After having spent a great deal of time with Adam’s latest game it’s easy to say that I’m a fan.  The editor is deep, the booking simulation is deep, and more importantly, the game is as fun as you want it to be.  However, Total Extreme Wrestling 2005 is an interesting series of contrasts.  For every amazing new addition to the game, it seems like a little something has been chipped off the edge.  While the game is a technical masterpiece, and probably Adam Ryland’s best work as a game programmer, TEW lacks the personality that made the Extreme Warfare games so great.  The game is packed with wonderfully detailed stats and nuances, so much so that even after several days of playing, I’m still finding nooks and crannies that I didn’t know were there.  On the other hand, sessions themselves can, at times, turn into tedious click fests as you bounce from one informational screen to another, not even absorbing half the information they’re throwing at you, kind of making the attention to detail a wash.

TEW follows an all too familiar path in this regard.  In its well-intentioned desire to bowl you over with spreadsheets and data, the game kind of gets lost underneath it at times.  Booking a wrestling show rarely feels like booking a wrestling show, but a congruence of numbers and letters and chunks of data, that spit out more data to be consumed.  In other words, I think that game “shows” too much of itself in this regard.  Even during our interview (http://www.onlineonslaught.com/columns/hocking/20050630.shtml) a few months ago, Adam talked about “streamlining” the game.  In order to make it more accessible, with less fluffery.  Unfortunately, what he didn’t seem to anticipate was that eliminating the fluffery would kill some of the nuances and ambiances that made the game so fun the first time around.

Editor:

I’m going to tell you this right now, if you’re not interested in modding or editing the game, if you’re not interested in the Game Made “Cornellverse,” TEW might be a little hard to swallow for the first few months while the modders have at it.  The editor is insanely deep for every character, location, promotion, title…basically, anything you could ever hope to edit, it’s in there.  But less experienced and/or patient players are going to be warned not to touch it.  It could take hours just to slog your way through creating a small Indy fed (only to realize that you forgot something and have to quit out and go back to the editor), and if you’re Joe Player hoping to create a WWE pack?  Forget about it.  There are no fewer than 80 drop down menus, check boxes, and slider bars you have to slog through before the player is even workable in the game.  Certainly, some dedicated, hardcore fans are going to get their hands on this, mod up a storm, and create excellent, workable productions that are worth a look, but modding TEW isn’t for the light hearted.

This is also true for the much touted Angle editor.  The angle editor allows you to select form 42 “types” of angles (ranging from kidnappings to interviews to “Oops” moments) in which participants are each judged based on one of Overness, Entertainment, Microphone or Acting skills, or on their Looks.  Then you have to choose how many of eight participants can take part in the angle, and what of eight jobs they fulfill (are they the target of an attack, the girl who sparks a feud, etc.).  As you can imagine, it’s not for the faint of heart.  The preview copy of this game came with 20 angles, all very generic, and making more complex ones is a very daunting, possibly even boring task.  Again, some hardcore players out there are going to relish the opportunity, but if you’re on the fence, be warned, it might take a while before you can just pick up and play like previous games (with the added benefit of people making some excellent ideas for angles and matches in the meantime).

The other much ballyhooed feature, the Story Line editor proves to be a little more tedious.  It really is just pointing and clicking angles and matches into a box until you’re at wherever it was you wanted to end up.  I applaud the fact that the player now gets to decide what constitutes a “wrestling story,” but at the same time, this is really only going to be useful in the hands of some truly dedicated fans.  It’s not that it’s particularly difficult to piece together (once you understand what it is you’re going for), but it’s tedious.  A lot of wasted time for minimal immediate results.  For some people, that’s great fun, but for the casual end consumer who wants to jump right in and play, it’s a daunting roadblock (and the preview copy only had one tag storyline precreated, which made it all the more necessary that I make a few crappy rudimentary stories of my own just so I’d have something to review in the game).

It’s worth noting here that the “in-game” editor no longer exists in the form of being able to edit character’s stats, moods, health etc, while you’re in the game.  However, Adam assures me that an external program is being created to do something to that effect.

