WWE All Stars (PS3)

While a dream match between your favorite wrestlers will always be an appealing concept, the reality of them often faces a small issue. While there have been cases where an established legend is able to face a legend in the making, the fact is that you can’t really hold the fight while both wrestlers are in their prime. That’s where virtual entertainment comes in though, WWE All Stars taking the legends that helped build up the WWF and WWE as well as newer talent and letting them face off while in top form, the visual presentation even giving them overmuscled physiques that make them look like the action figures younger fans likely were already using to make these dream battles take place.

 

WWE All Stars’s roster is never going to please everyone of course, there’s no women’s division at all and even casual fans of World Wrestling Entertainment will likely have a choice or two that wasn’t included, but it does put together a remarkably well balanced roster of the most famous faces and the up and comers that then-modern wrestling was currently featuring on television. Even someone unfamiliar with professional wrestling will still find someone they likely recognize, big names like Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage, and The Undertaker all available for play. While trying to predict which major names of the day would become legends in their own right, WWE All Stars also has a good range of selections with people like the luchador Rey Mysterio, John Cena, and Triple H to make sure the character stable isn’t too heavily leaned towards the past. Some wrestlers will need to be unlocked though, but the game does make sure to have some of its largest names immediately available so players booting up the game for the first time won’t be denied the chance to play as someone like The Rock. All in all, 30 wrestlers are part of the game’s roster before adding in the extra characters you can buy as downloadable content, but it is certainly a robust batch of distinct wrestlers with diverse fighting styles and unique gimmicks. Eddie Guerrero will bounce around the arena with jaw-dropping athleticism while a character like Sergeant Slaughter brings an obvious up-front theme to a character that people less into WWE might latch onto as they dip their toes into the action.

You can create custom wrestlers to go up against these major names from the WWE’s history, a fairly flexible system allowing for generous reshaping of the body but at the same time you are restricted in terms of what moves they can use in the ring. A custom character will need to borrow the move template of a pre-existing wrestler, so even if you construct what you consider a missing legend, you can’t really customize their moves to bring them close to life. However, each of the 30 wrestlers on offer do they have their own unique finishing move, the player gradually filling up a meter to earn the power for these heavy damaging hits and grapples that can even instantly eliminate an opponent if you’ve already worn them down to no health. Finishers can be stored for a bit and unleashed or used immediately, but if they whiff you’ll lose a chunk of energy required for it that you’ll have to regain by continuing the fight. Because of this, the finisher system can either be a great way to wrap up a fight that is essentially already over or just a strong special move to whip out if you can’t quite close out the fight yet.

 

While the finishers are powerful finales, the bread and butter of a wrestling match will be wearing down your opponent’s stamina. Represented by a multi-layer health bar, the goal of a match is usually to pin a foe for a three count and the lower their stamina, the less of a chance they’ll have of breaking out of the pin in time. At a basic level you can use punches and kicks to wear a foe down, but WWE All Stars makes sure even these simple swings can have a little pizazz. A large character like Andre the Giant can stomp the ground so hard it launches a wrestler upward where you can then keep them airborne with a well spaced string of punches, this juggling adding a bit more complexity to how you deal out damage since you can actually execute short combos. You can kick someone off their feet and then get them in a painful grab they’ll need to pull themselves out of to avoid additional damage or you can link together a set of swift punches if you’re worried the opposing wrestler will weave around the much slower grab attacks that can deal significant damage. The over the top presentation tends to focus more on enhancing the impact of a technique like giving an impressive height boost to a jump off the ropes, WWE All Stars pushing a wrestler’s moves beyond realism so they more closely match the overblown nostalgic memory of an amazing moment rather than its actual substance. The Big Show here will be the kind of massive opponent who can knock you all the way across the ring with a simple blow and Jimmy Snuka will be able to leap much higher than human legs would ever allow, but even if someone’s winding their body around another wrestler in an elaborate throw, the athleticism is an authentic replication of moves they did in real life but with an exaggeration on the impact and set-ups.

 

One key part of making this battle system more complex than just wearing each other down though is an intelligent reversal system. While you do have a guard button to protect against basic kicks and punches, pressing it with the right time will allow a reversal where you deal quick damage instead. Pressing the right button when someone is attempting a grab will let you turn it around on them instead, and nailing reversal timing is key to doing things like catching someone out of the air during a diving attack or ending an extended grappling chain from a greedy opponent. Sometimes though a reversal can in turn be reversed, meaning that you can get into a brief exchange of flipping the attack on each other until someone slips up and eats the damage. Some reversals can only be reversed once though to prevent this from defining the action, but far more important is how tight the window is on the reversal. Mashing the required button will not grant you a reversal and you need to time it pretty precisely to effectively counter the attack or grapple, the player able to squeeze a reversal out since there is a brief indicator but learning a wrestler’s moves ends up more vital to timing those reversals effectively. The reversals being about smart timing that isn’t easy to achieve allows for most moves to still find their mark and the computer-controlled opponents don’t get reversal happy too often either, but you are usually given a small window to potentially get yourself out of a jam and it’s all the more satisfying to do so because reversals aren’t easy or all too guaranteed. Signature moves do exist that can’t be countered, but like finishers you need to build up energy for them and whiffing them will completely clear out a chunk of the special move meter.

