Wrestlemania X8 Preview

Since our first 2856823hands-on look at the game, Wrestlemania X8 has progressed by leaps and bounds. We've recently had the chance to delve deeply into a near-final version of the game, and we can give you a thorough recap of what the game has to offer, along with our new daily feature showcasing biographies, movies, and images of the wrestlers who star in the game.

Developed by Yuke's, the creator of the SmackDown! series, Wrestlemania X8 may seem like something of a departure from what wrestling game fans have come to expect from a Nintendo system. However, Yuke's has brought many elements from developer AKI's N64 wrestling games, Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy, while drawing a few gameplay elements and stylistic influences from its experiences with the SmackDown! games. Right off the bat, you'll notice that there are no scripted sequences and no story mode in Wrestlemania X8. Instead, the focus lies in accurate depictions of the wrestlers, sound wrestling mechanics, and numerous gameplay features.

The GameCube controller is put to full use to allow for the most possible maneuvers per wrestler. The A button executes grapples, the B button performs quick strikes, and both buttons together execute special moves. The Y button runs or climbs turnbuckles and, when used with the grapple button, performs an Irish whip. The X button picks up prone opponents and, when combined with the A button, picks up weapons or rolls people over. The right and left triggers control your strike counter and grapple counter, respectively, and both of them used together can foil a special move. The Z trigger serves the dual purpose of pinning opponents and tagging in partners. Movement is controlled with the analog stick, and sudden taps of the stick let wrestlers hop back and forth, with just enough movement behind each quick step to either duck out of range of a grapple attempt or dropkick or duck into range for a surprise move. Rounding out the controls are the directional pad, which controls taunts, and the C stick, which controls facing for multiple opponents. The control set, when used to its fullest, allows for an immense variety of moves, including baseball slides to the outside of the ring, springboard dropkicks off the ropes, and double-team maneuvers. The way that grapples allow for interaction with the ring ropes is particularly impressive-the ropes will bounce and sway when wrestlers bump into them, influenced by convincing physics.

The actual grappling plays out much like the grappling in the SmackDown! games, with grapples having either an immediate effect or catching nothing but air, opening yourself up for an opponent's retaliation. Different types of grapples include back grapples and the ability to put an opponent into a clinch, where a follow-up move can be selected.

A fighter's status in the match is denoted by an indicator next to the wrestler's name, which starts at green and progresses by flashing on its way toward red. Based on dealt damage and move variety, a second meter under the wrestler name will fill up, rewarding you with a special move. Up to three specials may be saved, which each wrestler can use to the best of his ability. Kurt Angle, for example, can use one of his three specials to perform an Olympic slam and then follow it up with an ankle lock. If the poor opponent still hasn't submitted or been pinned, he can take it to the top rope and perform a moonsault-pin combination.

The Superstars

It wouldn't be the WWE, the new name for the WWF, without the wrestlers, and Wrestlemania X8 has a roster composed of most of the major players who made appearances at this year's Pay-Per-View. The star lineup includes all of the WWE main eventers: The Rock, Triple H, Chris Jericho, The Undertaker, and Kurt Angle, as well as a variety of the midcard wrestlers who aren't always as prominently put under the spotlight, such as Christian, Lance Storm, Test, Scotty 2 Hotty, and Albert. Tag-team notables include the Hardyz, the Dudley Boyz, and the APA. Representing the women of the WWE are Trish Stratus, Jacqueline, and Stephanie McMahon. Booker T, The Hurricane, Rob Van Dam, and other former ECW and WCW athletes are also playable, although most notable is the inclusion of NWO members Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, as well as former NWO member Hollywood Hogan. The federation's stables and teams are also represented accurately. For example, if you and a friend choose to play as Matt and Jeff Hardy for tag-team competition, Team Extreme member Lita will escort them to the ring, while if you select Kevin Nash and Scott Hall to come in, they make their appearance as the NWO with Hollywood in tow. Since the game takes place specifically at this year's previously held Wrestlemania X8 Pay-Per-View, you can date most of the included characters to this event.

The wrestlers in Wrestlemania X8 are composed of high-polygon-count models, with plenty of detail in such areas as their faces and costuming. Each wrestler has a pair of outfits to choose from, and some of the changes are fairly drastic. Triple H varies between his tights and his jeans vest and T-shirt, while Mighty Molly turns from pink-clad superhero to former blue-garbed Holly clan member. Each wrestler's hair has been modeled carefully with moving textures and even what appears to be individual strands, which looks quite good considering how difficult it is to accurately portray this aspect of their appearance.

Wrestlers have all of their trademark move sets, including such attacks as Tajiri's mist and buzz saw kick, Jeff Hardy's swanton bomb, and the Hulkster's indomitable big boot and leg drop. Each of the moves is made up of a large number of frames of animation, which, considering the fast pace that the game plays, gives everything a very smooth, lifelike look.

