The core of the game’s combat revolves around strikes and grabs, with light and strong versions of both mapped to the controller’s face buttons. With All-Stars, the team at THQ San Diego has tried to mash up a pro wrestling game with a traditional fighter. “We’ve taken some liberties with the rules,” explained THQ’s Sal Divida at a press event – the desire was to have a fast, twitch-based game that “kept the action rolling,” and one that didn’t spend a lot of time with characters grappling on the ground. From the time-warping premise onwards, the game cheerfully tosses all pretense at realism out the window in favor of a more action-game bent. WWE All-Stars is a colorful, cartoonish, over-the-top take on the universe and history of the WWE (formerly the WWF before those jerks at the World Wildlife Foundation got all snooty about things), pitting former legends like Randy Savage, Ricky Steamboat, The Rock and Andre the Giant against modern-day stars like Sheamus, Kofi Kingston, John Cena and The Big Show. (Fittingly enough, senior designer David Friedland had previously worked on Blitz: The League, and creative director Sal Divida was involved with both NBA Jam and NFL Blitz). It’s the strange sort of game that’s targeted both at hardcore fans of pro wrestling – a love letter to the great stars of past and present – and at people who’ve never played a wrestling game in their life, much like how you don’t need to play football or basketball to appreciate NFL Blitz or NBA Jam. How do I do a suplex? Where did he just get the folding chair he just smashed over my head? Dammit, I got pinned and don’t understand why.Īnd yet, I found THQ’s WWE All-Stars surprisingly enjoyable. I played the old Wrestlemania and Smackdown games at friends’ houses, and never really enjoyed them too much. My exposure to it was back when I was younger, in the days of the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection, when my friend and his brother constantly emulated the Hardy Boyz and practiced their chokeslams out on their backyard trampoline. I’m really not a pro wrestling kind of guy, to be honest.
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