[UPDATE] I just read that it is the northeast and CA only right now so check their site where they have a map so you know when your state has service resumed.

I’ll start off with the one negative I have with the game since I don’t want to end on a bad note, there is NO multiplayer in this game.  A game of poker is always more fun with a group of friends (or at least random strangers) than playing with some computer AI.  A game like this could be fun to be able to play online with friends on your OpenFeint (more on that later) buddy list or maybe even just some local Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, but that is not the case here.  I’m pretty sure that the iPhone version does so it is sad that Android gets the shaft here.With that out of the way, besides this major omission there is still plenty here to keep you busy. 

The first mode is Cash Game which you can think of like the “exhibition” mode in other games.  You pick a place to play (all real locations) and join one of the events hosted at that location.  The more you scroll over the higher the buy in to play, but obviously that means there is a chance to win more money.  A recent update added the ability to purchase (with real money) more chips so that you could play the bigger events earlier had you not earned enough yet.  Once you pick the location a short video intro of it plays and you join a table.  Gameplay is intuitive with you tapping on your chips to place your bet.  You can tap on the check mark to call or slide on the wheel to increase your bet.  There is even a button to set the amount to what the pot currently is which can be a help if you want to make bigger bets.  The wheel only goes so fast so sometimes it takes a bit to get to where you want to go.  If you want to fold you just flick your cards up.  You pick an avatar to represent you and when playing you see the avatars of all the other AI players and you can play with or without “tells.”  There is also a meter for how strong your hand is that can be turned on or off based on your taste.  These games as well as the career games all go towards an overall bankroll that you will try to increase (I mean, that is the point of playing Poker, right?).

The Legend Career mode is where you will most likely be spending the majority of your play time, at least at first.  It plays just like the cash games and has the multiple locations as well, but now there are more events with a bit of variety that seem to give it a bit more purpose.  You start at a small pub playing a game for nothing to build up a bit of a bankroll to get you to Harrah’s New Orleans which has Sit & Go, Winner Take All, and Shootout events.  Your progress in each event is saved so if your best was 3rd place it will be labeled as such until you beat that.  You do not need to come in first to move on, but it will obviously net you the most cash to be able to buy into the bigger games.  Other than more variety the career mode also adds a sort of rival for each location introduced in some high quality video sequences (and once beat there is a video of them not being the best loser).  In all seriousness this could have been the only mode and Cash Mode isn’t really all that different, but it is how it is setup and that is fine.  There is an option to save replays which I find odd since there really isn’t a whole lot of action like in sports, action, and fighting games.  I cannot see a situation where I would be like “Dude, you have to see this sick flush I got!” but if you can, it’s here for you.

On top of the bankroll increasing, the more you play the more you level up.  This adds an extra element to keep you playing where it adds kind of a level grind.  The better quality the opponents you’re facing or the bigger the stakes the more XP you will earn for winning and you can even get a smaller amount of XP for at least playing a hand and losing instead of just folding.  These levels really get you nothing in game, you don’t get any avatar customization or item boosts or extra chips or anything, it is purely just to say you hit that level.  Well, that and to get achievements.  WSOP is an OpenFeint enabled game which for those that don’t know is an attempt to have something similar to Xbox Live or PSN where you can have achievements that accumulate to an overall score, a friends list, and leaderboards.  All of these features are available in WSOP which is definitely nice since OpenFeint seems to have the most support for users, although there are others and not every game supports it so don’t expect it to be exactly like Xbox Live.  The only thing is that (at least as it is as of this writing) you can’t see what achievements your friend has earned, just what games they have played.  If you click on the game instead of showing the achievements they have accomplished it takes you to a download page.  This is more of something with how OpenFeint is setup than how Glu has made WSOP so I can’t fault it for that.

The graphics aren’t anything special (outside of the high quality video clips) but they get the job done.  I mean, how fancy do you really need that deck of cards to look next to your (hopefully growing) pile of chips?  The same can be said for the sound effects.  It doesn’t look or sound like a cheaply made game so you feel you got a bit more for your $0.99.  I have had this game for a few weeks now and I have been playing it for hours and still have not finished the career.

