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WWE ‘13 Review for Xbox 360

WWE ‘13 Review for Xbox 360

The Pinnacle Of The WWE’s Story

Ah, pro wrestling, the soap opera for men, the testosterone-fueled stage play, the drama of barbed wire, folding chairs, and ring-sized cages. If you were a boy growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s, your life was probably saturated with the stuff. You would spend every lunch period talking about Stone Cold Steve Austin’s feud with Vince McMahon, or The Undertaker’s feud with Kane, or the crazy stuff that D-Generation X did on Monday Night Raw. You never really talked about the moves or the matches themselves. You talked about the storyline and the narrative surrounding these WWE (at that time, WWF) events, and picked your favorite wrestler hoping that someday he would get the shot at the title. Yes, wrestling was all about the story, and WWE ‘13 by THQ is one of the first games to realize this.

The focal point of WWE ‘13 is easily the Attitude Era mode, which brings you back in time to relive the days when wrestling changed hands from “superheros” like Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior, to badasses like The Rock, Triple H, and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

I cannot stress enough how wonderfully this mode is put together. It acts as a sort of wrestling history lesson, outlining the feud between the WWF and the WCW, showing you ratings timelines that compare the two franchises, and letting you control all the biggest superstars on their road to superstardom.

WWE ‘13 Screenshot

It starts with the forming of D-Generation X and goes clean through Mick Foley’s rise to the top as Mankind, Dude Love, and Cactus Jack. These are names that even the casual wrestling fan will notice, and playing through the Attitude Era is like a walk down Memory Lane, filling in the blanks between the iconic matches that you begged your parents to buy you on pay-per-view.

The Attitude Era mode’s commitment to narrative is stunning. Actual audio from classic WWE matches is used both in matches and in cutscenes. Characters move exactly as the real superstars moved in the original event. Your goals are never simply to win, but rather to re-create the events that took place in the match you are currently participating in. You’ll have to hit certain moves, bring characters to certain locations, assault wrestlers with specific objects at specific times, and even wait for unexpected cutscenes and quick time events to make your wrestling even more cinematic. Completing all of these “historical bonus objectives” unlocks additional matches and cutscenes as well as new characters, costumes, arenas, belts, and more, all to be used in the game’s many other modes.

WWE ‘13 Screenshot

Of course, not everyone will enjoy this particular Memory Lane (even if it is the best mode the game has to offer). For these people, the game gives you a panoply of tools to create your own wrestling narrative. Of course, the ability to make your own superstar returns with even more options. You can now layer on shin guards, under-armor, clothing, accessories, and all sorts of trinkets to get the exact look you want. You can color any of these pieces a variety of colors and hues, right down to your wrestler’s actual skin tone. You’d better believe I made a giant green Incredible Hulk.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Once you’ve made your very own wrestler, you’ll want to flesh out his move-list. If none of the signature and finishing moves seem to be striking your fancy, then you can make your very own move instead. Then, of course, you’ll want to tweak the character’s stats and design their entrance movie, music, and animation, and even flesh out who they have rivalries and conflicts with.

Not enough customization for you? Don’t worry, the game has more. Let’s say you want to make your own belt, say, the WWE Master of the Universe title. You can design how the belt looks, who holds the belt, when it’s going to be defended and how, and more.

WWE ‘13 Screenshot

Say the normal arenas are too boring for you. Well, you can customize those too. You can choose what the ring looks like, what lighting your use, what entryway you’ll use, and even how big the crowd is and what behaviors they have. You can customize everything right down to the Titantron.

Perhaps Smackdown and Raw aren’t enough weekly events for you? You can customize your own WWE weekly event, pay-per-view event, or whole season. You can choose what matches are held, what titles are wagered, and who makes an appearance. You essentially get to be put in the driver’s seat as Vince McMahon himself.

Now, let’s say you’ve done all of this, but you still aren’t satisfied. Sure, you can take your custom wrestler with a custom belt to a custom arena in a custom event location, but what is wrestling without the story? Luckily, WWE ‘13 lets you customize that as well. You get to set up feuds, create your own cinematic sequences, and flesh out your own storylines however you like. You can set up backstage assaults, sudden match interruptions, pre- and post-match taunting, and even more! The narrative is entirely in your own hands. This is a level of narrative customization we haven’t seen from current day RPGs and other narrative-centric games. WWE ‘13 is almost a “make your own game” suite.