A good balance of extravagance on offense and decent but not intrusive defensive options gives the wrestling on show its life and allows for the dream matches of your making to truly shine, but the single player challenges do try to provide some entertaining scenarios for you as well. Fantasy Warfare is a set of 15 matches which consist of one major name of the past going up against a more recent WWE superstar, but what makes these more than mere suggestions on how to fight is the excellently edited promo that plays before each match. Using footage from real wrestling matches and events, these pre-match videos do such a phenomenal job hyping up both wrestlers that you can even start to believe someone you’ve never heard of before now is the perfect match-up for a beloved favorite. Some of these match-ups are pretty clever in concept, Jake “The Snake” Roberts who brought a live python to matches in his time facing off with Randy Orton who earned the nickname of The Viper for the way he watched and approached his foes in the ring, others like the Biggest Superstar showdown the obvious match of Hulk Hogan vs. John Cena since they are the most popular wrestlers on their half of the generational divide. Superior Lifestyle is a bit of an odd pick for a theme as it has the rebellious Stone Cold Steve Austin face off with the straight edge CM Punk, but the video before the match still adds some excitement to the face-off all the same. It is a little unfortunate you can only view the video after you’ve already made your choice on which character to play as for the Fantasy Warfare match, but some are worth replaying since wrestler unlocks are tied to this mode.

 

Path of Champions moves away from providing well constructed dream matches to providing small narratives, mostly in the form of a wrestler challenging you to take on a small gauntlet to prove you’re worthy of facing them. Consisting of three gauntlets with ten matches each, these are mostly standard wrestling bouts save for the finale where you take on the person who was taunting you in small cutscenes along the way. Understandably since some wrestlers featured are dead there isn’t much voice acting on show in the game, but the Path of Champions allows for The Undertaker and his eccentric manager Paul Bearer lean into his undead gimmick more, Randy Orton is able to belittle and taunt the player, and in perhaps the oddest choice, the tag team duo of Triple H and Shawn Michaels seem focused more on comedic skits than really riling you up for the inevitable encounter. While wrestler entrances often feature their associated tracks and a brief walk-in with personality they are clipped short in order to keep things speedy, but having a place where the larger than life characters can talk a little does make this mode that is otherwise mostly a string of matches against AI wrestlers have a little more spice.

 

WWE All Stars has a few match types on offer but not nearly as many as one might hope. Besides a standard match between two wrestlers to the first pin fall, you have extreme rules matches where people can get out of the ring and grab weapons like metal chairs and wooden planks to hit each other with free of the warnings that crop up if you do so during a normal match. Steel cage matches change the focus away from pinning the opponent or knocking them out, the wrestlers instead trying to scale the cage and escape it before the other fighter can pull them back down. A little timing minigame at the top of the cage requires five successes in order to let you finally seal the win but the successes do carry over between attempts meaning the match won’t stagnate, but if you don’t wear down your opponent they can easily pull you down so these fights won’t normally end too soon either. Besides simple alterations to the match like having three or four wrestlers all trying to last the longest or pin someone first though, the only remaining match type is the Tornado Tag Team match which is just another way of framing a 2 vs. 2 wrestling match. No true tag team wrestling where the fighters swap out with someone in the wings exist, no ladders or tables matches exist as neither one of those objects is even featured, and there are no other popular match types like money matches where people try to claim a dangling briefcase without being foiled by another wrestler. While the roster is 30 wrestlers a Royal Rumble where multiple wrestlers keep joining the fight could have still been an interesting feature albeit limited in terms of variety, but here the issue is less that these omissions feel like they hurt the game and more it could have been a way to make some exciting wrestling come in even more interesting forms.

THE VERDICT: The well picked roster of WWE All Stars already likely makes it a professional wrestling fan’s dream come true, so one of the only major marks against it seems to be that it could be so much more. More match types, more wrestlers, and more customization would let this already quality game start to touch on greatness, but as it is it still provides an exhilarating fighting system. WWE All Stars shines as it mixes smart limitations with a strong focus on maneuvers that are still exciting to watch even after you’ve become accustomed to the enhanced depiction of the wrestlers and their moves.

 

And so, I give WWE All Stars for PlayStation 3…

A GOOD rating. While I haven’t watched too much professional wrestling myself, this game’s reverence for and explosive presentation of WWE names I both knew and was unfamiliar with did briefly cause of surge of interest in the long running sports entertainment franchise. The game does a superb job at embodying not just the reality of a signature move but the kind of electric energy a fan would feel seeing it executed in a pivotal match, the exaggeration making things compelling even though they can’t have the real life legends like Macho Man Randy Savage available to provide memorable voice lines on top of it. The battle system is rather finely tuned thanks to the smart implementation of sufficiently demanding reversals, the actual input for it simple but the timing meaning you need to be constantly attentive if you want to exploit your opportunity to do so. Signature moves still get around it if you feel you’re being stymied too often though and wins often hinging on pins or finishers that aren’t going to be guaranteed victories until you’ve really been worn down gives room for comebacks and strategic approaches to try and turn the tides in your favor. The battle system is just the right level of complex that you can learn how to put together satisfying attack strings with some effort but you can still have big bombastic battles even if you mostly lean on simpler tactics. While the 30 man roster feels pretty packed with who you would hope to see, it is a shame some simple match types like tag team bouts were completely left out, the focus certainly more on reproducing the iconic wrestlers properly over giving them the largest sandbox to have their matches in. It is again a matter of content breadth rather than content quality that prevents this from really being a phenomenal package though, so that’s hardly going to hurt the enjoyment a player can extract from it.

 

While someone with some love for the history and even present of the WWE will likely get far more out of this game, WWE All Stars does some solid work hyping up its iconic roster within its own boundaries as it stretches reality a little to allow for impressive feats of athleticism. The fighting system manages to capture the rule set of professional wrestling well, pins feeling earned and reversals feeling skillful because the game knows when ground should be given. Seeing things like submissions included as a viable win condition would make the offerings more robust, but this collection of legends and superstars facing off is still a hearty package capable of pleasing those with various degrees of appreciation for World Wrestling Entertainment and its star-studded history.