He’s beating him like a goverment mule!
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages: MasonicGamer.com is proud to bring to you….Okay that was lame but for the past 20 or so years I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with wrestling. When my favourite wrestler finally retired, leaving not many choices from the era I grew up in, I practically stopped watching. I always stayed a casual fan, checking in from time to time when I noticed RAW on TV. When I heard that WWE 13 would focus on the Attitude Era, my ears perked up and I was momentarily transported back to the good old days.
Even if you didn’t grow up predominately in the 90’s, everyone who ever watched “sports entertainment” knows what the Attitude Era did for the medium. WWE ‘13s Attitude Era mode has you take part in classic matches from the WWE history. It starts out with the formation of DEGENERATION X (DX). In the first match you play as the Heart Break Kid, Shawn Michaels taking on the legendary Mankind. Any wrestling fan worth his salt will know most, if not all of the classic matches and characters presented throughout the Attitude Era mode, unlocking new characters and extras along the way.
Without giving any spoilers away, at the beginning of each match you’re presented with a set of objectives to complete. Those objectives are all related to the original bout and attempt to give your match the feel of how the real thing played out all those years ago. They can include simple tasks like, win by pin fall when your opponent is LOW on stamina or hitting your opponent with a chair. However, unlike WWE ’12 that required you to complete everything in order to continue on, they’re mostly just bonuses and don’t require completion.
The gameplay offers a steep learning curve for newcomers, but it is easy to master the basics. For veterans of the series, you’ll find gameplay is quite similar to WWE ’12, so if you played the last iteration you’ll know what to do. It took me a couple of goes to get a grip on the control system but once I had mastered those basics controls everything else seemed to fall into place and before long I was flying from the top turnbuckle, laying the Smack-eth-down on Stone Cold Steve Austin’s candy ass and tuning up the band for some sweet chin music. There was however two slight problems I found with the controls.
The first was the reversals system which requires a button to be pressed at the perfect moment. In WWE ’12 mastering the lightning fast timing was very difficult; WWE ’13 was to change that. I happened to find that even with the indicator I’d be hitting it either too soon, being greeted with a “Too fast!” prompt or too slow “Too late!” Although the addition of the prompts attempts to teach you to improve your timing, I found myself on the wrong side of a beating 90% of the time.
The second problem is the “attitude moments”. These take place during the Attitude Era story-line and are quick-time events which require you to press a button that corresponds to the onscreen prompt. This will then trigger an event, like knocking out the Referee or giving you a massive energy boast for a big comeback. Even though this is a nice addition to the game it seems to be more of an afterthought as the quick-time events will trigger at random times and without warning. The first time this happened I was in the middle of a punch combination when I noticed the prompt pop up on screen but, at the time I was too busy button mashing to trigger the event. This meant that I missed one of the objectives.
There are a number of other glitches that rear their head throughout any play mode. Mostly you’ll find yourself missing grapples or teleporting across the ring when rolling, especially during the aforementioned attitude moments. The camera is another issue. The idea is to add drama and suspense to big moments in a match, but it just ends up obscuring you view, your best bet is just turning it off. They’re not huge or game-breaking problems but are definitely annoying and worth noting.
If the reminiscing isn’t your bag, WWE ’13 has plenty else to offer. Practically every current superstar, literally every single match type you’ve seen on TV and every game mode from previous iterations. The only unfortunate part of not playing the Attitude Era mode is having to listen to Michael Cole commentate. Jerry “The King” Lawler and Good ‘ol J.R. are back in the booth calling the shots during Attitude Era, for everything else you’ll have to deal with Cole constantly shouting “VINTAGE” followed by a number of superstar names.
Nothing quite explains the feeling of reliving the era that defined the WWE and the Attitude Era mode provides a great trip down memory lane. To say it’s a welcome addition to the franchise doesn’t even begin to do it justice; it’s something fans need to experience for themselves. Attitude Era gives the franchise a fresh lease on life to the otherwise, and often, dull stories of past WWE games.
With a creation mode that provides a seemingly endless amount of combinations, the ability to relive what is arguably the greatest era of sports entertainment and clearly the best graphics of any wrestling game ever, WWE ’13 offers exactly what fans have been waiting for; something that appeals to all generations. Although THQ may have their work cut out for them in form of patches or adjustments to the next release, yearly tweaks and additions all add up to WWE ’13 being basically the best wrestling game of all time.
