PlayStation 2

Legends of Wrestling II

Last year, former WWF and ECW license holders Acclaim sat without a direction for their lagging wrestling games. Without a big time wrestling promotion to back, Acclaim went the legends route, nabbing a true legend in Hulk Hogan and paying him to promote their first legends game, Legends of Wrestling. While LOW received so-so reviews across the board, I thought it was a solid, but a bit rough, wrestling game that was deeper and more interesting than the disappointing WWF Smackdown: Just Bring It.

What happens when one company is so much better than its “competitors” that they can no longer afford to run and sell out? Whoever owns the license of the big company, pretty much gets the best licensed wrestling title. THQ has the current WWE license but that didn’t stop Acclaim and Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City from making Legends of Wrestling and its sequel, Legends of Wrestling II.

Legends of Wrestling II is plagued by the same contradiction as every other wrestling videogame, but it has a somewhat rougher time of it than most. These games are attempting to make a legitimate competition out of a fixed sport. It's a sport which derives almost all of its entertainment value from the fact that the outcome is predetermined and the performers are cooperating in order to put on a show. Now, in some cases, this is not so much of a problem. Games like SmackDown! and Fire Pro compensate by letting the players put on the show themselves, providing a massive selection of options for moves, match types, and so on. They lack the extra excitement added by the angle -- what goes on outside of the ring to set up a match -- but they can usually live without that.

Wrestling has come a long way since its early days when stories and plots were just beginning to dramatize the fights and build them up into showdowns of epic proportions. There was a time when the build-up was more exciting to watch than the actual confrontation and the colorful participants were so ludicrously entertaining to watch. As a tribute to these wrestlers, Legends of Wrestling II brings them back in action, however, without the exciting drama.

Like its predecessor, Legends of Wrestling II features a great concept that's largely overshadowed by a number of gameplay flaws. The experience of playing as some of professional wrestling's greatest personalities--such as Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, Andre the Giant--is made much less enjoyable than it might have been due to some sluggish controls and other issues. And while the game's original approach extends beyond its cast of characters and into its different modes of play, the actual gameplay itself simply doesn't hold up well enough to make any of these modes worthwhile.

Anyone who’s read my Smackdown reviews knows what I look for in a wrestling title—gameplay and realism. At the beginning, when Acclaim hit us with the first Legends of Wrestling game, many people didn’t know what to expect. We knew we were in for a major dose of nostalgia, but how would it play compared to the likes of Smackdown or No Mercy? Unfortunately, it sucked. Badly.

I really wanted to like Legends of Wrestling 2. The nostalgia factor alone makes the game worth checking out. It's just that LoW2 is missing that certain something … namely compelling gameplay.