And here is the kicker. All of this customization, all of this user-made content, can be shared online like some sort of testosterone-driven LittleBigPlanet. You can download someone else’s custom superstar, put them in a storyline with your superstar over a belt that a third person made, and then re-upload that back to the Internet. Granted, at the time of writing the pre-launch servers were a bit barren, but given enough time, WWE ‘13 will be fleshed out with its own user-generated universe of wrestling insanity. I can only hope that Vince McMahon sees some of these concepts and eventually integrates them into the WWE itself.

Now, to be fair, the game isn’t perfect. In fact, some of its most glaring flaws are in its control scheme. You have buttons for strikes, grapples, and miscellaneous actions like Irish Whipping and going for pins. These buttons all do different things depending on where and how you are standing and what direction you are pushing. You then have another button for finishers and signature moves, a trigger for interacting with the environment, and another trigger to reverse the opponent.

WWE ‘13 Screenshot

Unfortunately, this control scheme has a few limitations. For one, the window for a reversal is unfairly small, which is very frustrating for new players. On the flipside, there is no limit to how many times you may reverse a move, so skilled players will find themselves in reversal loops that get boring quickly. In addition, it’s kind of hard to tell when you can and can’t move, i.e. when your character is dizzy and helpless or not. This leads to a lot of button mashing. The HUD is unfortunately barebones, and your HUD options don’t get remembered from match to match if you set them, say, inside a match in the Attitude Era mode. There’s also no way to check your move-list in the middle of a match, just your passive ability list, which makes some Attitude Era matches a lot of trial and error.

However, as frustrating as these flaws can be, you tend to look them over just so you can get to more narrative goodness. In that way, WWE ‘13 is actually at its most fun when played alone. It’s far more fun to hop into the WWE Universe mode so you can take your wrestler of choice on a trip through the ranks in order to become the WWE champion than it is to simply sit down and play a vs. match with a buddy.

WWE ‘13 is one of those games that has just too much content to review. I’ve had WWE ‘13 for a couple weeks now and I still haven’t seen everything the game has to offer. It has a feature set unlike any other and its commitment to both built-in narrative and player-based customization is greater than anything we have seen from almost any other title on the market, regardless of genre. In fact, the only flaws I can find in WWE ‘13 are concerning the gameplay engine itself, but the feature set is so huge it’s almost like it doesn’t even matter.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.9 Graphics
In game, the graphics look a bit stiff, but in cutscenes they are perfect. 3.2 Control
The controls are almost as stiff as the graphics, with needlessly finicky timing and unresponsive button presses. However, they get the job done. 4.2 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The use of original audio from past WWE matches is genius. 4.9 Play Value
Despite the frustration in the gameplay engine, WWE ‘13 kept me playing for countless hours. 4.3 Overall Rating – Great
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.

Review Rating Legend
0.1 – 1.9 = Avoid 2.5 – 2.9 = Average 3.5 – 3.9 = Good 4.5 – 4.9 = Must Buy
2.0 – 2.4 = Poor 3.0 – 3.4 = Fair 4.0 – 4.4 = Great 5.0 = The Best

Game Features:

  • Predator Technology 2.0: Driven by new animations, transitions, and modified controls, Predator Technology returns to deliver intelligent, fluid, and engaging WWE action, resulting in a smoother gameplay experience than its franchise predecessors.
  • Create and Share Your WWE: Utilize the franchise’s industry-defining Creation Suite to develop and customize Superstars, arenas, entrances, finishing moves, storylines, and more! Go online and upload your creations to share them with the WWE Universe, and download creations from others to add to your own experience.
  • Relive the Attitude Era: You have heard the legendary stories and witnessed the history. Now, for the first time, return to an unparalleled and groundbreaking era in WWE history: a time of pure raucousness, grandiose personalities, and colossal revolution through a franchise-first single-player campaign focused on eight purveyors of attitude during the famed “Monday Night Wars,” including WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
  • WWE Live: Experience the atmosphere, spectacle, and fervor of a WWE live event through attention-grabbing Spectacular Moments, including ring breaks and barricade crashes, along with a brand new audio system designed to produce the most authentic and vibrant commentary, sound effects, and crowd participation levels ever experienced in a WWE videogame.
  • WWE Universe 3.0: Control the virtual WWE experience like never before in the franchise’s popular career-style mode, as individual decisions throughout gameplay will dynamically introduce matches, alliances, rivalries, and unpredictable moments along the path toward becoming a WWE champion.

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