Not on par with the greats from the N64 days, but a good first outing for a new franchise
If however, you're willing to give this one a try, it's not a bad first step in the right direction. I want to praise this games over the top gameplay style and it's impressive roster of characters. I want to also praise it's presentation that seems like a love letter written by fans and for fans of classic and current WWE.
Now the warts on this particular entry in WWE gaming history. This game offers very little to help first time players or people who haven't been playing wrestling games in a while. In my first hours with the game I felt overwhealmed often and except for the rudimentary picture of a 360 controller telling me what buttons did what, there was little in the way of instruction. With some time and a drop in the difficulty I was eventually able to start cobbling together some wins. But if I didn't have a past full of time spend playing wrestling video games, I might still be struggling with what seemed like a very aggressive "Rookie" setting. That said, it's all in the time you spend practicing with this one. Learn the counter timing, learn the different classes, learn by beating up an empty second controller. Then the fun starts to manifest itself. I know as hardened jaded gamers it's easy to chide the training and tutorials section, but sometime it just makes sense to give a little bit of instruction.
There are a hundred places where you can read or listen to what people have to say about the graphics and the sound and music so I wont waste your time here. I will say that it's one of the better looking games I've played personally and I love the overblown action figure look of the characters.
The CAW is about what you'd expect from a first time WWE game. It's a tack on which is really saddening. The CAW experience is always a fun one for me personally so I'm sad to see it so frail in this one. But it is there and there are at least one or two achievements for doing things with CAW characters specifically, which is nice. In the end though, the lack of ability to assign specific moves is almost a deal breaker. You're essentially just picking an existing wrestler's moveset and adding a new finisher (or not if you prefer). I'm partial to Undertakers finisher with Kane's moves, but that's just me. And most of the finishers have to be unlocked so there's not much if you dive in early. There are also a few original ring entrance options along with all the rosters available as well, but honestly after a few matches you'll likely turn entrances off to save on load times. Which brings us to another problem; the load times are awful. If you have the space, install the game before you ever play it. Believe me, you wont regret it.
All in all this is a pretty good first step towards a game that I hope will turn into a franchise. SvR has become stale and I was never much of a fan anyway. It's Creation tools are impressive but I never much enjoyed the gameplay they were attached to. All Stars however, has a lot of potential and I'd love to see another entry with more fleshed out options and creator tools somewhere down the line. Here's hoping this is the first step in challenging the yearly roster updates of the other WWE games!