A Wrestling Game For Wrestling Fans - A Novel Concept Indeed

The original WWF Raw for Xbox was, for the lack of a better term, a disaster. While the wrestling engine itself was sound and promising, the game struggled thanks to lackluster and stiff gameplay along with a major lack of redeeming features (many of which were removed at the last minute despite the game being delayed some 4 months) to encourage any kind of replay value aside from the multiplayer. THQ and Anchor definitely had something going with Raw, but it lacked that oomph that makes a wrestling game turn out better than the average grappler. With that in mind, it’s quite an achievement that WWE Raw 2 is such a solid wrestling game. Gone is the clumsy and stiff gameplay, replaced by more fluid animation and better match pacing, and all the necessary intangibles are in play for rewarding replay value for single and multiplayer exploits. It still could use a bit of tweaking and fixing to really make the game shine, but as is Raw 2 is a surprising effort that truly feels like a wrestling game for wrestling fans, instead of a wrestling game for fighting game fans.

WWE Raw 2 is absolutely loaded with gameplay modes, unlike the original who boasted a tag team bout as a special feature apparently. Every major WWE match is included with some small exceptions (no Survivor Series or Elimination Chamber, though there is a 6 man Armageddon match, and damnit, again no Stephanie McMahon’s dirty panties on a pole match, damn you THQ), and all can be played by yourself or with friends, real or imaginary. There’s Hell in a Cell, TLC, Ladder, Table, and even plain old one on one matches (I remember those like it was yesterday, since yesterday was about 1998). There’s also the famous Royal Rumble and now-defunct King of the Ring formats as well, letting you have up to 64 wrestlers in a Rumble (usually it’s 30, which is the default setting here) and 8 in a KotR tourney. About the only thing missing is online play – and given the amount of wrestling fans who live up to the stereotypes, this is probably not a bad thing. Either way though, there’s plenty of match variety in Raw 2.

There’s also 60+ WWE Superstars, ranging from the big names like Hogan, Austin, Rock, Lesnar, Angle, and Goldberg, to bums like the Hollys, Billy Gunn, as well as a loaded assortment of WWE Divas like Stacy, Torrie, and Stephanie McMahon. No Sable despite her return to the WWE, unfortunately. If you don’t like any of these stars, the great CAS (Create-A-Superstar) mode will be just the ticket. The Xbox allows for one new sprinkle of goodness to the process – custom soundtracks. Not only is the engine deep for creating numerous past stars and plenty of your own wicked creations, and assign them unique movesets, but the game lets you use custom soundtracks to give your wrestler a unique theme to go along with their own unique entrance that lets you set lights, pyro, and all that jazz. This is particularly great for old WWF fans, as you can then rip old WWF themes to the drive and assign them to a legend for more authentic entrances and such – only here can Bret “Hitman” Hart return and even come out to his own theme music!

The central focus of Raw 2, above all other options, is the Season feature for up to 4 players at once (hurray!). Raw 2 lets you choose a wrestler and take them to the top, or take an existing superstar and keep them up there. Throughout the endless seasons, you can attempt to gain allies, attack a wrestler to start a feud, court a manager, or just generally annoy other WWE wrestlers. Of course, you can also win all the WWE titles, and defend them in all manner of gimmick or regular matches. The season is rather similar to the one in WWF Smackdown 2, with lots of matches and a decent bit of interaction, though at least here you get to defend your title on a consistent basis. There’s 3 events per month – one Raw, one Smackdown, and that month’s Pay-Per-View event, so the seasons go by at a fairly brisk pace as to not bore you too much after a while.

Raw 2 vaguely emphasizes the roster split of the current era – there’s champions for each division, but wrestlers do cross over and fight on other shows and against competition from the other side of the roster. To be honest, this is the way it should be in WWE for real, so I tend to like it. The only oddball thing is the constant title changing (each title has changed about 10 times in a year, except the WWE Title because I’m champion), and the tag team combos can be very strange (Jackie and the Big Show? Eh?), and when Trish Stratus can beat Shawn Michaels in a ladder match for the World title, weird stuff is going on. For some, this will be a major turn off, but it can be dealt with, especially if you end up enjoying the gameplay of Raw.

Speaking of Gameplay, Raw 2 is a vast improvement over the original. The original Raw felt stiff, plodding, and generally very sloppy and annoying. Anchor obviously understood as they did tweak the existing engine and managed to make the game much more fluid and responsive. The main system of grappling is here, but now it’s much easier to chain moves and get the action going. In no time flat you can learn the little tricks of the trade and perform much better than you ever could in the original Raw. There’s a good amount of moves to boot, and very easy to execute. The responsive control makes things even better, as the game actually looks like a wrestling match instead of 2 guys in their underwear grabbing at each other for 10 minutes. Finishing moves are easily executed once you fill up your voltage meter (more on that in a bit), with a simple press of a couple buttons. It’s a shame that you can’t map your controls like the first Raw to make it a one button press, but it’s not too bad. The main problem is the only way to pull off special moves is in a grapple, which leaves many wrestlers unable to do their finisher’s since they don’t do it out of the grapple. They need to employ a more Smackdown-like system to let you perform finishers properly.

