First Glance:
The next installment of THQ’s WWE wrestling video game series.

Short Story:
Featuring over the top action and ridiculously over exaggerated character models, WWE All Stars features your favorite current and legendary WWE superstars. You can either play as the superstars of today or be nostalgic and play as the superstars you grew up watching.

The Score:
WWE All Stars is a pretty fun game to play. If you’ve played any of the old arcade games (WWF Wrestlemania on the SNES) you’ll really enjoy this game. The game features over the top action that’s similar to the gameplay of the old arcade games that you played as a kid. Unfortunately, the game does lack in terms of features though. If you’re a wrestling fan, both old and new, at least play this game. WWE All Stars gets a Busy Gamer 3.

Body of Review:
I’ve been a big fan of the WWE for many many years (since back in the WWF days). And of course, since I’m an avid gamer, I’ve played pretty much every WWF/E game that’s been released. Some of my favorite wrestling games have been the WWF/E THQ games. Starting with WWF Wrestlemania 2000 all the way to the Smackdown vs. Raw franchise, THQ has been making some pretty solid wrestling games. They gave us a taste of what this game offers us with 2009′s WWE Legends of Wrestlemania, which was decent, though it had a more grounded feel to the game play. WWE All Stars gives us what Legends of Wrestlmania gave us as far as the roster of WWE Legends are concerned, and then combined it with the over the top action and crazy physic of the wrestlers on the roster similar to that of the old arcade and SNES games of our childhood.

The game has a pretty impressive roster. It features current WWE superstars including: Triple H, Kofi Kingston, The Undertaker, John Morrison, and the recently retired Edge. And also your favorite WWE Legends: Shawn Michaels, Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and for the first time in a THQ/WWE video game, The Macho Man Randy Savage.

The game offers two different “story modes.” One is the Fantasy Warfare mode, which pits a current superstar and a legend of similar fighting styles against each other in a match. What makes this mode pretty cool is that they splice together clips from interviews or live in ring rants of each superstar and turns them into an impressive little match set up. To me, I was really impressed by the amount of work that went into putting those vignettes together.

The other mode is Path of Champions. This mode includes three challenges, where you can chose to challenge The Undertaker for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, Randy Orton for the WWE Championship, or Degeneration X for the WWE World Tag Team Championship. Each championship path will start with the respective champion addressing you and then you go on your way through 9 matches and then the championship match. For example: The World Heavyweight Champion is The Undertaker. Now, his path starts out with Paul Bearer, yes, Paul Bearer, The Undertaker’s long time manager back in the old days, welcoming you to the Funeral Parlor.

For those of you who were WWF fans back in the day, The Funeral Parlor was a segment that would usually feature Paul Bearer talking to the superstar that The Undertaker was in a feud with and then The Undertaker would show up, usually out of nowhere either working on a casket or coming out of a casket, and scares you half to death. Randy Orton just talks about how much better he is than everyone else, and DX just makes fun of you and plugs merchandise (they plug the WWE All Stars game, yes they plug the game you are currently playing). It’s pretty fun to do.

Other than those two modes, you have your normal exhibition matches, 1v1, tag team, extreme rules, and cage matches. Unlike the Smackdown vs Raw games, All Stars does not include Ladder Matches, or my favorite Hell in a Cell match, but what can you do?

The best thing about this is probably to ridiculously over the top action in this game. There’s nothing like playing as The Rock against John Cena, and giving Cena The Rock Bottom, and jumping about 20 feet in the air to deliver said Rock Bottom! Everyone’s moves and finishers are as ridiculous as this. Plus, on top of that, the character models are extremely overdone. I’ve always said that the wrestlers physics are over done in the games and this one takes it to a whole new level. The Undertaker, for example towers over his opponents and his hands are about as big as most peoples heads. It’s completely unrealistic and it’s awesome!

There were some problems with this game though. The game play gets pretty repetitive, but that’s pretty standard with a fighting game, the thing is, is that you can barely win a match by anything but a knock out. Even if you take out your opponent’s health after delivering a finisher, they will more than likely kick out of the pin. As much punishment as you dish out on your opponent, you have a really hard time getting a pin on them, which is a little annoying.

Another thing that bothered me would be the super stars entrances. First of all, they don’t have their full entrances, they stop at the top of the ramp. THQ has always done a great job putting together video game versions of the superstars entrances. If you look at them from previous games, their video game entrances and pretty much exact to how the superstars come out to the ring in real life, would it have killed them to give us full entrances?

Probably the worst thing about All Stars was the “Create a Superstar??? mode. THQ has always made an incredibly in depth create a superstar mode in their wrestling games. All Stars made it painfully simple. As far as the look of your superstar, your choices of clothing and body features are very, very slim. And it’s no different with selecting your entrance and move set. You don’t get to select individual moves, you only get to choose a superstar’s move set as your own, which sucks. I’ve always enjoyed being able to pick my favorite moves from my favorite superstars and combining them into one to make the ultimate badass, but not in this game. The only individual move you get to pick is your finisher, and it’s the same with picking your entrance, you don’t get to pick your individual music or entrance animation. What was great about previous THQ/WWE titles is how detailed the “Create a Superstar??? mode was. Anything was possible with that system. You could have your superstar come out to Triple H’s music with Shawn Michael’s entrance, or have your superstar weigh 300 pounds and see him fly off the top rope with a Swanton Bomb. I was really disappointed with this part of the game.

WWE All Stars is a decent game. It brought back a lot of memories from playing the old WWF arcade games when I was a kid. But at the same time, I left me wanting more as far as some of the game modes and customization is concerned. If you’re a current or old fan of the WWE, play this game, you will enjoy it.

Till next time Busy Gamers, happy gaming!

M-Dawg out!!