Cam's Eye View: Xbox 360 Back Track Part 2: fable 3 for the Xbox360 review

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the 360 Back Track! I have noticed while looking at Gamefly.com that the 360 is kind of losing exclusive games for its console. It’s like Halo will be the last thing Microsoft has going for it. Gears of War has ended with the third game and well, you can’t just rely on the download market or Japanese shoot em’ ups to drive your sales anymore. This is turning into the Turbo Grafx for pete’s sake, literally, since it’s a console mostly known for its quality shooters like Halo, Gears of War, Deathsmiles, and you get the idea. It also doesn’t help that it basically has no good RPG franchise going for it. It does have its quality RPG titles like Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, and Tales of Vespira. You could say “Oh Cam, what about the Fable franchise?” Well, you could say that, but you would be wrong, the Fable games are not the best games on the 360. In fact, to prove this point, I’m going to review today the recent game in the franchise and what is considered the second worst game in the series called Fable 3! I can’t believe what some sites are giving this game like an 8 out of 10 and 9 out of 10. In my opinion, that is way off the mark since this game is one of the worst and messiest games I have ever played. It isn’t the worst game on the 360 since it does have its moments, but it’s a really bad game.

The story of Fable 3 takes place 50 years after the second game in the continent of Albion. The old king is dead and you play as one of two princes, and you basically play the good egg out of the two. After some incidences at the castle caused by your jerk wad of a brother, you leave the castle with your mentor Walter Beck and your servant Jasper. You then find an ancient artifact that was owned by your father, and you start to develop a revolution to take down your brother, and become king in his place. While there are some great voice work and some decent characters, the story isn’t original and it doesn’t really get interesting until a little after halfway through, and I didn’t really feel connected until I became king.

The gameplay is a somewhat mix of action with RPG elements, and a somewhat king simulation. You run or teleport from place to place completing missions. To arm yourself against the horrors that await you in Fable 3, you get a sword, a hammer, and either a rifle or a handgun to take down your enemies. You also have a decent magic system where you can upgrade how powerful your magic can be and combine 2 spells together. Throughout the game, you can make decisions that will alter the later parts of the game, like how much support the other kingdoms will give you in the ending part of the game where you are king and need to make big decisions that will affect the ending of the game. Later in the game, you will become king and this is where the game will actually be interesting. You have to make the decisions that will either improve you in being a good king, or make you a bad king with some results in poor defenses against the final enemy, distrust from your allies, and well, giving you big evil wings in the end. You can also get in a relationship with a woman and get married to her, but it’s rather tedious, so I wouldn’t really bother with it, but that’s just me. You can also team up with other people and go around the world of Albion taking down evil. There are also mini-games, like making pies and playing music that will net you some extra cash for some of the fairly expensive weapons and clothes.

The art style is fantastic and it reminds me of other games like Overlord. It’s a beautiful looking game and it’s one of the better looking exclusives on the console, even though I think Tales of Vespira looks better if we are talking exclusive RPG’s. The music isn’t bad either, but again, I feel like I’m playing Overlord, due to the sound of the music. The voice acting is also not that bad and it seems like the actors really wanted to pull you into the story, and even though I said the story was unoriginal I did feel pulled into it due to the voice work.

However, a lot of big things and little things really bring this game down. The first thing I want to complain about, and well I am going to complain about is the over-powered firearms and magic. This made the game way too easy, because I could easily flank the enemies from far away, and I only died once. The loading times are ridiculous. It seems like it took forever for a lot of the loading screens to be done with. There are also a bunch of glitches that I found that pulled me out of the game, like seeing hair on top of a character’s head move, and just a bunch of little, but nothing serious bugs that just made me shake my head since I’m a game tester and I hate seeing this stuff in a released game. The AI is terrible. I feel like the ally and enemies are just not that smart. I was able to just flank enemies from afar and they could never get out of the way or get close to me. Even if they got close to me, they wouldn’t attack. Even though it’s nice that I could carry a sword or hammer, with the over-powered magic and guns, I had no reason to upgrade my melee weapons. The king gimmick might be the most interesting thing in the game, but it comes in so late in the game and it just isn’t fully pulled off. The reaction from your allies when you make a bad decision is silly, since it’s like, “ oh, hey, I’m glad I’m your ally!” and then when you make a bad decision “ I can’t believe I fought for you! You suck!” How does that make sense? They should have known that you were going to make some harsh choices when you became king, and it’s like they never knew that. It’s terrible writing at its best. There are also a bunch of little things that drag this game down, like holding the A button to open doors, a clunky menu system where everything is set up into room-like areas that I guess they were trying to do like Terranigma did, but not well-executed, and very repetitious main missions and relationship missions. I felt like I was doing the same dang thing over and over and OVER AGAIN!