4/5 Stars – I would have given it the full 5 stars if there were any form of multiplayer, but it is still a ton of fun without it.  It will keep you busy for quite some time and even after you finish the career you can try to level up more and earn all the achievements (oh yeah, and increase your bankroll).  I have been known to say in the past that playing poker against AI is boring but this game made me change my mind on that matter.   For $0.99 you can’t go wrong.  It is available on both the Android Marketplace as well as the Amazon App Store.

If you don’t know what I mean by coin pusher here is a video to help you:

If you still don’t know, you obviously have never been to an arcade, fair, or bowling alley.  These things are obvious scams that seem to work because they pop up at every one of them.  The basic idea is that you dump in money in hopes of more money coming out and as you can see in the posted video, it never works out that way.  It’s like a claw machine, but take away any possible skill and even less value for your winnings.

So the geniuses at Nubee decided that this should be an app for a phone.   So let me get this straight, something that is only appealing because you have a chance of winning money and therefore is not “fun” is now something I can do on my phone?  So you get up to 50 coins to dump in and try to get them in the holes to get the slot spinner to go which gives you… more coins.  If the coins are pushed off the front (not the sides) then you get them back, just to play them again.  Sometimes the spinner will give you special coins or “treasures” that you can collect (think like a Facebook game) which can then be redeemed for… you guessed it, more coins.  It is an infinite loop of just playing for the sake of level grinding.  Yes, you read that right, they felt that the way to make this more appealing was to add the RPG element of leveling up, much as you would in a Facebook game.  What does leveling up get you?  Wait for it…  more coins.  But these coins are in the form of an anchor dropping on the table and whatever it knocks into your possession you can play, so your level bonus can vary and other than that IT DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR YOU TO LEVEL UP.  Do not expect to be able to have more coins available to you than 50, do not expect the ability to drop more at once, do not expect to be able to get coins regenerated faster.  Leveling is just one small notch above pointless. 

If you’re reading this and going “what do you mean by regenerating coins?”  then you are obviously caring too much, but what the hell, I’ll humor you anyway.  Since you aren’t actually putting any real money into your SD card slot (go ahead, try and jam a quarter in, see what happens… I’d love for you to take video of the resulting tech support at your local Verizon/AT&T/etc) you are given 50 coins to start and every 40 seconds you will be given one more coin.  You can still get coins back if the app is not running but it will take longer than 40 seconds a coin.  Now here is where shit gets really crazy, you can actually pay money if you want to actually get more coins.  Once again the Facebook game comparison comes in, but right now that means you’re just paying money for the privilege of tapping your screen some more to get more coins to play to tap your screen to get more coins to… oh man, sorry, my brain is frying just thinking about it.

Now, if there were any point to any of it, ie you won actual prizes or maybe even come up with some cross promotion and have it unlock items in other games, then maybe I could see why this exists.  But right now it is a game that is about leveling grinding by just tapping coins in a crazy Groundhog Day infinite loop with the idiot tax of paying for more coins, or even treasure (which, remember, is just to collect to get more coins… getting the point yet?).  When you click on the item area where you can redeem your coins and treasures there is a “coming soon” section that I really can’t even imagine what they would add to it.  I have wasted so much of my time trying to hit various level milestones and collections in the hopes that more would happen and that I would be find a point to be able to add to this review.  Sadly, none of this ever happened and I am not without that time back in my life.  Please, don’t let friends play Coin Pirates, if you see it on their phone, uninstall it for them, they will thank you.  If you take anything from this review (which in all honesty is WAY longer than it needed to be and way more press than this app deserved) just know to stay far away.  Maybe you can e-mail them and ask them what the point is, I’d be interested in what they’d say.

0.5/5 Stars – Hardly a “game.”  I only gave it the 0.5 since they at least attempted to give some of a reason by adding collections and leveling… but in the end it still is all pointless.  I’m surprised my brain is still functional enough to write this after playing it as much as I did.  Oh, and how the hell does it have a 4 star rating on the Android market?!?!

