WWE All Stars Message Board
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In the hustle and bustle of E3 week, on the very day THQ announced it would transition over the UFC license to Electronic Arts for an 'undisclosed cash payment," the publisher decided to close its San Diego studio.
"THQ confirms that today's announcement regarding the UFC license transition will affect the company's San Diego studio," the publisher informed Joystiq in a statement. "THQ is working closely with those relevant staff to either find possible employment within the company, or potentially with EA."
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In a move all-but-assuredly timed to be buried underneath the deluge of press conference recaps and trailer postings of E3 Day Zero, THQ has reportedly shuttered one of its studios and then proceeded to totally not say anything about it.
The studio in question is THQ San Diego, the team that most recently had worked on the critically-acclaimed arcade wrestling game WWE All Stars. According to the report, the team had been working on a new UFC game, which obviously became unnecessary following today's announcement that the UFC licensed had been passed to EA.
The San Diego studio had originally been purchased by THQ from Midway, following the latter publisher's demise. The team had previously worked on TNA Wrestling, as well as the Backyard Wrestling series.
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The additional power of the system means the conversion from Wii to 3DS is far less jarring than from Wii to DS, and WWE All Stars is a great example of that. If you're a fan of arcade-style wrestling games, or you loved the console version, there's no reason to hesitate picking up this handheld edition.
Full review here
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- Gauntlet mode will allow you to face off against every superstar in a row with few opportunities to regain health
- Score Scramble tracks points earned throughout a match as players attempt to reach a certain limit in a race against time
- uses the touch screen for some elements
- counter punches with the D-pad
- framerate stutters a bit in this build
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The 3DS game will come pre-packed with the 13 rasslers offered as DLC for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, and two exclusive gameplay modes, Gauntlet and Score Scramble. Gauntlet is a survival mode in which players have to take on every wrestler in the game. Score Scramble challenges players "to either reach a specific point total or to finish a timed match with the highest point total."
The 3DS version of All Stars arrives on November 22. Unfortunately, we don't expect a BrawlStick release for this one.
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For 240 Microsoft Points or $2.99 on PSN, you can add Big Boss Man, Michael "PS" Hayes, and "World's Strongest Man" Mark Henry to the game, all complete with the game's outsized style. That's ... more stars, even if it doesn't quite hit the goal of "all." Maybe we're being too strict about this.
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Jeff and I spent weeks trying to gank someone's pre-order code for WWE All Stars, the one that gave you access to perpetually evil multimillionaire and master of the perfectly-trimmed beard, Ted DiBiase (as well as his son, confusingly also named Ted DiBiase). I guess we can give up that hunt, as THQ announced today that the Million Dollar Man and son are now available for purchase in the game's DLC store on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for $1.99 (or 160 Microsoft Space Dollars).
The Million Dollar Man: Great WWE villain? Or GREATEST WWE villain?Even more exciting is the announced upcoming schedule of DLC, which features a number of classic wrestlers the likes of which any old school wrestling fan should find themselves uncontrollably squeeing with glee over. Go ahead and get your squee face ready, I'll wait.
We good? Okay.
July 5th will see the release of the "All-Time Greats Pack," which includes the Legion of Doom (Hawk and Animal, for the uneducated), Jerry "The King" Lawler, and Chris Jericho. That pack will retail for $4 (320 MS points).
Also on July 5th, R-Truth will be made available as a free download. Because honestly, who would pay money for R-Truth?
On August 2nd, THQ will take a trip down to Cobb County Georgia and release the "Southern Charisma Pack," featuring the face of law and order in the WWE, the Big Boss Man (as well as Michael Hayes, and Mark Henry). That pack will retail for $3 (240 MS points).
Whether or not more DLC will come down the pipes following the August release, THQ isn't currently saying, but between the Million Dollar Man, the Legion of Doom and Big Boss Man, I don't have many complaints about the selections they've made. That said, if we don't get a "Many Faces of Charles Wright" pack, featuring The Godfather, Kama "The Supreme Fighting Machine," and Papa Shango, this whole WWE All Stars endeavor will have been entirely for naught. For naught, I say!
