Which button do I use to betray my partner?

Inside the ring, things really take a nosedive and the game crosses over from quirky and annoying to evil and malicious. One of the worst transgressions is encountered when your wrestler is low on energy. The opponent can knock you down and cover you for the pin, and when you kick out, he can just cover you again. Now imagine this happening for five pin attempts in a row, with your wrestler immobilized as you frantically pound on the buttons and scream, "Get up!" If you are playing against the computer, until you get good enough not to be weakened and laid out you will be in this position a lot. Your wrestler will lay with his back glued to the mat while the CPU wrestler dutifully goes for pin attempt after pin attempt. Of course, once you do get that good, you might want to try the harder level, which comes with its own set of problems that we won't get into.

If you're playing a tag match with a CPU partner and he happens to start off, you will probably never be tagged in. He will fight the whole match. If you are in and you try to pin your opponent, your partner will come in - not to stop the other opponent from breaking the pin, but to keep relentlessly grabbing at your back, as if trying to pick up the fallen foe while he is being pinned. Many times, your partner or manager will just stare into the ring, ignoring people striking him with fists, kicks, and foreign objects. Inexplicable, unless you consider . . . poor programming.

The referee will sometimes complete a three-count for a pin or a ten-count for wrestlers outside the ring, then the wrestler will kick out or come in and the match will continue as if the count never occurred. Other times he will not count at all, just staring at some other wrestler in some far corner of the screen. What's he thinking about? I'd say it's probably . . . poor programming.

When you interfere in a friend's match in Season mode, the computer will take control of your wrestler if you don't leave the ring after about thirty seconds. And I am not talking about merely being forced out of the ring. I mean the computer will take over your guy and do whatever it wants, attacking people you don't want to attack, doing things you don't want to do, until it finally decides to leave. Once you are outside, you will regain control, but if you should happen to use a ladder to jump back in the ring, you will become possessed once again – and if you happened to be facing your friend when you landed, guess who you will probably end up attacking. And if this is a title match you're interfering in, don't be surprised if you end up with the belt, even though you weren't legally in the match. Yes, not only can a champion lose the belt on a disqualification, but he can lose it to the first person that interferes in his match! Extraordinarily poor programming there. Just awful.

What's so civil about Raw anyway?

So what was all that talk about the game being fun in spite of its shortcomings? Simple: if you enjoy wrestling games and you only play with at least one friend that also enjoys wrestling games, you will probably have a good time.

There are so many senseless limitations and so much unfinished business that almost everyone will have something to hate, but if you keep your standards low and you play in a loud, pizza-fueled group, it's easy to deal with the game's faults. You can play with up to six wrestlers in matches that include Hell in a Cell, cage, ladder, table, and Royal Rumble. Season mode supports up to four entrants and interfering in other people's matches (whether to help them win or to cause them to lose) is great fun. Create a Superstar is commendably in-depth and, like the one in Wrestlemania XIX, includes some Virtua Fighter moves. The gameplay is not too good, but it has some favorable points, such as the ability to reverse double-team moves.

Season mode is probably the single strongest selling point this title has, and I would be remiss if I didn't describe it in a little more depth. One season is broken into twelve months, with each month divided into a Raw show, a SmackDown show, and a pay-per-view. Your ultimate task is to win and hold both the WWE and the World titles, thus becoming the Undisputed Champion.

Along the way, you make your presence known: sneak attacking enemies, manipulating third parties, calling out superstars, hiring and firing managers, and generally getting in feuds and alliances as much as you can handle them. Play your cards right and you will be rewarded with increased popularity and, eventually, title shots. You choose what action to take before each match on each card, except for the matches you wrestle in.

There are just enough new cut scenes to keep you playing the whole year, and you may actually find yourself enjoying the challenge of winning someone's trust while making someone else's life a living hell. Before each selection, you can refer to a list of your closest allies and worst enemies, with each name color-coded according to the intensity of the relationship. There is some rudimentary strategy involved in the decision making process, but there is little logic to what happens in the short-term. Turn on your tag-team partner once or twice (that's "turn on" as in "betray," not "seduce") and he will probably still defend the belts with you.

None of the cut scenes has any dialogue, spoken or written. You just watch the action and read a one- or two-word description of what is happening. The backstage fighting is a farce. It is confined to one small room and you only have your standing and running strikes, the same mounted punches as everyone else, and your forward grapple finisher. You hit your opponent a few times to make him dizzy, then press the grapple button to perform your finisher and end the scene. If you grapple before your opponent is dizzy, you jump on him and start punching. A game of tic-tac-toe would have been almost as exciting.

You earn points for leaving Wrestlemania as the Undisputed Champion and also based on playing different match types, but the unlockables are so disappointing you may refuse to believe that's all there is.

Big Daddy Kool-Aid

That should cover most of what you should know about Raw 2, the Kool-Aid of wrestling games. Just like those little 20¢ packets of fruity powder, this game relies on you to add most of the good stuff. If you are willing to add a custom soundtrack, create your own wrestlers, ignore a ton of miserable code and faded effects, and just press ahead with the matches, Raw 2 is good for more than a few laughs. But if you are worried about how much the negative comments outweighed the positive ones in this review, and you don't want to reward games that don't reward the player, then go with your gut and spend your money elsewhere.

Back to Page One of our WWE Raw 2 review

· · · Nick