So if you didn’t feel like reading my Catch Me If You Can review, the genre is basically a platformer where you only have to worry about two buttons: jump and duck.  The movement is automatic as you are just constantly running so it is all about the timing of jumping and ducking.  Some games try to mix it up a bit and change some elements and maybe even add a button to kick or something.  A Tricky Game with a Cookie looks to change some elements as well, but instead of adding a button and/or ability they have decided to be innovative and TAKE AWAY DUCKING.  Wow, exciting, so now you literally have an Atari 2600-esque one button game.  Sure, it’s a platformer, but one that consists of just jumping as a rolling cookie.  Old Spice and Doritos have sponsored games, the makers of A Tricky Game.. should have called up Chips Ahoy or Oreo and maybe they would push a few more units out.  You know, now that I think of it this really does remind of me a flash game that would be found on a web site of a food company.

Harsh criticism aside, basically you just have a game that is about timing the pressing of the A button and no more.  When you “die” it rewinds a bit and you try again while timer keeps going.  At first I thought that it would rewind to beginning of a level section (shown by different colors in the platforms you are rolling on), but that did not seem to be the case as I died and started slightly ahead in a tricky section.  So different sections have different colors to the ground but it didn’t seem to matter.  You are merely trying to get the best time that you can to finish the level and it keeps track of high scores for you locally.  There are 4 courses to pick from short, medium, long, and custom plus a level editor.  I fully admit to only playing the trial which only had the short course, but that was enough for me to know that it was not a game for me and not worth the 80 points asked.

Now maybe the thought of just loading a quick game here and there to try and beat your score is fun to you but I’d have to say that the poor level design can kill any of those thoughts right away.  Right at beginning of the game as you are learning there are sections you can’t see so it becomes more about trial and error than skill.  There is no tutorial, not that there needs to be one, but you’d think the beginning of a level would be able learning how to time jumps and ease you into what kind of twists the level design can throw at you but this is not the case.  Ok, sure, the challenge is what it is about and you learn by dying and just playing over and over again to make yourself better giving it an old school feel, but it just seemed too shallow, even with the promise of making your own levels.  I mean, honestly, are you really going to take the time to make a level for yourself to try and beat with the good chance that you’ll make something that can’t be beat?  Maybe you want to make something to mess with your friends, but you’d have to convince them to play it.  We are no longer in the NES days where a track editor is confined to something locally, games with editors now pretty much need the ability to save and share these courses with others online.   I understand this is an Xbox Indie game with a small budget, but it just seems like a cheap way to say your game has replay value when you’ve only provided 3 levels.  To coincide with the poor design are cheap deaths.  I had one run where after I died it would constantly restart right at a knife so I would spawn into death and had to reset the whole game.

This game is from the maker of Zombie Sausage which I am currently working on a review for (2nd HINT: I wasn’t a fan of that either).  I may not be making any friends with these reviews, but I’m hoping if people are smart enough to steer clear of these poorly made games that are giving the Indie Channel a bad name that they’ll stop flooding the marketplace since they are making it hard to find the good games.

1/5 Stars – Poor level design on a weak and shallow concept lead to a poor game that probably wouldn’t even be fun as a free game on your phone.  I found myself playing a bit to try and overcome the challenge but when I found that the “challenge” was due to poor placement of respawning and not my lack of skill I was quickly done with it.  Try harder next time.  To see for yourself, click here to see the listing on Xbox.com and download to your console.

Let me preface by saying that I am a huge fan of Dragon Gate USA.  I have watched DVDs from Japan, ordered the cable PPVs, and even gone to a few live shows (including their very first live iPPV).  I do my best to keep up with it and make myself familiar with all the wrestlers, but I make no claims to be an expert and know every little thing.  I say this so that you know that I am familiar with the product but if I make a mistake or do not know something, I am only human… anyway, onto the show.