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Next on the list, July 5 brings the All-Time Greats pack, which features Hawk, Animal, Jerry "The King" Lawler and Chris Jericho for $4. The wrestler R-Truth will also be available as a free download on July 5. Finally, the Southern Charisma pack will debut on August 2 for $3 and will include Big Boss Man, Michael Hayes and Mark Henry.
At this point, there's only one question left to ask: Where the hell is Cyndi Lauper?
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There's just one small caveat: They have cartoon wrestlers all over them.
The specific controllers offered are the "BrawlSticks" and "BrawlPads" produced for WWE All Stars, and thus bear the stylized likenesses of two massive and oiled WWE stars, The Rock and Triple H. Perfect if you were looking for both a new arcade stick and a new art project!
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That said, Develop is a reliable publication and when it claims a source has informed them Electronic Arts possess an early next-generation Xbox development kit (I'm not about to call it Xbox 720, guys), there's reason to believe there's some truth there. That's just about all Develop has filed here, however.
“Quite often when new consoles come around they’re packaged into a PC shell, but actually what’s inside is an entirely new console,” said Develop's source, described as "senior, trusted, well-placed."
Microsoft has said very little about its plans for Xbox 360's successor, pointing to continued strong sales and the successful launch of Kinect as proof there's no reason for Microsoft to move on yet. Nintendo's decision to leave Wii behind, however, may have started putting pressure on everyone else.
I'm not ready to buy three new pieces of hardware for my living room, are you?
Job listings from March (via Engadget) described a team at Microsoft working on "defining and delivering next generation console architectures," which is absolutely not surprising. Of course Microsoft is actively working on a machine to come after Xbox. Eventually, the six-year-old Xbox 360 will be retired.
"Our view is we will be selling Xbox 360 for a long time," said Microsoft president of entertainment & devices Robbie Bach in 2008, when asked about Microsoft's future plans. "We are always working on new technologies. We have people working on those. People ask me how many people I have working on the next generation. On the one hand, it’s everybody. On the other, it’s nobody. People are continuously working on new technology. We started thinking about the next generation before we shipped the Xbox 360. It doesn’t start with a date. It starts way upstream with silicon development. From that comes a series of data points. You start making early technology choices. It’s an evolving thing. Stuff doesn’t become concrete until you get inside a window of when you have to ship, more than 18 months or so out.”
If Microsoft's looking to ship in fall 2012, we'd be within that window. Nintendo has said its next console would arrive sometime in 2012 but has not specified a window--we may not even get that at E3, knowing Nintendo. Previous statements from Microsoft pointed towards an Xbox 360 successor at earliest in 2013.
"I think it's important to say that the Xbox 360 is the console of the long future for us. There is no need to launch a new console, because we're able to give this console new life either with software upgrades or hardware upgrades like Project Natal," said senior director of Xbox product management David Hufford to The Guardian in January 2010, before Microsoft had ultimately billed Natal as Kinect. "The Xbox 360 was designed for a long life, and I don't even know if we're at the midpoint yet."
It's unclear how much Nintendo's next machine will relate to its previous phenomenon.Sony's known for making similar "long life" proclomations about its hardware, declaring both PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 would be around for a decade. In a sense, Sony was correct about PS2. Even though much of the world had moved on to newer hardware, Sony continued to sell PS2 hardware at a decent clip, even releasing supportive software. WWE All-Stars was released on PS2 earlier this year and Electronic Arts will have a PS3 version of Madden NFL 12 when it releases in August.
"This generation is here for a long, long time," said Xbox UK boss Stephen McGill to Xbox 360 Achievements last fall. "I think there's still a lot of legs left with the Xbox 360, so we're years away from contemplating what comes next."
When McGill made that statement, however, Kinect was unproven and Nintendo hadn't announced a new console. Kinect was very much designed to extend the current machine's lifecycle by a few years.
The next moves from Sony and Microsoft may hinge more on the response to Nintendo's machine than anything else. If the market expects another phenomenon, how long can each company wait? It would not be a surprise to see Microsoft fleetingly reference a new console at E3, if only to get folks buzzing.
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With Nintendo about to disclose details on Wii's successor at E3, the gauntlet has been thrown and we're looking at endless months of anonymous sources murmuring about what Sony and Microsoft are planning. Speculation's fun 'n all, but everyone and their anonymous mom seems to hear differently.
