 WWF Attitude for Sony Playstation
When the first vague announcements were made that a sequel to Acclaim's massively popular WWF War Zone was in the works, my drool reflex kicked into high gear. I greedily lapped up any and all information I could find about the game, and agonized when the release date was pushed back again and again. The demand for the game was absolutely unprecedented, and pre-purchasing was almost a necessity to ensure you had your copy. My level of anticipation for this game was unreasonably and almost incomprehensibly high. Having such huge expectations almost always has dire consequences, virtually ensuring disappointment.
War Zone was a very good game, and at the time was easily the best wrestling game for the Playstation, at least in the U.S.A. It looked great, sounded great, and was just a damn lot of fun to play. It suffered badly due to the fact that many of the wrestlers featured in it were long gone from the WWF by the time of its release (Bret Hart, British Bulldog, Ahmed Johnson, Mosh, Thrasher) but it overcame this to still be a fine effort. The eagerly-awaited sequel, Attitude, has a few similar roster problems (like Dr. Death and Goldust) but with the nature of the wrestling business, that's inevitable.
The gameplay in Attitude remains basically identical to War Zone. Each wrestler has a wide selection of moves. Some are simple moves which can be done by any wrestler (like a body slam or an armdrag), while others are more complex moves specific to different wrestlers. All told, the game's pool of moves is around 350 or so. Moves are executed in the same way as War Zone. A certain amount of D-Pad presses (either one, two or three) are done, and then a button is pressed. The more D-Pad presses, the more dramatic and damaging the move will be. Each wrestler has a total of about thirty moves of varying difficulty. Each wrestler also has a "trademark" move and a "finisher." These are the most damaging moves in his arsenal, and they generally match moves that the wrestler is known to do in real life. For example, The Rock does The People's Elbow and The Rock Bottom as his trademark and finisher respectively.
Graphically, Attitude improves a little on its predecessor but it's nothing dramatic. The wrestlers all look reasonably like their real-life counterparts, but there's no scaling, so everyone is the same size as everyone else. This isn't terribly distracting, but it just isn't right when Kane is the same size as Sable. The faces of each wrestler are digitized onto the character, and they look all right, but some look pretty bad in close up; The Rock is a particularly laughable example. The crowd is merely window dressing, as they're two-dimensional and only move slightly. The ever-present signs from WWF shows are in attendance, but unfortunately, none of them say anything like "Austin 3:16" or "Where's Mideon?"
Sonically, Attitude is terrific. Shane McMahon and Jerry "The King" Lawler do the commentary, and the recorded a wide range of dialogue. It does get repetitive, but that's the nature of the beast. It gets a bit old with some comments, though. Lawler has several quotes like this: " The crowd noise is very good, with each wrestler having chants related specifically to him, even if they're things that real fans would never chant, like chanting "Red Machine! Red Machine!" for Kane. Single voices will shout out comments from time to time as well. Each wrestler has his (or her) correct theme song, and the entrances are a huge improvement over War Zone. Depending on the venue, pyro will go off, and lights will be used for certain wrestler's, and almost all of their music will be heard. Each wrestler was brought in to motion-capture their entrance, giving an incredible authenticity to them, right down to Mankind hobbling to the ring on his bad knees, or Ken Shamrock getting "in the zone" before getting in the ring.
Most of the improvements in Attitude are the bells and whistles that have been added, and there are plenty. One of War Zone's biggest selling points when it was released was its great create-a-wrestler feature. Attitude retains the C-A-W mode, and expands it, allowing the player to make his wrestler in even greater detail, right down to specific facial features. You can also place text on a wrestler's clothing, and control the lengths of shirt sleeves and pants legs. The pool of other items like masks, accessories, and the like are all there, and expanded as well. Also, you can give your created wrestler a nickname from a list, and the announcers (Shane McMahon and Jerry Lawler) will call your creation by that name during his match, and the crowd will do chants specific to that name. You can also choose theme music from an included library of songs, as opposed to War Zone which had you only allowed to use another wrestler's music. Some of the songs are pretty cool, but for the most part, they're just there. Perhaps the best part of the improved C-A-W mode is the ability to select all of your wrestler's moves from the moves in the game, rather than pre-set move lists as in War Zone. You can assign any just about any move to do any amount of damage you want, so the possibilities are virtually endless.
Also added is the Create-A-PPV mode, which allows you to design your own event of up to eight matches. You choose the wrestlers involved, what type of match they're involved in, all the modifiers and rules of the matches, the order of the matches, and so on. You name your event, design the arena and ring, and you can either play all the matches yourself, or let the computer decide the outcome. This great idea has one gigantic and fatal flaw, however. There's no way to put belts on the line in a match. Since the whole point of pay-per-views often revolve around title matches, this seriously deadens the impact of this mode.
The play modes are expanded greatly as well. All the matches from War Zone are there, like Tornado matches, or Weapons matches (called Hardcore matches in Attitude), but many more have been added. Stable matches, Gauntlet matches, Survivor Series, King Of The Ring, and even a Royal Rumble are there for your choosing. This definitely increases the games replay value, because the central single-player game, the "career mode" has little to offer once it's completed. In career mode, you choose a wrestler (there is also a tag-team career mode) and start out at the bottom of the heap. Your start out at #20 on the list of contenders for the European Title, wrestling lesser opponents at house shows. As you win matches, you move up in the rankings, and you also move from wrestling house shows to televised events like Shotgun, Sunday Night Heat, and Raw Is War. Eventually, you battle for the European Title, defend it, and move on to the Intercontinental Championship. The pattern repeats, you move on to the WWF World Championship battle. Along the way, you will unlock cheats and hidden wrestlers by virtue of winning matches at pay-per-views and winning belts. When you complete career mode, you get little fanfare or reward, and the mode ends. You never defend your WWF title at all, it's just over. It takes so long to complete (in excess of 50 matches) that the lack of a big reward is a big let down, and there's really no incentive to do a career with more than one character, unless you don't unlock all the cheats the first time.
WWF Attitude is very good, but it does indeed suffer from my huge expectations for it, and due to the fact that outside the dressing up it was given, the play is identical to War Zone. Anyone who was adept at that game will immediately master Attitude. That's not so bad, really, but I just expected SO much out of this game that it could never have measured up. All it really does in the end is take the War Zone template, eliminate some bad points, improve on good points, and add several new good points. As such, I don't find myself playing it a whole lot anymore, but I crank it up every so often, and it's fun with a group, to be sure. I still recommend it, whether or not you have played War Zone, but the lasting impact just isn't there.
Review by Mario Speedwagon |
