First impressions: Legends of Wrestling 2

The original Legends of Wrestling featured an absolutely amazing concept--snatch up the licenses and rights to dozens of professional wrestling's greatest superstars and have them go toe-to-toe in regional-circuit-style venues. Legends of Wrestling also reinvented the traditional grappling mechanics of wrestling games with its intermediate start position system, which had players jockeying for shifts in position and then mounting follow-through attacks instead of initiating grapples. We recently had a look at Legends of Wrestling 2 and saw that Acclaim has been working on making numerous changes to the original title and has added a couple of notable names to its roster to boot.

First and foremost, the most appreciable change to the Legends of Wrestling series in this second game is the updated roster, which includes more of the most popular wrestlers to ever grace the squared circle. New to the series are classic greats of yesteryear such as Andre the Giant, Big John Studd, and Rowdy Roddy Piper. The game also includes some of the wrestlers who were in the limelight recently, including Sid Vicious and Scott Steiner. New tag teams have also been added, including the Nasty Boys and the British Bulldogs. In fact, Legends of Wrestling 2 will have a final cast of more than 65 wrestlers, and each character will have four signature outfits.

The gameplay has not been changed significantly since last year's PlayStation 2 version of the game and the recent Xbox and GameCube releases. Players grapple against CPU opponents or friends with a variety of different mechanics, including golf-game-style reflex tests and classic arcade button mashing. The only notable change that has been made to the action is that the game seems to have been sped up a bit, so the bouts don't play out quite as sluggishly. Improved rope collision detection has also been implemented, with bouncing, moving ropes lending more realism to the action.

New gameplay modes have also been added, including a "$15,000 body slam challenge," in which the player will have to slam the massive Big John Studd. Players will also be able to fight in cage matches, ladder matches, and battle royales. Additionally, the game will feature an in-game store, where presumably, they will be able to buy previously unlocked content, such as the alternate outfits.

We'll have more on Legends of Wrestling 2 as it becomes available.