This game had a lot of potential. However, it's rush job feel and glitchy nature make it hard to enjoy.
Let’s start with the game’s admirable (to a point) premise. The hardcore wrestling scene (circa the release of this title) was in a bit of trouble. The ECW had been annihilated and so we were left with the WWE’s flashy intros and standard (read lack luster) wrestling. Even the ECW games were a bit lame. Eidos and Paradox saw a potential gold mine and decided to cash in. The idea seemed simple enough: Find a hardcore wrestling franchise still functioning, take their people, add some larger than life moves, mix well with some locations where you could really do some damage, and then execute. Of course incorporating the Backyard Wrestling troupe also aroused the attention of its “celebrity” endorsed counter-part: the Insane Clown Posse’s JCW (Juggalo Championship Wrestling), and obviously the meat heads from ICP came with it. With ICP you get Twizted (my spell check is going nuts right now) and this is where they could have afforded to skip out on a few of the finer details. Anyway, it seems fairly simple, right? Of course it does.
Still ignoring the game-play mechanics we go on to the environments. This was another one of those killer ideas the game could have truly made into a revolutionary feature. The environments are as close to totally interactive as they’ve ever been in a wrestling game. You can climb onto high ledges, water towers, balconies, roof tops, stage riggings, just about anything. If you can’t climb on it, then you can use it as a weapon. Chairs, tiki torches, benches, tires, small tables, basketballs, bottles, bats wrapped in barbed wire, bicycles, fluorescent light bulbs, and more are all available to help you beat your opponents into bloody pulps. As if that wasn’t enough, breaking certain destructible pieces of the environment such as knocking over the parked motorcycles in the truck stop, slamming your opponent into a parked SUV at the mall and triggering its alarm, or smacking the shirtless guy barbequing in the backyard level add another hazard because they will incur the wrath of certain people who will take up a post position and smack the bejesus out of whoever gets close. Again, this was an excellent feature which, given the proper amount of time and attention, could have turned the wrestling game world on its ear.
The characters are next (I don’t want to bury the game before I show you its strong points). These are typical BYW material…they’re all pretty over the top and do include both the members of ICP and Twizted. This isn’t horrible because if you don’t happen to like either group you can always set up an exhibition match and beat them like red-headed step children. It does a decent job of helping to capture the source material. That’s all I can find that’s positive with the characters. Most of them are hard core white trash or wanna-be white-boy posers (an adequate cross section of any trailer park). The “ladies” are…well picture the B list squad working the strip clubs on week nights in big cities or the A list dancers on Friday and Saturday nights in small, southern towns. It’s sad, really. One of them is a Paris Hilton-esque character and it’s pretty fun to smash her through a burning table from a second story ledge.
The character models and animations are pretty good. Considering the amount of data on the disc from the environments the characters did get little bit of chop job and they certainly aren’t head turning. The one cool thing about them is that as the fight progresses and you start beating your opponent into oblivion his face begins to open up and bleed, so does the rest of his body. There will be rips in the clothing, blood stains showing through, and even knuckles splitting open. However, only the male characters do this and it is pre-rendered and looks the same every time, but it’s still a nice touch.
One last strength. This game has a pretty redeeming soundtrack. Yes it features ICP and Twizted which some people like. I don’t. It also has some rap on it, and I don’t think you can get “bloodlust” angry listening to rap. However it does feature Chimaira, Machine Head, Shadows Fall, 40 Below Summer, and some other redeeming Nu-metal stuff. Not bad when you think about slamming someone through a flaming table listening to Machine Head’s “White Knuckle Blackout”. The only thing that resembles something half worthy of note in the play control is their reversal system. Instead of the WWE standard where it almost seems to be blind luck and button mashing your character flashes white for a second when you should press the simple direction and button combo that makes up your general moves list to counter theirs. The only gripe is that they can reverse your reversal and you can get stuck in a pretty lengthy cycle of reversals before either wrestler actually eats dirt. Now for the real weaknesses. This game had oodles of potential but to simplify the controls in this rush job they lack the depth of the WWE games. There are very few “special circumstances” moves and limited controls all around. For example, there are levels with things like tables propped up on walls. When tables were mounted in corners in the WWE games you had a special moves set to smash people through them. The game lacks that kind of depth. Actually, it doesn’t even have a front and rear grapple, it’s all front grapples, even if you land it from the back. It was a total rush job and the control scheme definitely shows it. If you climb on a table or a ledge and grapple an opponent it’s all the same to the engine. You will perform one of your two moves to chuck someone off a high place. That means you can’t stand on a table and power bomb or pile drive them through it. This is very weak since that means you have to try and set them up next to them table to smash them through it. In the first level, the backyard, the two high ledges placed with the intention that you throw someone off of them result in slamming your opponent through a table. In later levels the only way they’re going through a table is if you position and slam them there from ground level.
