What Were They Thinking? 12.12.07: WWE RAW

Posted by William Bumgarner on 12.12.2007

This week, I talk about the horrendous RAW PC game for Windows 98.......I think that's as good a summary as any for this game.

Welcome back to What Were They Thinking?. This week, continuing my series of
examining wrestling games, I bring you WWE RAW for the PC. This game was also
released for the Xbox with the WWF logo, but thanks to the well-known (and laughable until they
got their way) lawsuit by the World Wildlife Fund, they changed the later Xbox copies and all PC
copies to display the WWE logo on the box, but all in-game logos were still of the WWF from the
"Attitude Era".

When I first saw this game for ten bucks at Wal*Mart in 2003, I thought I didn't have much to
lose. I quickly discovered I was wrong.

The graphics were game's best feature, but not enough to save it. Great detail on entrances, the
arena, the superstars' looks, pyros, etc. Some (like HHH) look odd, and others have outdated ring
gear, but overall, not bad. You got very detailed hair (again, HHH's looked especially realistic),
entrance attire, and additional elements (like an eyepatch for CAWs).

It's nice to play as guys like Kaientai, the APA, and The Undertaker w/ his Limp Bizkit music,
but others (Perry Saturn, K-Kwik, etc.) are a waste of programming. The "hidden" characters (Vince
and Shane) are only worth unlocking for their music. Other hidden characters (Fred Durst and
Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley) just leave you scratching your head wondering why they put them in
there.

The sounds in this game were not bad. Not bad at all. Having Lilian Garcia announce the
wrestlers during their entrance is nice, but the generic "oof" and "ugh" sounds get tiresome after a
while. The music simply blew me away. Very nice selection, from Rollin' to Kaientai's
theme to the X-Factor music, you can't go wrong with the lineup.

The grapple/strike system is simple horrid. Not at all smooth and flawless like WrestleMania
2000. Also, the physics lack much in this game. If you're playing as a tall guy (like Kane, for
example) and your opponent is, say, Funaki, a punch WON'T connect. You punch straight forward,
and it goes over his head. Meanwhile, he can punch and kick you to his heart's content. In this
game, it pays to be short. If your character comes down to the ring first, then you can attack your
opponent during his entrance. This allows you to knock off and steal his gear (like Kurt's medals).
Also, during the matches, things like hats or the aforementioned eyepatch can be knocked off of
your opponent. As a final nail in the coffin for this, the controls are awkward to use (being spread
out all over the keyboard and sometimes requiring combinatins of buttons. I like playing Twister, but
not with with my fingers or a keyboard.

As for the Create-A-Wrestler engine, it sucks. I've worked with (and mastered) CAW modes in
several older and newer games, and this is just beyond my ability to make anything decent.
The same generic faces with a few different twists dominated my "originals" lineup. I hate that. I like
my customs to be able to look, I don't know, custom. In games like Day of
Reckoning, the engine was so refined that you could make pretty much anything, and
WrestleMania 2000's, while not as broad as DoR's, was still flexible. In RAW,
however, I found it frustrating. I usually make a dozen or more custom characters in these games,
but I only made three in this one because I was sick of fighting with the engine. I remember several
times that I had almost gotten part of a character finished and pressed the wrong button, returning
me to a previous menu and erasing all of my changes. And not being able to use custom entrance
music from your hard drive without deleting an in-game tune, placing your custom song in the folder,
and renaming it to match the deleted tune was a real downer, as the music was top-notch
and having to delete any of it was not something I relished doing, no matter how badly I
wanted my wrestler to use We're Not Gonna Take It for his entrance.

There's also a "Title Match" mode where you fight through the ranks to ebcome a contender for a title belt, but it's not as good as what WCW/nWo Revenge and WCW Mayhem put in place. That's just freakin' sad, seeing as how the CD format is supposedly "superior in every way" to cartridges. If that's so, then why do the old cartridge games still seem so much better than some of the modern disc games? Anyway, Title Match is something that's "there". That's about all I can say about it. I reall making my way through the roster and almost winning the WWF Title. One man stood between me and the Champ: The Rock. Peopel complain about Triple H's AI being cheap in the PS2 games, but he's got nothing on Rocky here. No-sells galore followed by weak-looking ounches that somehow floored me were more than enough to put me down for the count. Frustrated (I had been working for weeks to try and get to that point), I scowered the Internet and downloaded a 100% complete savegame file so that I could have all of the characters, parts, etc, and really start cracking at the CAW mode. Even with everything available to me, however, I discovered that there wasn't a hell of a lot there. All of the time that I wasted came rushing back to my memory and I nearly used the game for target practice the next time I went to the shooting range.

Other than looking and sounding nice, this game didn't bring much to the table. Sorry to those
who liked it (though I can't imagine anyone did), but it just plain sucked. As with all games, I
tried to like it, but it dodn't want to work with me in any way, shape, or form. The bottom line
is that, when a game from 1999 on an "inferior" cartridge console (N64's WrestleMania 2000)
has your game beat in every way that really means something to a gamer, you've done something
wrong. Thankfully, THQ learned from their mistakes a year after this game when they released
Here Comes The Pain and WrestleMania XIX. I know WMXIX sucked big hairy monkey
balls (after all, I owned it from the release date until I had to sell it, Legends of Wrestling,
SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006, and Shut Your Mouth to get money to buy a new
alternator for my car), but at least it was more enjoyable than RAW.

