Genre : Sports
Publisher: THQ
Developer: YUKE'S
Release Date: August 30, 2004

Buy 'WWE Day of Reckoning': GameCube

WWE: Day of Reckoning takes a concept already made familiar territory by games such as Tony Hawk’s Underground and Def Jam Vendetta: start as a no-name character; work your way through the ranks via a series of bouts or missions, earn respect, earn enemies, go through some drama, and eventually defeat whoever the big villain is and come out on top.

There’s a “traditional” wrestling game here too, but the story mode is the real meat of it.

The first thing you do (after tackling the tutorial mode) is head to the create-a-wrestler mode, which is more extensive than your average wrestling game creation mode. It lets you adjust just about everything you might have wanted to adjust regarding your wrestler; physical dimensions and appearance, moveset (you can pick every single move in your wrestler’s arsenal, one by one, or just model yourself after an existing WWE wrestler), statistics, and there’s even an entrance editor. Here, you can adjust camera angles, give yourself a video, add some pyrotechnics and even control the mannerisms that your wrestler undergoes as he walks to the ring.

The hardcores may nitpick because you can’t paint your wrestler’s toenails or anything. Nuts to them. This mode gets a major thumbs-up from me. There’s so much in here that it seems intimidating at first, but if you give yourself fifteen minutes to just cycle around the numerous options (and that entrance editor alone is about as addicting as pineapple cream pie, I swear) and play around with them, you’ll become a mad scientist, forming wrestling creations with which to fiendishly take over the WWE with.

And take over the WWE you will…eventually, anyway. Once you’ve got your created wrestler saved to a memory card, you’ve got to take him (or her) to Story Mode, where you start off as a WWE hopeful. You’re an unknown, who hasn’t gone through any of the ropes yet, so once you arrive, you’re shipped off to Developmental to hone your skills, and make sure you have the basic techniques down.

After a certain amount of matches/missions, you impress the WWE bigwigs enough to make it to the big time. You have matches on Sunday Night Heat, then you can choose to be part of either the Raw or Smackdown franchises. The choice you make here affects which storyline you get to be a part of, and which wrestlers you get to interact with for the remainder of your playtime. Sadly, it doesn’t affect the overall story itself; whichever brand you choose, you’ll be going through the same missions and seeing the same sorts of scenarios, just with different casts and slightly different scripts.

It should be noted that your franchise choice is pretty much the extent of the game’s open-endedness. Everything else is linear and scripted (if you fail a mission, you simply try again instead of experiencing any sort of consequence); fortunately, it’s a good script. You take part in a WWE where everyone is in character, 24/7; from Mr. McMahon to “current” Smackdown manager Kurt Angle, from Jonathan “Coach” Coachman to Eddie Guerrero to the Undertaker (oh, you will learn to fear and loathe the Undertaker. Yes, you will.) Anyone who’s ever been exposed to World Wrestling Entertainment will feel right at home, while newbies will be eventually drawn in by the excellent characterization of… everybody but your avatar, actually.

Another thing that makes you forget about the lack of open-endedness is that even though there’s technically one storyline, it’s also long. You’re put through an entire simulated WWE year, consisting over 30-plus weeks/missions, and will compete not only in the televised shows but in Pay-Per-Views such as Summerslam, No Way Out, Royal Rumble, and Wrestlemania--which, like in the federation itself, house all of the special matches where you either win titles, or experience a dramatic turn in your story.

The story mode is comprised of missions that give the game variety. You’ll have to win matches with stipulations, such as attacking your opponent with a weapon, or getting a certain type of submission. Sometimes you’ll end up in specialized matches, i.e. Hell in A Cell, Tables Ladders And Chairs, or Iron Man. These missions, I have to say, mark the first time I personally ever cared about these modes; I particularly found the TLC matches chaotic and fun, especially when four people are on the screen wreaking havoc. Anyone who’s only given wrestling games a passing fancy could easily find themselves getting more engrossed in the multiple match types than they expected.

Through all of what’s mentioned above, you’ll experience deception and drama, make friends, turn on them, and have people you thought were allies turn on you. You’ll get assaulted in your locker room and come into your next match at only half your strength and your limbs already half-worn out, making you easy submission fodder. You’ll partake in backstage interviews, do some trash-talking, and get dissed in return. In-ring interference, overblown speeches, managerial prerogative—it’s all here, and while it’s not technically “interactive”, you still feel like you’re a part of the roster, and end up caring about what’s going on.

As things stand, this is as close as you can get to taking part in the WWE without actually undergoing years of training and attempting to break into the business yourself. Like Def Jam Vendetta before it, this game’s atmosphere is its strongest selling point. There are others, however.

Its looks, for instance.

I don’t know how these graphics are coming out of a Gamecube. I mean, I know the little box is no slouch, but I honestly thought I’d seen everything after Tales of Symphonia. But these are the most realistic-looking models for wrestlers I’ve ever seen. Their animations are incredible, the special effects are just as much so; hardly anything looks blocky, videos play in the background, entrances are faithfully recreated, step by step. Put this baby on S-Video or higher and you’re watching a live televised WWE broadcast, especially during the entrances, cutscenes, and finishing moves. It plays tricks on your eyes. The only things that break the fourth wall are the load times, and the fact that the fans are still made up of horribly pixellated animated sprites, but you can’t have everything.

The soundtrack is great, consisting of a mix of hip-hop, rap, and of course, tracks for each wrestler. The non-wrestler tracks, however, do get repetitive, especially considering that they’re used in lieu of commentary or any sort of voice acting whatsoever. Still, all the music is fitting for the knock-down drag-out matches, so that’s a plus.

Okay. I’ve been talking about atmosphere and aesthetics for a while now, and I know you’re all clamoring to find out how well it plays. It’s not a super-technical wrestler in the vein of the old N64 games, nor is it the way the Smackdown series started out, where every move was a flashy power-move. Instead, Day of Reckoning straddles the two styles; giving us easy grapples while still retaining technical aspects such as limb targeting. New to the WWE wrestling games is the Momentum Shift feature, which some people will consider cheating, but is really just a way to keep you on your toes. Once per match, if you’re taking a supreme beating, you can press the A and B buttons to perform a special grapple. If it connects, your stamina and that of your opponent are switched. It’s a mimic of the “dramatic upsets” often seen in the televised matches, right up there with being able to knock out the referee and pull out a weapon from under the mat with which to end the match more quickly. There are lots of ways to make matches interesting.

A valid complaint is that, due to the lack of space, there are only 40-plus wrestlers in total. This may still seem like a lot, but considering that half of them are midcarders that people, well, care less about than the big names, it makes the amount of choices seem smaller still. Still, hidden characters such as Andre the Giant and Bret Hart help to keep things fresh. Another valid complaint is that the counter system is iffy at best. One trigger counters grapples, the other strikes, but you practically have to be able to tell the future in order to get the timing right. There is no countering on reaction here. The computer, of course, can counter all day if it wants to, though.

In all aspects of its execution, WWE: Day of Reckoning is an ambitious game—perhaps a little too ambitious for the Gamecube’s limited disc format. Therefore, some things had to be cut, and others do not meet full expectations. We can only dream of what might have been if this were a DVD-based Xbox game, but what is here has several things that will make people smile. If your only system is a Gamecube, and you’ve ever had a passing fancy for either wrestling games or the WWE, you’d be a crazy fool not to buy this. If you have more than one system, then you owe it to yourself to at least rent it a few times. The story mode, unlockables and versus matches alone will keep you busy for a few good weeks. It’s an impressive title that champions quality and heart over quantity, mainly because there was no other choice.

Good job, you guys.

Score: 8.0/10