Also, the tables in the WWE games are mobile and you can move them, throw them, and place them as you see fit. This did lead to the ability to bust some pretty crazy stunts if all went well. In BYW they’re fixed in place. You can’t move or reposition them to allow you to take advantage of the games killer environment systems. This means that most levels leave you with 2 and sometimes more tables (often decorated with fluorescent light bulbs and barbed wire) that you can only break with well placed slams from the ground. This shows exactly how the game’s rush-job mentality short changed their innovative ideas.
The lack of depth doesn’t stop there. The game features a “career mode” they call “Talk Show Mode”. This is an interesting concept, albeit a short one. The game plays out through a series of cut scenes which are supposed to be styled from a typical (if not a little satirical) talk show talking about BYW. The characters on each segment introduce the next level and not much else. Each level parcels out a predetermined number of anywhere from 3 to 4 to 1 fighters which you have to eliminate in a series of one on one matches to proceed. They also inject a few (normally 3 but a couple of levels ask for 4) “challenges” in each level such as breaking a set number of background objects, punch and kick damage, slam damage, and time to win. This is insanely easy and doesn’t take too much to do. If you play it right you can often take care of most or even all of them in one match. It doesn’t help to add depth to this rush job. The worst part is that the health system isn’t like the WWE games where you can beat on them all you want without finishing them. When they’re health is finished, so is the match. This seems to be in place to merely limit per match play time so you can’t see the limitations they imposed on the game itself. The AI is fiendishly stupid as well. They run around, pummel you a few times, back off, and then grab a projectile to throw at you. The real problem there is that the projectiles almost seem to seek you out. They don’t travel in a straight line but rather seem to twist and curve to make sure they find you. It’s very frustrating, especially since the AI relies almost solely on these things to fight you. They also seem to exploit cancellation issues in which you do something to them while they’re doing something else and your hit doesn’t register and theirs passes right through to hit you.
As for replay value in single player exhibitions there isn’t much. If you liked a particular level or something that’s about you get out of it. Same B.S. different day. You just pick your wrestler, pick your opponent, pick your arena, and then duke it out till one of you loses all your health. There are no submissions and why bother with pin-falls if, in less then 2 minutes, you can beat your opponent’s health to zero and win? This is where the game‘s lack of depth is all too evident. You can’t even fight more than one opponent at a time. They toss in a couple of “special” type matches to keep you from complaining but they’re all pretty contrived and obnoxious. I gave up on them after a few minutes. I won’t waste the space describing them.
In summation:
This game had the potential to be one of the best brawlers EVER MADE. If they had invested some good hard thought and effort into some of them game play elements they made (or any effort into certain areas of controls) this could have been a sublime wrestling game and the start of a franchise to rival THQ. If you really really want a hardcore wrestling title then get this one and stay away from the sequel. However, for those of you who were looking for something along the lines of a THQ or AKI game with a hardcore premise, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. You can only slam the members of ICP through a flaming table so many times before it gets boring and the game’s lack of variety ruins it all for you. If you really are serious about playing it, find someone else who has it or rent it…even though that budget price tag is tempting, rent it…you may be stuck with a coaster if your tastes aren’t right for this game. Also, if you have an original PS2 (the fat one) and a DVD remote receiver plugged into port 2, remove it to play this game or it will go haywire. It works fine on my PS2 two, though.