Wrestle Reviews
The Scorpion King
Release
2002
Format
Sony Playstation 2
Nintendo Game Cube
Background
“What the hell does this have to do with wrestling?” The Scorpion King was the first time that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would be the leading man in a movie, and this movie due to its success would see The Rock no longer be a full time WWE wrestler.
For those of you who do not know, The Rock had a very small part in the smash hit movie The Mummy Returns where he played The Scorpion King. It has been said that the salary that The Rock got for The Scorpion King was one of the highest ever paid to an actor for their debut leading role. This movie was made as a prequel to The Mummy series.
Presentation
The game does not follow the events of the movie and instead serves as a prequel to the movie. So what we have here is a game that is a prequel to a movie that is also a prequel to a movie. The game to be honest really does not look amazing. They have managed to capture the look of The Rock and his character Mathayus pretty well, but the rest of the characters all kind of look bland. The environments though look pretty decent and they has really captured the look of the movie. It is just not a game that is going to blow your mind.
The game has some really bad CGI cut scenes that move the story along. I think that they really should have just made the cut scenes with the in game character models. The voice acting is really good and they actually got The Rock to lend his voice to the game which is really cool. I had a very hard time though hearing The Rock talk in a video game and not talk trash to people like he did in the WWE.
Game Play
This is a game to cash in on a movie so let’s get that out of the way right now. But to be fair as far as movie tie in games go it really is not all that bad. This is your typical action beat’em up style game. You play as Mathayus who has four weapons at his disposal. While four weapons may not sound like a great deal you can do some pretty cool combos, and you do have a decent amount of attacks. You will take down wave after wave of enemies of which there is a good variety. The enemies range from little birds to big huge titans for you to kill.
There really is not a great deal to this game besides the combat. There is the odd puzzle here and there, but to be honest these are not really going to give you any problems at all. Each stage is a case of getting from point A to B while taking down hordes of enemies. I kind of like this and its good every once and awhile to turn your brain off with a hack and slash style game. The combat is satisfying and the controls are nice and tight. I do think that this is one of those games though that once you have beaten once, you would probably never play again.
Final Thoughts
Would I have been interested in this game had it not starred The Rock? No, I probably not. But if you’re a wrestling game collector, then I do think this is a game that should be in your collection. At the end of the day it’s a game that is never going to be in any top ten lists, but there is still some fun to be had here. If you like games like Zombie Revenge or Die Hard Arcade then you would have fun with this.
For additional reviews by Jason Delacey: Click Here
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