Get Ready To Rumble!

Finally, we get another wrestling game on the Dreamcast. Best of all it's from THQ, the maker of some of the best wrestling games on the market today. Everything sounds great right? Maybe the Dreamcast is finally getting a top quality wrestling game like those other consoles have. Well, maybe not. This game is actually pretty terrible, almost as bad as those Acclaim wrestling games. It seems once again that the Dreamcast has become a dumping ground for an unfinished, rushed game.

The problems are as follows: There are hardly any wrestlers, the last time we got a game with this few wrestlers was probably on the Super Nintendo. The main game mode is the Royal Rumble, which has you eliminate 30 wrestlers, there isn't even 30 wrestlers in the game so you wind up fighting the same people over and over. You can even get stuck with two of the exact same wrestlers in the ring at one time. There are hardly any sound effects or music and no commentary! Come on now, this is the Dreamcast we're dealing with, not the N64. The lack of sound is ridiculous. Graphically the game also fails to satisfy, nothing spectacular or flashy, it just looks like a 32-bit wrestling game running in high resolution and using some lighting effects.

Gameplay is also lacking, the moves although simple to perform, there are just too few. There is no auto face button so sometimes you wind up punching air. The Royal Rumble mode is merely just a button slammer, punch, punch, punch.

The game modes are yet another thing that lacks. Basically there are two modes and a vs. multiplayer mode. There's an exhibition mode that takes you through ten stages, where you pick a wrestler and a run in partner to do special moves with. You fight three minute rounds in a ring, but at times you get magically transported from the ring in the middle of the action. The wrestlers just pause from fighting look around and viola, you're in a kitchen, a parking lot or backstage. Just like magic and from out of nowhere you leave the ring and go fight elsewhere. How weird is that?

The two, one player modes are just garbage and simply not enough. We're used to a lot more. Where's the create-a-player? This would have certainly made up for the lack of wrestlers. Where's the Career mode? No where to be found. All you get is a terribly small package with hardly enough to go around. You can say this is an arcade game and that's OK but arcade is simply a mode in other console wrestling games today. It basically comes standard with the package. It's not the whole package.

So the bottom line is, this game is just plain bad and is very lacking. There's surely fun to be had, but it's very limited gameplay, lack of wrestlers and lack of play modes won't keep you busy for long. A rental should be sufficient. I surely wouldn't lay down the big bucks for such an incomplete game.