WrestleMania XIX

[BreakABone]

Well even though there are so many more "high caliber" games, Penguin always has a special part in his heart for wrestling games. Anyhow here is the latest on WrestleMania XIX:

Well, I got see the videos as well and they were mighty impressive, some things to note.

They borrowed quite a few elements from No Mercy
-When you have a special and you get knocked down, you will pop back up, but it seems very character specific, RVD knipped up (however you spell it, but you know the thing HBK does) well Hogan got up and Hulked up.

-Even though it's been confirmed you can see it in the videos, once you activate a special you can do it as many times as you want in the given time. I saw Angle put on an Angle Lock and then when Hogan broke out, he quikcly caught him with an Angle Slam.

-The game has a nice atmosphere about it. Big moves are repeated from like 2 angles while finishers are shown from 4 in a letterbox mode. Looks real nice in motion.

-The blood! It's great, how they show your face when you get busted open. It's from different angles as well. When RVD got busted open in the HIAC, he was on his knees and they showed his face and you can see that he is in pain while Brock was busted open on the floor holding his face in pain, it comes off real nice in motion.

-Some of the reversals are very intricate. Like whenever Angle went for a back grapple Hogan almost always reversed with a side Russian Legsweep that you can barely see coming.

-The move count seem to go up, there was some dead action, but I'm assuming the folks who played weren't too good.

Something I'm missing, can't think of it.

O yeah, the movies shows the first aspect of damage specific stuff when. In some of the moves, you can see RVD and Rey holding their necks after a pounding they took, in RVD's case he started holding his neck after receiving an F5 from Brock, as for Rey, Big Show was pounding on his neck with several moves.

Even though I can't 100% confirm it, none of the movies show Rey bodyslamming or anything to Big Show, but he does rely on his speed.

If anyone has any other questions, I see if the movie shows them.

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/e3/0513b/gc_wrestlemaniaxix0513_screen007.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/e3/0513b/gc_wrestlemaniaxix0513_screen019.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/e3/0513b/gc_wrestlemaniaxix0513_screen041.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/e3/0513b/gc_wrestlemaniaxix0513_screen055.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/e3/0513b/gc_wrestlemaniaxix0513_screen101.jpg

[Bond]

Well, the screenshots look pretty good, but I'm sure they could look a lot better if they weren't taken from the trailer.

The blood also looks really cool, almost too realistic for my taste though.

[BreakABone]

Originally posted by Bond
Well, the screenshots look pretty good, but I'm sure they could look a lot better if they weren't taken from the trailer.

The blood also looks really cool, almost too realistic for my taste though.

Well some of the stuff really doesn't come out well in screens IMO, but some of it looks real good in motion.

Only one of those screens were taken from the trailer (which reminds me, I've seen SmackDown Shut Your Mouth, Raw 2 and WM XIX trailer, SmackDown had the others beat in spades), the rest are in-game. The little blur effect is due to the cinematic effects used when doing a finisher.

the blood is nice

[fingersman]

It seems like the devs are living up to their word. This wrestling game should be good. :D

[Null]

blood looks good? i was going to comment on how bad it looked. it looks like they got shot in the head each time. same thing every time. id rather see differnt types happen. a lot or a little. maybe in different locations.

[BreakABone]

Originally posted by Null
blood looks good? i was going to comment on how bad it looked. it looks like they got shot in the head each time. same thing every time. id rather see differnt types happen. a lot or a little. maybe in different locations.

Well, the blood looks good facing the conditions. Like a couple of licenses made into games there are restrictions. In this case, THQ doesn't have permission from the WWE to use blood in any other place but the face so folks are pretty much screwed.

I mean they are getting a bit less lenient they did allow blood in the game (Every other next-gen WWE didn't feature blood) so maybe they will give up on this only on face business.

Also for some stupid reason, the blood isn't allowed to drip either. I don't know why they allowed them to make it with all these restrictions, but it added a bit of realism.

[BreakABone]

Well much like Raw 2, THQ has updated with a trailer of WrestleMania XIX. It shows some nice footage but also shows some weird stuff.

http://www.thq.com/e32003/ChooseFormat.asp?Fname=Wrestle_Mania_

[TheGame]

I just hope blood isn't overdone... I mean, like in every match, I'd rather it be like No Mercy where blood rarely ever happens, because that makes it just that much special.

-EDIT-

Saw the trailer, I think this doesn't look as good as Raw, but the visual style reminds me of No Mercy... so maybe that won't be a bad thing.

