Remember WCW vs. NWO: World Tour, THQ's last Nintendo 64 wrestling game? Revenge builds on the previous game but makes most of the same mistakes. The result is a good wrestling game that should have been so much better.
The World Tour engine has been carried over to Revenge, so the gameplay is identical. The main difference here is the graphics. The characters look and animate very well, and the wrestlers' faces look really accurate. There are a few seams in the polygons here and there, and instances where bodies go through the ropes and such, but it's not a huge deal. All the backgrounds are made up to look like various WCW shows, including Pay-Per-Views like Starrcade, Superbrawl, and Halloween Havoc. The roster is quite possibly the largest roster of licensed wrestlers ever, though there are still a few non-WCW masked weirdos tossed in for good measure. An edit costume feature lets you make extremely basic changes to all the wrestlers.
The gameplay modes include challenges for all of the WCW belts, as well as a battle royal, handicap matches, and exhibition matches. Winning belts unlocks wrestlers like Kidman, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Curt Hennig. A few of the belt challenges are also locked at the beginning of the game. The actual wrestling itself is mostly timing based. Rather than grapple and pound on buttons for supremacy, he who ties up usually wins. There are a few counters here and there that will allow you to reverse certain moves and strikes. The game has a decent number of moves per wrestler, but it still feels like there just aren't enough variations. The computer's lack of skill in one-on-one matches doesn't really help, either. It does, however, manage to put up a good fight in tag team matches, as well as the battle royal.
The sound department is lame, at best. The only real music contained in the game is the WCW Nitro theme. None of the wrestlers' entrance music is in the game. Also, the game has zero commentary. Even a few phrases from Bobby "The Brain" Heenan or the fans counting to ten when you ram someone's head into the turnbuckle would have done wonders for the game's audio department. The sound that is in the game is pretty bad. All the music has an extremely generic sound to it, and the sound effects are pretty drab.
Technically, Revenge is a good wrestling game, but you would like to think that THQ would strive to make significant improvements over World Tour instead of jacking up the engine and sliding new graphics and some other insignificant changes under it, but that's just what it did. And we're all still waiting for a truly great WCW-licensed game. Maybe when EA takes the WCW license from THQ next year, we'll see something better.
