WWF Royal Rumble

Written by Jeff Pear  on October 15, 2000

Review: A THQ wrestling title arrives on DC... hey! Where's the cream filling?

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THQ publishing a Sega/Yukes game? Something must be amiss I said to myself. Low and behold something was. This game is not terrible mind you, however, it's not the best thing since sliced bread. Read the review to hear why.

The visuals of WWF Royal Rumble don't show off what the Dreamcast is all about, graphics wise, quite well. Wrestlers look how they appear in real life and they have nice fluent animations. The Ring looks good and the ropes snap back with all of the force that they do in real life. The crowd however is a downfall. 2D people jumping and yelling with signs seem to be the standard fair these days. Overall however the graphics are crisp and well done.

The audio is our standard wrestling fair again. The crowd cheers, the wrestlers grunt, and the mat makes that well known *smack* sound. You hear the WWF theme music for a moment and then it is turned off. The audio isn't horrible but it could have used some work, just like many areas of this game.

Ah...yes the gameplay. "Punch, kick its all in the mind if you want to test I'm sure you'll find" that this game is seriously lacking in this department. Your wrestler punches or kicks. Sad really. The team attacks are fairly interesting but they are extremely easy to carry out (e.g. press A + B) What this game could have used was a large tweak in the directional controls. Basically, you could play this game with just your right hand. Your man faces the wrestlers and all you have to do is wait for the appropriate time to "punch" the opponent.

This titles features are... wait a minute where are they? Oh, there aren't any. We are given old wrestlers, wrestlers who've never made it, and wrestlers who are unknown to most of the wrestling public. There are around 20 characters in the game, and there is no create a wrestler option (which I would have assumed would be there after THQ's absolutely stellar job on the N64's Wrestlemania 2000). The highlight of this game is its Royal Rumble mode, which it is after all based on. This is arcade style fun and it's where this game shines...somewhat. Royal Rumble is reproduced faithfully 9 wrestlers on the screen and 32 more waiting to be taken out. The exhibition mode is pretty fancy too. It lets you choose the special team moves you can execute. It seems to me that if THQ had developed this it would have a much more polished look feel and of course those features that we have come to expect from our games such as the create a wrestler mode.

The replay of this game is low; bringing a few friends over will draw maybe 10-20 minutes of use of this game. The one player is tedious and monotonous. Don't make yourself like this game just keep enjoying Wrestlemania 2000 on your N64 and hopefully THQ will hear our cries and deliver us a wrestling game that is unsurpassed on any console.