Working Title 10.21.11: Working Rant -- Putting Confidence in WWE 12 (and 13...and 14)

Posted by Jordan Williams on 10.21.2011

The WWE's line of video games have grown incredibly stale over the years, but how can they be turned around? 411's Jordan Williams takes a look at how they could improve the franchise in this week's Working Title!

You're lucky I didn't put the video at the bottom on autoplay.

Welcome to the #1 Column that is STILL FUCKING HAPPY that Mark Henry is champ WORKING TITLE. Now like I mentioned last issue I really don't like to gush over my wrestling love in my video game column this week it's actually appropriate because this week's column is about WWE's video game offerings. Essentially WWE12 is right around the corner so I am looking at all of the WWE 12 news and improvements and find myself seeing a similar cycle.

Promises...promises...but still the same old shit. So how can we fix this? Is it time for the WWE games in general to make a huge change or a genre shift or is it just a case of the WWE franchise doomed to be Madden'd out with subtle little changes that are so minute that we end up not caring?

BUT FIRST!

The triumphant return of...


Working Playlist!

Working Playlist used to be called....well...I can't remember what it was called. Either way it's just a quick review/recap of what I've been playing and how I feel about it.


X-Men: Destiny I am a huge Marvel fan (Fuck DC and your capes you flew in on) and I LOVED XML1 and 2 and MUA 1 and 2 (even though 2 was...eh..) and you know what? Where XMD might not be the BEST of the bunch I can still appreciate what they tried to do here. It's not good by any means but it's an example to me anyway of a game that's more fun than it is good. The idea of picking three unknown characters and having them sort of be the "outside looking in" types is a great touch. My only gripe is that the game is terribly short (about 5 hours if you blow through it) and the COPIOUS amounts of dialogue can't be skipped. Also what seems to be the biggest foul is the fact that there is no New Game+. You spend nearly the entire game picking up new powers and costumes and you have to start fresh each time.


Gears of War 3 And I present to your a nominee for Working Title Game of the Year. Yes, I mean that. The game's single player is actually pretty good...from what I've played. Most since I haven't had a lot of time I've been digging into the multiplayer offerings. While I am absolutely fucking horrible when it comes to Versus (a.k.a Shotgun) mode I am loving the hell out of Horde 2.0 and Beast Mode. I just wish Beast Mode was longer than 12 waves and it was bit harder. Even on Insanity it still doesn't take much other than a group of Tickers and a Serapede to wreck shop.


Rage From the 30 minutes I have played...I dunno. It seems like Fallout 3 mixed with Borderlands. Not sure if that's a good thing yet. Once I play a bit more I'll see.


Battlefield 3 Beta I decided I'm not going to play this. Why? Because I am not going to bother playing something that by all accounts is broken and since it's a beta it seems like everyone under the sun will try to glitch it. So I'll just wait until the actual full retail release and GameFly it. Although the backlash it seems to be getting is interesting...I wonder if it's because people don't fully understand that Bad Company and Battlefield were/are two different games.


And now that that is out of the way...WWE.

Now I am not going to discuss the current on-screen product of WWE because that's not what I get paid (HA!) for. Instead I am going to discuss the state of the current on console product.

Mainly how goddamn stale these games have gotten. Are the games bad? Not necessarily...but have they seen major improvement over the years? Nope. Have they pushed the envelope on what can be done with the genre? Hell nope. Are they worth paying 60 dollars year after year to get?....AW HEYULL NAW.


So what can we do to save WWE12 (and 13...and 14)? Well...although WWE will NEVER be a fighting game based on the very nature of it, there are a few tips they can take from the genre in order to change it up.


Working Title: How to put confidence in the WWE franchise

Yeah, I would like I say that I came up with the name for this issue before Monday but we all know that's a stinking lie.

What's also a stinking lie is the act that the WWE games have been super great wrestling franchises for the last few years. To put it bluntly the best parts of the WWE games have all taken place out the ring. The graphics and presentation have all gotten better and the Create-A-[Noun] is actually all kinds of awesome and has seen VAST improvement (although making Divas is still just an exercise in futility). The main thing that sticks out as stale and bad is the in-ring action. The animations are plodding and slow and the story modes which for all intents and purposes should be the main crux of these games have all been boring, flat, and dull. So the first step for me anyway to fix this is to make the story mode better. Of course one might be inclined to think that WWE creative being in charge of a story MIGHT not be the best thing...but if a RECORD company can come up with a decent story....


Story Mode: Def Jam Vendetta Fight of NY and Mortal Kombat 9

You know I love FFNY, in fact I don't know of anyone who actually hates FFNY and it still stands as a pretty damned good way of doing a decent story in a wrestling game (although some might argue that FFNY was more fighter than grappler). The main problem with the majority of the Road to WrestleMania stories that are in the current SvR games are that they are completely boring and devoid of the twists and turns that the on-screen product has. If you've played one 'Defeat Undertaker at WM" story then you have played them all. Spooky shit will happen, druids will appear, you will beat UT at WM and confetti reigns. To compact the problem even more you can only use such a small number of superstars for actual story mode use. Do we really need to do a story with Cena year after year? I understand that in the previous games you did have branching story modes and what not that you could use pretty much any wrestler on...but those weren't exactly of the best quality either.

So this is how you fix it. Instead of just that same old story why don't think actually make it...you know...a story? RTWM is on the right track with having every match/event taking place on a literal calendar but where I think the game could shine is in making just one huge over arching story.

You know, like Mortal Kombat.

