent modes and features and a pretty solid line up and the video montages are fantastic.  You can import all your created wrestlers from SvR 2009 as well the entire roster – a truly amazing feat that I am truly in love with.  Legends fall a little short of the mark in my books but it’s still an entertaining journey back into the days of my childhood, something I’m always grateful for.