WWF Royal Rumble E3 Impressions

WWF Royal Rumble look amazing. In the Royal Rumble mode you can get up to nine wrestlers in the ring at one time. Simply put, that's never been done before. And you would think that such untested waters would create somewhat shaky results - but Royal Rumble pulls it off with style. There's no slowdown, the game is super speedy, and it's incredibly easy to control. What does this all mean? It means WWF Royal Rumble is about as much of an arcade wrestling experience as you can get. THQ knows this - that's why its getting Yukes to develop an arcade version of Royal Rumble.

Royal Rumble could be compared to your typical walk-and-punch game, as the combos and grappling system is setup to let you pound on buttons and quickly switch from one move to the next. Tap the attack button three times and your character does a quick strike combo. Hit the grapple button and you instantly grapple. No more holding down the button for a big grapple or tapping complex d-pad schemes to get super moves - Royal Rumble gives wrestling a true beat-em-up feel.

Unlike just about every other wrestling game, Royal Rumble doesn't make you focus on one wrestler when there's multiple foes in the ring. Just like in a walk-and-punch game you're totally free to move about the ring and attack whoever you wish. I think this makes the game super dynamic, as you can simply switch from one person to the next and beat up just about everybody.

The graphics in Royal Rumble are really clean, and look much, much better than WWF Attitude on Dreamcast. The engine looks a lot like a revved-up version of the PlayStation SmackDown! engine - except there's tons more polygons and the intros look really good. I can't wait to get my hands on a full version of this one.