Needs more buttons.
There are a lot of great things going for Legends of Wrestlemania. Unfortunately, the game play isn’t one of them.
Let’s start off with the good. The concept for this game is great and the presentation is top notch. This game is a wrestling fan’s dream minus Macho Man. The game has friggin’ Honky Tonk Man which alone justifies at least one star. All the wrestlers look pretty close to the way you remember them. The old footage they show during the game is awesome. Everything is great until you actually start playing the game.
The game play is just a mess. There is no nice way to say it but it is just terrible. The developers attempted to simplify the controls by only using the four face buttons but that only complicates thing. Less buttons doesn’t mean the game is less complicated. Just take a look at running. I had to actually pause the game and look in the instruction manual to figure out how to run. The sad thing is I never have this problem in wrestling game, so how is this game simpler? It doesn’t. So this is how you run: You can either double tap the B button or double tap the joystick away from your opponent.
Really? Are you kidding me? Why the hell is there no run button?
You can’t even go outside the ring and grab a weapon. You can only do this by triggering a grapple chain. So you need an opponent outside the ring with you to get a weapon. Once again, why don’t they just use one of the extra buttons for grabbing weapons under the ring? If you ever played another wrestling game before you will probably go outside and press random buttons next to the ring trying to grab stuff, but nothing will work.
I could go on and on but…just one more.
You can’t grapple in Royal Rumble. No suplexs, no body slams, no nothing. What?!
It’s a shame because on paper this game sounds great but the game play is just awful. The game will fight you every step of the way. You’re better off avoiding this game and spending your money on some old wrestling VHS tapes to get your wrestling fix or maybe break out the N64 for some wrestling action with your friends.
