Legends of Wrestling

Published by Acclaim
Developed by Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City
Platform: GameCube
Price £39.99
Released: Out Now

Do you yearn for the 1980s? Were you a fan of WWF and did you watch your heroes at every opportunity? Well if you did then you'll certainly be excited by the theme of Acclaims latest wrestling game. Rather than simply give us another rendition of today's WWF, Acclaim have created a game based around the likes of Hulk Hogan, Bret 'Hitman' Hart and Jimmy 'Superfly' Snuka, you know, wrestlers who had personality and charisma. Such a game seems like a brilliant idea to me.

Legends of Wrestling contains a mammoth forty-two wrestlers in all. There are three game modes that include Exhibition, Career and Tournament. Exhibition is your typical one-off match that can either be 1 VS 1, 1 VS 1 VS 1 (3 in the ring) or even 1 VS 1 VS 1 VS1 (4 in the ring). You can also have a 2 VS 2 tag match. Career mode enables you to take a wrestler of your choice or creation, through a whole season of wrestling. The idea is to become the champion of the United States. You have to win a belt in each of the countries regions in order to accomplish this. Once you have conquered the US you get to have a shot at the World region. There is also a Tournament mode and here you can take part in a VS, Tag Team or Tag Belt Tournament.

Pleasingly enough you can create your own wrestling legend. All aspects of his appearance can be modified as can his abilities, moves and managers etc. The saved wrestler takes up nine memory card blocks and can be used in all the gameplay modes which again is a most welcome addition.

Controls are all important in a wrestling title and Legends of Wrestling does OK on this front. All the moves are fairly easy to pull of and it never feels like it's random button bashing like so many of these games are. If I had to pick issues I would say that it doesn't seem to contain enough moves. What is there is good but it could have done with more moves to add greater variety to your style of play.

Graphically the game looks OK. I don't know if it was deliberate on the game designers part but the wrestlers have a plastic, action figure look about them as their bodies seem to be smooth and rounded rather than heavily textured. It looks a little strange but its still good all the same. The animations occasionally look a bit wooden too. One thing I have noticed is that there is a small collision detection problem that rears it's head from time to time. Sometimes a wrestler can appear to carry a move out on you without making contact. This is a rare occurrence though. If there are more than three wrestlers in the ring at the same time the action can tend to slow down a little but again this doesn't happen too often. The camera angles are generally OK but sometimes, especially when the action moves out of the ring, it becomes a little distant and it is difficult to see the action.

The game causes no problems for deaf gamers. It is a shame that the manager, wrestler, and announcer comments are unsubtitled though. Your manager will occasionally tell you what he thinks of you after a fight, in career mode, and because there are no subtitles you'll be completely oblivious to his comments.

Legends of Wrestling is a welcome change of style for wrestling games. The game may need a few additions/adjustments to achieve classic status but what is here is enjoyable. With Legends of Wrestling 2 in development let's hope that everything is subtitled and the problems we have mentioned are sorted out.

Overall Game Rating: 6.4/10 Legends of Wrestling is an enjoyable game that, oddly enough, enables you to battle with the legends of wrestling. There are some problems but overall it is easy to play and is especially fun as a multiplayer experience.

Deaf Gamers comment: No subtitling in the game which is a shame.