FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREFLYYYYYYYYYYYY
COULD YOU SHIIINE YOUR LIIIGHT
NOW I KNOW YOUR WAYYYYS
CAUSE THEY'RE JUUUUST LIKE MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE

NOW I'M JUSTIFIED
AS I FALLLL IN LIIIINE
AND IT'S HARD TO TRY
WHEN YOU'RE OPEN WIIIIIIIIIIDE

BRING ME YOUR ENEMIIES AND
LAYYY THEM BEFORE MEEE AND WALK AWAYYY

walk away...


WAAAAAAALK AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

The ugly bastard child between HCTP era Whedonian shenanigans and numbered SvR Snyderian ludography. Directed by the Russo brothers. Wrestlers during entrances don’t slide around like eels anymore but it wasn’t mocapped humans moving at 0.8x speed like in 2006 yet. There was commentary but still drowned by the OST playing during matches (OST isn’t as good as HCTP but the main theme will play at my wedding and funeral). Playful, radically tubular name but it’s the same one that will fall into corporate yearly numbering just a few months later. Season mode was sort of like in HCTP but not really, you could only go for the top or midcard title for some reason, and didn’t have the genuine cutscenes from its successors. You could only store 3 finishers! That's not 7 nor 1!

Roster was the 2004 roster, meaning it fucking sucked as literally half the personnel tried really hard to be somewhere else and the friend who picked character sixth had to choose between like Garrison Cade or Chuck Palumbo.

Played pretty much the same but sans the crazy backstage, implemented actual Royal Rumble mechanics but everyone just picked the few Super Heavyweights in the game who could just lift people up, except Cristian who always picked Andre, the only ULTRA heavyweight in the game, because it was his game. Fuck you Cristian stop showing everyone my created wrestlers you piece of shit

I didn't get to play too much of the game because my copy crapped out on me but what I did play was pretty fun. There's tons and tons of match types and modes to keep you entertained. All of the models and entrances and menus and stuff like that look surprising good for PS2. They gameplay is fun and all the moves and animations look great and flashy and I love how much weight moves have when Wrestlers hit the ground. My only problem is I don't fully understand the controls so lots of what happens feels like an accident but that's mostly on me. I enjoyed it overall but I don't think I'll come back to it very often mostly because I enjoy the 2K style of wrestling games more.

While a step up in graphics and presentation from Here Comes The Pain, this entry lacks in content and features that the previous game offered, not to mention a smaller roster size. The removal of top stars at the time such as; Brock Lesnar (originally supposed to be in the game), Goldberg and Stone Cold made this feel unfinished. The story mode offers fully voiced cutscenes but the trade off is a more linear and seemingly less content filled story than previous season modes. This game also features one of the worst character creation suites making it near impossible to fill in missing roster gaps. Gameplay was still very strong here but in the end there's very little replay value to be had. The licensed soundtrack and return of commentary were both welcome additions though.