This Aint No Attitude Problem. its the other way around (WWF Attitude (DC))

Member Name: tonyhawley

Product:	WWF Attitude (DC)
Date:	22/11/01 (46 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Short Load Times , Tons of Wrestlers , Great Entrance Themes

Disadvantages: Frustrating Controls for Novice Players , No Training Mode , No Videotaped Challenges

WWF Attitude opinion by Tony hawley

WWF Attitude is a great game if you're a wrestling fan. As a strong simulation of the squared circle, Attitude features enough wrestlers, moves and match options to keep its replay value high for years, and it's also a great game for four-player slugfests.

Finally, the WWF has come back to Sega! WWF Attitude is the first wrestling game for the new Sega Dreamcast system, and serves as an excellent final chapter for Acclaim's long-standing association with the World Wrestling Federation.

The partnership dates back to the mid-1980s, when Acclaim released Wrestlemania for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Approximately a dozen games for a half-dozen different systems followed. But now, the WWF has chosen to dissolve their relationship with Acclaim and future WWF releases will come from THQ.

Attitude, the sequel to WWF Warzone for the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64, was released first for those systems. This led to some speculation about whether the Dreamcast version would feature more options, flashier ring entrances, or even videotaped "challenge" sequences. However, the three releases turned out almost identically.

The Dreamcast version of WWF Attitude lives up to most of the hype surrounding it, featuring 40 WWF superstars and 2 other personalities, all as playable characters. The inventive create-a-wrestler mode is greatly improved. Although it is still somewhat difficult to create an exact likeness of wrestlers from the past or from other organizations, the amount of costume designs, accessories and programmable moves is staggering.

Unfortunately, Attitude suffers from the removal of two of the features important to the runaway success of Warzone: the training gym mode, and the videotaped challenges. The challenges were an added bonus to the career mode in Warzone. At random times in the course of making your way through the ranks to the W
WF championship, you would be challenged by the wrestler you just defeated to a brutal specialty match. I can only guess that this feature would take up too much space in Attitude, which has over three times as many playable wrestlers.

As far as the training gym, Attitude is more of a pure wrestling simulation than its main competition, THQ's newest WCW games and the recently released Wrestlemania 2000 for the Nintendo 64. Unlike gamers using THQ products, Attitude players must learn and master button combinations to pull off a complicated move. While the in-game pause menu allows you to view the combinations for moves, this system suffers from two major drawbacks.

First, you can only view your wrestler's moves from his current position on the mat when the game was paused (standing/opponent standing; on turnbuckle/opponent on ground; and running/opponent standing are a few examples). This makes it difficult for a player to plan a string of moves unless you have played before with a particular wrestler. And yes, button combinations for the same move may vary from wrestler to wrestler, or the move may simply not be present at all. Secondly, a player unaccustomed to the controls set forth in Warzone will find it unusually difficult to do any move other than a basic armbar without constantly pausing to find out which buttons do what. This hurts the game from a multiplayer standpoint (it supports 1-4 players) because it is frustrating for a novice to sit down with someone who owns the game and not be destroyed in under three minutes.

On the positive side, the Dreamcast's processing power has nearly eliminated load times, especially helpful for Attitude, which suffered badly from slow-loading on the PSX.

The graphics for the Dreamcast version are also the cleanest of the three versions, and are far superior to Warzone, and in my opinion, still better than Wrestlemania 2000 for N64. The developers brushed up the area around t
he ring just a little for Dreamcast, adding some movement to the crowd in order to create a bit more realism in the environment.

Warzone was the first game to program entrances for wrestlers, and Attitude has improved on them greatly. When the match begins, their theme music plays, they walk down the ramp and through the ropes into the squared circle. Depending on the complexity of the entrance (Stone Cold Steve Austin walks through breaking glass, the arena lights go out and torches flare up for the Undertaker), you can just sit back and watch the show for a good 5-10 minutes. Of course, you also have the option of skipping through this part and getting right to the action.

Attitude also features a blood mode, where wrestlers are sometimes busted open during the course of a match, and teen language mode, where Austin will routinely mention "openin' a can of whup-ass" and Chyna will appear to the "No Chance in Hell" theme song. Both of these modes can be turned off in the options menu, just in case parents are in the room.

Attitude features dozens of unique matches, including singles, tag team, triple threat, triangle elimination, survivor series, royal rumble, stable and 4-player war. Special stipulations can be added to the match, making it a falls-count-anywhere hardcore match, last man standing or steel cage first-blood contest. The possibilities, and entertainment value, are limitless!

A small drawback, however, is the reduced number of unique costumes for the WWF superstars. The PlayStation version features four per wrestler, while the Dreamcast only has two. For the PSX, alternate costumes could be selected by holding one of three controller buttons when choosing a grappler, but this feature was mysteriously deleted from Attitude. The only time you'll see a single alternate costume is when the same wrestler is selected more than once for the same match.

As mentioned above, Attitude's
create-a-wrestler mode is easily the best I've seen. You can design a grappler from scratch, choosing body type (male, female, skinny, average, fat), color, clothing and facial features, then selecting the moves he does from scratch or copying one of the 40 sets of moves already present. Then you name your wrestler, choose whether the fans will cheer or boo him, use a variable points system to determine how strong, fast and charismatic he is, and pick his entrance (how he walks to the ring). In addition, Attitude features more than 30 individual entrance theme songs, as well as over a dozen more original tunes that can be used in create-a-wrestler mode.

Overall, WWF Attitude for the Sega Dreamcast is an excellent wrestling simulation, and would make a fine addition to anyone's library of video games.

By Tony Hawley

P.S I hope you liked my review it took me a long time

Summary: