WWE WrestleMania 21 Review

I’m not going to sugar coat it. WWE WrestleMania 21 is a horrible game and will probably go down in history as one of the most disappointing games ever. WM21 is a mess of bad gameplay and crippling glitches and it is obvious that this game was rushed to retail to meet an unreasonable deadline. Xbox wrestling fans are better off sticking with Raw 2 or Showdown: Legends of Wrestling. They aren’t good games by any means, but they are certainly better than WrestleMania 21.

Deadlines of Doom

WrestleMania 21 is the first wrestling title developed by Studio Gigante, so that right there raises some red flags. You can’t really blame SG for the poor state of WM21, however, because it was THQ that set the deadline that they wanted this game to be released around the same time as the actual WrestleMania 21 event. Given a few more months (or a year …) this game could have probably been decent. In its current state it is filled with bugs and glitches and it is hard to shake the feeling that it is only really halfway done.

Gameplay

The first problem with WM21 is that the controls leave a lot to be desired. It plays basically like any other wrestling game – you have a button for strikes and a couple of grapple buttons – but you only have tiny amount of moves to use and the whole game feels like your character is moving in slow motion. This game moves incredibly slowly and is aggravating to play if you have spent any time with the Smackdown games on PS2. Not only that, but the collision detection is terrible and there is a definite lag between pressing buttons on the controller and having the moves performed onscreen. The collision detection is a problem because you will oftentimes flat out miss grapples and strikes because for whatever reason the game won’t connect them. Combine this with the lag in the controls and it gives your opponent a ton of time to counter and perform a move of their own before you even have a chance to react. This creates a clunky, slow, boring, repetitive, frustrating game that isn’t even in the same league as the wrestling games available on the PS2 and GameCube.

Glitches and Bugs

WrestleMania 21 would be a bad game if the core gameplay was the only problem, but the amount of glitches and bugs you’ll find push it to a completely new level of badness. Wrestlers teleport around the ring seemingly at random which is hideous to watch. Wrestlers will also get stuck in midair for minutes at a time. We did a Royal Rumble match and Mankind got flipped into the air and didn’t come down for a good five minutes. He just floated a couple of feet off of the mat and glitched out until finally falling back down. Because of the bad hit detection you have to be in a precise and perfect position to perform ground moves (strikes or submissions both). If the computer can’t find the position they just stand there and glitch out (seriously twitching and flickering) until you stand up. When the AI actually does find the sweet spot for ground moves, it will get stuck in loops where it will do the same submission on you ten times in a row. At which point you’ll be so weak they can score an easy pinfall. Not fun. I can keep on listing annoying stupid things this game does for ages, but I think you get the idea.

Continued on page 2 ...