 1987 was the year that Square released Final Fantasy I; it was also the year they released another classic, Rad Racer. Why do I start my reviews with a history lesson?
Thirteen years later Square, a company primarily known for its RPG's has done it again. In 2000 they have released Final Fantasy IX and Driving Emotion Type-S. That's why I always throw a little history your way. It seems that very little changes in the Videogaming world. Why Square has decided to expand their horizons is anybody's guess, but now they have released a wrestling game: All Star Pro Wrestling.
This game is a mixed bag, strong in some aspects and weak in others. If you jabronis want to know more, get your freaks, grab your ho's, and read on.
ASPW is not based on any particular association in Japan, but it has 26 real life wrestlers from the various associations. Can you imagine a game that would let you pit The Rock against Big Poppa Pump, or Goldberg against "Stone Cold" Steve Austin? This is the Japanese equivalent of that game. Some of the wrestlers available are: The Great Muta, Don Frye, Masa Saito, Tadao Yasuda, Rikidouzan, Akira, and El Samurai.
The only one I recognized was The Great Muta, due to his recent stint in the WCW, but hardcore wrestling fans will likely recognize a few others.
ASPW opens with a very long introduction in Japanese by the ring announcer. Fortunately you can skip this with the press of a button.
The game offers a multitude of options right off from the start. Most of the important screens have enough English that you can navigate them relatively easily, and the ones that don't, have a fair amount of graphics so you can figure out what you are changing. You can toggle ring entrances, camera angles, time announcement, commentary, digital or analog control, and sound. Once you have done this you move onto the Make Match screen. Here you can choose to wrestle a singles match, or wrestle in a variety of tournaments in various classes. When you choose a match, you are taken to another options screen. This screen allows you to choose: one or two player, difficulty, arena, mat color, and even the referee.
The computer AI is not bad, but the default is a tad easy, and the novice is just plain retarded. I could select a two-player game and unplug the second controller and get the same challenge from the other grappler. The other settings pose a greater challenge and put up a good fight.
The arenas vary in size, and each arena affects your wrestler's entrance. He will come in from a different door, there will be a different light show, and how he gets into the ring may be different. Although ASPW offers a lot of features, it does not allow you to create a wrestler or change an existing wrestler in anyway. This would have added a lot of replay value to this game, but c'est la vie.
 Once you have begun your match, the announcer says something brief and then introduces your wrestler. This is where the game really shines. Each wrestler has their own theme music and light show. Some wrestlers have pyro, which looks fantastic, and others play to the crowd as they make their way to the ring. The overall look is a bit surreal as Square made heavy use of motion blurring to make the movements look more realistic. Some of the entrances approach two minutes in length, almost as long as Lex Luger's but you are able to skip them so it is not a big deal.
One thing I found amusing was that one of the most intimidating looking wrestlers in the game comes out to horrible Japanese pop music. Picture Kane coming out to Britney Spears and you'll get the picture.
Once the match starts, the games (not Triple H) problems are exposed. The overall pace of the game is very sluggish. The wrestlers approach each other slowly and once you have knocked the other guy down it is not difficult to kick him and keep him down for two minutes at a time. It is very frustrating watching your wrestler roll around on the mat, not having any control over what is going on. Once your wrestler begins to come to his senses he will get up on one knee. Most likely he will get kicked back onto the mat, but if you are lucky and you make it to your feet, your wrestler will probably be dazed, only able to limp around the ring.
The match will continue like this for a while and then all the sudden your wrestler goes on the offensive, returning the beating that he just received. The match will go on like this for a while, and unless you set the match time for over half an hour you'll probably have a draw. This was fairly consistent whether or not I was playing the computer or another person. There were way too many draws, nothing is more of a let down then fighting for a half-hour (15 minutes real time) and then coming to a draw three times in a row.
Each wrestler seemed to have a finishing move, I assume that they are realistic, but the only one I am familiar with was Muta's green mist, which he did use.
 The controls of this game are worse than watching the Road Dogg wrestle. It's True. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, it means they are horrendous. The game relies on the two analog sticks for all its controls. That's right, there is no reason to use your buttons at all. While this setup is easy on the fingers, it stinks. The left stick moves your wrestler around and the right stick is used to pull off moves. The option to change the right stick control to the buttons was available, but it didn't seem to make things any easier. Keep in mind, I was not able to read the directions since they were in Japanese, but after several hours of playing I was unable to perform more than a few simple moves with any regularity.