Even when wrestlers are standing idly in their ready positions, the quality animation bears notice--you can see their chests heave in and out as they breathe, and their fingers clench and unclench in anticipation. Each wrestler also has a set of distinct facial animations unique to their move sets. Kurt Angle's mouth hangs open when he's about to pull off one of his suplexes, and plenty of wrestlers seem to be blinking, grunting, or wincing in pain while they execute their moves.

If You Don't Play Legal...

While Wrestlemania X8 doesn't have quite the diversity in its weaponry that WWF Raw for the Xbox has, the items are quite interactive and versatile. Tables and ladders are fully functional in that you can set them both up and use them as launching pads for some incredible attacks. Two wrestlers can climb the same ladder from opposite ends--at least until one knocks the other off. Whoever climbs the ladder first can even launch an aerial attack from the top, although at great personal risk. Tables are extremely versatile, as they can be deployed normally or propped up in one of the corners of the ring. Tables placed in such a manner are set up ideally for an opponent to be Irish-whipped into, where they will lie back in a daze until a follow-up attack sends them through the splinters. Of course, tables can also be set up normally, where any of a wide variety of moves will send opponents smashing through, depending on the momentum and weight of the force driving through it. Moves that can send a wrestler through the splinters include backdrops, body slams, monkey tosses, an abundance of finishing and trademark moves, and of course, the 3D, or Dudley death drop.

Aside from tables and ladders, wrestlers can also make use of folding chairs, sledgehammers, kendo sticks, steel trays, fire extinguishers, garbage cans, and even ringside announcer tables, so there's no shortage of weaponry. Facing an armed opponent may seem imposing, but the strike parry button can be used to disarm an attacking foe, which not only strips them of their weapon, but also dishes out a small attack and charges your special meter significantly. These moves are also impressively animated--you can clearly see one wrestler swing out with a folding chair, which is caught and stripped from his hands, and then met with a swift kick to the midsection as penance.

...Prepare to Get Disqualified

To keep the action clean, Wrestlemania X8 has someone enforcing the action in the ring at all times--esteemed referee Earl Hebner. His role in Wrestlemania X8 is nearly identical to the one he played in WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It--he'll make the counts, keep the tag teams playing fair, and disqualify those who don't play by the rules. And it wouldn't be the WWE without a little poor sportsmanship, so if desired, wrestlers can take their aggression out on Earl. He can be tossed around and slammed with ease, which works well for setting up illegal double-team moves or weapon usage. He occasionally gets in the way during legitimate moves, just like in the televised presentations, and with the realistic player-collision physics, you shouldn't be surprised to see Earl frequently in a daze, hanging on the ropes, or flat on his back counting sheep. He brings with him many of the animation routines from SmackDown! Just Bring It, most notably those used when escorting a belligerent tag-team partner to ringside.

Matches Galore

There are an abundance of different selectable match types in Wrestlemania X8, allowing players to re-create just about any modern booking, albeit with a "four wrestlers in the ring" limitation. There's the standard singles competition, tag-team matches, handicap matches, triple threats, fatal four-ways, battle royals, and the royal rumble. Each of these match types has varying modifiers that can be toggled in the prebout option screen, including pin falls, submissions, rope breaks, tornado rules, and the amount of time your tag team partner is allowed to aid you. These rules can be changed to modify any of the specific gimmick match types as well--specifically hardcore matches, cage matches, hell in a cell, ladder matches, table matches, TLC, and iron man. Thus, by mixing and matching these options, you can arrive at an immense number of different play modes, including fatal four-way table matches, with no disqualifications, or tag-team "hell in a cell" matches with submission-only victories.

Aside from the aforementioned modes of play, which are each available as exhibition matches, Wrestlemania X8 features two distinct play modes for players to explore--path of a champion and battle for the belts. Path of a champion is the single-player game, which puts players behind a series of challenges in one of six divisions--heavyweight, intercontinental, European, hardcore, light heavyweight, and tag team. Going through any one of the paths will force you to win a string of matches of varying types. You can end up in ladder matches, fatal four-ways, and plenty more on the way to the championship bout with the current titleholder. Defeating these titleholders involves the way you make the title exchange hands for exhibition purposes and also the way you unlock each of the six hidden characters. Once the belt changes ownership, the champion's date of title seizure is recorded, and a comprehensive belt history is kept for future perusal.

Battle of the belts is a more sizeable feature exclusive to Wrestlemania X8, in which players can challenge the CPU to earn any of 51 title belts, ranked in accordance to difficulty level, and then wager them in unification matches against friends. To win one of the belts, you need to change the game's options to the appropriate difficulty and then win a series of different match types against the computer-controlled opponents. Once you've completed all of the challenges, you can save your status to the memory card, and the belt becomes part of your collection. Each of the belts bears a unique emblem and a leather strap that can be swapped using a color palette to suit the owner's personal preferences, but its most important function is its value in unification bouts. Two players with the same belt on separate memory cards can compete to find who the "true" owner is and play for bragging rights, with the belt as a trophy. Considering how difficult it can be for some players to clear the "hardest difficulty level" matches, these bouts may lead to memorable multiplayer challenges.

