WWF In Your House Review

If you're looking for a serious wrestling game, this isn't it.

WWF In Your House is a sequel of sorts to WWF Wrestlemania, and both take traditional wrestling games and give them a fighting game element - complete with power bars and supernatural special moves. In Your House adds finishing moves, four-player action, and different backgrounds for each character - backgrounds that replace the plain old wrestling ring. And it's all downhill from there.

I enjoyed the original Wrestlemania. It was a fresh look at wrestling games, and it captured the wacky fun that makes professional wrestling some of the best comedy on television today. In Your House, however, is little more than a rehash of the original: The character graphics look degraded and soulless, as if they were pasted on the background like some kindergarten project involving paste, magazine cutouts, and that yellowish macaroni that often served as a makeshift frame.

While Wrestlemania charged the player with devising a little strategy and style in play, which balanced the game and made it enjoyable, In Your House instead relies on speed and luck (with many rounds spent simply mashing on the super kick button until the opponent finally drops). This, in turn, means the characters that populate In Your House are a little dull. The Undertaker no longer looks as fearsome. Shawn Michaels doesn't seem to move as quickly. Owen Hart is just plain lame.

In Your House is packed with running commentary. That's both a good and bad feature, depending on your point of view. The commentary is inaccurate quite a lot of the time, and many of the observations from Vince McMahon and Mr. Perfect come about four seconds too late, which is a very funny, if unintentional, bug. Die-hard fans take note: Just like the real thing, Vince screams "Forget about it!" at least once per match.

If you're looking for a serious wrestling game, this isn't it. Simply, it's full of weird moves and plays more like a fighting game. The characters, while distinctive, are boring. The backgrounds are a nice idea, but look terrible. The addition of a four-player mode is a nice touch, but it isn't enough to make In Your House worthwhile.

The Good

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The Bad

About the Author

Jeff Gerstmann has been professionally covering the video game industry since 1994.