WWF Betrayal

Overview

WWF Betrayal marks the first attempt made at bringing the world of the WWF/WWE into video games outside of the pro wrestling genre. An old-school brawler at heart, it was released for the Game Boy Color months after the launch of the Game Boy Advance, and as such did not garner very much attention. To date, only one other attempt has been made at bringing the WWE license to other games with WWE Crush Hour, which is an altogether different genre and bears no relationship to WWF Betrayal aside from the licensing.

Plot

You are the WWF World Heavyweight Champion, and during an ordinary title defence, you lose the Championship to your opponent thanks to outside interference. You head backstage to get a piece of the perpetrators, where you learn that Stephanie McMahon has been kidnapped! To make matters worse, the guys who orchestrated your loss are also the ones who kidnapped Stephanie! Vince McMahon, Stephanie's father and owner of the WWF asks you to save her, and in exchange offers you a rematch for the WWF Championship. Caring not for Stephanie's welfare, you set out anyways in hopes of reclaiming what is rightfully yours: the WWF Championship.

Unfortunately, your foes have planned ahead and have stationed guards at every corner just waiting to take you out. What's a WWF Superstar to do? Why, do what he does best: destroy the competition. Chase your targets through the city and beat anything that stands in your way to a pulp, and you just might come out of this with the championship belt around your waist!

Due to the nature of the game, the plot was designed to be completely interchangeable so that no matter which wrestler the player selected, the others would still play a part. Thus, the identities of the perpetrators change depending on who you select. The storyline sees significant changes if you select Triple H; since he was married to Stephanie McMahon at the time of the game's release, he would naturally have an actual interest in rescuing Stephanie in addition to reclaiming the WWF Championship.

Now choose a WWF Superstar and get ready to rumble! The Rock, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Triple H, and the Undertaker are all ready for action. Punch, kick, and use weapons to build momentum and then deliver your finishing move to take out your opponents with style!

Gameplay

Gameplay is almost always on the repetitive side in beat-'em-ups, but perhaps more so in WWF Betrayal than others of the genre. The game rewards successive moves with "momentum", so the fastest and best way to thrash foes is to punch and kick them repeatedly and use a finisher. Your wrestler also a running dropkick, to be used at your leisure. Discarded weapons can be obtained and used to great effect, but only until you sustain your next hit.

Taking a page directly from the WWE's playbook, where no wrestler is ever down and out for long, the traditional life meter "bottoms out" early before it empties entirely, dazing your wrestler but allowing him to recover hit points to a manageable level via button mashing. Skilled players can greatly extend the length of each life by watching this meter carefully, which is fortunate since some enemies possess long-range attacks that can drain nearly the entire bar in just a few seconds. Losing a life means you have to start over all the way at the beginning of the level.

You will encounter bosses at the end of each level, each one being one of the wrestlers you didn't select, rest assured they are more difficult to defeat than any ordinary baddie. Still, the same set of tricks works on them too, so long as you can outlast them.

Reception

Due to the waning interest in the Game Boy Color at the time of release, the experimental nature of the game, repetitive gameplay and simple character animation, WWF Betrayal failed to garner very much interest and received harsh scores from review publications.