Overall, Fable 3 and Lionhead Studios are terrible. I mean, I can’t believe these guys get so much money for such below-average games. Fable 3 is one of the worst executed games I have ever played and one of the worst games on the 360. I can’t recommend this action RPG and I can’t recommend any games from Lionhead. I can understand the founder being really high-spirited about his games, but I can’t see why they promise so much and deliver so little. Don’t buy this game, and even if you own it, return it! I say, go out and get Tales of Vespira or the other Japanese-styled RPG’s over this terrible game. Stop sucking up to the companies’ mainstream reviewers! You can give a game a bad score. It will show them that they need to WORK HARDER!

This game gets a 4 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: DLC Domination Part 7: Renegade Ops for the PS3 and 360 review

Welcome back to another DLC Domination. Who here has seen the awesome film The Expendables? You know, the 2010 film with all the big action stars of yesteryear and of modern day with Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and cameos from Arnold and Bruce Willis? Well, if you haven’t, you need to buy it! It is this generation’s Commando, it’s this generation’s man sandwich of pure man energy! It’s an enjoyable film and I think you can find it cheap now so there is no excuse if you haven’t seen it. The whole film seems like it would set itself up well to be made into a video game since it can be over the top, a lot of goons to shoot down, and explosions everywhere! We kind of get that film-to-game adaptation with the game called Renegade Ops. While it might not be the hottest 360 or PSN downloadable game out there, it is just pure high-octane action. You get explosions, you get multiple vehicles to pilot and shoot stuff in, and you get an incredibly stupid and clichéd story line. It is more like an arcade game or an NES game like Jackal, so if you are into those kinds of games, then I say download it right now if you’ve got the points. Does this game have its faults? Well, you will have to read and find out.

            The story starts off with an evil villain named Inferno who contacts the United Nations and states that he has basically taken the whole world hostage. Inferno then demands that he rule the world or else it will all burn to the ground. While the United Nations tries to think of a more logical way on how to stop the villain, an army general goes commando and brings along 4 bland and personality-deprived teammates to take down Inferno and SAVE THE WORLD!!! Yeah, it’s total super popcorn flick stuff. No one has a solid personality, the characters you play as are bland, and some can even be useless in gameplay! I love this kind of terrible story telling, but at points it seems like they are trying too hard to make this story seem serious. It just isn’t possible, and you won’t give the slightest care for what happens in the story. Give them credit though, they did nail the stupid popcorn movie lines. Then again, the guys who created the awesome Just Cause 2 made this game.

            The gameplay, however, is much more interesting than the stupid, stupid cookie cutter story. You get to control 4 different vehicles that you can choose to play as in each level. However, the only two that are actually useful are the two vehicles that are on the cover art for this game. They really don’t play any differently from each other. The left analog stick can control them, and you can aim and shoot using the right analog stick. Each vehicle out of the 4 has its own special power, like a strong cannon, calling an air strike, pulse blasts, and a super strong armor. You can gain power-ups, health pick-ups, secondary weapons, and special items to unlock extras. During some areas of the game, you will be able to unlock the ability to ride combat helicopters to take down the tougher parts of the missions. You can also play with up to 4 people at the same time offline and online, and cause even more over-the-top action set pieces than seen in a Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis film. It’s over the top fun that reminds me of another downloadable game called Gatling Gears, but that’s for another time.

