WWE ’13 – A Noob’s Hands-On

It’s October again and that means the new WWE game is coming out soon. WWE ’13’s iteration includes a big change from the straight-up wrestling of last year’s game. Now you can play through your favourite highlights from the Attitude era of wrestling that ran from 1995 to 2001. For people like me who dabbled on a Saturday afternoon in their teens, you’ll see plenty of familiar names like Shawn Michaels, Undertaker, Mankind and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

The “Attitude” mode will take you through highlight of the era, starting with Shawn Michaels vs Mankind in August 1997. You’ll want to win the match, of course but you get bonus points for historical accuracy. These optional objective have you replicating classic moments like hitting Mankind with a chair and winning by pinfall.

You’ll be able to play matches as Divas as well. Customise your own female wrestler. Dress her up, dress her down and, in the spirit of equality, allow her to show a little body hair.

The crazy match modes are still available. Hell in a Cell, Elimination Tag, Championship Scramble, Ladder matches and many more can all be customised. I quite enjoyed the classic Backstage Brawl, which makes its return again. Pound on your opponent without a ref to interrupt the proceedings, throwing each other into vending machines and moving containers that are lying around unattended in the backstage corridors.

The counter indicators have been changed, to favour more experienced players. Noobs like me can no longer rely on the counter icons popping up overhead, as the time they’re on-screen has been vastly reduced.

Perhaps children have the lightning reactions to counter in that half-second but I have no chance. Slower players like me will have to learn how to recognise a counter through the animations of our opponents, which is no bad thing.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing I learned at the preview was that Inferno matches were a real thing, where wrestlers would attempt to roll each other into the firey border that was set up at the edges of the ring. Why? WHYYY?

I spent most of my previewing time with the ladder match mode, which plays much like it did in last year’s game. Oh god, ladder matches. These are just as frustrating as the Attitude ladder matches were and for very similar reasons.

For the uninitiated, during a ladder match, there is a suitcase suspended above the ring. Two foldable ladders are positioned outside the ring. Your job is to get that ladder up and grab the suitcase.

Of course, you can grab the ladder and whang your opponent across the face with it. If they get into position first and start climbing, you can grab them by the leg and knock them off, or tip the ladder over.

It’s brilliant, silly fun yet also quite annoying when it descends into ridiculous wars of who can hit harder with a ladder.

My own pet peeve was in trying to reach for the damn suitcase. Every time I tried, the suitcase would be swung just out of reach and it took me several goes to realise that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. The game had just decided that my ladder was a little bit too far away.

There’s also the classic scenario where the powers-that-be have decided that your match simply wasn’t entertaining enough. Vowing to not repeat my helpless-idiot-on-a-ladder performance, I flew out of my corner as soon as the bell was rung and clobbered my opponent about the head. Diving out of the ring, I grabbed the metal stairs and used them to pin my opponent to the ground while I set up the ladder and grabbed the case. Alas, you can’t win the match in 2 minutes flat. As my opponent freed herself and tipped my ladder over, I was left suspended 10 feet above the ring, clutching my precious suitcase with legs dangling helplessly.

I’m only presuming that my ladder match was too short or perhaps my opponent wasn’t helpless enough. The game gave no feedback as to why the suitcase wasn’t released to my grip even though I did exactly what the on-screen prompts were showing.

As seems to be the case with WWE games, they’re fun once you have some experience but the rules are a little mysterious. The tutorial is still limited to a set of lookup menus that go some way towards explaining things but I still would like to see an optional basic run-through of the objective for each match mode and how the trigger and bumper buttons modify your moves.

That said, I suspect the audience for this game doesn’t need to be reminded.

WWE ’13 will be out on 2nd November for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Different pre-order bonuses are available from GAME, , Amazon, and Grainger Games.