Gamecube: WWE Day of Reckoning 2

[Gojira]

If you don't remember last year's WWE games, I'll sum it up for you: you had your WWE Smackdown vs. Raw, another incremental advancement in the PS2 Smackdown series with voices in its season mode and new limitations on what was possible. You had your Wrestlemania 21, made by some former developers of Mortal Kombat, a new but rather limited game with clunky gameplay from lengthy animations. And then you had your Day of Reckoning. Now this was technically an upgrade from Wrestlemania X9, but there was something about it that made it feel like a more solid experience than that game, or any of the others last year for that matter. The submission system was a simple tug-of-war that worked, the presentation was rounded out with lots of new selling and reaction animations that gave the matches a more realistic flow, the reversal system combined with the momentum shift added a great give-and-take, and unlike Smackdown it was possible to use grapples to hit third opponents, or break up a grapple by hitting them.

So with such a long list of improvements made, it seems THQ and Yuke's wanted to refine it even further to leave GC players with a great wrestler before moving on to the next generation. What results is a lot of very small improvements: some good, some questionable. Some of the animations have been further refined, and the wrestler models have been given some incredible detail. During tag team matches you no longer have to taunt to give your partner orders, instead holding Z and pressing the d-pad. The AI is now able to do more than irish whip and do a strike that misses, and it even pauses every now and then to throw off your reversal timing. The story mode is even improved, with a rather engaging mystery tale for once, and ditching the odd "missions" of last year for simply winning a match to move on. Plus there are some choices here and there that add a little variety to it. And finally there is a new match type in Last Man Standing, which is handled decently. These are all welcome additions and help DoR2 along very well.

However among these are some new additions that some may find annoying. Firstly is the stamina gauge. The way this works is, as you perform moves your stamina decreases. If you get too eager with the moves and, say, grab a chair and swing wildly, your stamina will be gone in a matter of seconds. Once that happens, you have to stand still or walk around until your stamina returns. While this should be okay, the problem with it is sometimes your stamina won't return for reasons unexplained and you just end up being tossed around like a sack of potatoes. Luckily there's a submission system that allows you to regain stamina with rest holds, but of course if you're low on stamina it's very possible your opponent will figure out which hold you're going for and break it immediately. And even if you do manage to pull it off, if you don't wear down the body part you're applying it to, you won't be able to keep in on no matter how good your submission rating is. So, while these additions are not bad, it takes a while to get used to them and some may not like having to stop and rest when they're in the middle of a beatdown, or have to break a submission so early even when they have a high submission rating.

Finally, the bad. It pains me to say this but the CAW is not good. I don't know what happened. CAWs themselves look uglier, but that's the least of the problem... when you want to add anything, and I mean anything, the game pauses to "create the model" for almost 10 seconds. Want to take off a glove? 10 seconds. Want to add gear? 10 seconds. You need to change the color of your pants? 10 seconds. It puzzles me why this is in there when DoR1 had a very fast and convenient CAW. On the plus side you still have pretty much all of the clothing and items you could use in DoR1, but that also means there's not much new in the way of anything, so if you couldn't find a certain style in DoR1, chances are it's not here either. Also crowd chanting is back. Unfortunately this means that whenever a superstar is in "DANGER" the crowd will chant his/her name. And they don't freaking stop until that superstar starts putting up some offense. Also a near fall is always reacted to with a "HOLY SHHHH" chant, which is funny the first time but just gets annoying every other time. And even with 6 different sound volume options, you can't turn the crowd off without turning off something else with it.

So if they were going for a perfect game, they fell short. While the wrestling is great and tight as ever, the new additions are questionable, the CAW is annoyingly slow and the crowd is just plain annoying. Still, it is not a terrible game, just better and worse than DoR1 in several ways. I'd recommend a rental first to be safe.

[Rugal 3:16]

At least this game has the five credible legends that really matter

Hogan, Bret, Austin, Foley and Rock