That said, Develop is a reliable publication and when it claims a source has informed them Electronic Arts possess an early next-generation Xbox development kit (I'm not about to call it Xbox 720, guys), there's reason to believe there's some truth there. That's just about all Develop has filed here, however.
“Quite often when new consoles come around they’re packaged into a PC shell, but actually what’s inside is an entirely new console,” said Develop's source, described as "senior, trusted, well-placed."
Microsoft has said very little about its plans for Xbox 360's successor, pointing to continued strong sales and the successful launch of Kinect as proof there's no reason for Microsoft to move on yet. Nintendo's decision to leave Wii behind, however, may have started putting pressure on everyone else.
I'm not ready to buy three new pieces of hardware for my living room, are you?
Job listings from March (via Engadget) described a team at Microsoft working on "defining and delivering next generation console architectures," which is absolutely not surprising. Of course Microsoft is actively working on a machine to come after Xbox. Eventually, the six-year-old Xbox 360 will be retired.
"Our view is we will be selling Xbox 360 for a long time," said Microsoft president of entertainment & devices Robbie Bach in 2008, when asked about Microsoft's future plans. "We are always working on new technologies. We have people working on those. People ask me how many people I have working on the next generation. On the one hand, it’s everybody. On the other, it’s nobody. People are continuously working on new technology. We started thinking about the next generation before we shipped the Xbox 360. It doesn’t start with a date. It starts way upstream with silicon development. From that comes a series of data points. You start making early technology choices. It’s an evolving thing. Stuff doesn’t become concrete until you get inside a window of when you have to ship, more than 18 months or so out.”
If Microsoft's looking to ship in fall 2012, we'd be within that window. Nintendo has said its next console would arrive sometime in 2012 but has not specified a window--we may not even get that at E3, knowing Nintendo. Previous statements from Microsoft pointed towards an Xbox 360 successor at earliest in 2013.
"I think it's important to say that the Xbox 360 is the console of the long future for us. There is no need to launch a new console, because we're able to give this console new life either with software upgrades or hardware upgrades like Project Natal," said senior director of Xbox product management David Hufford to The Guardian in January 2010, before Microsoft had ultimately billed Natal as Kinect. "The Xbox 360 was designed for a long life, and I don't even know if we're at the midpoint yet."
It's unclear how much Nintendo's next machine will relate to its previous phenomenon.Sony's known for making similar "long life" proclomations about its hardware, declaring both PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 would be around for a decade. In a sense, Sony was correct about PS2. Even though much of the world had moved on to newer hardware, Sony continued to sell PS2 hardware at a decent clip, even releasing supportive software. WWE All-Stars was released on PS2 earlier this year and Electronic Arts will have a PS3 version of Madden NFL 12 when it releases in August.
"This generation is here for a long, long time," said Xbox UK boss Stephen McGill to Xbox 360 Achievements last fall. "I think there's still a lot of legs left with the Xbox 360, so we're years away from contemplating what comes next."
When McGill made that statement, however, Kinect was unproven and Nintendo hadn't announced a new console. Kinect was very much designed to extend the current machine's lifecycle by a few years.
The next moves from Sony and Microsoft may hinge more on the response to Nintendo's machine than anything else. If the market expects another phenomenon, how long can each company wait? It would not be a surprise to see Microsoft fleetingly reference a new console at E3, if only to get folks buzzing.
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The DLC also includes "Compatibility Pack 1," an update that patches the game to be compatible with ... the Honky Tonk Man DLC. What a convenient bundle! The DLC was released for PS3 back in April, but is currently unavailable due to the small matter of the entire PlayStation Network being down.
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I bet you didn't even know that game had multiplayer, did you?
Well, it does! And it's nuts. (And bolts. Zing!) If you want to play with us, dust off your kraziest kontraptions and send us a friend request at GBTNT on the Xbox 360. If you don't have Nuts & Bolts yet, you can pick up a Giant-Bomb-endorsed Platinum Hits copy for pretty cheap, and the game is also available through Games on Demand.
Either way, we'll be playing from 4PM to 6PM PDT tomorrow, April 7th, and live streaming the whole damn thing. Don't miss it! To get everyone appropriately chuffed for the event, here's a really ineffective Master Chief built in Nuts & Bolts. Enjoy!
