I must admit that I have a fascination with wrestling. I’ve been a huge fan of wrestling twice now, once in the early 80’s and then again in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. My last infatuation with wrestling drove me to find out more about what really happened in wrestling. I made it a point to visit almost every wrestling Web site to read about the latest scoop and behind the scenes happenings of WWE, WCW, ECW and Japanese wrestling.
I even had a crazy dream at one time that I wanted to be involved in the inner workings of a wrestling company. There were a couple local independent companies (Ohio Valley Wrestling and IWA Mid-South) running shows that I would attend from time to time. I remember at one show thinking to myself that I would get some money up and “invest” in one of these companies. Now if you know anything about wrestling you probably realize just how insane that idea was at the time. You don’t just “invest” in a wrestling company and get a chance to run the show. I was naïve and sucked into a form of entertainment that I thought I knew everything about. Yet almost 10 years later the wrestling business is still going, with fans still having the same dream I did years ago.
Total Extreme Wrestling gives would-be bookers/owners a chance to find out just how complicated and involved running your own wrestling promotion can be. Almost every single aspect of running a wrestling show seems to be included in Total Extreme Wrestling (TEW). Now when I say “seems to be” I should add that since I’ve never actually been an owner or booker before I can only assume this game includes everything involved in running a wrestling promotion. From what I’ve read and heard from friends that were involved in the business TEW hasn’t skipped over too many details.
However, TEW isn’t just a wrestling game like the classic THQ N64 games or even the legendary Fire Pro Wrestling series. Total Extreme Wrestling is best classified as a simulation database instead of a wrestling game. You will never actually play a match by moving your character around the ring or performing moves by pressing buttons. TEW is completely focused on the backstage/business aspects of wrestling.
You start off by selecting an avatar for your character. There are only six avatars to select from so choose wisely. Next up you select which promotion you want to work for or you can select to start your own promotion. I chose the later because I had an idea for a promotion that I thought would work great. I wanted an intense show with great angles, great-to-decent matches and a rabid fan base that was quick to turn on a bad match. Honestly, I wanted to reproduce the early ECW (pre-WWE ownership) style and I thought it would be a piece of cake.
Once I started my promotion I had to sit down and face the realities that I was almost immediately in over my head. I had hundreds of wrestlers that I had to review to see who I wanted to contact to work for my company. Ever wrestler had their own history created for them ranging from how many years they have wrestled, which companies they have wrestled for to the number of titles they have held. It was up to me to fill a complete roster to run a weekly show every Saturday in the Southwestern United States. So I had to choose wisely because I couldn’t double book a guy for my show and somebody else’s show on the same night. I also had to take into account that some of the wrestlers had contracts with the bigger promotions and won’t be able to wrestle for me no matter how much money I could throw at them. So after looking over their availability and contract/employment status, I had sent out communication to probably 50 workers.
I say workers because I not only had to get wrestlers to actually wrestle I had to get referees, announcers and a road agent. A good referee should be invisible but still be able to visualize the action in the match by their body/facial expressions at key moments. The announcers have to be able to tell the story of the match by explaining the history of the wrestlers, their feud and what every move is doing to the wrestlers in the match. The road agent is the guy backstage that keeps everything together and will usually work with the workers on how a match will flow. So I decided that my first signing should be the announcer, who was going to be the Joey Styles of my company. Even though he was working somewhere else my offer was good enough to have him do one show a week for me.
What I found out during the negotiations with the talent was every guy was completely different with their demands. As expected, younger workers just breaking into the business were willing to accept much lower offers than experienced workers. But some of the veterans in the business really tried to be a hard negotiator due to their demands. You can select from a variety of options when you make an offer to a worker. Besides their pay you can decide if they get a percentage of the merchandize or the gate. You can offer an actual contract or a pay per performance with different lengths to the deals. Would it be a one shot deal so you can bring in a huge name in the business to hopefully bump up the gate for a big show? Or do you want to lock up a promising rookie to an exclusive deal so he doesn’t sign with one of the bigger companies?
Besides the negotiations the amount of options you have control over in TEW is staggering. Once I had enough workers signed it was time to book my first show. I had two huge big men signed that I wanted to push by making them look like unstoppable monsters. I figured a couple of squash matches to start off their career in my federation were appropriate. Then I would have a match to determine our television title, even though we didn’t have a TV deal just yet, by booking a solid veteran against a big strong young talent who was getting recognized in another company. Then I booked the world title match with my character going up against a superstar wrestler from Mexico. I even did an advance booking schedule for the show so fans knew the matches before they came to the show.
Next up was to select a venue for the show. Now I thought to myself why am I selecting the venue on the day of the show? Wouldn’t I have already chosen my venue weeks or months ahead of time so tickets can be sold? Unfortunately I didn’t have an option to book a venue ahead of time but it really didn’t affect the game. I picked a sweltering venue that lacked air conditioning and always had a rowdy crowd in the Southwest from an impressive number of venues across the country. I could have gone with a huge arena that could fit 30,000 fans but I would have blown most of my budget just on one show. Instead my venue would hold 1,000 fans, which I thought was perfect since the pre-show analysis said almost 1,900 fans were expected. If more people wanted in for the first show I just knew I would have 3,000 fans ready for the next show.
