WWE All Stars

Genre: Sports (Pro Wrestling)

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Wireless)

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Review:

WWE All Stars is a Pro Wrestling game released in 2011 on PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, Wii, and Nintendo 3DS. This game’s premise is to give players the opportunity to select from a roster of wrestlers ranging across the ages of the sport, including classic stars like Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage, and Andre the Giant, to more modern competitors like The Rock and John Cena (well, more modern as of 2011, at least). Players can also mix it up with these stars using their own custom-created wrestler, but this game only includes male wrestlers (sorry, fans of Trish Stratus, Lita, or Chyna).

The presentation here is not great. Wrestlers are represented by somewhat low-poly 3D visuals that seem a bit cartoonishly exaggerated while also only roughly resembling the wrestler in question, and while the animation is okay, these characters seem even more surreal because not one of them is voiced – the only voice in the game is that of the announcer. To his credit, the announcer does a decent enough job, and the game’s music works well enough to match the style of actual matches, but the impact of these legendary match-ups would have carried so much more weight if they came with archival footage for the intros, or even a halfway-decent voice-alike.

For the gameplay, players have buttons for light and heavy strikes, weak or strong hold/throws, there’s a run button, and a button for reversals. Everything else is handled by the touchscreen, with players tapping opponents’ icons to face them, their own icon to taunt, or a center-of-screen star to perform any number of context-sensitive moves, from climbing the turnstile to going in for a pin.

This control setup leaves a lot to be desired, in numerous ways. Firstly, delegating so many different moves to only one command, and then placing the button for that command in the middle of the touchscreen is a pretty absurd lapse in judgment. What’s more, the run command requires players to hold it down while also holding in the direction you want to run, which feels a bit awkward when you’re trying to set up an attack. Also, the reversal command has such an absurdly short window that players will likely struggle to do so in time, especially with the short notice they’re given.

Barring these flaws, WWE All Stars is a serviceable Pro Wrestling game, but it’s far from a great one. The core gameplay is mostly decent, there’s a decent smattering of match types, there’s… hmm, apparently only support for 2 players via local wireless, with no download play supported…

Yeah, overall, WWE All Stars is likely to be a pretty big disappointment for Pro Wrestling fans. It mostly does what it aims to do, but it definitely feels lacking in numerous ways, from the controls to the lack of love in the presentation, to the exclusion of an entire gender from the game. Even more disappointing? This seems to be the only Pro Wrestling game on Nintendo 3DS. So if you’re a fan of the genre, your options are either this, or playing another gaming platform.

tl;dr – WWE All Stars is a Pro Wrestling game that has players taking part in battles featuring a roster that stretches across the decades of the sport. While the gameplay is mostly respectable, the poor controls, somewhat lacking presentation, and the lack of female fighters make this a pretty disappointing game, especially since it’s the only Pro Wrestling game on the Nintendo 3DS.

Grade: C-

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