            The graphics are nice. They get the job done and are not the best nor are they the worst. Everything runs smoothly most of the time, and I rarely have dealt with slow-down with all the explosions and action on screen. The enemies are varied enough to make sure the game doesn’t feel incomplete. Controls feel good, and you pretty much have a good amount of control over your character’s vehicle. The music is fine, but it can sound a tiny bit generic and could have been used for any popcorn flick action film. It isn’t bad music, but it isn’t very memorable.

            There are some minor problems though that bring this game down. The first is its price tag, it’s 15 dollars on both PSN and Xboxlive. It’s a bit pricey for this kind of game when you could easily get Gatling Gears for 10 bucks on either platform, which in a way is a better game. The game can also get a bit boring due to a few minor things like repetitious boss fights, missions, and not enough variety besides the helicopter piloting. The story is also very boilerplate for an action game, which made me think back to Jackal on the NES. I enjoy it for its popcorn script, but overall it just feels like a waste of time. I also feel like two of the characters are completely pointless and/or useless. It’s the two drivers who have the pulse gun and the super armor, since their weapons are not the strongest, and along with the two other characters you can play as, are boring and unoriginal.

            Overall, this game reminds me a lot of Deathsmiles and Vanquish, where I enjoy the over-the-top gameplay, but it also doesn’t have a lot of substance. Granted, it’s easier than Gatling Gears, but I feel like Gatling Gears is a better game since I had more fun with that game than this game. It is better if you have more than one person playing with you, but don’t expect it to be a game you will play over and over and over again. I would say, wait for the game to drop down in price (if it ever does) to download it. Until then, get games like Gatling Gears or Hamilton’s Great Adventure.

This game gets an 8 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the PS3 and 360

I don’t play a lot of shooters these days. It isn’t that they are bad or boring games. Some of the better games I have played are shooters, like Timesplitter 2, Red Dead Redemption, Uncharted 2, Vanquish, Mass Effect 2, and Medal of Honor: The Rising Sun. Though it seems like every single year we get a Battlefield, a Call of Duty, and then a bunch of other shooters that try to kick the kings of the shooter genre off their high chairs with mixed to mostly negative results. There are some interesting ones like Homeland and Brink, but they don’t feel as finely polished or as entertaining as games I mentioned above. I guess I just want more variety than what I have seen with most shooters these days. This is where today’s game comes in, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the third game in the Deus Ex Franchise. So far, the critics and other reviewers have praised it highly as one of the best games of 2011, but how good is it, really? Not to say other Internet reviewers are wrong since we all have our own opinions, but I had a bit of a mixed reaction when I played through this game. I guess I could say it’s a good game, but with some faults. Let’s dive into the mechanical cyborg world of Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the PS3 and 360.

The story puts us in the futuristic and drab world of Detroit in 2027 where humans are now capable of having cybernetic upgrades or augmentations to their body. Of course, this doesn’t sound as glamorous since it also comes with riots about how terrible this kind of human evolution is and of course some other shady underworld dealings. You play as Adam Jensen a security guard, voiced by Elias Toufexis who you might have seen if you watched Smallville or Supernatural. During a surprise attack from a group of augmented beings that attack the company you are a security guard for, Adam basically gets pushed to near death while his exgirlfriend is killed. Six months after the event, Adam is brought back to life with a new augmented body and a pair of cool-looking shades. It is up to him to find out who was behind the whole attack, the murder of his exgirlfriend, and who were those augmented beings and wonder how the whole, pardon the pun, “Human Revolution” will happen. To be personally honest, I didn’t care much for the story. It kept me interested for a good while, but in the end, was a bit confusing and had some bland characters. Those are just my thoughts, since some people liked the complex, but still pretty confusing story.

