Not WCW's best attempt......or THQ's best hour....
......but I am not here to discuss the Smackdown series, or the WWE at all. I'm going back to a time when THQ paired with with WWE's then-rival, WCW. At this point, things were slightly even between the two busniesses, but on the videogame front, it wasn't even close.
WWE was lightyears ahead. Here is why.
Character selection : Just about every big WCW wrestler from 1998-1999 is in here : Sting, Hollywood Hogan, Ric Flair, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Bret Hart, DDP, Booker T, Randy Savage, and so on. So I will give credit where credit is due, and say that there was quite a selection of wrestlers. But then again, that brings me to....
Gameplay : Where things go downhill.
Every style of wrestler had the same move. Big men had big men moves, and smaller guys had moves they would use. There was little difference between the move sets at all, anyway. The only thing special about each wrestler was, well, their finishers. The Sharpshooters, Powerbombs, Legdrops, Scorpion Deathlocks, and so on were there. You were able to use these moves at anytime whenever the opponent was in the situation that allowed you to use the move.
Fairly helpful, right? Well, not really. The moves were just like the normal movesets. But, I'll assume it was there to make it "feel like a realistic match".
Also, the A.I. was fairly stupid on all levels of difficulty. So, it wasn't hard to win anyway. There was little challenge, really.
Controls : Very, very clunky. You could run this on a superfast computer, or one that is slow as hell, and the controls still wouldn't respond quickly. But since the A.I. is stupid, it isn't that hard to beat them down with bad controls anyway.
Graphics : Everything up until the match itself looks good. The graphics at the match....are less than "ok"......very blocky. The audience looks terrible, if it even shows up half the time. There is a plus, and that is that you can tell which wrestler is yours most of the time.
Well, if you must get this game, I'll give you a hint : Don't. Rent it, at most. If you want a WCW game, get one of their later games, and get it for a console and not the PC. If you want a wrestling game in general : Go for a Smackdown game, where THQ shows how much they have improved from this mess.
Final Score : 2.7