ECW: Hardcore Revolution Review
"Oh God, not another wrestling game!" I hear you say? But, before you make up your mind about this game, and stick it at the back of the list of games to buy. I think you might be in for a pleasant surprise. Extreme Championship Wrestling, is an East Coast based organisation, which in case you haven't already guessed by the title, places the emphasis on "extreme wrestling". It's about time we had a whole new generation of wrestling heroes, which these guys are! WWF this aint... They don't just prance around in their brightly coloured tights, like a lot of other wrestlers do. They take it just that one step further! These guys go as far as using foreign objects in the ring. Their unusual take on grappling means they'll do things like throwing opponents through flaming tables and braking breeze blocks over their, (ahem) private bits! ECW is famed for its generous amounts of bloodshed, so it makes sense that there's a barbed wire mode included, in which I guess means; the blood should flow a little quicker and in which the ropes get replaced with, obviously, barbed wire!
The gameplay in ECW is almost identical to WWF Attitude and in that respect it would be hard to shake that feeling of dejavu, like you may have played it before. In it's essence ECW Hardcore Revolution is basically WWF Attitude with a couple of new modes, some new sound effects and new wrestlers and their finishing moves. Once you get into the game and scramble through all the menus and in game controls, it's quite good fun, I suppose.
As far as this game goes. If you want to become a success in the ECW arena, you need quite a bit of persistence! I found the moves damn hard to figure out, and the game really annoying at times, because the computer wrestler ends up jumping off ropes doing summersaults, and doing moves, which at times seems like it's damn near impossible to figure out! It's quite good fun to play if you have a hell of a lot of patience and don't end up getting in a stress and throwing the control pad on the floor, like me (lol)! I find, personally that this game winds me up so much that I kind of get in a major stress, start swearing, turn evil and make it my damn mission to master this game... before I think, "ah sod this", then give up! : 0)
I think, navigating around the menu screens is pretty straightforward. I have to admit, I thought it was pretty over-board when I first saw it. But when I finally got used to the game, moving around the screens became a lot easier. This really isn't a game where you can just dive into the game headfirst, stab at all the buttons wildly and expect to get anywhere fast! Getting moves off can be quite hard at times. The main problem being that there's a whole lot of control system to be dealt with before you can even begin to have fun with ECW.
Here is a list of controls to navigate your way around the main menu
On the title screen, press START. This will take you to the main menu.
Move the Analogue stick up/down, to highlight the menu item of your choice.
Move Analogue stick left/right, So you can toggle the highlighted menu settings.
A button. Will confirm your selection/take you to your next screen.
B button. This will cancel your selection/take you bake to your previous screen.
Start. This will pause the game.
Z button. This brings up the help menu.
There are Four different kind of modes to choose from. They are Exhibition, Career, Tournament, and Pay-per-view. There are also Three other modes on the main screen, which are: Create-a-wrestler, Utilities and Cheat menu.
Graphically, this game is an extremely nice looking game which I think will keep you hooked for quite some time. The animations come across as really smooth in which I can't find anything to complain about! It sounds really good as well. When the folks in the audience are cheering, you could be forgiven for thinking it's a real audience. That's only when everyone is cheering, though! I reckon the announcer comes across as really good and quite accurate! He seems to keep in time with the wrestlers actions. But because Joey Styles (the voice of ECW) is working alone, there isn't an over flow of speech. The only problem with the game's sound is, when you customise your own wrestler, you're seriously limited to the entrance theme songs you can choose from. The theme songs you have to choose from are the entrance songs of real wrestlers. But, considering there are over 40 wrestlers, only having 10 songs to choose from does get a little boring after a while! Another thing, which is slightly annoying about the game is, While wrestling, it's inevitable that the audience is going to shout and cheer. But what I find stupid is that for no reason what so ever the entire audience suddenly stops cheering, which I think would be totally unrealistic in a real wrestling situation! When they do cheer, they usually spout off a load of totally lame phrases. It's obvious; you either like or hate a wrestler. Either way you'll cheer or boo, to get your opinion across. I bet there's well over a thousand people at theses wrestling venues, and for it to suddenly go totally quite is quite frankly completely stupid and unrealistic!
Personally, I'm undecided about this game. It's quite a good game, but because it's ECW and not WWF, I don't like it as much. In no way does that affect the game at all. Because the game it self, is still extremely good! This game is worth the buy if wrestling games are your thing. I don't really know whether this game, personally would be on my list of games to buy. I like a lot of aspects about it but there's a few, which quite frankly, get on my nerves! It's a really nice looking and sounding game and has big possibilities for all you wrestling fans who like to get in on the action with a good old console game. I'm afraid; I just can't be included in that category. The reason being, as far as thrash-em and bash-em games go, I've always preferred, things like Street fighter EX, and Mortal Kombat style beat-em-ups. I just can't be arsed with all these wrestling games. I'd much rather watch it on television!