The gameplay is an interesting mix of stealth, first and third person shooting, and conversation branch stuff. This is basically what Alpha Protocol should have been. You go around doing missions, which you can take on by either going in guns blazing or sneaking around and stealthfully killing enemies only when needed. You also, from time to time, take down bosses, hack computers to do all sorts of mischief, to take on optional side quests, and level up your character and upgrade new kinds of augmentations. These augmentations are a major mechanic since sometimes you need to unlock certain upgrades to progress through parts of the story, like having certain level hacking, stronger armor, not dying after jumping from a 7 foot tall ledge, invisibility cloaking, and make yourself a super robot action hero that Blade Runner would be proud of. You will usually be going around to different parts of the world to get questions answered, but those answers bring more questions to the table. The game also has a bit of strategy to it, due to the fact that even though it says you can tackle this game any way you want to, it really pushes you to go on stealth, which I will talk about later. You can knock out enemies or you can straight up kill them, but killing them causes them to make a sound, which is weird after you stabbed them or cracked their neck in half, the sound is what causes more troops in that area to swoop in, and hopefully, you are either hiding or you hid the body so they can’t find it and set off the alarm system. The main varieties of enemies you will be facing are usually soldiers and giant robots, with the occasional boss fight. There is also a conversation branch-style mechanic that you see in games like Mass Effect and the Witcher 2, where you could change the results of the conversation with whatever you choose to say. There is a huge amount of content for your dollar, which results in the game being about 20 or 30 hours or so of gameplay if you choose to tackle everything. It’s even more replay value due to multiple endings that you can go through, depending on what you do throughout the game and what decisions you make.

The graphics are high-end and look amazing. There is just a lot of flash and style to this futuristic Minority Report mixed with Blade Runner look. The music is also high quality and it matches the mood of whatever the situation is. The composer for this game is named Michael McCann. He is mostly famous for stuff like Splintercell: Double Agent, Tom Clancy’s EndWar, and shows like The Foundation. The voice acting is also good with some quality voice actors. The controls work perfectly and give off a great shooter and stealth vibe and movement. It isn’t buggy or glitchy in the least. To be honest, when I went into this, I knew it was more stealth than shooting, and I thought it was going to be like Mass Effect, but with stealth, and I’m glad it isn’t that.

However, I do have a few grips that kind of turn me off about the game. Even though you can choose how you go into the missions, like either go in filling everyone with lead or just find a stealthy alternate route, it leans more on stealth and really pushes you to go Metal Gear Solid on the missions. That is fine since this game can be difficult if you go in rushing through the levels, but I feel like my actions are more limited than they should be. This game is about choices, which I understand and fully respect, but I’d actually like to have the option to go in with a more offensive choice, due to very limited ammo pick-ups. I’m not really good at conserving my ammo, and that’s a fault on my side of this game. I guess what I’m saying is that I want a combat and stealth element, like in the Assassin’s Creed and the Rocksteady Batman games. Even though the graphics look beautiful and amazing, all the areas you visit seem to be the same drab color choice. The detail is great, but it all looks the same the more you go into the game. I also found side missions to be extremely tedious due to a huge amount of backtracking, which is, in of itself, a tedious way to make filler for a game. It doesn’t help that the map isn’t the best and the towns can get a bit confusing layout wise, that in returns make backtracking frustrating. The loading times are also annoying since they take a good 15 seconds or so, but I heard at launch they were much worse. I also felt like the boss fights were extremely disappointing. The whole game is saying, “ take the stealthier route for bigger rewards”, but the boss fights are mostly “ shoot them until they stop moving their leg”. It kind of breaks the pace a little and is more annoying than interesting, since I hear that in the past Deus Ex games, you could run away and avoid the boss fights entirely. I was expecting something more like the Batman Arkham games or the Assassin’s Creed style bosses. At least the company admitted they screwed up with the boss fights. I also found some characters to be a little bit interesting, but still on the bland side, and really not that memorable. Not that the whole cast is like that, NO SIR! It’s just a few and it somewhat pulled me out of the story.

At first, my final thoughts about Human Revolution were at an honest 7 out of 10. This was before I then kept playing and got through it enough to have some of my complaints taken down and realized that it is a really good game. It is one of the best I played in 2011, but I would put it in the number 10 spot since I didn’t enjoy it as much as other people did, which is reasonable in my opinion. I definitely enjoy the setting, story even if it is a bit confusing at times, the stealth elements, music, and voice work. However, I didn’t like the throwaway action elements, boss fights, repetitive-looking levels, confusing level layout from time to time, and not being as fully immersive as other free-roaming games like Red Dead Redemption. I would highly recommend at least checking this game out, but keep in mind it’s more along the line of stealth and not a super action film with cyborgs. It has probably dropped in price by now, so I could recommend it and the overpriced, but actually having a great Deus Ex style boss fight DLC, The Missing Link. Maybe I prefer more action over stealth or maybe I prefer action and stealth mixed together like in Assassin’s Creed or Batman Arkham City, which are the best in that category in my opinion. Its one of the best you could play from 2011, but as of now, I’m ready to play some more Mass Effect 2 so I will see you all later.

