The basic game engine has been sped up and tightened with minor polygon break-up. I tried out the exhibition matches first. Immediately I noticed a lot of improvements. A lot more speech from the wrestlers and commentators have been added making it feel more like you are watching an actual WWF show. More moves have been added this time all of them done very smoothly. Each wrestler has their own signature moves as well as finishers (like X-PAC’s Bronco Buster and X-Factor. The game utilizes the same grapple system as seen in Warzone, so expect a bit of frustration at first. However, with a bit of practice, you'll be performing all sorts of cool moves on your opponents and vice-versa. The Undertaker destroyed me, The Rock laid the smackdown on me (Ed's Note: Know your role, son!), and I have been made "Fame-Ass by Bad Ass Billy Gunn. But frankly, I haven’t had a better time getting beaten. (Except when Bahn destroys me in Street Fighter Zero 3, but that’s another story)

Among some of this game's finest features is the Career Mode in which you must choose a wrestler (or a tag team), and make your way up to become Heavy Weight Champion. You'll start out at the bottom doing House Shows and other minor WWF Events before you can even make to the big leagues (i.e. Heat and Raw). This is pretty much what the wrestling industry is about anyway, starting out from the bottom making a name for yourself. All characters now have full introductory sequences, but they vary depending on the event you're in. For example, if you're engaged in the House Show event, all the glitter, lighting effects, spotlights are gone. Whereas, Pay-Per-Views and RAW manifest all the glamour and glistened effects.

Getting to the best part of WWF: Attitude - the ability to create your own wrestler. Without a doubt, the degree of options and customizations featured are amazing. Not only can you choose a gender and clothing, but Acclaim takes it one step further and allows you to customized the most minute details. Specifically, choosing the type of eyes, nose, lips, and facial hair. Plus, you can choose various tattoo patterns, graph text on clothing, and it doesn’t stop there. Attitude even features options to customize the your wrestlers' personality, theme music, crowd cheers, entrances, and more! There's just too many easter eggs bundled in this game to highlight. Suffice it to say, the game has made me happy enough to keep playing continously throughout the day and night.

Moving on, you can customize the attributes of wrestling matches. Examples such as:

• Hard Core Matches: (which allows weapons to be activated, no count-outs/no disqualification),
• Iron Man matches (most pins win),
• Gauntlet matches (survival mode), "I quit" matches (loser must be beaten by submission)

Attitude also allows you to create your own Pay-Per-View. You will have complte control over the lighting effects, the ring’s color schemes, apron designs, even name your own pay-per-view. Without a doubt, the features are abundant, simply making this game an impressive package.

To re-emphasize a point mentioned earlier, the control in this game is much tighter than previous efforts. A LOT of players will be frustrated when trying out the tag team modes,(i.e. tagging your partner or double teaming an opponent).These are either not mentioned in the manual or they failed to elaborate significantly of these details. Fortunately, there are FAQ's which can be accessed online to assist you. Be sure to read them, I guarantee you'll have fun playing this game.

In conclusion and to state a personal inflection, I became a wrestling freak since I got cable in September 1998. WWF Attitude truly emulates the Raw Shows almost perfectly. Packed with and abundant degree of sex appeal, profanity (toggled via an option), taunts, and signature moves (I just cant enough of that Corporate Elbow); I'd have to stress that this game won't just be enjoyed by wrestling fans alone. In essence, I feel that anyone can have fun playing this game. Thus, I recommend it to anybody looking for a game with a lasting replay value!

· · · Nercm