By Dylan Moran
Nostalgia is a fantastic thing. It’s like a free drug full of greatness and joy without the risk of hospitalisation.
But there are some things about nostalgia that have downsides – like the embarrassment of admitting ‘yeah I did that’.
So when I got a copy of W12 there was a mixture of happiness and trepidation. I mean, we all went through that whole South Park/wrestling/Roswell phase, right? Rocking the baggy camo cargo pants with the wallet chain, hat backward, cranking some Limp Bizkit and Puddle of Mudd, eating Dunkaroos and blue Pepsi and smashing Golddust’s head into the canvas time and time again.
There’s just something about being an adult that lets us look back at that teen with condescension in our eyes and go ‘really?’ Because we now know there was nothing original in what we were doing, nothing rebellious – because every one of our peers was doing it too, and it was just what Hollywood was telling us what to do, who to listen to, what to eat.
Like that innocence, Dunkaroos are gone now. Well... They’re still there if you really put in the effort, but it just doesn’t feel the same when you have to work for it right?
It was much the same with W12. We all know the greatest wrestler ever returned to the ring last year, but there were so many wrestlers I didn’t recognise – my favourite of which has gotta be Shaemus, a stereotypical Irish dude who is basically the Dropkick Murphys of the wrestling scene at the moment. You’ll spend a lot of time playing as him in the Road to Wrestlemania mode, by the way.
On startup the dude who greeted me on the menu screen was Drew McIntyre, another guy I don’t recognise, who I'm told is the current face of professional wrestling. It’s good to see he still hits the essentials of WWE success – greasy ponytail and spandex.
But this light-hearted sense of confusion was thrown off-kilter when it turned out there were people still fighting that I did know. The Undertaker is now 46 years old and still going strong. So is his ‘brother’ Kane, who is 44.
The longevity has to be applauded but I can think of things I’d rather do after a career with highlights like this?
Now you may not be aware, but the review copies for these games don’t come with instruction manuals. This is usually all well and good as titles will have a tutorial mode or similar. Not this one.
W12’s idea of a tutorial is to give you an eight-page document to read in the menus and not actually be able to practice these different elements of the game.
So straight off the bat it alienates itself from those new to the series. While the gameplay in W12 is very similar to those games back on PSX and Dreamcast – a button to punch/kick, a button to grapple, a button to Irish whip – and was pretty easy to pick up, that’s cause I spent years playing the original titles and smashing mates with a ladder, chair or baseball bat. If you happen to be picking up the controller for the first time ever, you’ve got a steep learning curve ahead of you.
As always, there’s the mode letting you make your own wrestler. Determined to keep this realistic as possible I started to lovingly recreate myself... and then my guy started to look like All Black Cory Jane, so I just went with it.
About 20 minutes later (there’s a hell of a lot to muck around with, and a lot of it is not too intuitive – such as how you have to push ‘continue’ on three different sub menus when editing a mask or you lose everything) I had made Captain Hurricane, a dude in a suit who wore a yellow skull mask in the ring and looked like the All Black winger out of it.
Then I got to the point where I could edit my skills. Most sports games treat this as an RPG element – you get X amount to start with and earn some with each bout. Not so in W12. Young Cory could have 99 in most categories if I desired. As I said, I was trying to keep this realistic so resisted the temptation. Instead I kept everything at its baseline 70 except speed (99) and charisma (20). This is Cory Jane we’re talking about remember.
Another roadblock I ran into in ‘create a superstar’ was one which still has me baffled. The things the ring announcer and the commentators can say are completely different. I could have ‘The Captain’ as my entrance name – but ‘captain’ isn’t part of the commentator’s repertoire. Instead, they call him ‘The Champ’, even though he hasn’t won a title yet.
Indeed, he hasn’t won a fight yet. After I finished making him I headed off to trek my way through ‘story’ mode. Except there isn’t one.
It’s a wrestling game that allows you to create your own dude or diva but then doesn’t even have a generic story to follow. There’s the ‘WWE Universe’ mode which sees you take part in bouts with little-to-no personal investment – and since there’s no benefit to winning or losing, there’s nothing for the casual fans to strive for after beating up a few guys they don’t recognise.
For the hardcore – which is probably the focus of the game anyway – the promise of taking on people like Triple H (another who has been around forever) is probably enough to keep them going. Until they notice the ‘improved AI’ isn’t so much. The same stunt I used to pull as a 12-year-old fighting The Rock as Stone Cold still works – Irish whip them into the ropes, then when they ping back at you, do a backbreaker. When they recover and get up again, irish whip them and do a backbreaker. Repeat this move as many times as needed until you can do your particular finishing move.
Despite the flaws and annoyances, when I play I’m trapped in my teenage self tapping buttons and swearing at men with ponytails for daring to lay on top of me. It’s a shame there’s nothing to keep this game going – I mean I’ve already put over 80 hours into Battlefield 3, it’s not like I won’t stick with a game if it gives me the slightest reason to keep the controller in my hands. But in W12, once you’ve played through Road to Wrestlemania and won the championship as your own wrestler, the game has nothing left to offer.
Three stars.
3 News
WWE '12
:: Publisher: THQ
:: Developer: Yuke's
:: Format: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii
:: Rating: M