This game gets an 8 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: Eternal Sonata for the Xbox360 and PS3

You know what I have noticed with all of these Xbox 360 reviews and 360 games I want to do reviews on? The Xbox 360 is slowly turning into the Turbo Grafx-16. Before you leave a shallow hate-filled comment, let me explain myself. What do you get when you get a 360? Halo? Gears of War? Well, if you can’t think of any other genre besides a shooter, then no flipping way, Sherlock! The Xbox 360 is the home for more quality shooters from first person, third person, to arcade-style shooters. Is there ANY other genre you can think of putting on the 360? I know a lot of the 360’s profit probably comes from players getting Xboxlive Gold membership, because then they can play online with shooters that are mostly on other consoles, but for some reason people buy them on the 360. There are also a lot of arcade-style shooters like the Raiden series, Deathsmiles, and other arcade shooters on the console. What happened to the amount of high quality Japanese-style RPG’s that were on the console? I mean, there are a lot of quality titles on the system, like Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and depending on who you ask, Last Remnant. For example, here is another quality RPG you could get on the PS3, but I feel like this is the better version, Eternal Sonata. It’s a very original and unique Japanese-style RPG that is definitely worth more of your time than other RPG’s that have come out, but since I have talked about them already, I won’t list them. I mean, who would have thought a video game based off one of the world’s most famous musicians, Frederic Chopin, would be well good? And on top of that, it isn’t a music game! Well, actually that’s a lie, since music plays a huge role in this game, but it isn’t a Guitar Hero rip-off. So, let’s dive into the Sound of Music and review Eternal Sonata.

The game starts out with the famed composer, Frederic Chopin, voiced by Patrick Seitz, in his bed in a very ill condition. He then makes some kind of fantasy world within his mind, filled with a tyrant named Count Waltz of Forte, voiced by Liam O’Brien who rules over the imaginative world. Chopin then joins up with multiple characters throughout the game to take down Waltz and protect the world. In that sense, you could say the overall style is unoriginal with the whole ‘take down an evil guy and save the world’ story, but to my surprise, Eternal Sonata has one of the deepest, memorable, and original stories I have ever seen. I mean seriously, there are themes of escapism, death, life, political espionage, and rebellion being the themes throughout the game. It’s told very well with some really great voice actors doing some of the best voice acting I have ever seen. I mean, there is even a girl in the game named Polka, voiced by Erin Fitzgerald, who has the ability to use magic, but in that world, people who use magic are outcasts and are doomed to die. There is some deep stuff here if you stay with this game. In the game, you will meet the already said Polka, Allegretto and Beat, two brothers who lived in the sewers, Viola, a headstrong farm girl who is skilled with the bow and arrow, and Salsa and March, two sisters who guard a magical forest that the Count wants to destroy. Later, the group will meet the rebel group, Andantino, consisting of Jazz, the calm-headed leader, Falsetto, Jazz’s lieutenant, and Claves, Jazz’s girlfriend. In the PS3 version, you get Crescendo, a young prince and Serenade, Crescendo’s fiancé.   All of these characters are fully developed and you really feel for some of them, like Chopin and Polka.

The gameplay is a mix of action and turn-based RPG mechanics. You only have 3 party members at once, which require some tactical planning later in the game when you have about 7 team members. You take turns freely moving the character around the battlefield and then start hacking away at the enemies and bosses. You can choose between a quick and combo-making attack or a super strong attack and they all run on a timer. Each time you make the character move, a timer will start and count down to zero, which will make the characters turn over. You have to think logically to choose between using more weak attacks and using two strong attacks, since enemies are tough in this game, but are tougher in the PS3 version. The other main gimmick of this game is the light and dark mechanic. In the battlefield, there are areas covered in shade that will affect your strong attack, but can also affect the enemies, either changing their attack or turning them into different monsters entirely if they stay in the shade. Lucky for us, in the overworld, enemies are visible so you can easily dodge them, but like my disclaimer goes, grind a couple of fights to make sure you don’t get wailed on later in the game because it will happen. I’ve died a couple of times going through this game. Each time your party levels up after a boss fight, a few things change, like the time to idle and the amount of time in battle that you can take. It gets pretty hard near the end of the game when you really have to think on your feet due to you not having a lot of time to plan out your strategy, but you can also get some benefits from these changes. Just expect a challenge later in the game. I’ll explain my thoughts about that later.

