WWE Legends of WrestleMania

WWE Legends of WrestleMania

If this were any larger than life you’d need a bigger house just to play it.

Fan favourite wrestlers bring back the fun for WWE Legends of WrestleMania. This exhaustive, and physically exhausting, bundle of Clotheslines and Irish Whips will send your adrenaline levels through the roof. It’s a history lesson that’ll mean a lot to fans of the present day events and could entice older generation fans back to the console to relive the golden years. In keeping with the classic theme THQ has stripped bare the control system to favour old-school gameplay. That said there are also new techniques that really bring these bouts to life.

Or should that be ‘back to life’, because the core appeal of Legends is to Relive, Rewrite or Redefine WrestleMania history with around 40 superstars of the ring. Here’s a bunch of them that we’ve just picked out at random, if your favourite isn’t listed here we’re pretty sure he’s in the game anyway: Undertaker, Junkyard Dog, Stone Cold, Rik Flair, Mr Perfect, Arn Anderson, Bam Bam Bigalow, Roddy Piper, The Rock, British Bulldog (get in), Ultimate Warrior, Bret Hart, Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. There’s more pain in this game than a truckload of tacks dropped on your head from orbit, and that’s before you import all the wrestlers from SmackDown vs. RAW 2009 – and, yes, that includes your home grown superstars.

The main gameplay mode is WrestleMania Tour where each wrestler has a series of objectives to meet. If you’re to Relive a contest these replicate what you may remember from real life contests since 1984. And if you weren’t even born, don’t worry because Legends includes hours of archive footage to instruct and inspire, and highlights are shown before the in-game guys make their entrance. To ‘Rewrite’ history your guy must turn the tables, making heroes out of villains and vice-versa. If you choose to ‘Redefine’ anything goes and you get to decide the parameters.

We love the presentation of this game, as it embraces everything that has made WWE a global household name. The charismatic stars are captured in their heyday, with ever-so-slightly exaggerated physiques to make more of their big personalities. When they make their entrance you’ll have shivers down your spine, like when Ultimate Warrior holds onto the ropes and fireworks rocket to the ceiling from the opposite end. This is show time from the moment you press START!

But it’s how the game captures the spirit of WWE of old that takes the crown. From its simple control scheme of punch, grapple, pin and block to slightly more advanced techniques that include running and counter attacks, and combination button-presses that’ll let you taunt or perform crowd-pleasing finishers. As the contest takes shape your success or failure builds or breaks down a three-tier Momentum Gauge, at the limit of which your WWE athlete can perform the impossible.

We mentioned at the beginning how Legends is exhausting, and by that we mean you’ll really need to work that controller to win! Mashing buttons to recover from a fall or to come top in a Test of Strength opening gambit means you’ll constantly be flipping the controller to get the optimum position for finesse or brute force. If your opponent is good (and be advised that the AI is no pussy either) the bouts can last a very long time or else you could be on your back within minutes. Either way you need to give this all you’ve got.

At one stage you’re sure to hear the announcer speak of Hulk Hogan thus: “It truly gives me goose bumps. The man is emotion personified.” This is honestly how we’ve been left feeling about THQ's WWE Legends.

5 our of 5