Tuesday, March 14, 2017

I'd Fire The Announcers Too.

I watch wrestling sometimes, or read about it online. The strange characters and stories, plus the incredible things they can do, it's really entertaining, sometimes. I might go months without paying any attention, then follow it raptly for a few weeks. Depends on which wrestlers are getting to have a good showing at the time.

I haven't ever bought a wrestling video game. Considered it, but the games never seem to get the fighting right. Which is admittedly tricky. You can't really do it simply like a regular fighting game, where there's a health bar you wear down until they collapse. You need to be able to incorporate characters getting squashed, characters winning by the surprise roll-up, or else hitting their finishing move out of nowhere. That seems to be hard to do.

But the execution of sports games not quite working out how I pictured is not a new disappointment. But I still manage to find enjoyment with some of them by messing with rosters. I spent a lot of time on NBA Courtside just seeing what would happen if I took the top two scorers off each team. Or building baseball teams with fast guys at every position on Major League Baseball featuring Ken Griffey Jr. With a wrestling game, I'd really like to be able to fire certain wrestlers. Just take them off the board entirely. Since I can't be rid of the possibility of Randy Orton showing up on TV to bore the hell out of me, it would be nice to create that circumstance in a game, at least. Just have the roster full of only wrestlers I actually like. It wouldn't be enough if the actual wrestling was still a mess, but it'd be a nice feature to have.

3 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

Where wrestling games go wrong*, I think, is in treating it like the fighting is real. I'd like to see a game tackle the truth of the sport, so it would be closer to a football management simulator, with mechanics that focus on hiring performers, organising events, plotting storylines, and so on. You'd have to keep an eye on viewing figures, internet buzz, merchandise sales, and all that, while watching out for rival promotions and finding the one thing that makes yours unique. I think that would be a more interesting approach than a beat-em-up that isn't as good as other beat-em-ups.



*(Well, it doesn't help that the WWE games are badly coded trash.)

CalvinPitt said...

That could be interesting. I'd like for it to incorporate injuries, what happens if your big PPV headliner tears his shoulder three weeks before the event, what can you do to salvage that? Can you get a particular wrestler over with the fans? Yeah, that would be fun.

thekelvingreen said...

Yeah, I think there are other interesting aspects of professional wrestling that have game potential, other than the in-ring fighting. I'd like to see those explored.

There's probably a Japanese SNES-era game that does exactly what I'm looking for!