Lying beside you, here in the dark...

The Charge:
Relive.  Rewrite.  Redefine.

Opening Statement:
Hello, my name is Jon, and I am a wrestling addict.  The “soap opera for dudes” became my dark passenger at the tender age of 5, watching WWF Superstars and World Championship Wrestling (NWA) with my grandfather in the late 80s.  It didn’t matter which company I was watching, I’d take my wrestling however I could get it.  While my interest has wavered over the years, and my watching has diminished to one or two PPV shows, and the occasional episode on TV, I still consider myself a lifelong wrestling fan.  I miss the days of loosing my mind when Rick Derringer’s “Real American” would triumphantly blast through the speakers of my television, because that meant that in mere seconds, Hulk Hogan was going to walk through that curtain and vanquish the world’s evils inside the squared circle.  Protected by a hundred storey high wall of nostalgia (hulkastolgia?), these childhood favourites, these grapplers of yesteryear have now been repackaged in their very own wrestling videogame.  Legends of Wrestlemania takes our life-sized action figures and challenges gamers to relive their greatest battles, to rewrite the outcome of their greatest feuds, and to redefine an entire era of professional wrestling on what is without a doubt, the grandest stage of them all.

...feeling your heart beat with mine...

Facts of the Case:
Coming hot off the fall release of Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009, Legends of Wrestlemania harkens back to a simpler time for pro wrestling (you’ll note my refusal to use the term ‘sports entertainment’).  Gamers are given a roster of 38 ring veterans, 4 classic managers, and 16 historic venues.  Sporting a “streamlined” (read: stripped-down) control scheme, Legends of Wrestlemania seems posed to try and snatch up all those casual gamers who’ve seemed to become an area of focus for the industry over the past two years.  It’s an odd decision, considering the legends roster was peeled out of the latest Smackdown title.  One would think that the game would be aimed at fans of the Smackdown series, which still sells extremely well to this day, despite critical reception growing somewhat lukewarm.  As one of those very fans (like I said, I’ll take my wrestling however I can get it), it really saddens me that Legends of Wrestlemania looked like a heavyweight contender, but ends up a Brooklyn Brawler.

...softly you whisper, you're so sincere...

The Evidence:
Right off the bat, just to get this match rolling, the “streamlined” game play in Legends of Wrestlemania is boring.  The game feels threadbare, and were talking about a title with a starting roster of 38 playable characters.  The controls are limited to one analog stick to move the wrestlers, and their every offensive and defensive capability have been mapped to the four face buttons.  The matches seem to geared to be over very quickly, but the game moves about as fast as late 80’s Don Muraco.  Matches feel like the Smackdown games for about two seconds while players through those first few punches, but as soon as they hit that grapple button, the nostalgia hits a brick wall.  The chain grapple system forces gamers through a series of lethargic quick time events, prompting them to hit a certain button within a few seconds in as the animation lumbers around the ring like a dinosaur.  There are odd occurrences  when the game will prompt players with a sudden flash of 1980s WWF blue, the response is to quickly slam a thumb onto ANY of the face buttons to execute a slightly more powerful chain grapple.  This game feels like remedial math class, I actually started getting the urge to play in a pair of danger mittens.

...how could our love be so blind?

Once we get past the crippled control scheme, the rest of the game follows suit.  I’m going to catch some flak for this, but the game just doesn’t FEEL like wrestling.  There are three tiers of momentum that allow access to bigger and stronger movies, and once the third level is attained, each grappler’s Finisher (a short chain grapple sequence ending with their WWE finishing move) becomes available.  There is only the life bar to worry about, so Canadian gamers can throw out their usual strategy of picking Bret Hart and sniping at their opponent’s legs and back to soften them up for the sharpshooter.  Maybe I’m spoiled by bouts of Fire Pro Wrestling Returns and Street Fighter IV, but I kind of enjoy a little bit of strategy in my wrasslin’ games.  Not just “punch until they’re in the red and press circle to pin”.  The Tour mode is a little fun for about an hour, giving gamers a series of tasks to perform within matches set around achieving or changing the outcome of some true mat classics.  But play for any longer than that and it the game’s sluggish pace and simple grapple system just bleed any sense of enjoyment right out of the game.
You want another nail in the coffin?  I don’t know how this was possible, but somehow the makers of the game managed to create some sort of beer goggles effect during promotion for Legends of Wrestlemania.  The sad truth, the game is crap-sack ugly.  Each of the wrestlers is rendered as a larger than life super-hero (I’m sorry, but Hulk Hogan never had that full a head of hair, and Andre the Giant was never that chiseled on his upper body), coated in reflective textures.  During their entrances they look fantastic, once the match starts they move like they would nowadays.  The crowds would’ve been embarrassing on the PlayStation 2, and unfortunately, the wrestlers’ classic entrance themes don’t all match up.  Michael Hayes without the nigh-immortal Freebirds theme “Badstreet USA”, Big Bossman using his late 90s heel theme as opposed to the uber-amazing “Hard Time” song?  Triple H in his humiliating early-career Connecticut Snob gimmick as opposed to his now iconic Modern Day Conquerer gimmick? Blech…the whole point of nostalgia is to recapture the feeling of days gone by, not sully them with half-hearted attempts.

Rebuttal Witness:
This is normally the part where I try and defend whatever redeeming qualities a game has, but even after subjecting myself to five torturous hours, I only found more wrong.  I was impressed by the recreation of each Wrestlemania venue.  The entrance text all use the appropriate 1980s fonts and graphics that would’ve been found on old Collisseum Video tapes, every prop on the entrance ways have been recreated painstakingly.  The entrances look fantastic; but every other moment in Legends of Wrestlemania is just too ugly to look past.  There are classic videos shown before each of the matches in Tour mode, and those are nothing short of fantastic; and despite my initial sadness that the game didn’t include either “Macho Man” Randy Savage OR Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat (the two combatants in the greatest match in WWF history), or either member of both the classic “Strike Force” and “Demolition” tag teams, the roster is solid.  It does suck that there are only 4 managers (damn it, I wanted my Sensational Sherri), but watching the ghoul like antics of Paul Bearer outside of the ring is a hoot.

...we sailed on together, we drifted apart, now here you are by my side.

I’m sorry if I come off as half-hearted here, but Legends of Wrestlemania is a monolithic disappointment.  Gamers are being asked to pay full price for a game that doesn’t even offer a quarter of the experience that the Smackdown titles do.  Everything that made those titles great has been sawed off and shaved down, mass produced on the cheap and slathered in phony nostalgia to try and get us to cough up our hard-earned gamer dollars.

Closing Statement:
To keep it nice and short, this is one title that will NEVER…EVER make it into ANY Hall of Fame.  Wrestling fans should pocket the 70 bucks they would spend here, buy a couple of those amazingly put together WWE DVD retrospectives, and remember their favourite grapplers as they deserve to be remembered, not emulate their antics in a shoddily put-together bottom feeder of a game.  Broken, boring, and inexplicably expensive; there is NOTHING legendary to be found here.  And that’s the bottom line!

The Verdict:

Platform: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360 (PS3 Version Reviewed)
Developer: Yukes
Publisher: THQ
Release Date: March 24, 2009
Rated: T for Teen.