Allow me to take you back to the '90s and to a time before American Idol and 5MB download speeds.
I'm talking about a time when professional wrestling completely and utterly dominated cable TV on Monday nights. I started watching WWF's Monday Night Raw when I was in the fifth grade. Eventually the bubble burst and it seemed like America grew up and grew out of love with "sports entertainment" along with me. Wrestling organizations were creating less impressive stars as well as boring plotlines and stories. Once people finally realized that it was just a sweaty soap opera for men and there was cooler stuff to do online or, God forbid, outside, people just stopped watching.
WWE Legends of WrestleMania takes you back to the glory days. Let me clear this up as quickly as possible: this game is really only for people who were at one point, likely in their youth, wrestling fans. People who still consider themselves to be wrestling fans will probably buy it and treasure it, but for the rest of us this is just a rental at best. Legends breaks away from its Raw vs. Smackdown brother and instead focuses on classic matches from WrestleManias past. I may be too young to have seen Hulk Hogan take on Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III, but this game shows a presentation before every match retelling the story and drama that led to the match you're about to participate in. At this the game excels.
Sadly the game play is a little hit and miss. It's fun seeing footage that hypes up the feud between your wrestlers, but the actual match itself is a letdown. It's also odd to see old footage with the WWF logo blurred out and announcers proclaiming King Kong Bundy as a WWE superstar. A lot of Legends of WrestleMania boils down to button mashing and timed button combos to allow for a sequence to play through the actual fun parts of the match. I can basically kick and slam my opponent, play to the crowd, run back and forth and perform a People's Elbow on my downed challenger while only really needing to press two buttons at the right time. That's not so great.
The bottom line is this is a niche game that plays up to the Hulkamania 80s and Stone Cold 90s and will probably not be bothered with by anyone who didn't grow up with an Ultimate Warrior lunch box. The game is fun for about an hour or so because that's all you'll need to clear the entire Relive section of the game, and once those matches are done with there is little reason to continue. Like many wrestling games before it, Legends offers more of the same, but will be a kick to the middle school-aged boy inside some of you.
◗ Beef E. Thompson: beefyness@gmail.com
