The last time I was into sports entertainment wrestling, it was called the WWF. The last time I was into wrestling, Smackdown and Raw were TV programs and not two competing brands. The last time I loved a wrestling game was WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo 64-- I'm old, I know. As you can deduce, the last time wrestling entertainment was part of my life was around 2002. Wrestlers such as The Rock and Stone Cold were my current-day heroes and AKI Corporation (now known as syn Sophia Inc) was the king of all wrestling games. After I stopped following wrestling, the Smackdown brand of video games became the de facto in the virtual grappling world but I didn’t enjoy the controls as I did during AKI’s reign. Does WWE All Stars have what it takes to reel me back into wrestling? Find out next!
The most interesting aspect of WWE All Stars is the premise, since half the roster is filled with legends of wrestling and the other half has current and rising superstars. So if you’re like me, who stopped watching wrestling a long time ago, it feels good to come back to a game where these admired athletes of an era garner the same attention as today’s popular wrestling stars.
While the annual Smackdown vs. Raw series strives for realism in graphics and gameplay, WWE All Stars sets itself apart with its exaggerated arcade gameplay and caricature-like design for the wrestling superstars. The character models are sculpted in ways that would make He-Man proud but the action figure-style wrestlers mesh perfectly with the over-the-top gameplay which is fast and furious. The controls are pick-up-and-play affair and the fundamentals won’t take very long to understand and before you know it you’ll be landing pile drivers from 10ft off the ground. Wrestlers are separated by four distinct classes: Acrobat, Brawler, Grappler, and Big Man, with each category having unique advantages such as Brawler being able to chain combos and the Big Man boasting brute strength (a stomp launching opponents in the air, anyone?). And unlike your grandma’s wrestling game, this one is very light on the rules excluding regulations like rings outs and submissions, your only mission is to either win by pin fall or by executing your finisher. With such fast-paced combat, WWE All Stars sometimes feels like a fighting game heavy on the wrestling element.
In terms of content, the game only has handful of match types such as your standard exhibition, tornado tag team, handicap match, Triple Threat, Fatal 4-Way, Hardcore match and Steel Cage match. The main portion of the game is the Path of Champions mode where you must battle through 10 unrelated matches to land a final match to either become WWE Champion, WWE Heavyweight Champion or WWE Tag Team Champions. Despite the decent effort put into FMV cutscenes in each path, the matches feel tacked on. This mode does a poor job of making you care about the matches before facing the champion. It felt as if I was playing 10 random matches just to make it to the end. The best mode in the entire game, which should have been touted as the crux of the entire package is Fantasy Warfare. Each match in Fantasy Warfare has two (one legend, the other superstar) wrestlers going against each other to prove who is the best in the category for that match. For example, the Pride of Scotland match has Roddy Piper against Drew McIntyre; another match has Hulk Hogan against John Cena to prove who is the biggest superstar. These matches play like regular exhibition matches but the video package beforehand makes it feel very exciting. Thanks to this mode I gained a bit more context about some of the wrestlers I didn’t know about. The videos are edited very well and do a great job highlighting distinct differences and similarities between the two wrestlers. Plus they’re plain fun to watch. This is by far my favorite mode in the entire game.
To round off the other features in the game there’s a character creator mode which gives you multiple slots for different creations and an online mode. With my experience, online play was serviceable. There were instances of lag but not too much of a game breaker. The only problem I had online was the cage match. When you’re leaving the cage you have to stop a moving arrow inside a colored bar, but since the arrow moves so quickly, when playing online the game registers it later than you would like making that part of the match a frustrating experience. The create-a-superstar mode could have also been better in terms of content (clothing and entrances) and the lack of original moves for your wrestler also hurts the mode(your wrestler can only have preexisting moves from other WWE wrestlers). On the bright side, the game does support DLC content (really, what game doesn't nowadays?) and players can download wrestlers such as Honky Tonk Man, Ted DiBiase Jr. and future releases look to include stars such as Chris Jericho and Jerry "The King" Lawler.
WWE All Stars has a few shortcomings stopping it from being legendary but with its fast and stylish gameplay and adequate amount of modes it should keep wrestling fans busy for a while. Even if you’re not huge on today’s wrestling entertainment, All Stars is still a formidable game and a great alternative to the wrestling games on the market today.
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