However something happened by the time the show started and by the time it was finished. The fans didn’t like the show and the outcome of the matches didn’t meet my expectations. The game gives you a small breakdown of each match as the show progresses, such as who the winner is, how long the match lasted, the mood of the crowd and an overall ranking of the match. Almost every match brought the mood of the crowd down and was ranked as an E or lower. Somehow I skipped a whole section of the game revolving around the storylines and angles for the show.
Just because I booked the show didn’t mean that the show would go off exactly as I planned. I needed to dig farther into the game to actually tell the road agent who I wanted to win the matches. So instead of the insanely popular Mexican wrestler becoming the new champion I found myself in the position of Owner/Booker/Champion. On the day of the show you need to give notes to your Road Agent as to how you want the match to progress. You can select who wins, who interferes in a match, who to keep looking strong in the match and numerous other options in how the matches will be performed. You also get to book angles for each show which can be used for a variety of reasons. You can use the angle to interview a wrestler about an upcoming match, show a video package of a new wrestler coming in or have a tag team break up. Almost every angle that I watched as a wrestling fan looks to be included in TEW.
The other portion of the game that I didn’t pay attention to was the storylines. More post-show analysis said the fans expected more storylines and less action for my show. So when I selected the storyline option I was presented with a huge collection of storylines to pull off on my shows. Just like the angles, probably every type of storyline I watched in wrestling seemed possible with TEW. So I decided to run a tag-title tournament storyline at my next show.
The tag-title tournament storyline featured four teams. I booked my two huge monsters together on a team, two up and coming faces (good guys) as the second team, two low level wrestlers as the third team, who would simply be the squashed meat for the monster team. The last team was my character and the Mexican superstar. The storyline requires that you book each match in a specific way in order to keep the storyline progressing. This required me to tell the road agent exactly which teams I wanted to win so the computer wouldn’t decide for me. The story was for the two up and coming faces to win an upset match over me and the Mexican superstar. This way I thought it would make the two new faces look good in the process and get the fans into thinking they could defeat the unstoppable monsters.
Next up I had to book angles on the show at precise moments so the storyline will keep progressing. If I screwed up and booked the wrong team at the wrong time it would cause the rest of the storyline to fall apart. The first angle involved the big men talking about their upcoming match with the faces. The next angle had the two faces talking about the upcoming match against the monsters. Then the next angle was a video montage hyping the match one last time. Finally the match was scheduled and I told the road agent I wanted the big monsters to go over. But I included notes that I wanted to have an all-out match and I wanted to make the two faces still look strong. Then there was still one more angle to book a celebration angle where the new champions celebrated their victory in the ring.
Once again everything had to be planned to perfection or the storyline would fall apart. If I booked the wrong team to win or the wrong angle at the wrong time the storyline was useless. I would have to abandon the storyline for another one in hopes of building up hype for the workers. But I knew I messed up because I booked the entire storyline in one night instead of spreading it out over several shows. The post-match analysis of the last match included a comment that both of my big men were noticeably tired near the end of the match. My total show score was an E which is well below a C where I needed to be to keep momentum going for my company to succeed. Even the next show I booked, where I had all of the good guys winning still wasn’t enough to make the fans happy. That show was ranked an E+ which is a small improvement.
Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 really shined the light on me. It made me realize that there was no way I would have ever been a good booker for a wrestling company. There are way too many choices to keep your company producing a great show week after week. Thankfully the game does a good job of letting you try as many different options as possible to running your own wrestling show. This is without a doubt the most hardcore wrestling game I have ever played simply because of the almost limitless number of booking options. Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 can be your only choice if you want to find out just how difficult it can be to actually run your own wrestling federation.
Review Scoring Details for Total Extreme Wrestling 2008
Gameplay: 8.0
As I’ve mentioned TEW is more pure simulation than action packed wrestling game. Most of the game is easy enough to follow once you start clicking around at the seemingly endless menu options. Everything is point and click to get going in the game. I didn’t appreciate how the storyline options didn’t really connect with the advance booking on the day of the shows. If I did my advance booking I was never able to import those matches into the game the day of the show. So it was rather tedious having to schedule all the matches even though I already had them listed.
Graphics: 7.0
Just static head shots of the various wrestlers in the game. You can tell that some of the models were used over and over again for many of the wrestlers.
Sound: N/A
Concept: 8.7
Really it’s probably better to think of this as a wrestling database instead of a game. You get almost every angle, storyline and match type imaginable to book your own wrestling promotion. You decide who you want to push, who wins the titles or even how much they get paid.
Multiplayer: 7.5
The game does let you and three other players compete against each other to see who can run the most successful wrestling company. Each player is assigned their own spot on the database which can be password protected to prevent other players from stealing your upcoming angles and stories.
Difficulty: Medium/Hard
This is as hardcore of a wrestling experience as you will find. Your head will probably be spinning at first just trying to figure out how you want to book a match, who you want to sign and the other countless options in the game. A slightly cumbersome interface in certain parts of the game will cause some additional confusion as well.
Overall: 7.8
If you’re still one of the die-hard wrestling junkies who just can get enough then you will fall in love with Total Extreme Wrestling 2008. You will probably find just the right combination of insane stories, unusual angles and hardcore matches to let you create your ultimate wrestling fantasy.
No comments:
Post a Comment