WHERE CHATTERS GO TO TALK ABOUT OFF TOPIC STUFF!
Whenever you see a list of the best wrestling video games, WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo 64 is usually listed as #1. It's status is almost legendary, and gets the highest marks for gameplay and it's CAW (Create-A-Wrestler) system. No Mercy is absolutely an AMAZING wrestling game. There are some games that have come after it that have also become beloved by the fans, including Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain, various entries in the Smackdown Vs. Raw series (especially 2007 and 2011), as well as WWE 13, 2K14 and 2K17. (Any WWE game after 2K17 is utter crap). However, if I had to pick ONE wrestling game to own outside of No Mercy, it wouldn't have the WWE label on it anywhere. Instead, I would go with Spike Chunesoft's Fire Pro Wrestling World. The Fire Pro series is actually quite old, the first game coming out for PC (Japan only) in 1989, with Super Fire Pro Wrestling being the first console game, available on the Super Famicom. Over the years, multiple Fire Pro games were released for the Super Famicom, Playstation, PS2, Sega Saturn, PC, Xboxes. etc, but for the most part, they were Japan-only releases, and those of us here in the United States had little idea the series existed. If you have never even heard of the game until reading this post, it's perfectly understandable. And then something amazing happened. Spike Chunesoft put the game on Steam for PC users, and released it in North America for Playstation 4 owners. And Twitch streamers started to play it on stream, which is how I discovered it. OK, but what does the game actually look like??? Graphically, it's not trying to be photo-realistic like the WWE 2K series does...and in my opinion, that's a GREAT thing. Not having to be photo-realistic allows you a lot of freedom in your Create-A-Wrestler features. (More on that later). The isometric view takes a bit to get used to, but once you do, it feels normal.
There are plenty of match types available, for both single and multiplayer experiences, as well as story modes and a Promoter mode, kind of like Smackdown vs. Raw's GM mode. From traditional wrestling matches to straight up MMA rules inside the Octagon... Now, the actual game play itself is HARD AS HELL. If you are playing the game, there is a steep learning curve. The moves themselves are fairly simple, but everything is timing based, and CPU controlled wrestlers don't give you much leeway on your timing, even on the easiest difficulty level. CPU wrestlers simply DGAF if you are noob. However, the fun of wrestling games isn't you against the CPU anyway, it's you against your buddy. And if you both suck at getting the timing right, it's balanced, LOL. But, honestly? I never actually wrestle any matches. The fun of Fire Pro is in just setting matches up and letting the CPU wrestle the CPU, while you sit back and watch the mayhem. This game has moves in it that you have never seen in a wrestling game before, and that's before you ever even touch the downloadable content. You sim the CPU against the CPU, and you have no idea what kind of match you are going to get. It might last 5 minutes, it might last 50. It could be a technically perfect match or a flat out brawl, the AI kind of goes with the flow. It's incredibly fun to watch. Technically, you can do CPU vs. CPU in the WWE games too...but it's really not the same... Before I get into the absolute best part of FPWW, I do have to mention a criticism that I have with the game. You have a very small selection of championship belt designs available, and while you can download "belts" as part of a wrestlers clothing design, the belts you can actually win or lose in the game is very limited. I hope a future DLC allows people to expand the number of belt designs, as I think it's the game's biggest weakness. And now, for the best part of the game: Create-A-Wrestler/Steam Workshop. The game is worth it for wrestling fans just for the depth of this one feature. First, the game has built in, an incredible amount of choices when it comes to designing your own wrestler. From faces, masks, costumes, materials, You can make just about any wrestler you want, just from what's available to you initially. You can create separate promotions to organize your wrestlers in, create stables within those promotions, move wrestlers from one to another, just a lot of freedom to play promoter (outside of the previously mentioned promoter mode). But, what if you don't want to take the time to learn how to make really cool created wrestlers to use? Well, then you can just hop on Steam, and go to the Fire Pro Workshop...where you can download thousands of characters, clothing, faces, ring mats, logos, and moves. You can download just about any wrestler you can think of, chances are someone's created them already. But who wants to download wrestlers one at a time? BORING! Want to create a wrestling promotion based on the classic 1980s WWF? No problem. Instead of trying to remember all of your favorite old school wrestlers, just find a 1980s WWF collection or 10 to download...Preferred the NWA or WCW? There's a collection for that too. World Class? ECW? TNA? Ring of Honor? Collections! Why not simply download entire rosters? But what about non-wrestlers? Can you include those, just for fun? ABSOLUTELY. My own personal game has ex-Presidents, Transformers, He-Man characters, DBZ characters, G.I. Joes, Marvel/DC comic characters, Star Wars and Star Trek characters, the Bee Gees, KISS, Kratos, all of the wrestlers from the NES Pro Wrestling game, MMA fighters, boxers, Martial artists like Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, celebrities, the Ninja Turtles, Freddy Krueger, Jason, old timey movie creatures from those 1930s-1950s schlocky movies, Robocop, the Terminator, Conan the Barbarian, just all kinds of weird non-wrestling characters. You wanna know who would win in a fight between Skeletor and Cobra Commander? No problem! Set up a barbed-wire match between Galactus and Unicron? Sure! Wanna see how Daniel LaRusso from The Karate Kid/Cobra Kai would do against Marty McFly inside of a UFC ring? You can make that happen...Deathmatch between Bob Ross and Mr. Rogers? I dunno why you would ever be that sadistic to put them against each other in a fight, but if you really wanted to... Lastly, where else are you gonna see Hulk Hogan against Duke Nukem inside the Octagon, with a bear as the referee?
Comments
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
February 2021
CategoriesOur sister Sites:
NCAA Chatters ncaachatters.weebly.com/ NFL Chatters nflchatters.weebly.com/ Patriots Place patriots-place.weebly.com/ MLB Chatters mlbchatters.weebly.com/ |
Photo used under Creative Commons from ColinD13