WWE Day of Reckoning

After two sloppy attempts at giving the Gamecube an exclusive wrestling game, Yukes finally comes through with the oddly named Day of Reckoning. DOR is the first Yukes game to not have that "rushed so we can put more time into Smackdown" feeling, which is a good sign. Admittingly, it's still not as good as HCTP, but at least it's good enough in it's own right, and people that don't like the Smackdown series now have an ideal alternative.



DOR's most advertised feature is the addition of a story mode that actually involves wrestling! Oh my God! No more throwing security guards off high ledges to their deaths, you actually fight wrestlers in a wrestling ring! The story mode makes you use a created wrestler who starts out at "WWE Developmental" (which is the game's way of saying you'll be fighting a lot of made up wrestlers at House shows), then work your way up to Heat, then you choose to fight on either Raw or Smackdown. For the Developmental matches, you'll often be given a special stipulation that you must fulfil, such as perform a certain amount of counters or let your tag partner score the pinfall. These begin to vanish when you fight on Raw or Smackdown. In place, on television means you'll be involved in fairly entertaining storylines that are actually worthy of being on WWE television. You'll fight week in and week out until you reach, obviously, the Wrestlemania main event and win the title.

The story mode is good at constantly providing new challenges and oppenents as you play through it. It'll take you around 8 hours to go through it once. Though the story mode is a big improvement from last year's security guard massacre mode, it still has problems. The storylines and dialog are always the exact same and you never get to make any choices to change what happens. (You only choose which show you fight on, and the storylines are exactly the same on both shows, just with different wrestlers.) Also, you have to use a created wrestler, which may be a bit disappointing to those looking to play as their favorites. If you desire, you can play through the game multiple times to earn money to unlock various arenas and CAW parts in the game's Shopzone.



The gameplay itself is very tight. If Yukes nailed one thing right, this would probably be it. DOR adopts the No Mercy weak/strong grapple and strike system, among other gameplay conventions. It also brings back Wrestlemania's counter system, where L counters grapple attacks and R counters strikes. It's not too easy or too difficult to pull off counters (though if you find it easy, you can adjust that in the options menu.) The biggest change may be the way momentum works. Borrowing from both No Mercy and Smackdown, you have seperate meters for momentum and your special moves (as well as a diagram of a body to reflect limb-specific damage, which works great here). The special bar fills up as you fight and when full, gives you a special icon. Pressing A and B simultaneously uses up one special icon to enter special mode where you can do your finisher. The momentum meter reflects various aspects. When going from yellow to red, your special bar fills up much faster. When in the blue range, it means your almost a goner. The problem here is that while the special meter fills up at a sane pace for a weaker wrestler, for the game's stronger wrestlers like Taker or HHH, it fills up at an insane pace. It can only takes a few minutes to fill up three icons for one of these wrestlers. The AI in the game may counter your moves just a wee bit too much, but other than that, it works just fine. Except in tag matches, where your oppenent never bothers to tag out.

The game has your basic number of specialty matches, including ladder, TLC, cage and the always a-waste-of-time bra and panties. For the most part, they all work well, though the omission of the Elimation Chamber is surprising. The game is missing quite a bit of wrestlers, including JBL (I don't care how much he sucks, he's the present WWE champion and a glaring omission) The good news is that it makes up for this with a solid Create-A-Wrestler. The CAW here makes some great new additions, such as a design-editor to create unique designs, a fantastic system for making entrances and the use of gear that can be added anywhere in space in relation to your wrestler. There's a lot of customization here, though the game is still noticably missing various parts that made Smackdown's CAW so great (namely the use of layers and text.)



As far as wrestling games go, this is probably the all around best looking one to date, thanks to the fantastic looking wrestler models and various effects. There's still no commentary, but the game makes a huge step up in the audio department through the use of licensed songs. Any game with "Bring the noise" from Chuck D and Anthrax in it has to be good. Also, the game deserves credit for featuring Kane's awesome theme music from Finger Eleven, the first game to do so.

The bottom line on Day of Reckoning is that it's a really good game. There are still areas in which Here Comes the Pain is far better (and it doesn't help that Raw vs Smackdown comes out soon) but any Gamecube owner that missed out on HCTP and is hungry for a worthy wrestling game will find one here.