Gaming Target - Game Boy: WWE Road to WrestleMania X8

Written by Adam Woolcott on January 16, 2003

Review: Further proof that you indeed can slip crap into a GBA cartridge.

Ever since the days of Pro Wrestling on the NES (A winner is you!), video game consoles practically require wrestling games to keep the demographics right, since a lot of wrestling fans are video game players (however, this term cannot be reversed). Naturally the Game Boy Advance is no different and THQ has teamed with Natsume to deliver the second WWF/WWE grappler in the form of WWE Road to WrestleMania X8. Given the notion that the GBA is basically a portable Super Nintendo, I came into WMX8 expecting a game in the same vein as the classic WWF Royal Rumble/WWF Raw games from that console Ц two of my favorite SNES games. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. WMX8 has the modes of play to rival home console versions of the WWE, but contradicts it with lackluster gameplay and a total lack of enjoyment. If you MUST have a wrestling game for GBA, you'd be better off with the acclaimed Firepro Wrestling series Ц but WMX8 is strictly bargain bin material - a УjobberФ of a video game grappler, if you will.

Road to WrestleMania X8 comes equipped with a fairly up-to-date roster of WWE stars Ц names like The Rock, Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, Rob Van Dam, Triple H, Kane, and Kevin Nash are available to choose from Ц no Stone Cold (unfortunately) this time around. Due to cartridge restrictions most likely, a Create-A-Wrestler is not available, so you're stuck with what you're given.

Road to WM does have a good set of match types and features, however. There's steel cage matches, tag team matches, tornado matches and even a King of The Ring ladder tournament to crown a King of wrestling (even though they haven't done the King gimmick for years). As for modes of play, there's 2 forms of the main single player mode (multiplayer is naturally done through link mode with 2 GBA's), the Challenge. Challenge is split into the KOTR mode, or the Road To WrestleMania mode, where you fight a handful of wrestlers until your big fight at WM.

What makes this game fall apart is what happens when you're done selecting modes, and move on to actually fighting. Thanks to the lack of more than 2 face buttons on the GBA, there's a distinct shortage of moves available, so the game can get awfully repetitive. It's nothing to realize you've executed about 5 straight suplexes, because of this lack of move variety. It doesn't help that controlling the wrestlers is very unresponsive Ц it usually takes a few seconds after a tie-up to pull off what you entered, but by then the computer AI has probably laid the smack down on you. It's because of these issues that the game gets very boring, as well as irritating. If they had made better use of the R and L triggers, there might be a difference here, but I just don't find this to be as fun as the old Royal Rumble game from Acclaim, which managed to use all of the six SNES buttons to create a highly entertaining single and multiplayer game.

What hurts Road to WM even more is the moronic computer intelligence, or lack thereof. It's not that it's a pushover, it's because of the easily deciphered patterns that can be used to your advantage that the game becomes even more of a yawner. It turns into a game of wrestlers who only know the body slam and how to punch after a while, and that's no fun. To be honest, Road to WM lacks almost any kind of fun, despite the cool option to keep a list of champions in the cartridge save. It's almost worth itЕ but not quite. Road to WrestleMania just feels like a game rushed out the door with a load of gameplay modes to wow the kids, but bore the crap out of anyone else. Licensed drivel Ц it's FANtastic!

Road to WM's visuals are both good and disturbing at the same time. The wrestlers are modeled in a УmarionetteФ style, and their actions look puppet-like. This actually looks good, because they managed to animate it to look like the wrestlers actions, but it's wholly disturbing because it looks like the marionettes from Castlevania slugging it out. Plus, since WWE overlord Vince McMahon has a rep for using his wrestlers as puppets the artistic statement is both amusing and terrifying. At the very least, the wrestlers look pretty decent and their moves are somewhat realistic. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that it still looks like puppets fighting. For some reason, Natsume saw fit to throw in wrestler entrances that just consist of the theme music and a guy walking down the aisle. Was this more important than a decent fighting engine, a decent moveset, and a challenging computer opponent?

The sounds and music of Road to WM are good for the GBA. The wrestler theme music that plays during their entrance is good enough to be able to pick it out from the real deal, and that's always a good thing. Besides that, the other tunes that play are of the generic form that riddled most 16-bit games, but it's tolerable.

The other part, sound effects, is also passable. The crowd makes a generic wail and melds into the matches (complete with signs). There's also a few gee-whiz Batman sounds when you do attacks. It's nothing to write home about, but nothing to write and bitch about in this review. It's not like you'll want to play this long enough to really analyze it.