Build Your Own Superstar

While a multitude of match types is definitely enough to keep most players busy, many die-hard wrestling fans aren't happy without a fleshed-out create-a-wrestler feature. The current build we played didn't have a huge variety of parts and faces to use in building wrestlers, but there were enough for us to try our hand at creating a number of athletes. Each part of a wrestler's body, from the chest and shoulders to the jaw and abdomen, can be resized in terms of length, width, and depth. There's a wide variety of skin colors and textures to use, including those for varying degrees of chest hair and muscle tone. A number of tattoos and clothing types are also available to choose from, although we're not sure yet of how many will be available in the final version. The tools available for creating your own wrestler model are easy to pick up, and within minutes you can have the look of your wrestlers done. And you can also have them ready so that you can assign a moves set and statistics to each of them.

Each created wrestler also begins with an average rating of five out of 10 in each of the various categories they are ranked in. These categories are split into three subsections, which split a wrestler's overall abilities into the areas of physical strengths, offensive ability, and defensive ability. The physical attributes include strength, endurance, jumping, and recovery, while the offensive and defensive stats measure each wrestler's ability to dish out or defend against strikes, submissions, and grappling maneuvers. These stats can be raised or lowered as desired, and handy graphs let you know how well-rounded or specialized you are.

Each wrestler has an absolutely huge array of different moves at his disposal, and you can pick and choose which ones you want for your created characters. While many will be able to recognize the moves by name, the selection menus have small featureless models enacting each maneuver in a preview window. In fact, if you can even exchange moves for those wrestlers already included in the game by using the customize function, which lets you expand their repertoires or pay tribute to a finisher they've since forgotten.

To finish up your created wrestler, you'll assign him a name, nickname, and also a series of taunts, and you'll choose entrance animations from those available, including those for the first appearance on stage, for the walk up the ramp, and for the actual ring entrance. You'll also need to pick out their music and TitanTron display. Some of the character parts, original taunts, and entrance routines even seem tailor-made for wrestlers not appearing on the initial roster, such as Diamond Dallas Page and Mick Foley/Mankind.

Wrapping It Up

From a production standpoint, Wrestlemania X8 appears to have been tricked out with an abundance of visual and aural flair. Instead of character model faces or low-resolution mug shots, each wrestler's select screen image is a high-resolution overlay from the waist up, making for vivid matchup images. The action looks equally impressive on stage, as each of the arenas and settings within the game have been accurately represented, specifically Wrestlemania X-Seven, Raw, SmackDown!, Summer Slam, Survivor Series, Royal Rumble 2002, and of course, Wrestlemania X8. The fist punching through the wall over the entrance ramp is fully modeled in the SmackDown! arena, while all the notable features from Wrestlemania X8 were re-created, including the complexly detailed rafters, lighting rigs, and even the three-panel video display on stage.

When wrestlers make their entrances, they do so faithfully, with complete animation routines mimicking those used by the real-life athletes. The Hurricane goes through all of his superheroic movements, replete with a realistically flowing cape when he comes in for a match. Wrestlers also have their specific pyrotechnic displays to go along with their TitanTron visuals. The crowds in Wrestlemania X8 are composed of frenetically waving, animated cutouts, although a generous helping of texture smoothing has been used to make them seem rounded--the effect works nicely from a distance. Amidst all the commotion of a ring entrance, intro music is playing, including licensed tracks for such wrestlers as Triple H (Motorhead's "I Am the Game") and the Undertaker (Limp Bizkit's "Rollin'"). The original soundtrack we've had a chance to hear has been made up of a mix of jazzy, upbeat tracks that set a mood of tension during matches and in the menu screens without being overly distracting.

From what we've played so far, fans of Yuke's wrestling games and AKI's N64 titles have good reason to keep an eye on Wrestlemania X8. Those looking for a direct comparison between the two styles of wrestling games will likely surmise that the difference between Wrestlemania X8 and the previous Nintendo titles is that X8 has left behind the focus that Yuke's had on story development and has instead been working on an impressive-looking game, with plenty of features to address the desires of those wishing for a wrestling game with lasting value. The sizeable number of gameplay modes, as well as the hefty single- and multiplayer features, should provide for these concerns specifically. If this preview version of the game is any indication, Wrestlemania X8 will end up being a fast-paced, action-oriented grappling game that just may have enough to appeal to those waiting for the next big wrestling game on a Nintendo system. Check out our latest screenshots and movies, keep up with our daily wrestler feature for regular media updates, and stay tuned to this space for our review when Wrestlemania X8 is released in June.