Make some giant catastrophic event happen in the WWE that everyone has a stake in or something and you go through the course of a WWE year playing multiple different wrestlers or multiple different paths while still getting to the same goal -- defeating the main heel at WrestleMania.

Even on the on screen product those types of stories seem to be the ones that play out the best. One heel power stable shows up and dominates everyone and the faces band together to stop them. nWo, (Heel) DX, Evolution and more recently Nexus all were great good vs. evil storylines that would translate great to the story mode of a wrestling game. Hell, you could even take those same exact stories and re-write history.

Using that sort of thing you could even make the inVasion storyline fucking work.

But no matter how great you make a story in a game, the thing that will always decide whether it lives it dies will be the gameplay and that has been the main sticking point for the last few years with the Smackdown vs. Raw/WWE franchise. The gameplay is so boring and stale that it's honestly more fun just to put the matches on Sim and watch the AI fumble around rather than do it yourself.

Now THQ claims they have made changes to WWE 12 that will insure a deeper mode of play and will be 'better than ever' but this is the same PR scpheil they have been using since 2009.


Gameplay: ...Make it better?

But here lies the problem when it comes to the WWE gameplay. Sure, it's bad and clunky but outside of turning it into a straight up fighting game hybrid I have NO idea how they can fix it. WWE All-Stars was a nice little hybrid of fighting and wrestling that worked for how arcade and over the top the game was but trying to pull that off in what is supposed to be a simulation wrestler would be too jarring for the style and honestly too simplistic.

WWE: AS was a great game...for about 5 hours until you realized that you could literally beat an opponent in under a minute with perfect health if you used the button combos correctly. That sort of gameplay won' fly with the WWE 12 audience.

What about Fire Pro Wrestling?

FPW is pretty much world renown for its depth when it comes to wrestling games, but I am going to go ahead and say something here which is a bit...well...controversial?

The gameplay aint all that great. Don't get me wrong, you can do some AMAAAAZING things with FPW in the ways of wrestler depth and A.I and all sorts of goodies, but as far as the gameplay goes it's not something to write home about. And to be honest I don't know how well that gameplay would even translate to a 3D plane AND online seeing how everything about it is timing based. Of course with the current systems the countering of moves is all based on timing and you can see how muddy that gets when the game is taken online.

So as far as fixing the gameplay I don't know what they need to change to make it gel but something needs to be done. Maybe it's the animations or the speed of the game. Maybe it's the fact that the moves in the game seem to lack any real power.

So what I am trying to say is that the gameplay might not need a massive overhaul like the story mode and the presentation. I think it just needs some polish. A lot of little things that get fixed can go a long way to making the gameplay a better experience.

And since THQ and WWE seem hell-bent on making this a yearly franchise there is also one more thing that they can do to up the quality.


Presentation

The WWE production team never gets enough credit for what they do. The video packages, the music, the camera work...all of it is pretty goddamn impressive when you finally sit back and look at it. So why doesn't ANY of that come across in the games? I know in the past they offered things like changing camera angles for the action and what not but it felt more Resident Evil 1-3 than WWE TV level. They do put little finishing flares on the presentation of the game with the entrances and the little WWE tags at the end of a match but there can be so much more done. How about a little ticker at the bottom that gives you fictitious WWE news like it does now?

Now of course no one wants quick camera cuts in every single match because that can be jarring to the orientation but a little selective zooming or a quick zoom in on an injured body part can go a long way. They already do this now when an opponent is bloodied but they could stand to do it a bit more.

Yes, this seems like a good place for a Mark Henry picture.

You will never truly be able to simulate all of the television product because people truly do not want to see commercials (real or fake) interrupting matches but for something as theatrical as the WWE they need to step the game up in trying to make the digital product mirror the television product.

And do I even need to bring up the sound design? Tap-dancing Pirate Hooker Christ how can the voice acting (barring a few examples) be so painfully bad? How about the announcing? Given the limited move sets that the game does have it surely can't be that hard to get the game to just call a cohesive match properly and not reference characters that are not even in the GAME let alone the match. The sad part about the announcing ESPECIALLY is that the same team that makes these games makes the UFC games which have GREAT announcing.

And whoever came up with the bright idea to stop the generic butt rock soundtracks and instead use Superstar Themes for background music needs to get a fucking raise. With that being said the person who decided to remove the option to SKIP songs during menus needs to be dragged out back and shot in the dick. I do NOT want to hear Cody Rhode's theme 6 times when I am editing a CAW.

Which brings us to...

Customization - It works!

The one thing THQ doesn't need to drastically fix is the customization. There are always things that can be improved upon and made a little easier but they have been really good and giving you a really large suite of stuff to use. Create-A-Wrestler is great in that of itself but the list just keeps getting stronger with Create-A-Finisher, Create-A-Entrance and now Create-A-Ring there are just a ton of little things you can do.

I can honestly say throughout what has gone on with the WWE games franchise the creative modes are the ones that have gotten consisentintly better throughout each iteration so I really don't have a problem with anything that goes on here. Although I would just be tickled pink (yeah, I said that) if I was able to completely edit established superstars costumes instead of just the colors.


Of course this is just rant that turned into a column that turned into a rant again. Seeing as the Fall/Winter Blockbuster season is upon us I thought I would just take a bit of time to talk about one of the of games I am looking forward to that doesn't involve a first person perspective or me putting bullets into someone.


Working Question

Call it.

Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3?

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams and…if I could ever land any of these in a non-tool assisted match I'd be happy.