365//365: Day 049 – WWF Attitude (PSX)

The 32/64 bit era in gaming was an important and beneficial period for the world of wrestling video games. Games like WCW Nitro provided FMV promos (albeit horribly acted), giving more character to the wrestlers your choose. WWF Warzone helped create realistic character models, which unfortunately had goofy animations and poses. WCW/nWo: Revenge offered a huge roster, with tons of moves for each wrestler, though lacked wrestler themes and a more solid presentation. Then comes WWF Attitude, the sequel to WWF Warzone. While Attitude is arguably most memorable for laying out the blueprints for what we see in wrestling games today in terms of entrances, theme music, options, creation modes and so on, should it be remembered as a good game?

Lets first  address the overall presentation of Attitude. Without a shadow of doubt, there’s more options, more variations, more content than most any wrestling game of its kind. Hell, more than most sports games within its generation. Exhibition opens up multiple set ups, such as 1 on 1, Lumberjack, Triangle Match and nearly a dozen other modes. Within each mode you can select nearly a half dozen stipulations, with more options pertaining to how you win (I Quit, Iron Man, etc) arenas, time limits and more. The options are so vast, that you’ll find almost as many, if not more ways to play a match than today’s Smackdown vs Raw titles.

Early in the Career Mode, you start out in house shows, with no pyros, flashing lights, and an overall simple set.

Another major milestone that Attitude helped to set were user creation related. Create a PPV offered yet another layer of depth, innovation and variation to how you play the game. Set up to eight matches of various settings, set up how you want the lights to look, ring ropes, signs, and so on. With create a wrestler, you were offered a then unprecedented amount of customization and character editing, the likes not seen in any game in this region. The amount of customization throughout WWF Attitude would go on to set a watermark throughout many genres, one that took a very long time to surpass.

Finally, Attitude helped usher in wrestler entrances that were beyond impressive for its time. Lighting, fireworks, custom movements and traits all transferred over to an extraordinary detail. Nothing came close to these entrances for years, and still come off as quite impressive over ten years after the fact.

Notice how this review is literally gushing over the presentation and options, yet have not mentioned anything about how it plays? That’s because like Warzone before it, Attitude’s gameplay is a bit sloppy. Although you have a good amount of moves available, you have to input goofy commands, like you’re playing Mortal Kombat. Not only that, but in order to perform some of the trademark moves, you have to weaken your opponent down to a specific level. That’s fine for finishers, but why would the player have to wait for half my opponents health to be down before they can perform a spinebuster, or a tornado DDT? As with Warzone, your characters do look admirable, but have horrible poses, walk cycles and punch animations. The use of blood is laughable, as you see cuts magically form on wrestlers stomachs, back and backs of their heads with no clear explanation why. When was the last time you’ve seen a wrestler bleeding from the stomach?

UNDERTAKER! *clap* *clap* *clapclapclap* UNDERTAKER! *clap* *clap* *clapclapclap*

Commentary is nothing special either. Jerry Lawler throws out occasional one liners that are more of a joke than color commentary. Shane McMahon sounds overly enthusiastic about the action going on. Both of them are sparsely heard from as it is. Probably better to have something than nothing, like WCW/nWo: Revenge had. Wrestler one liners are decent enough, with a decent crowd reaction throughout the match. While it sounds leaps and bounds better than any wrestling title in that era, it’s nothing special as a whole.

The one major issue to WWF Attitude has to do with replay value. The customization that you hold in the palms of your hands will definitely hook you for a bit. Playing the matches, after a while, will bore you. If anything, it’s a lot more enjoyable to create wrestlers, make a PPV for them, set up the matches, lights, aprons, etc, and watch the PPV unfold. CPU acts a bit goofy, and isn’t overly boring to watch, you’d rather play the matches yourself.

WWF Attitude's look, as well as use of blood, is not only baffling, but somewhat hilarious.

It’s a hard one to rate. While WWF Attitude takes time to get used to, it becomes boring to play after a while, yet you want to keep the game on to create wrestlers and PPV’s, but can’t bring yourself to play your PPV, yet would rather participate than let the CPU play out your creation. What a paradox. The one main thing that WWF Attitude brought us all is an unprecedented number of ways to play a wrestling game. Although the gameplay is meager, and does become tiresome rather quickly, you still feel compelled to play on and try out different modes with different stipulations, in PPV arenas you created. A great history lesson, if anything, for anyone that’s a wrestling fan.

Rating: 7.2