Mortal Kombat gone Wrestling.
I've never been much of a fan of digitalized sprites, however,
WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game looked so weird that it intrigued me, so of course, I went ahead and got both it and its sequel. What makes it so weird is that this game isn't your average fighting game, it's more akin to Mortal Kombat, with life bars and a block button, as well as a very similar
sense of humor. Undertaker can summon ghosts, Bam Bam Bugalow can throw fire punches and Ramon Razor can turn his arms into deadly
blades. It's a weird game, alright?
This is a straight up port of the Arcade original, without any bells and whistles. You get 8 wrestlers: The Undertaker, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Yokozuna, Bam Bam Bugalow, Lex Luger, Ramon Razor and Doink. Wrestling wasn't a thing over here, even though
curiously enough, Hulk Hogan was a household name, so... I could
barely recognize anyone besides The Undertaker, so the roster might resonate a bit more with American households, or people big into wrestling during the 90's. Single Player Mode is made up of two Arcade Ladders, but you can also play Co-Op and Deathmatch with another player. It's... it's quite
lacking. And the Arcade Ladder is quite annoying, one of them starts off with 1 on 1 matches, but then you have two one VS two matches and ends on a one VS three match, while the other ladder is even worse, starting off with one VS two matches, then two one VS three matches and ends with a fight against all 8 characters. It's tough and it's unfair and I
recommend turning off blocking for this mode.
The game has a very Mortal Kombat five-button setup: Punch, Kick, Super Punch, Super Kick and Block. Punch+Kick makes your wrestler run, while S. Punch+ S. Kick allows you to grab opponents... with a
specific few characters. Other universal inputs are forward-forward-S. punch to get your enemy in a headlock, back-back-S. punch to throw your enemy towards the rope and back-back-punch to throw your enemy into the ground. You can also get out of the ring and get on top of the torn buckles to produce jumping attacks. There's a combo gauge that lets you use Super Moves, but the instruction booklet is no help and there's no in-game moveset, and I couldn't
care enough to google them, so I
wasn't able to pull off any of them. Even so, controls didn't seem very responsive, and the fighting system was a bit clunky, so I didn't have much fun. That said, I'm sure it's better against other players, since the CPU just isn't fun to fight in this game, they react to fast to your head-locks, producing reversals
before you can try to figure out what input combination works with the Wrestler you picked.
I'm pretty sure this game has a
small cult following behind it, but sadly, I just
didn't enjoy it much. Combat in the game is bit wonky and unresponsive, although not altogether bad, just
subpar, and playing solo is more of a chore than anything. I give them props for the
idea, however, and while I wasn't so fond of the end product, I'm glad that such a weird idea can live on as a game.
3.0 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment