WCW Vs. NWO: World Tour Review


For Nintendo 64

Rating: Good
 WCW Vs. NWO: World Tour is a game that I came very, very 
close to buying, but chose not to in the end due to the fact
that the difficulty level still isn't quite right.  At first,
the game is 100% awesome.  Unlike WCW Vs. The World, which 
had a couple boring WCW wrestlers and dozens of non-existent
Japanese and Mexican wrestlers from fictional federations, 
WCW Vs. NWO has 24 of the world's most under-worked and 
over-paid has-beens from WCW (or the NWO, same thing).  
While I still don't like WCW as much as the WWF and I never
will, it's still nice to be able to play as real wrestlers 
instead of fictional "international superstars," and playing
as the Wolf Pack (Hall, Nash, and Syxx) does feel extremely 
cool.  Like WCW Vs. The World, WCW Vs. NWO has a great 
control system that lets you perform dozens of moves using 
the same few buttons, plus special signature movies when 
your Spirit Meter reaches the maximum level. The menus and 
options are also great, letting you adjust everything from 
the time limit to whether submissions are on or off.  You can
even grab foreign objects like chairs from the crowd and beat
your opponent to a pulp with them, although you can't bring
them into the ring.  Sometimes if you beat up your opponent
bad enough, they start bleeding (and I mean bleeding bad, 
although the blood seems to be stuck to their face as opposed
to flowing like Shawn Michaels at Badd Blood or Steve Austin
at Wrestlemania 13).  One of the game's best new features is
the tag team mode, which can be played from anywhere between
one to four players in an exhibition match or a full-fledged
league or tournament.  One really nice option they added to 
tag team action is the option to play Survivor Series-style
where both members of the team have to be pinned in order 
for them to lose.  You can also do one-on-one leagues, with 
up to eight wrestlers in a league.  Everybody wrestles 
everybody once, earning three points for a win and one point
for a tie, and then whoever has the most points at the end is
the winner of the league.  You can watch or skip computer-
controlled match-ups, and you can even have entire leagues 
made up of just computer opponents, with the winner getting 
the "title shot" at "your belt."  All in the mind, though, 
since there are no actual championships in the game. One of 
the most hectic new modes is the Battle Royal, where four 
wrestlers duke it out until only one is left standing.  All
four wrestlers can be controlled by human opponents if you 
so choose, or it can just be you against three computer 
opponents if you want.  One gripe I have with the tag team 
and battle royal modes are that the camera has a bizarre 
insistance on having all four wrestlers on the screen at 
once, even if they're eliminated from the match and/or 
computer-controlled.  This causes the camera to pan out a 
lot, making the wrestlers in the ring look too small.  The 
League Challenge mode seems like a good idea as to climb the
ladder of success by beating everybody in a league, but you 
also have to choose a wrestler from that same league, and 
NWO guys against NWO guys just doesn't feel right. Elsewhere,
the graphics aren't much better than WCW Vs. The World, but 
they're still very good.  The main menu music is cool, but 
why didn't they include the awesome NWO theme music?  For 
some reason there is still horrible music playing during the
actual wrestling, though, although you can turn it off at the
options menu (thank God).  The game requires a Controller Pak
to save, but this isn't that big of a flaw since there's 
really nothing to save unless you want to save in the middle
of a league and finish later or something like that.  All the
analog joystick does is control signature moves and taunts 
(you move around with the d-pad), and this takes some getting
used to since N64 games are usually controlled with the 3D 
joystick.  However, it eventually feels natural once you get
used to it.  The biggest problem with the game, the one that
prevented from buying it and prevents me from recommending 
that you buy it without a rental first, is that the 
difficulty levels are still a little out of whack. Normal is
too easy and Hard is too hard.  This isn't near to the 
extent of how bad this was in WCW Vs. The World (where it 
ran rampant and made the game barely enjoyable at all), but
it's still bad enough to make the game get old after a 
couple days of play.  WCW Vs. NWO: World Tour is a very good
wrestling game chock full of features and solid control, but
until THQ can get the difficulty level right, I think I'll 
pass.

Back To Reviews
WCW/NWO Revenge Review

/34">

© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com