Gameplay:

One of the chief concerns about the move to a “graphical” style for TEW was going to prove difficult to navigate.  I’m pleased to say this isn’t true.  The menus and screens themselves are a bit overloaded with information and buttons, but if you need to find something, be it a stat or a match history or the option to change a gimmick, you’re not going to have a hard time finding it.  Some of the menu choices are a little perplexing (why, for example, can’t you make heel turns or add a manager from the roster screen?), but they’re all serviceable.  One gripe, however is that while it’s often easy to find what you’re looking for, it can be difficult to do whatever it is.  Often times some things within the game take an inordinate amount of clicks just to complete the simplest action.  Assigning a manager for example, should be as easy as it was in TEW 2004.  Click a pulldown menu, select the manager you’d like, and save.  Now however, the process is no fewer than five clicks.  Click “Overview” on the booking screen, highlight the wrestler you want to edit, then select the “Select” button to change to this wrestler (which seems unnecessarily complicated to say the least, and it turns up several times throughout the game), then select the manager from the list, and then save.  Five clicks in what should only be two or three.  Also, the design on this particular screen (and any screen where you request the “Statistician’s View” rather than the “Booker’s View”) looks like a screenshot straight out of Excel, which is a sobering reminder that sometimes management games can be a bit like playing a spreadsheet.  I would’ve liked to see them eliminated in all but the financial screens (where they fit much better).

The booking screen itself is kind of fun.  Based on your writers’ and road agents’ talents, the wrestlers’ talents and personalities, and where your fed is in the grand scheme of things, you can find out all manner of different things like what the future might hold for your wrestlers, what role on the card people want to see them at, and what they think of your job so far.  It’s a perfect example of fluff done right adding value to the gameplay.  If the game is telling me that “Joe Sexy” is the perfect guy to job out to up and coming stars I want to push into the main event, the most personable way possible isn’t just to show me, but to show me in an entertaining manner.  Sadly, this is seemingly lacking in other parts of the game, but I’ll take it where I can get it, and the booking screen is a nice example of it.

One of the main parts of the game is managing finances to keep your company afloat long enough to run it into the ground, and, well, there’s not much to speak of here.  Rather than continue to refine the somewhat flawed but infinitely playable financial management aspects of TEW 2004, the option is turned almost completely off here.  Yes, you can choose what level your production is at, and whether or not you license music, and a few other minor options, but the rest is all just fed to you on another screen telling you that you made $X on merchandising and $Y on sponsorships.  I realize that it had little to do with the actual core of the game play, but it’s a bit sobering to lose control over an important aspect of the game, even if the actual “control” of it was all in my head, since I’d pretty much have to pick the best options anyway when I did have control.

On to a few short notes about other main functions of gameplay:

-The advanced booking option is a welcome bit of fresh air, allowing the player to tell fans what matches will be featured on upcoming cards (or later on that same show).  It’s a nice feature that was too long missing from the series.  Not only does it give you a chance to build up matches, but it also serves as a handy reminder of what you were planning on booking for that show as well.  A caveat though, is that you have to read the screen if you’re announcing a match during a show, because if you don’t check the right box, fans will be expecting to see the match during that show, and you probably won’t deliver.

-The “Owner Mode” really doesn’t add anything more than you have in “Booker Mode,” really.  Just a few more options on editing your promotion, and you don’t have the “Owner Goals” hanging over your head, forcing you to meet certain quotas like earning a certain amount of money or reaching a certain amount of overness in a certain timeframe or else getting fired.

-PPV distribution deals and the “Other Media” draws are some other neat little extras that don’t need to be in there really but are appreciated.  Just some other things to think about when booking your shows (can wrestling really beat the ever popular “Crime Lab”?) and another viable way for you to control how your fed makes money (in choosing the PPV carrier that meets the needs of a fed of your size and market).

-The locations are very generic.  Once again, completely editable, if you can stand the tedium.

Booking

The most important part of Total Extreme Wrestling is the booking, because without it, none of the rest of that would make a bit of difference.  It’s here that TEW almost excels.  The actual booking is fairly easy, if a bit clunky.  You select whether it’s a match or an angle (any non-match is now an “angle”), select a match or angle type, select the participants and then select whether it’s part of the pre-show “dark” period (20 minutes) or part of the regular card.  Matches are further broken down by the need for a few minutes of “prep-time” for entrances, prop/cage set up, and the like, which adds a nice bit of realism to the proceedings.  Where the game really gets it right, however is in the booking of the matches themselves.  For every match, you select a road agent, either from your list of current agents or any wrestler you think might do a good job at it, and then you click over to make notes for your road agents during the match.  Want to completely bury a guy on his way out of the company?  The option is there to do that.  Want to keep a guy looking pretty strong even though he takes a loss?  You can.  In addition to selecting generally what the finish to the match should be, you can select how the wrestlers reach that finish.  It’s really a nice touch of realism, and definitely my favorite of any additions to this game.  A small gripe, but it would have been nice to move the location selection tab to the booking screen, just to consolidate things a little more.

