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Rating: Average
I had high hopes for WWF War Zone, but all these hopes were shattered
by the game's complete lack of features, options, and entertaining gameplay.
Most of the time when a game based on a televised event is good, watching
the event will just make we want to play the game. For example, last year
I couldn't watch a football game without getting an unstoppable craving to
play NFL GameDay '98. Unfortunately, it's the other way around with WWF
War Zone. After the initial stages of experimentation are complete,
playing WWF War Zone just makes me want to watch the WWF on TV. And
believe me, wrestling fans will have a lot more fun watching Raw every
Monday night than they will playing this poor excuse for a wrestling game.
Most of the WWF's top stars are in the game, but so are three guys who
are (thankfully) long gone from the World Wrestling Federation- Bret Hart,
Davey Boy Smith, and Ahmed Johnson. It is especially surprising to see
Bret "I've Been Screwed" Hart still in the game considering that he left
the WWF in November 1997 on extremely bad terms (I'm sure wrestling fans
know what I'm talking about).
The most crucial flaw in the game is the complete lack of options and
features that could have provided this game with the replay value it so
desperately needs. You can't even pick your freakin' opponent in any of the
modes, much less have in-depth leagues, tournaments, battle royales, etc
with wrestlers you choose to be in it (like you can do in WCW Vs. NWO:
World Tour). The only option this game offers at all besides one
meaningless match after another is the Challenge mode, and even that is
just climbing a ladder of wrestlers in linear fashion. The only two other
kinds of matches you can play are Weapons Matches (in which you pick up
weapons at the pace of a snail and your opponenent usually hits you and
knocks the weapon out of your hands before you ever get a chance to hit
them with it) and Cage Matches (with no Hell In A Cell mode in sight).
I might have been able to forgive the game's complete lack of features
if the in-ring action was really good, but unfortunately it isn't. While
the power meter that slowly recharges over time if you don't take
additional damage is pretty cool, the gameplay itself is mediocre at best.
In better wrestling games like WCW Vs. NWO: World Tour, the player knew
that pressing a certain button in a certain situation would result in one
of a series of moves, which were all intuitively executed and felt like
second-nature after a while. On the other hand, WWF War Zone relies on
pre-set button combinations to pull off special moves. Hey Acclaim, this
is a wrestling game, not Mortal Kombat. The result is that unless you're
one of the few who are willing and able to memorize dozens of button
combinations, the gameplay boils down to nothing but button mashing.
Plus, the majority of the moves are the same for every wrestler, with not
enough variations to remind you that you are supposedly playing as Steve
Austin, Shawn Michaels, Mankind, or whatever wrestler you choose. As a
side note, the repetitive commentary can be turned off in the options menu,
but you're pretty much stuck with the annoying crowd chants which happen
quite often. The inclusion of all the wrestlers' full theme music is nice,
though.
The Create A Wrestler option is very in-depth, but there aren't near
enough faces to choose for your wrestler, and your created wrestlers can
only wrestle if you go out of your way to select them (and sit through more
loading time in the process). It would have been nice if the wrestlers you
create were automatically added into the mix with the game's initial
wrestlers, so that if I wanted to play as Stone Cold Steve Austin in a
singles match, the game's random-select might choose one of my created
wrestlers for me to go against.
Hardcore WWF fans may want to rent this game, but for long-term
entertainment, WWF War Zone is completely worthless.
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com