Wrestle Reviews
WCW VS The World
Release
1997
Format
Sony Playstation
Background
WCW vs The World is actually a pretty big mile stone in pro wrestling video games. First of all it was the first WCW video game in a few years. And also it was pretty much the start of bringing the Virtual Pro Wrestling series over from Japan and making an American wrestling game out of it.
WCW was really blowing up during this time frame so fans were really excited to get to finally play a WCW game. As the last one was WCW Superbrawl which was released on the Super Nintendo.
Presentation
WCW vs The World does have an incredibly large roster of wrestlers. You have many WCW Superstars like Hulk Hogan, Sting, Ric Flair and The Giant for example. But there are also these made up wrestlers from fictional wrestling promotions in there as well. Some of these made up wrestlers are based on real Japanese wrestlers, but for whatever reason they could not obtain the license to use them.
This game has really not aged well at all. And even when it was first released it really did not look all that great either. The wrestlers limbs sometimes look like they are not connected to their bodies which is pretty amusing, but it does kind of take you out of the moment. The actual wrestler models themselves I always thought had a bit of a chunky look to them. But for a first attempt at a 3D WCW game I guess it is really not that bad.
The rest of the game is really pretty bare bones when it comes to the presentation. There are no wrester entrances and perhaps most criminal of all there is no authentic wrestler theme music either. I have yet to find out a reason as to why THQ never used real WCW music for this game.
Game Play
Me and my buddies freaking hated this game when we first played it and I mean hated it. We thought that it sucked big time. Two of my friends came round to my house to check it out the day I bought it and we could not get into it at all. It was just so unlike any wrestling game we had ever played before. We had no clue what to do and were used to wrestling games being just pick up and play games. Once they left though I spent some time getting to learn the game. After all I had just spent £44.99 on this so I was not just going to give up on it.
And after a while I really got into it. It has a pretty cool grapple mechanic where the move you do depends on how long you hold the grapple button. The game does take a while to get to grips with, but once you do you can have some really fun matches. And some of the moves have been animated really well and just look awesome.
There is a decent selection of game modes for the time that the game was released. There was no story mode to play through, but there was various tournaments that you could enter which were kind of fun. At the time this was considered a pretty good selection of game modes. The real fun though was playing this against a buddy who was also pretty skilled at the game.
Final Thoughts
As a predecessor to the incredibly popular WCW and WWF THQ games I think this is a great game to have in your collection. Now I will say that father time has not been kind to this game at all. But it is still cool to own as the first WCW game to be released on the Playstation.
