The first wrestling game released on the X-Box.
First, I'll start off with the story mody. Wait...oh yeah, I forgot there is no story mode. None at all. Instead were treated with a Title Hunt mode. Here we can go through a series of matches to earn a title. We can go for WWF title, European title, Lightweight title, Women's title, Not the tag titles which is a bummer. Another weird thing is that theres no gender specification. Which means you can make Undertaker your Women's champion.
Create-A-Wrestler is today one of wrestling games most common features. Wrestling games today are all expected to have this mode. Overall, this mode is done fairly well. Theres a variety of clothing to choose from. But some categories, like faces are very limited.
Looking back at early 2002, this game had some great graphics. Characters like Rock, Austin, X-Pac, Triple H looked like you would expect them. There facial expressions were done nicely.
Now, for a negative. The biggest negative of the game. The wrestling/ game play engine. This game is really not fun to play because of the broken mechanics. Now this game isn't as bad as WrestleMania 21 which was made 3 years later. For example, when you went to do a grapple you would have to press the button multiple times. Same with punches, reverses, everything. This game was very frustrating.
The wrestler movement is not very good at all. The characters look too tense, and like there robots. This really the entrances not that good.
The game has the match types you would expect, cage, ladder, all that. Nothing important to point out here. There's also many different weapons you can use throughout the game. But what's the point of weapons if you can't make people bleed? Ah well.
During the matches, it does something very unique. Theres a bar on the bottom of the screen split in equal sections. Each section reprsents the health of a wrestler. When you start dominating your opponet, your bar will increase, as his decreases. But that doesn't eliminate the fact that the game has very bad A.I.
The X-Box has had a bad history when it comes to wrestling games. Playstation 2 gets the long running, amazing SmackDown! series. The gameCube gets the great Day of Reckoning series. WWF Raw has bad AI, bad gameplay mechanics, good graphics, good sound, good roster, decent create mode, no season. WWF Raw is mediocre. If you want a good wresling game for the X-Box, the best you got is Raw 2. And with the release of the X-Box 360 in 2005, there will probably never be a great wrestling game for the X-Box. Hopefully we'll get better luck with the 360.