Unfortunately, a lot of the momentum made in the booking is lost when the card actually starts.  The information is presented in a pleasing manner, and I really like the road agents’ notes section, but it doesn’t really feel like a wrestling match.  This is where I really miss the match commentary.  Sure it was unnecessary, but for something as important to the experience of playing a game like TEW, some kind of short match synopsis outside the finish and time would be nice.  Just to give it more of a feel of an actual show.  It may seem like a small gripe, but a little embellishment would go a long way to making the booking screen a lot more fun to click through.

After the show is over, you get a nice little report letting you know how the crowd responded to the show.  It’s a nice touch, and gives you a nice grasp on what changes you need to make from show to show to keep up with your audience.  That’s just my point though.  Small little touches go a long way to making the game work, and whenever opportunities for those touches are missed, it’s infuriating because this is otherwise such a great game.

Other Issues:

-The game itself plays incredibly smooth.  The graphics hiccups that were there were already solved between the time I got the game and the time I started writing the review.  Load times are quick and painless, and other than one memory issue I ran into early on in the editor, it’s run without crashing and with no bugs to report.

-I wasn’t able to test the sound or the multiplayer, so they’re not factored into the score at all.  Whatever sound effects are in there I’m sure will be cute the first few times you play through and then you’ll probably turn them off.  Multiplayer of course, I couldn’t review really because I don’t know anybody else who’s playing it.  

-The character graphics are well done, but some of them are a bit strange, and I’m not even talking about the guy in the lobster costume or any of the crazy masks (though the guy with female anatomy mask kind of scares me).  About 75% of the time, they’re good or very good, and then about 25% of the time, you’ll think that that same artist was locked in a room with a bottle of vodka and a copy of Poser.  The necks do look a little funky also, especially considering how few wrestlers have them, much less giraffe necks.

-I’m glad (?) to say that Women’s wrestling is entirely plausible.

-The graphical interface is nice and apparently fully editable in most of your major editing softwares, so if you don’t like the orangey-brown hue, go nuts on making your own.

-There is a save game option for use at any time, but you can’t save multiple instances of the same career.

Overall Score:  92/100

Obviously, I can’t cover everything, but I’ve hit on most of the major important points here.  The game is a pleasure to play once you learn your way around it.  If you liked TEW 2004, chances are more than good that you’ll like 2005 as well.  Understand that it is a learned enjoyment, however.  This could, in part, be because I was working with incomplete documentation, but I had to basically teach myself how to play the game all over again.  So know  that you’ll probably want to take some time within the game just familiarizing yourself with where everything is and learning what you’re doing.  It’s a jump not unlike that from EWR to TEW 2004, but even more so, because so much has been completely changed.

The two biggest problems I had with the game were:

-That the editors are incredibly deep, which is good, but entirely too daunting for new players and people who want to pick up and play.  I don’t think the editor should be changed, but this is a caution to anyone not willing to spend their first day with the game solely with the editor:  Wait a month or two until the people who don’t mind spending the time with it release mods, and then start playing.  Otherwise, your enjoyment of the game will be severely limited.

-The title lacks the same personality that Adam’s games have shown in the past.  The Cornellverse, which I’ve never gotten particularly into is deep and fleshed out, but ultimately that relies on the game being a tool for the player’s imagination to make something bigger than the scope of the game.  In the past, Adam’s games have taken great care to cultivate that creativity, like the different commentary sets and websites in EWR, or at least had a flair of personality outside the standard book and earn, book and earn mentality.  What I think is a danger for this series going forward, and is starting to become very noticeable here (though it doesn’t ruin the fun, yet) is that what Adam Ryland, the programmer, sees as unnecessary fluff that he doesn’t need to recode, was part of what made the game what it is today, which is the best wrestling sim on the market.  I understand the push for realism, I understand not wanting to worry us with extra unnecessary menus and slider bars and whatnot, but the danger there is that the more and more layers of unnecessary bells and whistles you remove, the more and more you’re left with the fun, playable spreadsheet.  I’m not sure I’d want to play that.

But that’s the future.  This is now.  Total Extreme Warfare 2005 is a fantastic game, the closest you or I will ever come to being Vince McMahon or Paul Heyman or, egh, Vince Russo.  If you’ve ever dreamed of what it would be like to watch a wrestling show, and hear 20,000 screaming fans, and know it’s because of what you wrote, this game is the closest thing you’ll probably ever come to it.  It’s realistic, it’s fun, and once you’ve got the angles and the storyline editors filled up and maybe a “real life” mod plugged in there, it’s one of the best wrestling games out there today.

SPECIAL NOTE:  I realize that all you TEW fans out there have a lot of questions on your minds about the various things I didn’t have time to cover here.  I’d like to open up my e-mail Inbox to you so that you can ask me any nagging questions you might have that would effect your purchase of the game.  Send anything you’ve got to [email protected], and I’ll see what I can do for you.