WWE All Stars

After years of dealing with the subject matter, some might say that THQ and Yuke's recent WWE-licensed efforts have started to look a bit bloated and uncomfortable in their spandex tights. Constantly adding new things to the core game without really trimming off the fat has left us with a game that feels cluttered and clumsy. This comes at the worst time, as wrestling has been falling to the wayside as a "combat sport" in the wake of the rise of mixed martial arts and the UFC. No one seems to care about brilliantly outrageous acrobatic powerslams anymore - they'd rather watch sweaty lads in tight shorts, struggling in a warm embrace on the floor of the octagon. Mixed martial arts has invaded the gaming world in much the same way, and has made for some of the most technical combat sports gaming you're likely to find. WWE All Stars, on the other side of the ring, is the anti-UFC. Simplified, streamlined, bombastic and colourfully deranged, this is distilled sports entertainment at its vivacious best.

The idea behind WWE All Stars is to pit the biggest legends of the sport against the ruling superstars of today, and to do so in the most ridiculously over-the-top way possible. That means that everything is bigger, more bizarre and more dazzling than you have ever seen before in a WWE game. The stars of the show are now musclebound caricatures of their former selves - we're talking He-Man action figures - with chests like wine barrels and arms like over-fed pythons. While the top-heavy superheroes may look like they come straight out of a comic book, the action in the ring is even more wonderfully unhinged. You know the way NBA Jam takes basketball and just goes crazy with mile high slam dunks and burning balls and explosions? This is sort of like that, but even more so.

With the WWE let loose to run wild like this, a standard wrestling match instantly becomes a more entertaining affair. Each match becomes a flood of monstrous special moves, flashing lights and booming impacts as the over-sized wrestlers do battle, with trails of energy streaming off of their limbs as they hurl themselves through the air. No longer held back by those silly and restrictive laws of gravity or physics in general, expect to see your fighter tossed twenty meters into the sky and then slammed into the mat with immense power, the blast radius sending ripples across the ring... it's fantastic. Moves that would otherwise leave these guys literally broken in half are delivered with bone shattering impact that you half expect the ring to crack down the middle. Even standard fight moves are wildly exaggerated, adding a playful flair to the aggression.

All of the high-flying, high adrenalin action may look like unbridled chaos, impossible to control or direct, but the underlying controls are surprisingly simple. That being said, getting to grips with it can be confusing at first, mainly because WWE All Stars uses quite a different control scheme to the usual WWE Smackdown VS Raw games. Different styles of fighters have different move sets too, so the same button inputs don't always have the same results. These move sets are based on the characters core fight style - you've got your brawlers, your luchadores, your heavies, technical fighters and so on - and those within the same style have very similar moves. In fact there are some whose specials seem like carbon copies of others, especially as you move between the Legends and Superstars. As crazy as the fight action is, I was pleasantly surprised by the hit detection here, a big problem with previous WWE titles.There is a good flow to the action, with reversals, counters and transitions elegantly animated.

The roster for WWE All Stars is smaller than we have come to expect from recent WWE titles, making for a selection of around 15 classic Legends and 15 modern day Superstars. It's a well balanced mix, with most characters having an 'opposite number', wrestlers from different era's who have very similar styles and even ring persona's. Look at Andre the Giant and the Big Show squaring off, or Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero, and the similarities are as clear as day. These match ups make for some tense battles, and many of them are showcased in the Fantasy Warfare mode - a selection of "what if?" scenarios putting old versus new to see who the real king of the ring is. Admittedly, some of these match up comparisons are a bit obscure, such as a face off between Shamus and the Ultimate Warrior who in my opinion are vastly different, but overall it's a good idea well implemented. The Video Retrospectives that play before each fight are brilliant, giving an insight into the wrestlers and their careers. As is now standard for WWE titles, there is also a character creation option, and while it allows for the easy creation of suitably over-sized fighters, your customization options are much more limited this time.

The other primary mode, besides the standard exhibition modes, is the Path of Champions - three campaigns to fight through, one for Legends, one for Superstars and one for Tag Teams. Each is made up of ten battles, culminating in a WWE title fight against the Undertaker for Legends, Superstars' reigning champ Randy Orton, or D-Generation X for those wanting to do it as a tag team. These stages cover a number of fight modes, from one-on-one to Triple Threat matches to Steel Cage matches, but ultimately it just feels like a string of fights with no sense of narrative tying it together. That is the one thing that's sorely missed from the usual WWE games - the typically laughable storylines and feuds that drive the action.

Bashing your way through those ten fights to get that illusive WWE Championship belt can be done in one sitting, but don't expect your opponents to go down without a fight. The AI seems to vary between cautious and ruthless, sometimes switching gears in the middle of a fight. You'll start off totally dominant, when out of nowhere you will be literally spammed by impossible to dodge super moves, and it's 1-2-3, fight over! As you move along the path to the title, the opponents also start to counter and reverse more and more of your attacks, to the point of frustration. It's fair to make the game more challenging as you go along, but the AI's success rate with reversals later on can be tedious. Conversely, some opponents offer far too little resistance, resulting in a number of fights which are over before before they start.

The frantic pace and button-bashing nature of WWE All Stars' gameplay tends to lend itself to playing against real opponents, with local multiplayer offering the most laughs. You and up to three friends can bash each others heads in across the various fight modes, of which the Steel Cage match proves the most tense and ridiculously entertaining. Would you believe it, someone has finally found a gameplay mechanic that makes the race to escape the cage as edge-of-your-seat exciting as it should be. There really should have been a lot more fight modes though, not just for the multiplayer but for the whole game, as WWE All Stars has cut a huge number of the match types from the usual WWE Smackdown VS Raw franchise. The overall feeling is that there just isn't enough content here, online or off, and longevity could be the games' biggest problem.

WWE All Stars is quite a departure from the rest of the series, make no mistake. This must be the first WWE title I've played that encourages air-juggle combos a'la Capcom fighters, or allows precision top-rope flying bodyslams from a mile away. The WWE franchise has been creeping ever closer to becoming a wrestling simulation over the years, and now we have this, a recklessly brutal - yet somehow cheerful - brawler that suddenly takes the series in a bold and unashamedly grassroots direction. And believe it or not, it's the best thing that could have happened to the ageing franchise. The roster of characters will bring a tear of nostalgia to many an old fan's eye, and the fluid fight action is as much fun to play as it is to watch. If there is one serious concern here, it is the game's longevity - there really should have been more to do - but while it lasts it's a blast. I'm rating this game based on what it is: a wonderfully over-the-top game that is guaranteed to entertain, and that's what it's all about, isn't it? Next time, if developer THQ San Diego could just add more arenas, a few more match types to mix things up, and just a tiny bit more narrative, we could be on to a winner for wrestling fans. Even so, right now this is probably the most fun you're allowed to have in a pink spandex leotard.

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