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It is a strange, slightly silly pursuit: creating a realistic replica of a fantasy. And yet, developers and publishers have, without asking why, fed us real-fake wrestling games, where punches whiff and luchadores disappointingly obey the laws of gravity.
WWE All-Stars, the latest wrestling game from THQ, sounds, in name alone, like another addition to this long, dull line of reality-fantasy-simulators. It's not: Its wrestlers are brawny theme park caricatures; its drama is shallow and direct; and its rules are nonexistent.
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4 out of 5
The bigger moves send you flying high above the canvas. WWE All Stars doesn't concern itself with reality--not even the fictionalized "reality" that drives professional wrestling. Instead, it feels like the developers set out to make a wrestling game that was, above all, exciting to play. Common rules of wrestling, like the count-out, are thrown aside. Boring tag team matches are tossed out in favor of rulesets that put all four men in the ring at the same time. And the physics of striking and grappling have been exaggerated to the point where the game has mid-air juggle combos, made possible by wrestlers that bounce off of the mat like they were wrestling on a trampoline. It's an exciting game that's entertaining in a way that no wrestling game has been for a generation or more. And it's all backed up by a great roster of current and past WWE performers, letting you relive a few classic moments while also letting you put together matches that wouldn't be possible today.
All Stars is not a particularly complicated game, and the key to doing well is learning the range and timing of your various moves. There are quick and strong versions of your strikes and grapple attempts, so knowing when to wind up for a strong grapple and when to quickly insert some strikes to prevent your opponent's grapple attempts from connecting is the key to victory. Unlike many other wrestling games, this one doesn't mess around with stamina. Instead, your focus should be on damaging your opponent while avoiding damage yourself, sort of like a fighting game. As you wrestle, you'll build up multiple meters, one that lets you execute signature maneuvers that drop the game into a glorious slow-motion sequence as you dish out substantial damage and a second meter that's used for your even-more-devastating finishing moves. They aren't especially tough to execute, so the strategy comes in knowing when to pull out these moves, which take even more time to wind up than your standard attacks. The fighting system lets you combo moves together in some interesting ways, allowing for mid-air juggles, but you can also grab guys out of mid-air, setting up some chain grapples that look really awesome.
That's probably the thing that makes WWE All Stars work so well. It's easy to make your wrestlers do cool stuff, and the game is great at making your moves look insane and painful. Simple atomic drops shake the entire ring. Finishers, like the Rock Bottom, almost look like they're going to destroy it. And a lot of the basic animations for signature moves have been pumped up. CM Punk tosses opponents up into the air before raising his knee and catching them with the Go To Sleep. Hulk Hogan's leg drop can hit standing opponents, crumpling them to the ground in a heap. Randy Savage backflips from wherever he's standing to the closest turnbuckle when you activate his elbow drop finisher. The whole thing just looks crazy, and this makes the few cases where wrestlers clip through each other or don't quite line up right for some animations easier to swallow.
He'll punt you in the head, but that's not going to end the match. The game defaults to a standard exhibition match, which is actually closer to a "falls count anywhere" match. You won't get counted out, there's no rope break, and the only way to lose by disqualification is to pull a chair out from under the ring and give your opponent four or five good shots. If you want to be able to dole out more chair shots, the extreme rules variant removes even this stipulation. The tag matches are all "tornado" tag team matches, eliminating the notion of tagging in and out completely by letting all four men be in the ring at once. You can also get into elimination or handicap matches, and many of the multiplayer modes allow up to four players in the ring at once. There's also a cage match, which lets you dive off of the cage for attacks and presents a timing-based minigame that must be completed before a wrestler can climb out of the cage and win. Also, many matches can be won by knockout, which is handled really well.
The idea is simple: if you hit a guy with your finisher while he's out of health, he's knocked out and you win the match. The knock out is usually followed by a stylish, lazy pin, with one wrestler standing on the other, or pinning him with one finger. It's a simple idea that makes the finishing moves feel more dangerous and damaging than they do in most traditional wrestling games. The catch is that it also ends tag matches, even though the unconscious guy's partner should, in theory, be able to break up that lazy pin and carry on the fight. Instead the standing partner just slinks out of the ring while the pin takes place.
