WWE Day Of Reckoning: As Catchy As John Cena's Freestyles: Wordlife

Wrestling games will never be perfect. Just repeat that. Wrestling games will never be perfect. There are too many things that different people like about them in order to satisfy everyone. But there are bars set. People will always compare their wrestling games to one of two games: No Mercy on the N64, and any iteration of the Japanese game Fire Pro Wrestling. Were those games perfect? While I'm not sure about the latter since I've never had the opportunity to play it, No Mercy was excellent, but far from perfect, and has aged horrendously. It's aged worse than Carrie Fisher. Yes, THAT badly. If you're searching for game reviews, then you've seen Return of the Jedi. And if you've seen Return of the Jedi then you remember when Carrie Fisher was hot like fire! But now, it's hard to believe that it's the same person. Imagine how befuddled Han Solo would be right now if Lucas ever continued the storyline after Jedi. So you get the point. No Mercy is slow with bad graphics compared to it's new aged counterparts. But it's still the bar. It had great game play and control, and actually felt like you were really grappling. And it set that bar on how much you could actually do in a game, with a nice one player storyline mode to boot.

I think that the most important thing for a game to succeed in this day and age is to simply have a superb one player mode. If you think about it, whoever is buying the game, doesn't have his friends over everyday of the week. There's going to be a few times when he or she has to play the game by themself. With Day of Reckoning, that is the first thing that jumps out at you. THQ wanted to make sure they fixed what had been wrong about their two previous GameCube releases, Wrestlemania 18 where the one player mode was non existent, and Wrestlemania XIX, where the actual one player mode consisted of Vince McMahon kicking you out of the WWE, and you had to get back in. It was a cool thought, but so much of it was outside of the actual ring, that it took away from the fact that it's a wrestling game. If I wanted to fight in non-wrestling environments, I'd buy something else. This year, all has been fixed. Now, again, it's not perfect. But it's really well done. The goal is to create a wrestler and take him through the rigors of trying to make it into WWE. He'll have to go through the developmental stages and wrestle at house shows before getting noticed by the likes of Vince McMahon, Paul Heyman, Jonathan "Coach" Coachman, and the General Managers. They'll ask you to do things such as reverse grapples twice before winning, so just winning the match is not good enough. This makes the story mode (one player mode) much more difficult and time consuming. It's a great step in the right direction. The only gripe is that you can't take already created superstars such as Chris Benoit and Eddy Guerrero through this same mode as it would take a little of the originality away. However, there's a way to do this, but it might take a little work. You can buy templates with your winnings from the story mode. They have templates for every wrestler in the game (except legends from what I can tell) and you can create the same wrestler from scratch, put an entire moves template for him, and thus put him in the story mode. So there is a way to get around this.

The story mode isn't broken up into simply TV shows like Smackdown is. It's broken up into weeks, but there is a story involved for every week. You don't see a lineup of all the matches, but there is some dialogue during just about every week. It's very similar to No Mercy in this way.

The afore mentioned create a player is excellent. I don't really know what else you can put into it. It's very similar to the PS2 Smackdown games in that you can change facial length, give hard edges to jaws, make high foreheads, and basically become your own plastic surgeon with your created wrestler. And while that is fine and dandy, the meat and potatoes is in the moves. Is every possible move in this game for a created wrestler? Not sure. But there is a whole lot. And we're talking Japanese moves galore as well. Want to do Keji Mutoh's (The Great Muta) shining wizard (or the version Hurricane does), it's here. Even moves I've never seen before. And every move that you see from WWE superstars as well. Let's just use the word robust. That sounds like the perfect word for it. You can manipulate your created wrestler all the way down to his ring entrance and entrance music, and even the way he strolls down to the ring. And those entrances are simply beautiful. They took a lot of time to get these right. Almost all of the music is in the game. A few exceptions include Ric Flair's old music from his early WWE days, as well as Victoria using her new music. But all the good ones are there, even those that the WWE has to license like Chris Benoit's.

All of that is great. All of what I just wrote is really good. But it's meaningless if the game play isn't right. It's been what has plagued the Smackdown games since they finally got it right a couple years back. If the games don't play well and the control doesn't feel right, the game isn't worth spit. That's not the case here. The game play is awesome. The buttons are responsive and the game is fast, but not too fast. It has a realistic pace, and if you are having a good match, it can be fairly long. That's not the case in the PS2 WWE games. It's a grapple based game such as was the case with No Mercy and it's not simply a kick and punch fest, unless you want it to be. Submission moves mean something as does working on one part of the body. If you constantly work on someone's legs, and then put them in the figure four, you'll see a meter that shows how close you are to tapping them out. It's very meter based. You have a meter that shows your health. You have a meter that shows how close you are to tapping in a submission move. And you also have a meter that if you are a smaller wrestler trying to pick up a bigger wrestler. There's a body meter which shows what parts of the body that are damaged the most for you and your cohorts. The final meter, is basically a bundle of things that has to do with your charisma and how you're doing in the match. If you put together a bunch of moves, this meter will fill up and you'll be given a chance to pull off your special move, also known in wrestling circles as your finisher. You'll know you've done this as the letters WWE next to your name will become red. You have three specials you can build up to. The reversals are hard to perform, and you have to be quick. The L and R buttons are used for this. This was the hardest part of the game play for me to learn to pull off.

If there's one problem I have with the game play, it's the collision detection. It's almost too good. In a match where there are more than two guys, if you are anywhere near someone pulling off a slam or suplex, there's a good chance you'll get hit with it which doesn't happen in wrestling. There is one new feature in the game play called the momentum shift. If your health becomes blue, you're close to losing. There's a chance you can turn the tides. By pressing A and B when it says momentum shift you will pull off a move that changes your predicament in the match. You can only do this once a match. This gives the match a more realistic feel. More realistic feel for a predetermined sport? Well, let's just say it feels more like the WWE.

The two player format is great. The three player format is awesome. The four player format is outrageous. There's nothing more fun than pulling off a 4 player Royal Rumble or TLC match. In this format, it's a great party game. You can fight in nearly any kind of match you want that has been done in the past, even the famous Bra and Panties match. The roster is a bit on the light side. Those damn Dudleys, JBL, Eugene, FBI, and La Resistance are no where to be found. But through the awesome create a player mode, you can faithfully create them. There are also some legends in the game including Andre The Giant and Bret "The Hitman" Hart.

This game is pretty much what I've been looking for ever since No Mercy became too old. You can say that it's No Mercy on steroids. Almost everything that was great about that game is great about this one. As for now, I'm going to be taking The Lonely One to the WWE championship. Paul Heyman thinks I have a good chance, but he keeps calling me Lonesome. And with all the templates I've unlocked, I can wrestle like Brock Lesnar, Stone Cold Steve Austin, or Hollywood Hulk Hogan, even if they technically aren't in the game. The Lonely One isn't that great yet as the points I have received by winning matches hasn't put me even close to average, but the guy has potential. This game does too.

4.5 stars.