One-ah, two-ah, three-ah.... OUT!
So Wrestlemania 21 as a wrestling game fails to shine in pretty much every department. The game mechanics give a pretty poor, hit and miss, wrestling game with player recovery times meaning you can go from being on top in a match to flailing on the canvas like a spastic fish in the space of a few hits. The fiddly controls with the precise positioning needed for some moves means that wrestlers rarely do what you’d like them to and each match soon descends into random button pummelling. The below par AI offer little or no challenge, especially if you take advantage of the flaws in the game mechanic to either beat them to a pulp or use AI loops to restore your own depleted health. Though the story mode offers some diversion, even the later matches won’t be too much of challenge, especially once you work out the AI’s limited strategies for each opponent and once you’ve finished it, there’s little to drag you back.
In the games defence, it does look good, with smoothly animated characters which look the part and arenas to match. There are lots of different body types, meaning that characters aren’t all the same model with different textures laid on top, but this isn’t enough to save the game. This is a wrestling game, and the core of the gameplay has some serious flaws mainly in that the motion captured animation takes over the game… 5 seconds of watching my wrestler clutch their hurt back gives my opponent plenty of time to line up for another strike and me no time to do anything but put my controller down and go and make a cup of tea.
In summing up, the only things going for Wrestlemania 21 is the graphics and the wealth of options and matches. Sadly, the core of the game, the wrestling, is about as much fun as washing Giant Haystacks underwear… by hand.
Pros
Looks good
Nice motion captured animations
Cons
Motion capture gets in the way of gameplay
Poor AI
Impossible defence system
Story mode too easy with little re-play value
Multiplayer matches tedious rather than fun
Wrestlemania 21 is like going to bed with Miss Jackie and waking up with Hulk Hogan: it looks good to start with but soon turns into a nightmare.