And now, it's time for.....
READER FEEDBACK

First up, we have Jason Mis (sorry I didn't include this last week, Jason, but, as I
stated, I was running late and pressed for time):

You left out a few things about this spectacularly awful game. Besides the butt crack, Ted
Dibiase had a beer belly, and since he had no theme music (this was before money,money,money)
they gave him Girls in Cars. Also, to come off the top rope you had to run toward the corner and hit
the A button, resulting in a single leap to the top, and an awful looking attack move. The only
wrestling move in the game was called a "body slam" in the manual. It was the funniest, worst
animation in video game history. Instead of an actual scoop slam, the wrestler picked up his
opponent like a baby, with the victim shaking and sweating and a look on his face as if saying
"Nooooo!!!" before simply being dropped. And for some reason Dibiase and Bam Bam couldn't
even do that. There was also the infamous 3 minute time limit on all matches, with the result being
few pinfalls, and draws galore. It's even worse when you consider it came out well after Pro
Wrestling, which was a hundred times better. But I still played it because it was the first chance to
play as WWF superstars. I have to laugh at how much enjoyment I got from such a piece of junk.
If you want to honor an old classic, review the Wrestlefest arcade game. That was by far the best
wrestling game ever until WWF Warzone came out for Playstation One.

Sadly, I never played Wrestlefest. I didn't get much into wrestling games until
WCW/nWo Revenge came out for the N64, and I've been hooked ever since. But you're right;
I forgot about that awful-looking body slam. Sometimes I have to laugh at how much enjoyment I got
out of WWF WrestleMania. But, in all fairness, I still prefer playing it to games like
WrestleMania X8 or the original SmackDown! vs. RAW. Who thought those
were good ideas? Chiming in next with some not-so-kind words for me is Chris Hudson:

I just read your latest column about WWF Wrestlemania for NEW and, quite frankly, you're
a moron. Firstly, there was no way for six players to play at once, as you stated. The only way to
have that many people play was to simply pass the controls around and take turns. But they all
couldn't play at once - in fact, no NES game allowed six players to play at once. So it's pretty
obvious you never actually played the game, you're just rewriting whatever information you found on
Wikipedia or whatever.

And finally, you complained that "here are no hidden wrestlers to unlock, no other titles to
contend for, no tag-team matches, no cage matches, no additional areas, no weapons, no outside-
the-ring fighting, no referees to beat up, and no create-a-wrestler or create-a-belt options." Wow.
This shows you're either just a complete idiot or you have unrealistic expectations for an 8-bit game
from the late 80s. Features like additional areas and create-a-wrestler didn't start surfacing until
almost 10 years later - well into the 32-bit and up era of gaming. Being upset that an 8-bit Nintendo
game doesn't have advanced features like that is like complaining that a car from the 50's doesn't
have a navigational system. No game from that era had all those features, not just WWF
Wrestlemania. And the fact that you're complaining about it shows you're an ignorant newbie who
has no understanding of the history of gaming and it shows in your pathetic ass writing. Try
again.

First, I have played the game. Hell, I bought it the day it was released. Perhaps it was a
poor choice of words when I said "at once"; what I was getting at was that you didn't need the Multi-
Tap for more than two players to join in with different characters.

Second, I wasn't "complaining". Rather, I enjoyed the game back in the day and still fire it up
every now and then for nostalgia. I was simply pointing out what the game didn't have and listing a
few things that, potentially, may have been possible to incorporate to add replay value. I
didn't say that they were absolutely necessary for enjoyment of the game. I'm quite aware that most
of the features I named didn't come into play in video games for years; but even as a kid I was
wishing for the ability to go wail on DiBiase with a chair or have a tag match. I never said that I was
"upset" over these things not being in there, either. If I was upset with the game, I wouldn't have
played it at all and either sold it or given it away (as I have done with the DOOM, Grand
Theft Auto, Quake, Unreal, and HALO games) I'm not an ignorant newbie;
I know my wrestling games and I know them well. A little "wishful thinking" doesn't construe
"complaining" by any stretch of the imagination.

Next up we have Chris Jacobs, who's much more civil:
I had that same game, it was Wrestlemania Bigger Better Badder if I remember correctly.
My version Andre didnt have green boots, or green hair, and he was the only one that could do a
body slam. I remember Hogan did a martial arts, or Lu Kang style side kick from the top, and
Macho did a elbow to the face off the top, and that was the only difference in move sets from them,
lol. I really liked that game, unless I was in the title tournament. I could never beat Andre, so I had
to always use him. and one question, how do you pin??? I still play it once in a while, and once I
knock someone out, I dance around for about 15 minutes until I accidentally pin them, or just turn
the game off because it annoys me.

Well, Chris, I believe that you press Down and B while near the opponent to pin (at least, that's
what I was always pressing), and I tried to get my old copy to working again to verify this, but you
know how those old NES cartridges are - they either work really, really well, or not at all. I did a little
research for you, however, and the GameFAQs guide says Up+Down+B, but, really, I can't verify
that, either. But hey - you could try 'em both and see which one works. Also, I find it curious that
your Andre's hair, etc, wasn't green. That's the only way I've ever known him to show up in
this game. So I went a-scouting on the 'Net and found a handy-dandy little screenshotfor reference:



Not as vivid a green as I remember (more of a brownish-green, really), but that
istecnhically a shade of green....or brown. Or whatever. (My point in the original column was
that Andre's real-life costume was black and they screwed it up in this game and made his
hair the same color.) Also, is it just me, or does he have tiny little arms compared to the rest of his
body?

And that wraps up another week. Stay tuned as I continue my series of wrestling games that
sucked, and remember - feedback lets me know how I'm doing, so feel free to fire it away.