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WWE Wrestlemania 21 Review - Xbox

Wrestling fans embrace, Eugene is here! Wrestlemania XXI sees the debut of the strangely amusing “retarded” wrestler, but could his disabilities of had a serious effect on the game? Xbox fans have been stopped pretty short when it comes to quality WWE games, and THQ promised quite a lot for Wrestlemania XXI, but can they stick to their promises, afraid not. Read on to find out why you shouldn’t purchase Wrestlemania XXI.

Gameplay

We hyped it, we might of even got you to pre-order it, and we’re sorry, but Wrestlemania XXI is one big miss. The physics are awful, the combat is awful, the commentary is repetitive, the story is linear, and the glitches are aplenty. Starting with the main story, the game takes a disappointing dive. The system is set up so you can only continue on your path to Wrestlemania XXI if you win. If you lose, it’s a rematch. This makes the story mode incredibly linear, as you can’t really decide on what your next match is, who your friends are, or who you despise. The character you play as is someone you’ve created, but you cannot select their personality. They are crude, cocky, and most unfortunately a pure dickhead. Relating to this character becomes very hard from the moment you hear him starting to talk, especially after playing through Jade Empire. Perhaps the character shouldn’t have spoken at all, and you should have been able to select what to say. At least then, the gamer could choose whether they wanted their character to be a complete idiot or not.

Playing through the different game modes, you can notice that the programmers have spent a lot of time designing new types of gameplay, but the coding obviously hasn’t been finished as it’s full of many, many glitches. Nine out of ten times when you try to do a running attack, they’ll reverse it, often two or three meters before you’re even in range of hitting them. All of a sudden, the tactics of the game become a lot more simple. Just go in, whack them, perform a grapple, knock them to the ground, and repeat. Using this simplistic tactic, you can beat any opponent in under two minutes, even Triple H or The Undertaker. The only time a match should last more than three minutes, is if it’s a Last Man Standing match or of course a Royal Rumble. If it’s a Last Man Standing match however, then you can just get out a weapon and whack them until they die.

Weapons vary from trash can lids to baseball bats, chairs, fire extinguishers, and of course the stairs. The stairs and ladders are the only items that don’t disappear after hitting your opponent with them a few times, so it’s recommended that you use the stairs in a Last Man Standing match to get it over and done with as soon as (continued next page)