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RAW 2

First things first – I stopped watching “pro” wrestling about the time of WrestleMania 5 or 6. Throughout the years since, I would pause every once in a while on a program featuring those men in tights, but frankly, I lost interest when there stopped being a semblance of a sport and the emphasis shifted to soap opera theatrics.

Does that make me the absolutely wrong person to be reviewing a wrestling game?

Possibly – but the case could be made that I’m the perfect candidate as I’m coming in without any preconceived notions.

WW Raw 2 is exclusive to the Xbox, the same way that the GameCube has the WrestleMania games, and Sony has the SmackDown titles. This is my first gripe with the game. Why does THQ release all of the wrestling games within approximately one month? Split the games throughout the year (releasing, say, maybe the WrestleMania game around March…) and have them multiplatform – this would definitely increase the appeal of each game, and possible have them hit a wider audience. Sure, the platform exclusivity locks up a certain audience, but it also leads to serious slacking with the mentality that it’s the only show in town.

It woudl be great to impliment some of the things that work in other titles together – make it look like THQ actually has a coordinated effort behind the WWE games. As it stands, each title is radically different, and ultimately, suffers from a lack of coordination.

I’m off that soapbox for now, on with the review…

The heart of the game is the Season Mode. Take your wrestler through the ring from event to event (oddly, Velocity and Heat aren’t in here), including the pay-per-view events culminating in WrestleMania – though the syndicated programs aren’t represented, as would be expected.

The create-a-wrestler is fun, especially being able to use a song from the Xbox’s hard drive during the entrance, but ultimately, it’s the stars of the WWE that fans want, and that’s where Raw 2 comes through. There are approximately 60 men and women ready for you to take control of.

Players take the wrestler of their choice, and take them through making their own destiny. The option to go after as many belts as you wish, to create the alliances and rivalries you want – it’s wonderfully creative, and something that should be looked at for future wrestling games. Why isn’t this a standard feature in all wrestling games? Let the players make up their own story…

There are strong and weak grapples and throws, signature moves and various other bits one would expect from this type of game. Locking onto an opponent is done by using the left or right trigger buttons, which could have been much better utilized (such as having them be the executables for “pin” or “submission move”).

The actual wrestling portion isn’t the problem – it’s the execution of it. Locking onto an opponent is sloppy, it’s easy to miss somebody right in front of you. Tagging out can also be a hit or miss affair. There are all sorts of collision detection problems as well, sometimes two wrestlers will be laying on the mat, and it looks like Siamese Twins.

During the season, your superstar can ambush a wrestler, lay traps, encourage, and other things that happen on television. The problem is that you must set this in stone before the show begins. If your superstar is up first, the outcome of that match may determine what you want to do for the rest of the evening. Maybe you want to call your opponent out for a rematch. Maybe you want to interfere with their tag-team match later on (or not, again depending on the outcome of the match). Not being able to alter your action during the program hurts the overall enjoyment.

It’s also not too clear how to call somebody out and set up a specific match type (there are several to choose from thankfully – such as hell in a cell, ladder, hardcore, etc.) and there is a certain randomness to the matches in general. There doesn’t appear to be a rhyme or reason why two of my staunch allies one week are on a tag team together, then fighting each other (after winning the tag match) the next.

This falls into the atrocious A.I. the game has. My 3 hottest rivals interfere in a title match of mine, one after the other. Each one of them goes after my opponent, my 4th rival. I just sit back and watch my rivals beat each other up while my superstar just sits there doing nothing. During a tag match, after I pin down my opponent, my partner will come in and disrupt the tag. Was there any testing done on this title?

Graphically, the game is good – collision detection problems aside. The entrances are obviously not from the in-game engine, however, as the wrestlers have a certain cel-shaded look to them as they walk down the ramp. The rings are a bit small, and the camera can be a bit wonky, changing around without notice. This doesn’t help when combined with the game’s penchant for mis-targeting.

The crowd is pretty standard as well – you’ll notice the same 2 or 3 signs in the background repeatedly, and there appears to be about 10 models used for the crowd that got repeated. Sure, you should be focusing on the action in the squared circle, but there should be some sort of ambience.

And that falls under the audio category. Like I said, I haven’t played a wrestling game before, so maybe this is standard and everybody accepts this – but there is no commentary during the matches. Yes, a lot of dialogue would have to be recorded for each wrestler and their moves, but shouldn’t that be in there by now? Haven’t videogames evolved to this point yet? Other than the bland crowd and announcements of the wrestler as they walk to the ring, there is no vocalization in Raw 2. Sad.

I could go on about other features, such as the ability to have 4 players go through the season, the momentum meter, the other multiplayer modes, but honestly, I can’t find the energy. Why? After successfully winning a championship belt in WrestleMania, I was given a message “Good luck next season” and the credits rolled. I patiently waited. After the credits, season 2 starts, and my superstar of choice doesn’t have a belt around his waist. What’s the point of working your way up to the top if you can’t stay there?

If the only console you have is an Xbox, either get MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch, or a GameCube and play WrestleMania XIX. Chances are, you have a PS2 and will be getting Smackdown anyway. You know, if this game were taken online, virtually everything would have been overlooked by millions of wrestling fans…

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Tags: WWE Raw 2

Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Oct 22nd, 2003 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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