Graphically, it’s beautiful. It’s one of the best-looking games I have ever seen artistically. It doesn’t push the limit of the consoles, but I think it looks amazing. The detail of the anime-style look is amazing. It doesn’t take a Tales of Vesperia look, but everything from the characters and monsters are all well-designed. The music is what holds this entire game together with great tracks that are wonderful to listen to and are beautifully composed. The composer in charge of this is Motoi Sakuraba who helped rework some of Chopin’s work while making some original tracks for the game. She is, of course, famous for working on the Star Ocean, Valkyrie Profile, and the Tales franchise. There was also some help from Stanislav Bunin who also helped record a few tracks. The voice acting is top notch and is definitely worth talking about. Each character sounds great even when some of the characters are more annoying, but even the annoying characters sounds great. There are some impressive voice actors like Sam Riegel, Patrick Seitz, Mona Marshall, Megan Hollingshead, Amy Rose, Tara Strong, D.C Douglas, Tara Platt, and other great voice actors.

I could easily go on why this game is great, but there are some flaws that I just don’t like and might be the deciding point in which you invest your time in this game.  The whole party level idea is interesting, but it makes combat tedious later in the game and some of the benefits are not worth it for less time in battle. I mean, I really enjoy the combat system, but the Party class totally ruins it for me later in the game. There is also an early dungeon in the game that will drive you nuts with an extremely tiresome puzzle. Clearly, no one went through this part thoroughly because it is a major roadblock in the game and halts the pace due to a somewhat unclear way of solving the puzzle. I am also surprised that they didn’t use other mechanics, like if the monsters are weaker than you, they run away. I just think they could have added more little touches like that instead of making battles tedious later on.

This could have easily been one of the best action/ turn-based RPG’s of any console, but due to some confusing game mechanic decisions, I can’t fully say this game is for everyone. If you want a good challenge and beautiful music in a RPG format, then I would highly recommend this game. It is still a bit pricey, but it isn’t like 60 bucks or anything. The PS3 does have more content, but the game is much harder and with annoying party class mechanics, I can’t fully agree that it is the better version. I say, get the 360 version since it’s about 20 or so dollars. I would really like to see a sequel to this game or some form of spiritual sequel. You will just lose yourself within this magical, musical, and creative world of Eternal Sonata

This game gets a solid 7 out of 10.

Cam's Eye View: WWE All Stars for the PS3 and 360

Hey, everyone, welcome to the New Year! WOOOOOO! It is 2012 and time for more new games and time for me to make them into game reviews. I decided to spook you all a little and do something different with this year’s first review. I decided to review a sports game! I know, I can hear you all gasping, since out of over 200 reviews, I haven’t really reviewed any sport games. This is mostly my fault for being biased towards these games. The other fault though is that sports games come out year after year after year. They don’t take their time and make something special, they usually do it to make money for the consumers who do enjoy and play sports games. Don’t get me wrong, I love the thrill when you play a football game and you are running down the field and no one is tackling you. I understand why these are popular to some extent, but they don’t really make me want to review them or put the money down for these games. I just want to play a sports game that is over the top and arcade-like, and doesn’t result in a realistic simulation of that specific sport. This is where this first review comes from, WWE: All Stars. Admittedly, the sports games are turning into the Guitar Hero and other music-based franchises, where we are getting kind of tired of seeing them, but WWE: All Stars decided to take a more fun approach, with an odd, but cartoony art style, more arcade style gameplay, and not too simulated like every other sports game out there. Let us see if this game succeeds! This is WWE: All Stars for the PS3 and 360. There really isn’t any story here, and all I could say is that all of the famous wrestlers old and new are in this game, and it’s a fan-serviced game where you can fight Andre the Giant with Rey Mysterio and take him down with your finishing move. Let’s move onto the gameplay then, shall we?

