We get elbowed in the face by THQ's wacky new wrestling sim, which aims to put the gripping back into grappling
Once upon a time, wrestling games were funny, easy to play, and appealed to those of us who wouldn't know Randy Savage from Randy Newman. Gradually, though, they began to lose their crossover comedy appeal in favour of connecting with hardcore fans. WWE All Stars looks to be an admirable reverse of that process, taking the genre back to its 16-bit heyday by referencing intuitive, twitch-based titles like WWF Royal Rumble and WWF Raw. Like EA's NBA Jam and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit it's all about getting to the core of the 'brand'. And that core is, well, utter lunacy.
There's a huge roster of wrestlers in All Stars, matching modern day giants such as Sheamus, Big Show and Kofi Kingston against old-school legends like Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Andre the Giant. The roster is split into four types, all with their own characteristics and moves. Brawlers are brutes with lots of juggle moves and a devastating charged strike attack; grapplers are more technical; acrobats are fast, wiry and tend to rely on aerial strikes from the turnbuckles; and big men are, well, lumbering beasts.
The highly stylised visuals, which have the same slightly accentuated physicality and subtle cell-shading as Street Fighter IV, exaggerate the visual differences between the types ? so put Big Show in the ring with the acrobatic Rey Mysterio and the later is comically dwarfed. It turns out Capcom's rejuvenated fighting game has been an inspiration. "We've combined our favourite elements from wrestling games and other fighting games," says producer Mike McTyre. "There are a lot of fans of Street Fighter IV in the office, it was highly influential in developing our product."
And as with SFIV, the real fun is in the highly adaptive combat mechanism. The emphasis is on swift, successive moves, so the face buttons are assigned to basic "strong strike", "quick strike", "strong grapple" and "quick grapple" options ? a simple set-up that allows newcomers to almost immediately string together pounding attacks. Beyond this, however, there's a branching combo system which lets players build their own chained sequences, often culminating in gory pounding sessions in which wrestlers are pinned to the floor ? or ropes ? and repeatedly kneed or elbowed in the face. It's guiltily hilarious stuff, but at the same time rather complex face-offs can evolve out of the counter and reversal options, which chuck a fighter's moves back at him. And as in Street Fighter, even counters can be countered, so you get these rapidly escalating rock, scissor, paper showdowns.
"We didn't want to go as heavily into the memorisation of button sequences as, say, Soul Calibur," says McTyre. "So you will see that with the brawlers, for example ? the first three hits in the brawler chain can be spammed on the button pad; there are different branches, of course, but whether you hit X-Y-X or X-X-X, for example, you access the chained moves. But if you want to go deeper into the chain for further damage or additional abilities such as charged attacks and extreme moves, which can't be countered, those do require skill. You'll have to time them out based on the impact of the hits."
Like Street Fighter, WWE All Stars is also an endlessly active and reactive title, in which no more is ever safely accomplished until your opponent is lying dazed on the canvas. "At any given point you have about five or six options to try and defeat your opponent, " says McTyre. "That could mean interrupting his incoming attack with a faster attack of your own, running away, countering the incoming attack, reversing the attack or, if he reverses you, reversing the reversal. On top of that, there's the reversal blocker, where the attacker can time his move to stop a reversal from happening ? at all times you are active in the game, there's no point of just pressing a button and waiting for your opponent to do something, you have to remember your opponent's moves and your own."
Every character has a set of four signature moves, which are highly choreographed slow-mo pain fests, usually involving great leaps into the air onto someone's head. "We looked through each wrestler's real-life move sets, from throughout their entire careers," says McTyre. "We had multiple designers scouring the internet, finding YouTube videos proving the wrestlers had done these moves, even if they haven't performed them recently. But we also wanted to amplify the characters ? these are the idealised versions of the wrestlers." Indeed, when the development team started work on the game, they say they pictured an ardent wrestling fan watching a cool move at a real match then explaining it to a friend ? the action on screen represents this re-telling and the inevitable exaggeration.
Back to the action, though, and it's also possible to Irish-whip opponents in the ropes before following up with a pulverising kick, punch or throw. The energy meter needs to be topped up to access these, and that requires landing a sequence of varied moves rather than relying on one or two staples. There's also a finishing metre, powered either by successful attacks or by taunting your foe via the D-pad ? a daftly satisfying activity, especially in two-player.
And really, this looks to be very much a social experience. In my games, players were making stomach-churning turnbuckle leaps at every opportunity, or simply sliding out of the ring and chasing each other around the parameter. It's also possible to delve underneath the canvas and pick up chairs and other weapons, though there's an escalating chance of being disqualified for using these.
With only one arena open during our demo, and lots of fighters still to be unveiled, there's a lot more to find out about All Stars. I'm also interested to see if there's a decent range of single-player modes and options. But right now, this looks to be a genuinely amusing and challenging new spin on the WWE series, which flatters button-jamming noobs, while providing ample combo firepower for more advanced grapplers.
The transition between moves is impressively smooth, as are the reversal animations, providing a genuine fluidity often missing from UFC and wrestling titles. All Stars is probably not going to turn absolute non-believers into WWE fanatics, but it might remind a lot of veteran gamers why they loved these titles during the Mega Drive years.
? WWE All Stars will be released on 29 March for the PS2 and on 1 April for the PS3, PSP, Wii and Xbox 360
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/jan/19/wwe-all-stars-hands-on
HCL TECHNOLOGIES HEWLETTPACKARD HIGH TECH COMPUTER HON HAI PRECISION IND HYNIX SEMICONDUCTOR
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