You can also take the game online, which mirrors the mode selection found in the offline game, but Internet latency can really change the pace of the action. In games where lag is noticeable, quick strikes become far more effective, because timing your button presses to counter them is even more difficult when you have to deal with a less-than-idea Internet connection. Since all players seem to be handicapped in the same way when the connection isn't great, it doesn't seem to break the game, but it certainly makes some strategies more viable than others.
Not quite the NWO showdown you were probably hoping for. Though you can set up any of the game's matches as exhibition bouts, WWE All Stars does a great job with its story-style mode. The Path of Champions is a set of three ten-fight ladders that let you take anyone on the roster (or any two characters, in the case of the tag team path) on a road to a championship fight. One of these is against The Undertaker, another puts you up against Randy Orton, and the last has you going against both members of D-Generation X. From a gameplay perspective, this mode is just a selection of preset matches. But the game sprinkles in a few really nice pre-rendered cutscenes to give the journey a little flavor. Paul Bearer appears in The Undertaker path, moaning into a microphone and animating perfectly while the Dead Man silently planes a wooden coffin in the background. Randy Orton's isn't quite as entertaining, but the pre-rendered Randy gets a lot of Orton's real-life looks and turns to the camera down really well. You can tell that someone sat down and studied a lot of footage for these. The D-Generation X cutscenes are silly in the way you'd expect: at one point Triple H and Shawn Michaels simply start shilling for the game you're currently playing. This is all real voicework, and most of it's pretty good.
The other mode is called Fantasy Warfare, and it tries to match up the two sides of the game's roster in interesting ways. Some of them work better than others. For example, it makes sense to have CM Punk and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin face off in a "Superior Lifestyle" showdown to see if straight edge is better than drinking a lot of beer. "Coldest Snake" for a match between Jake "The Snake" Roberts and "The Viper" Randy Orton? Again, perfect. But pitting Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka against Kane to determine who has the most "Ruthless Aggression" is kind of forced. Even if the core idea of the match isn't always great, each of these 15 pairings is set up with a terrific video package that really reminds you that the best thing about the WWE these days is its team of video editors. Lots of great footage from the past and the present is included and cut together really well.
In addition to a great roster of 30 wrestlers (15 current, 15 "legends,"), you can also create your own wrestler. While there are some decent visual options for dressing your guys up, the move options are limited to the movesets of the existing characters. So you can make some crazy idiot in a Bruce Lee Game of Death suit and make him wear Cobra Commander's cowl, but he'll still play exactly like one of the existing characters. That said, you can separately assign movesets and finishers, so if there's a character you like to use but wish he had a different finisher, that's an option. Created wrestlers can, of course, be taken online. That said, with guys like Mr. Perfect and Andre the Giant on the roster, you might not find a good reason to create a character of your own.
Alternate outfits let you get a bit closer to the Hollywood days. Visually, the bulked-up wrestlers look like ridiculous action figure versions of themselves, but that doesn't mean that they're slow. The game moves really quickly, and strings its animations together pretty well. Perhaps the only downfall with the way the game looks lies in the wrestlers' dead-eyed faces, which don't animate very much over the course of a fight. So Edge will perpetually have a weird, Joker-like smirk on his face at all times, and Randy Savage will always have a zombie-like look whenever he stares back at his opponent after his signature move hits. The commentary is pretty disappointing, with Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross providing some of the flattest, most generic sports dialogue around. It's also really repetitive. It's probably the one aspect of WWE All Stars that is straight-up bad. If those guys get back into a booth to record commentary again, someone needs to get them a cup of coffee or set their faces on fire or find some other way to make them sound genuinely excited about the proceedings.
Probably the biggest complaint with WWE All Stars is that there isn't more of it. More characters, to set up more Fantasy Warfare match-ups and more story mode hijinks would make for a longer-lasting experience. But if you were dedicated to seeing all of the major solo stuff and unlock all of the characters, you could blast through all of that in a day. With that in mind, the action can get a little thin, especially once you've figured out the timing for most of the reversals and strikes. But even with that in mind, WWE All Stars is still a great wrestling game that takes things in a much-needed new direction, and hopefully THQ applies at least some of what its San Diego team has done to some of its other, stuffier WWE releases.
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