Strikes, grapples and reversals are all assigned to just a few buttons, and special moves are performed with a combination of those buttons. CM Punk even has a damn Shoryuken, which is awesome by the way.Īll-Stars allows for some insane juggle combos that can be performed by everyone with just a couple of button presses. The majority of your offense is tied to combos, though it’s nothing as complicated as something like Street Fighter or Tekken. Less of a wrestling game, though the emphasis is on the graps, All-Stars shares a lot more in common with a fighting game. You could even argue that it helped inspire the likes of WWE Immortals, the mobile fighting game from NetherRealm Studios.Īnd it is fun to play. It’s this outlandish aspect of the game that makes All-Stars as fun to watch as it is to play, and it’s certainly more appealing to a non-fan than any other wrestling game.
Of course, it helps that when John Cena hits an Attitude Adjustment, he jumps 20 feet into the air before driving his opponent into the canvas. The cartoonish aspect helps to capture what wrestlers, or superstars if you prefer the Vince McMahon Vocabulary™, are portrayed as in the WWE: superheroes. Andre’s hands are the size of Rey Mysterio, Triple H’s nose could be used as a boat rudder and Hulk Hogan’s 24-inch pythons are more like anacondas. Each wrestler was a cartoonish caricature of themselves, with their features exaggerated to an insane degree. Graphically, WWE All Stars showcases all your favourite wrestlers and legends as you know and love them, but here they better represent the larger-than-life persona that they exude whenever they appeared on screen.
Whilst some pairings are as trivial as “The Celtic Warrior vs The Ultimate Warrior”, the packages themselves are beautifully done. Meanwhile, Fantasy Warfare mode asks the age old pub question of “who would win in a fight between X and Y?” Pairing off a legend with a superstar, each fight in this mode is accompanied by a video package assessing the similarities and differences between the superstar and the legend. Lastly, the Tag Team path had you chase after DX, as they cut fourth wall breaking promos like only post-2006 DX can. The Superstar path tread more familiar waters, putting you on a collision course with Randy Orton as he cuts mediocre promos because that’s what Orton does after all.
The Legend path sees you in the crosshairs of The Undertaker, in his full retro gimmick complete with coffins and Paul Bearer yucking it up next to him. Path of Champions was like an arcade/gauntlet mode of sorts, giving you one of three routes to championship gold. It was such a big selling point for the game that two separate modes were created based on that concept. The whole appeal of the game was watching Hulk Hogan fight Rey Mysterio, or Andre the Giant wrestle Eddie Guerrero. Whilst the “main” WWE games always contained legends, they were never the focus, but All-Stars was built on a foundation of coming for that nostalgia dollar. The game contained a roster of 30 wrestlers: 15 current wrestlers (at the time anyway, considering CM Punk was on the roster) and 15 legends. Released in 2011, WWE All-Stars was created almost as a celebration of all things WWE.
The game also managed to find its way onto PS2, Wii, PSP and 3DS, but those versions are a hollow shell compared to the delights you can sample on the full fat versions.
Strap yourself in.įirst things first, when we’re talking about WWE All-Stars, we specifically mean the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. Yes, this is today’s freshly served hot take. In the eyes of wrestling game fans, WWF No Mercy is practically untouchable.īut what if we told you there was another way a better way? A game that takes everything that WWF No Mercy has to offer, and amplifies it to such a degree that the classic game can’t even hold a candle to it? It’s a bold claim to live up to, but WWE All-Stars does just that. The combination of exciting gameplay, deep customisation and nostalgia for the Attitude Era have created this mystique surrounding the game.
As mentioned in our list of the best wrestling games, WWF No Mercy is usually the go to answer.