[The Duggler]

Originally posted by BreakABone
Well much like Raw 2, THQ has updated with a trailer of WrestleMania XIX. It shows some nice footage but also shows some weird stuff.

http://www.thq.com/e32003/ChooseFormat.asp?Fname=Wrestle_Mania_ O my god, that was horrible... Yukes are truly the worst wrestling game developpers.but the visual style reminds me of No Mercy... so maybe that won't be a bad thing.:confused:

[TheGame]

Originally posted by Ranzid
:confused:

I don't know it it's the blocky charicters, or the dark visuals, but somthing about it reminds me of how No Mercy looks... but then again, No Mercy was pretty damn ugly.

[The Duggler]

Originally posted by TheGame
... but then again, No Mercy was pretty damn ugly :lol: Yhea you're right. But it's still the best wrestler out there.

[BreakABone]

Well here is the developer's commentary from IGN's latest update. There are some hands-on impressions as well.

Hi I’m Nick Vladica (sp?), I’m responsible for the creative on the WWE franchise of video games. I’m going to take some time to walk you guys through all of the cool little things that we’ve added to the game this year. So basically we’ll go through all of the things we’ve overhauled starting with gameplay. We’ve spent a lot of time pretty much re-engineering the entire AI, so first starting off with the control system. What we’ve done this year is added both a regular weak grapple right into a move, but we’ve also added a strong grapple where you lock up and then have a whole variety of moves available to you. This can be done both from the front of the superstar or you can flip around to the back of the superstar. What we’ve also done is added a big strategic element, basically there is a counter for both the grapple and the strikes. So the control system has fundamentally changed like I just talked about with the weak grapple versus the strong grapple.

As far as gameplay, we’ve focused on a few core areas, one being location specific damage. So basically the idea here is two-fold. One is you work your opponents body part, it could be his arms, it could be his legs, it could be his head with your end goal being making him submit in that particular body part. We really show this to the user, one, when his arm gets worked he actually walks around holding his arm so you can see it visually and the second thing is one of the things we added is superstar attributes. Every superstar’s got different amounts of strength, agility, and stamina. If a superstar’s arms get worked, lets say he starts the match at 100 percent health, well he does 100 percent damage to his opponent. If he has his arms worked for a while basically any move that will involve his arm, he will do less damage. If his arm is 50 percent damaged he’ll do 50 percent less damage in all of his moves.

One of the big things we added for this year is a new single player mode. One of our criticisms for last year was that we didn’t have a compelling single player experience so we’ve listened to our consumers, listened to what they wanted and everybody wants to take the action outside the ring. It’s great to fight inside the ring, its great to fight against your friends in the ring, that’s true to programming, but hey you know what? It’s a video game. Lets do something fresh, let’s do something new. So what we’ve done is really held true to the integrity of the WWE’s programming, to their style but wrapped a unique very much WWE storyline full of turns and twists, double-crosses with the usual likes of Vince and Stephanie with real world environments. Fully interactive environments, be it a construction site, a shipping port, a parking lot, a shopping mall, things that feel alive that you can throw your opponents through that you can use to whack your opponents with… But in addition to that also have compelling missions in each of these environments. So you have your overall objective for the mode but within each of these environments you have X number of missions that you have to fulfill to complete the environment. So we’ve taken WWE style gameplay mechanics, for example Royal Rumble, or Hell in a Cell cage match, for example Royal Rumble, you have to throw your opponents over the ropes. Well in the construction site, which is a multi level construction site with an environment that you can roam around where you fight different construction workers depending on your mission, one of your objectives is to throw them over the platform to the lower level to knock them out, similar to the Royal Rumble where you throw someone over the top rope.

As far as animation goes, we spent a lot of time focusing on both cleaning up the animation and adding the whole selling element to the game. In wrestling one of the big things is showing off pain, the impact of moves, so we’re spending a lot of time making sure that the user feels like he is in the ring by how much the superstars are actually showing off their pain. I think the game is a 180-degree turn from last year in terms of the controls, graphics, animation, modes, we’ve really changed everything. Core elements of the game have been changed substantially based on consumer feedback so we’re really excited. A great sign is what the development team thinks of the game so we’re having a lot of fun playing it right now, everybody’s loving it, and we’re only at a pre-alpha stage. We’ve got all the features in place that we’re really going to build out, now its just a matter of tuning those and bringing them to a level that consumers expect. We’re really excited, and as far as consumers go I think they’re going to really love this product.

[Joeiss]

The bloood looks like fireworks.. lol