Published by THQ
Developed by Natsume
Release Date: Out Now
Price : £29.99

Sports games are not the GBAs forte if we're being completely honest. RPGs, action games and many more genres translate well to the small screen but not a single sports game has set the world alight when it's arrived on the GBA. The reason for this of course is not simply the small screen but the technical limitations that are imposed upon developers. Here we have WWE Survivor Series for the GBA and compared to the WWE wrestling titles that appear on the PlayStation 2 and GameCube it's very limited in it's options and the wrestling isn't as sophisticated as wrestling fans probably would have liked but that's not to say it isn't without charm.

WWE Survivor Series offers Single Play and Multiplay game modes. Let's just say the Multiplay is pretty useless unless you have a friend who also has a copy of the game as there is no option to have a multiplayer game with just a single cartridge. So realistically then (unless you have many GBA owning wrestling fans for friends) you're confined to the Single Play mode. The Single Play mode offers you a choice of Story Mode and Exhibition Mode both of which will keep you busy for a while.

On entering the Story Mode you'll come up against a big disappointment. You can't create your own wrestler. Games that want you to play through a wrestling career should allow you to create your own wrestler instead of simply allowing you to choose a professional wrestler to use. What's more there's no female wrestlers to choose from so if you're female, or simply like to control a female wrestler you'll be disappointed. Anyway you'll be greeted by Vince McMahon and introduced to the Story Mode and then given the choice of RAW or Smackdown!. After this you'll get to pick from a small list of pro wrestlers (around 8 each for both RAW and Smackdown!) and you'll receive a tryout with the GM informing you that you must win at least one of the next few fights. You'll get to fight in preliminary fights and attempt to grab all 3 championship belts. On achieving this you can then switch over to RAW or Smackdown! (the opposite of what you picked in the first instance) and try to grab all the belts there. You'll also have to be a bit of crowd pleaser with flashy attacks and finishing moves. Wrestling veterans won't be kept busy for long by the games story mode though. That said there is 3 difficulty levels to play at. Exhibition Mode offers the chance to play OneMatch, IronmanMatch, Single, Cage, Royal Rumble and Team Battle fights to name but a selection and it's here you'll spend most of your time.

Graphically the game looks OK but as you'd expect the animations that are on offer are rather limited. Because of the 2D nature of the game you simply move your wrestlers from side to side which looks a bit basic but it makes sense and prevents camera angles becoming an issue. Natsume have kept the appearance of the fights fairly simple though and haven't tried to make the fights look realistic in terms of how the arena and ring appears. The entrances are extremely basic and thankfully you can turn them off if you want to. That said there's nothing bad about how the game looks but there's nothing special either.

WWE Survivor Series is really a basic GBA wrestling experience. Whilst there's nothing bad here it's all very average with the game not excelling in any particular department. The control system is functional and the single player action is OK if you're not expecting anything special. There's no problems for deaf gamers either as there's no speech within the game and all information is in text. It's a real shame that the multiplayer mode is going to be useless for most people too. In fact we couldn't even look at having only one copy of the game. A game for wrestling maniacs only.

Overall Game Rating: 5.8/10
WWE Survivor Series is a basic wrestling experience that has limited appeal. It should have given you the option to create your own wrestler and female wrestlers should have been included. The Story Mode is too short and the Multiplay mode will hardly be played by most people because of your friends having to each own a copy of the game.

Deaf Gamers comment:
No problems for deaf gamers.