The voltage meter is the main health meter, and has changed a bit from the first Raw. In the first Raw the voltage meter measured more like crowd reaction, and as you repeated moves again and again they’d turn against you even if you were Steve Austin or The Rock. Now, the voltage meter is more like a “heart rate” for a wrestler – when they’re all fired up and full of adrenaline, you can pull off your finisher, and when the wrestler is nearly out of life, his voltage meter reads like a dim heartbeat along with a “danger” designation flashing on his voltage meter. This is when you go in for the kill and try to finish the match. Combining plenty of moves (or just generally kicking butt and controlling the pace of the match) along with some taunting (especially on the top rope, that always gets the blood pumping) is the key to maxing out your voltage meter. After it’s at full peak it does go down to normal, so do your business while you can and wear down your opponent.

There are a couple of really bothersome flaws in Raw 2 though that knock it down a couple notches. First off, the AI is…weird. They don’t tend to pull off much offense aside from punches and kicks, and don’t do a lot of reversals sometimes. The computer tends to stand there while you set them up for moves, and doesn’t put up a big fight. Yet, while they do that, they tend to kick out even if you’ve done your finisher 2 times in a row! The balance for the AI is quite strange indeed. One of the funniest things I saw was a rare time when I got knocked down in a fight – the AI went in for the pin. I kicked out. They gave me a couple boots to the midsection and pinned again. I kicked out. Rinse and repeat for 3 more times in about a minute until Goldberg lost his mind, got up, and speared A Train straight to hell for the constant pinning. Also, in tag team matches, your partner tends to grab at the legs of the guy you’re pinning instead of attacking the partner who’s coming in for the save – making it a 2 on 1 handicap match essentially. Annoying. Naturally against human opponents this isn’t important, but if you’re playing Season mode, be prepared for some strange stuff.

There’s also the matter of the referees. While it’s cool that they modeled 3 different WWE refs and even got their voices (yet…no superstar voices?) put in. But they count so slow and act so dumb that it’s insane. When you make a pin, not only does it take them 2 seconds to start the count, they take days to count to 3. No wonder people kick out of the finishers when it takes 10 seconds to count to 3! It’s like they’ve forgotten how to count quickly. Wrestling games always seem to not know how to properly do a 3 count, but Raw 2 takes the cake for ridiculousness.

Somehow though, WWE Raw 2 manages to overcome these nagging flaws for one reason – the game is fun. Plus it feels like a wrestling game – not a fighting game that many have become over the years. The WWE atmosphere is great, if a bit limited, and the wrestling action is fluid and strategic, yet fast paced at the same time (but not spastic). It’s still rough around the edges, but it’s a marked improvement over the first Raw, which was a troubled, troubled game. I was quite the skeptic before putting my $50 down on Raw 2, but the game ended up being pleasantly surprised by just how good it ended up being. As someone who hasn’t really watched wrestling in a long while, Raw 2 is a great reminder of how fun the WWF used to be only a few years ago.

Raw 2 is also vastly improved in the visual department. Gone are the stiff character models that looked like they just spent a night in a prison with Bubba, replaced by more fluid and realistic looking wrestlers who only slightly look like they’ve been playing pee pee up the poo poo. This affects the gameplay as well, given the stiff models of the first Raw were a hindrance to the game. The wrestlers now look and move great and even have a great entrance quite often (Goldberg’s signature entrance is here and is great). When you pile on the effects with a user-made intro for a created star the game tends to slow down, but only during the entrance, so it can be dealt with.

The other intangibles of the graphics are nice as well – a fully animated crowd loaded up with signs praising or taunting wrestlers and 14 different wrestling arenas fully recreated from the real deal only add to the atmosphere and really exploit what the Xbox can do. When the wrestlers hit the ring, the animations work together to create a wrestling game that moves along at a fluid pace and even looks somewhat graceful in action at times. The wrestlers are a bit too shiny at times looking like they borrowed some of the Divas’ sparkle shine stuff, making them look almost cel-shaded, but that’s about the only real thing I can find even remotely problematic with WWE Raw 2’s graphical presentation.

The audio is a classic case of hit or miss. There are no wrestler voices or play-by-play, so when you see a cut-scene of a match announcement or backstage discussion, the only way to know what’s going on is via body language (which is pretty good). Given that there hasn’t been any wrestler voices in a game since the horrid WWF Attitude, this is nothing new but the Xbox can handle all the voices, so lets get them in there. There are grunts and groans as they take damage in the matches, but they’re generic grunts and groans. The crowd does get into the matches, especially if a wrestler is wowing them with moves constantly. They do tend to get annoyed though when a wrestler repeats stuff over and over, which is also pretty cool and realistic.

Of course, the music of Raw is great. Every wrestler has their entrance theme (though a few have outdated ones), and of course, the custom soundtrack can let you customize the themes of a created superstar, so those can only be as bad as your taste in music. Otherwise, you have in-match music that is not too bad (really, custom soundtracks could have worked here), and original menu music (aside from the Raw theme that plays in the main menu) that also is well done. Some games tend to go overboard with audio – Raw 2 doesn’t.

The Bottom Line

WWE Raw 2 is a very pleasant surprise. The first Raw was very disappointing and not very fun at all, and yet Raw 2 is a blast for solo or multiple players. The wealth of gameplay options and creatable wrestlers adds a lot of replay, and while there’s some strange flaws in-game, the action plays like a real WWE match and is surprisingly fun. Though it’s not too far off from the original game, Raw 2 has been tweaked to play extremely well and deep enough to last a gamer a very long time. Xbox fans have been waiting for a long time for a good wrestling game (since they didn’t get Def Jam Vendetta), and thankfully, WWE Raw 2 is it.