The gameplay, instead of being a tedious wrestling simulator, is more like an arcade wrestling and fighting game. You have your usual wrestling mechanics like pin downs and ringside take downs, but there are some light and heavy fighting moves like punches, kicks, throws, and even special moves that are easy to pull off. In the normal case of each match, you will either need to knock out your opponent or pin him down for 3 seconds. There are special cases, like in the cage match, where you need to knock out your opponent and get out of the cage as fast as you can. In extreme rules, you fight in a normal match, but can use weapons like 2x4’s to add some extra damage. Sometimes, you will be fighting only one opponent, or in make a million viewer episode, forced to fight multiple wrestlers at once. There are other modes, like tag team, where you team up to take down another team of wrestlers. The 3 main campaigns will have you fight the Undertaker, another will have you fight Randy Orton, and the other one has you fight against D-Generation X as the final opponent. A fun feature is the dream match-up fights where you can choose from either one or another wrestler that was paired up for a “dream match” like the Ultimate Warrior vs. Sheamus and they show live footage of both wrestlers, which is pretty cool. There is also online multiplayer with the usual suspects that you can play with offline, like cage match, and or just brawl each other to the ground. There is also a character creator, but due to the kind of silly art style, you won’t be able to truly make a dream wrestler. Either way, there is a lot to do with this wrestling game to keep you going with simple and easy to-get-used-to controls, a good deep combat system, multiple wrestlers old and new, and other things that make this game worth a purchase around the 40 dollar range, or simply for hardcore wrestling fanatics.

The graphics and art style are pretty silly-looking. The art style makes all of the wrestlers sometimes look the same body-wise with their over exaggerated muscle bound bodies. The graphics just get the work done. Don’t expect them to be Castlevania Lords of Shadow or Uncharted 3 good. The licensed music, like in Splatterhouse, really works here as you do get pumped a little when you see yourself go down to the ring and see the other wrestlers you will be going against. It is definitely how wrestling is in real life, over the top and flash-over-substance mixed with fake wrestling. Oh, and I don’t care if I offended you by saying wrestling is fake since it’s somewhat true. There are also some small bits of humor put in, like when in one cut scene, one of the wrestlers advertises his own game to the masses and the other looks at him like an idiot. Either way, they did as good of a job as they could do using the Unreal 3 engine.

However, there are some major faults in this reboot and makeover of the wrestling game genre. There is no god dang training or tutorial mode. This made getting used to the controls and knowing what you can do with the controls really awkward and clunky, making for some unfair and terrible first fights. I mean, I am not saying that I need my hand held, but a proper training or tutorial stage would have worked so much better with this game where you can learn about the controls and techniques you can pull off. I took off a whole point from the score because of this one screw-up. Another major complaint I have is that the AI can be a mixed bag. One fight you are breezing through this fight with no trouble at all and the next fight, you are struggling to get out of harm’s way since you can’t block well or dodge attacks easily. Difficulty should be given to us slowly as we play through the game more and more as we get to the end and not just random spikes in difficulty. It is the same problem with games like Virtual On Marz where in one fight, I am having a huge issue with taking down two opponents, and then after a couple of times fighting the same fight over and over, the AI just got dumb and I got lucky. The next few complaints are just minor, but do add up. The cage match is tedious since it isn’t just taking down your opponent, but you also need to get out of the cage and do a timed button press to get out successfully. That is tedious and not needed. The other is that the Unreal 3 engine is showing its age and in the character creator, everything looks blocky, but that could easily be the art style that makes everything blocky.

Overall, for the first major sports game to be on my list of reviews, this one is pretty good. Maybe the future of wrestling games and or sports games can learn from this little experiment. I have wished for years that sports games be more than just simulation games of that specific sport. While this game does have some minor flaws that keep it from being perfect, I could still recommend this to anyone who is looking to get into wrestling or sport games. Hope you all are having a great beginning of the year and hope you all come back for more.

This game gets a 7 out of 10