Mike Reviews WWE WrestleMania 21 (Xbox)

Happy Tuesday Everyone!

Back again with another in our fortnightly Video Game reviews here on a Tuesday Morning, as we take a look at WrestleMania 21 for the original Xbox. The original Xbox isn’t my favourite console of all-time, but in general I quite like it and I’ve had some good fun with it. It never really excelled when it came to wrestling games though, which I think this review of WrestleMania 21 will explore.

You can read more Video Game stuff by checking my archives here on the Blog and also heading over to Gaming Respawn where I also write about them there Video Games.

Released in Spring 2005 by, the now defunct, THQ, Wrestlemania 21 was a messy attempt at rebooting the X-Box wrestling games, after the previous Raw series had failed to win people over. Whereas the GameCube had enjoyed mostly positive critical receptions for its own Wrestlemania and Day of Reckoning releases, and the PS2 had hit a massive home-run with its critically AND commercially successful Smackdown! Series, Microsoft had languished in a distant third with its wrestling offerings.

Whereas Smackdown! was very accessible to the casual gamer, and Day of Reckoning was enjoyable to the experienced player with its call back to the gameplay of the N64 classic No Mercy, the Raw games failed to find a niche that worked for them. Too fiddly and awkward to appeal to the casual crowd and not gripping enough to please more experienced fans of the genre, the games were not well received and fell flat on their faces, despite having excellent graphics and the ability to let you rip real songs to your X-Box hard drive in order to give your created wrestlers any entrance music you pleased.

I played Raw 2 for a while on the console, but it was never as enjoyable to play as games on the PS2 and GameCube. I returned to it recently and detested it. Sluggish controls and a tepid pace to gameplay made the whole experience quickly tiresome, despite the game looking positively gorgeous.

With Wrestlemania 21, named after the April 2005 WWE Event of the same name, THQ tried to bring the controls more in line with the Smackdown! series whilst also adding the storyline elements more commonly found in the Day of Reckoning games. Basically they were trying to combine features from the other consoles while using the superior hardware on the X-Box to give everything a more detailed graphical coat of paint.

At least when it comes to the graphics, they succeeded. The game looks positively fantastic, even when played today. The characters are exaggerated cartoon versions of their real-life counterparts and look brilliant. WWE arenas are painstakingly recreated and look fabulous and the cut scenes during the story mode are very well animated and look great.

Sadly, it’s all downhill from there. The controls are unresponsive, with timing of counters in particular completely horrendous, and the hit detection is woeful. You have four different grapple types that you can use, which are quick, strong, special and submission. By tapping the A button, you instigate a quick grapple and can then press A again, along with a direction on the d-pad, to perform a move. By holding A down, you enter the strong grapple, by tapping B you enter the special grapple and by holding B you enter the submission grapple. You use X for strikes and Y to run. LT blocks grapples while RT blocks strikes.

This isn’t a lot different from the PS2 controls, but whereas the hit detection and AI are good in those games, it most certainly isn’t in Wrestlemania 21. Fights become a frustrating battle in trying to get a move of any kind in before your opponent inevitably strikes you, whips you into a corner and then performs an unblockable corner grapple on you. It’s not supposed to be unblockable, but the timing is so completely out of whack that you’ll never be able to counter it. Frustratingly as well, size of the wrestler seemingly has no effect on how quickly or slowly they move.

While wrestling as Eddie Guerrero against the Big Show, I tried to use my quickness to strike Show often in an attempt to wear him down and splat him with a top rope move. However, Show always seemed to be quicker to the draw when it came to punches, despite being a slow moving behemoth in real life, and I just kept getting punched and stuffed in the corner.

As if the gameplay isn’t bad enough, the story mode is equally rotten. Trying to take a page out of the GameCube games, you’re forced to create your own wrestler and play through career mode that way. But whereas the GameCube games had a relatively decent narrative to follow, the X-Box story quickly becomes a chore. It also doesn’t help that your created character is an absolute wanker, who from the very first cut scene is acting like an arrogant twerp. He’s so thoroughly unlikable and conceited that I was actually starting to hope one of the WWE Superstars would destroy him so I wouldn’t have to play as him anymore!

I wouldn’t recommend Wrestlemania 21. If you want to play Sixth Gen wrestling games, I’d suggest playing them on the GameCube or PS2. Give the games on the X-Box a wide berth, as they are all pretty terrible and not worth your time.

Final Rating: *1/2