The majority of my matches were spent punching and kicking my opponent until he fell down. That would be followed up with some more kicks and once in a great while I would climb the turnbuckle and miss an elbow drop, but that was about it. I have absolutely no idea how to grapple an opponent, once in a while I could do it, but duplicating the sequence to do it again was near impossible.
The collision detection is also rather poor at times. Sometimes you can kick right through your opponent, other times you will jump off the ropes on top of him and he will not react to it at all. This is something that has plagued many wrestling titles over the years, but you would think that with all the power of the PS2 developers could get a handle on it.
The graphics are most definitely this game's strong suit. All the wrestlers are motion captured and are extremely detailed. They all have a variety of facial expressions and for the most part the character animation is very smooth. The arena is nicely detailed as you can see lit luxury boxes in the back ground, and the lighting effects are very impressive during the ring entrances.
My one gripe about the entrances was the over use of motion blur. In some instances it looks really good and makes the wrestlers look more lifelike. When it is overused it just makes the game look like an acid trip. I see motion blur in more and more upcoming titles and I'm hoping that developers don't use it just because they can. After all the attention to details in the arena and wrestlers, Square dropped the ball on the crowd. Every person in the crowd does exactly the same thing. Every single person, over and over, and other than wearing different colored shirts they all look the same. Even Mike Tyson's Punchout had different people in the crowd. There is no excuse for a powerhouse like the PS2 to have a pitiful crowd like that When there is little action the crowd claps in slow motion, when the action picks up they just clap faster. Some members of the crowd take pictures, and the flash will actually light up the ring for a split second. That effect is very cool, it just makes you wonder why they didn't do more with the audience.
Overall the graphics are above average and make my expectations for the U.S. wrestling games very high.
 The audio in this game are overall, average. Each wrestler has their own theme song and these themes are done very well. As I pointed out earlier, some of the songs don't fit the wrestler very well, but these appear to be the actual songs they use, so I can't hold Square responsible for that.
The announcers seem competent; they are all Japanese so I can't say for sure how good they were. They seem to only talk when you pull off a move, which means there is little to no color commentary. The crowd is mostly silent until the action heats up, then they will start chanting and clapping. When the arena is quiet, a lone person will yell out different things to the wrestler. Even though I don't have a clue what they are saying I always get a kick out of it.
The in ring effects are not bad. Hitting the mat sounds pretty realistic, but the grunts of the wrestler getting pummeled are rather repetitive.
Hardcore wrestling fans might enjoy this game as a unique look into a different style of wrestling. Japanese wrestling is based more on the wrestling and less on the "sports-entertainment" aspect. As a casual fan I found it strangely satisfying seeing a Japanese wrestler put on the "Walls of Jericho" and the "Steiner Recliner."
I played this game for hours and hours and couldn't really do anything other than get very frustrated. If this game had even average controls I would have given it a much higher score.
Now that the Dreamcast and Playstation2 are out, good looking games are a dime a dozen. Gameplay is what will separate the good games from the bad. While it seems like most of the games right now are terrible, it's important to remember the Japanese launch titles for the Dreamcast were plagued with many of the same problems we are seeing the PS2 have. By the time the titles reach the United States or Europe, many of these issues will be resolved.
I have no doubt that the anti-aliasing issues in Ridge Racer and Tekken will be fixed by October 26th. That is one of the benefits of not getting the games first. Companies can release a product, listen to feedback and make the game better for it's worldwide release. Tenchu and Sonic Adventure are a few titles that come to mind. Sega even released Sonic again in Japan after they fixed all the camera problems.
The bottom line is that even though a lot of the early releases are stinkers it's no reason to get down on the system or it's future. As Tupac said " Keep ya head up". |
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 Reader Reviews
N/A
| Score: |
| 4.5 |
| Gameplay |
| 3 |
| Graphics |
| 8 |
| Sound |
| 5 |
| Value |
| 4 |
| "The controls of this game are worse than watching the Road Dogg wrestle" |
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