Enter a new era of wrestling with Electronic Arts' unique idea for WCW 2000. The first thing you will notice is the absence of a ring! No, they didn't forget it. EA Canada is taking a new approach for making a wrestling game by doing away with the confines of the squared circle altogether. Instead, the battles will take place everywhere else but the ring such as the boiler room, locker room, out on the street or wherever else is a good place to kick some ass. Doesn't it seem that the tiny ring just isn't big enough to contain the giant egos of all the WCW superstars? Most of the action usually takes place out of the ring anyway, in the back locker rooms or during the walk to the ring, but it always seems to me that once the action finally gets to the ring, the pace slows down. This is really true for the WWF. I only watch it to hear the guys shooting off to each other and when a match starts that's when I head to the fridge.

As the years go by the wrestling games have overall evolved, slowly adding more features and realism to bring the games as close to the real thing as possible but I feel things are starting to stagnate a little. I'm looking forward to this game because it is taking a bold, new direction for the genre. But just because there is no ring, do not be fooled, this game at its heart is a wrestling game. But by having so much more varied and interactive environments like those in WCW2K, room for new gameplay features and innovation become possible. You can still perform all of the regular moves though, but some are implemented in a different way. For example, throwing a guy against the ropes and having him bounce off and run back at you so you can put a move on him. In this game you can still do that but instead of bouncing him off of ropes you can bounce him off of a stack of tires and still get the same affect. Almost everything in the environments can be interacted with. The current list of environments is as follows: Boiler room, Parking Deck, Bathroom, Loading Bay, Junk Yard, Ticket Office, Parking lot, Locker room and Supply room. In these locations there will be tons of foreign objects and other "unforgiving" items to make minst meat out of your opponents. The list of current weapons are: baseball bat, T.V., trash can, steel chair, wooden crate, VCR, TV camera, filing cabinet, mailbox, steel pipe....and yes, even the kitchen sink! The list is bound to grow before the game's release and there are also other objects that can be used as weapons. Many things in the levels are breakable, like walls, cars and tables. If you slam a guy through a table it will split in half, then you can proceed to grab a piece of the broken table and continue to pound the downed opponent with it! That is very cool ;)

As with most PS2 games due out in the next year or so, the graphics are a giant leap ahead of anything on the system now. The game will have the most realistic wrestlers you've ever seen and probably the most detailed characters ever created in a game period. As of now only Goldberg is completed and man it is scary how close he looks to the real one. The design, textures and detail to the polygon representation of Goldberg is just astounding. Especially his face, you can't tell the difference between his real face and the one in the game. EA is using a new process called cyberscanning to get an accurate model of the contours of the superstar's face. From there they get the wire frame model which is extremely accurate. Then the textures of his face are placed over the wire frame and the result is something that may just give you nightmares. New effects will be used that haven't even been used in wrestling games before like sweat on the skin of the wrestlers, moving hair and real-time lighting on the character models as well. All this slapped onto a 7,500 polygon model in addition to smooth 60 fps is going to result in some of the most impressive graphics on the PS2 when the game is released.

This new WCW game is definitely looking great and you won' t have to worry about aliasing problems with jaggies or anything like that. No doubt about it, this game looks sharp. It has a lot of potential to give new life to the genre as long as the no ring idea is implemented well. And if it is, it will just be a matter of convincing fans of the genre to accept the new idea which shouldn't be too hard because I think a lot of people are going to be hooked by the visuals alone. We hope to get some information on the multiplayer mode soon.