History of WWF/E Games Part 40
WWE Aftershock
Release
2005
Format
Nokia N-Gage
Time to look at the only WWE game on N-Gage.
Background
Ah…Nokia’s attempt to get into the hand held market. I think (and this is just my opinion) that the two main mistakes they made with the first design were the shape of the console, and the fact that the screen should have been in landscape and not portrait. They did re-release the N-Gage and the shape was better, but the screen was still in portrait.
Still though despite not being a huge success, there was a WWE game released for the N-Gage, and this may sound a little excessive here but I own 4 copies of this in my collection. No I am not insane, I picked three of them up for £0.99 when a mobile phone store was pretty much begging people to take there N-Gage stock. Another interesting thing is that this was not the first WWE game on a mobile phone. Before this there was numerous WWE java games that were released.
Presentation
Man this is one ugly game. I do not even think you can say it looks good for a N-Gage game. The wrestlers of which there are 12 are just a jaggy mess of polygons who in some cases look like they are from a different planet. They did include wrestler entrances, but the animation is just so bad that you do not really know what to make of them.
There are a few arenas for you to wrestle in, but these like the wrestlers are just jaggy and horrible to look at. The best way to describe the game I think is it is like you are watching a bad illegal copy of a DVD and it goes all blocky and distorted that is; how I think this game looks. You may even think that in the screen shots it only looks bad because they are blown up, but trust me they look just as bad on the N-Gage screen.
The animation of the moves is just brutal. The wrestlers do not even walk, and as a mater of fact I do not even have the vocabulary to describe the way that they awkwardly move around the ring. There are a limited set of moves, but that does not mater as when two wrestlers connect its hard to tell what is happening. One amusing thing is the way the wrestlers kick. There body does not move there leg just goes straight up it is like something out of a Atari 2600 game, but without the charm of an Atari 2600 game. To be fair I think that they were trying to be to ambitious with the graphics in the game and maybe should have just gone for a 2D wrestling game.
Game Play
Garbage……… really that is all that needs to be said the game is just no fun to play. It is just flat out boring. Your wrestlers do have a few moves, but they are so poorly animated that I doubt you will care and just try and win the match with punches and kicks.
There is a poor selection of game modes. There is no season mode which I am not surprised about to be honest, but they could of at least put in a tournament to win a title where you just beat a series of opponents. If I had to say what the main single player mode was it would be the King of the Ring mode. Where you are in a tournament to be the King of the Ring, and I think I am being kind giving them the credit for this. You get some basic one on one matches and some tag matches. It is worth noting that through Bluetooth you can play this in multi player.
Which in the case of a tag match you will probably wish the game allowed for four player multi player as the AI in tag matches is atrocious. If you hit your opponent say twice they will run and make the tag and they do this over and over again; it is just brutal.
Final Thoughts
Is WWE Aftershock the worst WWE game I have every played????? Well you know what I think it certainly would be right up there near the top. This is one of those games that I honestly cannot find anything good to say about it. The funny thing is the people behind this game Exient Entertainment have a pretty decent record of porting licenses to various systems. This is one of those games that it’s worth having in your collection just because it is mind blowing how bad it is. I do not even think you can blame the limitations of the N-Gage because Tony Hawk, Tomb Raider and Pandemonium (great game by the way!) all are decent.
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