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Review: Wrestlemania 21 – X-Box

by Nick Haywood on 9 July 2005, 00:00

Tags: Wrestlemania 21, THQ (NASDAQ:THQI), Beat 'em up

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Grapple me grapenuts...





The first place you’ll most likely start is with the career mode where you can make your wrestler from scratch, selecting body type, head shape etc etc until you’ve got him or her looking as you’d like. The fun to be had here is limited though, because as much fun as it is making huge, fat Sumo style wrestlers, many of the add-ons such as hair types or clothes can only be viewed once you’ve actually selected them. This becomes a pain as you constantly flick back and forth between menus finding the right look for your character. However, once you’ve slogged through that, you can then take him on the circuit.



The career mode follows your progress as you battle your way through each match, gradually climbing the ladder to be Wrestlemania champ… and then that’s it. Career over. To be fair, there’s not much else you can do when you’re already King of the hill, but the suddenness of the stop after 50 or so matches leaves you sort of wondering why you bothered. This is compounded by the fact that unless you ramp the difficulty up a few notches your opponents offer as much challenge as a damp tissue. Tacked onto the career mode is some sort of plotline designed, I suppose, to offer you some motivation for playing. Sadly, it’s all very linear and a bit pointless. In fact, with your character acting like a complete pratt half the time, I wonder if it would have been better to not have bothered with it at all and just move us onto the next match.