WWE 13 Review

Well, the time has come for THQ to once again present us with the newest iteration of their wrestling game franchise. WWE 13 came in with a whole lot of fanfare this year, mainly due to the involvement of Paul Heyman and the return of the Attitude Era in a WWE game. This decision ended up being one of the best decisions they could have made.

Let's start out with a precursor, if you played WWE 12, you can probably just skip ahead a couple paragraphs, because I'm going to talk about the controls and gameplay, which remain largely unchanged from last years game. So, just go ahead and meet me up ahead. It's cool, I don't mind.

Now, if you haven't played a wrestling game in a while, the controls will seem a bit different to you, most likely. How long it's been since you last played a wrestling game will really affect how long it takes to adjust to the new controls. You strike with X/Square (Xbox/PS3), Grapple with A/X, Irish Whip and Pin with B/O, run by holding LT/L2, counter with RT/R1, get in and out of the ring/climb/pick up things with LB/L1, and perform special moves with Y/Triangle. Everything else is a combination of those buttons. After playing a few matches, it will start to feel very intuitive.

Along with the controls is a much heavier impact on realistic situations. That means you can no longer go from facing away from your opponent to running straight at them, you will have to turn around. All weapons have physics applied to them, meaning moves can be done on top of them, and they will move around (semi-)realistically in the ring. Also, one of the biggest (and most welcome) changes from previous games is the pin system. You no longer mash buttons and hope the game feels bad for you, you will get a meter that you fill up by holding the A button. If you stop it in the target area, you kick out. This is harder the more beat up you are, and actually gives you some level of involvement in kicking out of a big move.

Now, welcome back people from earlier. Let's talk about what changed from WWE 12 to WWE 13. For starters, let's talk about what is undoubtedly the coolest change: catch finishers. In one of my first multiplayer games, I was playing against my brother-in-law, who was playing as Randy Orton. I was playing as John Cena. I went to go for my top-rope Fameasser, like you do, and he instead hit me with his RKO as I dove at him. He finished me right there, and it was gloriously awesome to watch. Catch finishers can completely change a match in unbelievably cool ways and really bring a whole new element to the game. All you have to do is hit Y/Triangle when you have a finisher as the opponent is doing a springboard/top rope move and you will nail them as they fly in. Just keep in mind that not every move can do this (for obvious reasons).

Beyond that, a new type of special move called an OMG! moment has been added. I have so far found 3 different ones in the game. When you have a finisher, if the opponent is on the announce table, you can use an OMG! move to put them through in a big way. Alternatively, you can spear them through the barricades around the ring. Finally, if both people are using super heavyweight characters (Big Show, Mark Henry, Vader, etc.) then you can do a top-rope superplex that will break the goddamn ring. Note, that this will end the match in a no-contest, because broken ring.

So that's the control, let's talk about gameplay. The biggest thing I want to note about the gameplay is the enhanced AI intelligence... so long as you're playing on the highest difficulty setting. The AI is atrociously bad if you play on anything but the highest difficulty, just to give fair warning. But on the highest setting, the AI will actually be very methodical in how they fight you, based on the character they play. For example, when facing Shawn Michaels, they will do a lot of high-impact moves and taunting, trying to build up a finishing move as fast as possible. Ken Shamrock, meanwhile, will beat up your individual body parts, weakening you and making it easier to get you to submit to the Ankle Lock.

That's the AI, but how is the gameplay in multiplayer? Well, online is laggy is hell, but let's talk local multiplayer. How does it hold up? Amazingly.

So far I've played about 16 multiplayer matches. All of them have been very good and a couple have even given off a big-match feel with both people really trying to send the match home as finishers get countered and near-falls keep occurring. So far the game has been just unbelievably fun in each kind of multiplayer match... with the exception of tag team matches. I don't know the reasoning behind this, but in this years game, performing a ring-clearing hot-tag will no longer yield a finisher. My guess is that was done because most matches boiled down to "make the hot tag, hit finisher, ???, profit." However, this decision ends up slowing tag matches down quite a bit, which is disappointing. One other note about multiplayer, I would heavily recommend turning off the reversal indicators after the first few matches, once you're comfortable with the system, otherwise it becomes a game of "wait for the indicator, hit button." Varying your timing does no good if an indicator always pops up at the time to press it.

So, after that, let's talk Single Player. Specifically, let's talk the new campaign mode, Attitude Era. Attitude Era is how you unlock everything in the game, and you do it by playing through recreations of some of the biggest (and coolest) moments in the Attitude Era. From the Rise of D-X, to the Brothers of Destruction, each campaign feeds off the previous one and tells the story of what made the Attitude Era so great, featuring clips from that time period, commentary from that time period (which really adds a lot to the matches) and a list of bonus objectives for each match that involves recreating specific moments from those historical matches. All-in-all, it is pretty awesome stuff that is a HUGE improvement over last years "Road to Wrestlemania" campaign, which took all control away and presented incomprehensible storylines and character motivations that make no sense. Overall, a huge step in the right direction and one that should set the bar for future games.

The game also comes with the largest roster in wrestling game history (with the exception of WCW Nitro, but since most of the characters in that game weren't real wrestlers, that doesn't count). With no DLC, there are 72 wrestlers, 2 managers, and 8 divas. After all the DLC is released, there will be 88 wrestlers, 2 managers, and 10 divas, for 100 characters in the game. Also, even though there is multiple versions of the same character, the game does a great job of differing the movesets based on how the character has changed. For example, Hunter Hearst Helmsley has a very different moveset from the modern-era Triple H.

Also, the game includes over 20 championship belts that can be defended or challenged for. Some of these are iterations of the same title (the WWE title, for example, has the modern version, the Attitude-Era circle belt, the Smoking Skull belt, Edge's Rated-R spinner, Miz's inverted spinner, the Rock's Brahma Bull belt, the classic winged-eagle belt, and also (incredibly) the 1987 and the retro pre-87 versions of the belt (held by such legends as Hulk Hogan and Bruno Sammartino). Also, you have the option of over 30 arenas to compete in, which are all spot-on representations of both modern and classic-era Pay-Per-View events.

So, lots of customization, plenty of possible matches, competent AI (mostly), and a whole lot of variety on the stakes, so are there any problems? Well, of course. One thing that irritates me is that the online continues to be very laggy, something that has been the case since online was introduced. Also, there are come minor nuances with the Attitude-Era characters. For example, to get all the griping out of the way: Eddie Guerrero comes out in the low-rider (he didn't start doing this until 2002), Road Dogg's entrance is censored (yet Billy Gunn is still using his "Mr. Ass" music), Attitude-Era D-X Triple H looks WAY too buff (he didn't significantly bulk up until he adopted "The Game" moniker in mid-2000), no Dudley Boyz or Hardy Boyz (contractual limitations due to their involvement in TNA), no Nation of Domination entrance for Rock or Farooq (which is odd, since Mark Henry is in full-on Nation mode), and finally, Dude Love doesn't have the option to wrestle in a tux (like he did during his heel run as Vince's lap dog). Again, most of these are just minor gripes against an overall amazing game, but I figured I'd get them out there.

So, my final verdict? This the most fun I've had with a wrestling game since Smackdown vs. Raw 2007, which I felt was the last "great" wrestling game. The multiplayer is really enjoyable, the single player is engaging and fun (and informative, actually), and the content that you are given is massive. I wholly recommend if you've jumped off the wrestling game bandwagon to hop back on and give this one a try. And if you're not down with that, I've got two words for ya.