No one.

But if you're Acclaim, you shop around, do a little wheeling and dealing, and put a game together about a bunch of loosely tied together individuals who are no longer associated with the WWF (and some who are). Enter Legends of Wrestling, featuring such famous acts as "The man who put wrestling on the map," Hulk Hogan; "The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be," Bret Hart; and "The whole f*n show," Rob Van Damme. Not too shabby, not too shabby at all...

...or is it?

Well like most things in life, the quality of the game isn't solely defined by the cast of characters it offers. There are little factors like graphics. And gameplay. And thus the dance begins....

Graphically, Legends has a very cartoony, exaggerated style far removed from the psuedo-realism of Smackdown and Raw is War. The price of this is that the whole thing looks kind of...wonky. The look doesn't come together entirely well. It reminds me a lot of low budget CG graphics in the early days of CGI. Furthering this feeling is the fact that everyone looks kind of bloated in this cartoon style, which doesn't quite do justice to a game about a bunch of guys who are supposed to be strapping badass athletes. The number of venues, while not huge, dwarfs the "interchangable setpiece" approach of the WWF games. But, visually speaking, the game ends up looking like a crappy 3D animated show.

The sound doesn't fare a whole lot better. The effects are fine enough, but a game which SHOULD have scads of character when it comes to sound, doesn't. No cool sound bites of Hogan telling us to take our vitamins and say our prayers, none of the wrestler's classic opening themes (which are all probably owned by the WWF), nothing! It's really quite disappointing.

And that, unfortunately, is not the only thing. While the game makes the smart move of ditching the old Warzone/WWF Attitude engine, the replacement is quite the mixed bag. There are a lot of interesting things, like the combo system, but you see, none of that really matters to me because, well...

It's slow. It's sooooo painfully slow. Not that the controls are sluggish, but the characters take so long to go through their move animations that it almost seems less interactive as a result. And when your product is "electronic interactive entertainment", the more interactive the better. I, personally, have been wanting wrestling titles to become more fighting-game like for a while now, so you can just imagine how displeased I was with this particular development. Your options for matches are also painfully limited. No cage matches!? What kind of foul treachery...!? Then again, WWF Raw on the X-Box suffers from the same problem, but it's still painful to be able to play as Supafly Jimmy Snuka and not recreate his massive dive from the top of the cage.

What we have here is a case of a good concept (great classic wrestlers...and RVD) with really poor execution. While I wasn't expecting much more from a game that is descended from the WWF: Attitude series, still...it would've been nice. It would've also been nice if Andre the Giant was included, but that's the least of this game's worries.

· · · Riisuke