After ordering multiple iPPVs from GoFightLive.TV I was worried about how this would go in terms of glitches and other technical issues since those were always riddled with them.  My concern was that they had issues with a company that did that as their business and had experience before, how well would they do doing it on their own for the first time.  When 8 PM rolled around and nothing was on my screen I was worried and sure enough the show started late.  It was almost 10 minutes before the show started right in the middle of the first match.  With that said, after that little hiccup the rest of the experience was pretty smooth, I would dare say even better than the GoFightLive.TV shows.

The image was only 4×3 which is understandable since that is how even Ring of Honor still shoots their stuff, but I would like for a nice upgrade sometime in the near future.  I know they aren’t working with the biggest budgets and it is expensive to get new equipment, but it is still kind of annoying that in 2011 we are still dealing with new 4×3 content and not widescreen.  Those of you that know me know that I am not one of those to try and stretch the image or any of the other horrible ways people try to make 4×3 fit on their TV so it’s not a case of me feeling like my TV has “wasted space” but merely the fact that since it is a live event I know that there is more I could be seeing of the action going on.  The picture quality was not great either but better than the 2 ROH iPPVs that were also on this weekend.  It was below DVD quality, but definitely passable and better than something that would be found on Justin.TV or Ustream.  The sound was what you would expect too, which is that it was usually hard to hear things being said and levels were constantly off, but this is typical of these iPPVs.  Overall not an ideal experience, but I am aware they are working on a lower budget and I was still able to support them legally and see the event live when I was not able to make a trip to Atlanta.  For the $14.95 price tag I will not complain considering Wrestlemania this weekend is $55.  Another side note is that they actually had some videos during intermission.  Whenever it was on GoFightLive.TV (even this weekend’s ROH shows) they just put up the GoFightLive logo during the 15 minute intermission without any indication of when it will be coming back so you just have to sit and wait.  It was nice that Dragon Gate played some videos even if they were just the YouTube videos that they posted weeks ago.

NOTE: This is not from the iPPV but from something someone uploaded on YouTube

The first thing I noticed was that the place they had the show had a very low ceiling which reminded me of the NYC show I was at where it was the same issue.  When you have a lot of wrestlers known for high flying it is a bit of a bummer to see that they are constantly touching the ceiling when on the top rope and checking their head making sure they are going to have enough clearance.  The top rope moves were definitely kept at a minimum.  I also noticed that the crowd was quiet at times but I am not sure if this was a technical issue or the crowd itself.  It looked like the place was packed, but it was not a big place, maybe 200 people.

Jon Moxley vs. Arik Cannon – missed the beginning due to the technical issues of it starting.  Not a fan of Moxley but Cannon can do some entertaining stuff when working with the right people. An ok opener, nothing special that stood out.  Moxley won and then Reby Sky came out afterward and was laid out

Elimination match – Stalker vs. AR Fox vs. Silas Young vs. Jon Davis vs. Brodie Lee vs. Jimmie Jacobs.  Stalker was the comedy gimmick wrestler of the match, he is dress like a devil/demon and had some comedy spots.  When he was eliminated first the people booed.  I love that this was elimination style since I am not a fan of triple threat, fatal four way, etc. matches that are first finish gets the win.  It was your usual multi-person Dragon Gate match with some flashy moves and spots to keep you entertained but little in terms of psychology.  I had never seen AR Fox either but everyone here commented that his jeans were WAY too tight and there were lots of talk of “male camel toe” which was something I was hoping I’d never hear.  With that said, he did well in the match and with some ring gear change I may keep an eye on his future.  In the end it was no surprise that Brodie Lee was the last one standing.

Sami Callihan vs. Masato Yoshino – I am a big fan of Yoshino’s but have never been a fan of Callihan since seeing him a couple years ago in ROH.  Callihan got a lot of offense in during the match which I didn’t care about, but once Yoshino had the upper hand it was entertaining.  This is not “oh he’s the bad guy I hate him” kind of dislike, but genuinely does not entertain me and I don’t even care about seeing him get beat up, it’s just Yoshino is great to watch.  Luckily Yoshino got the win but that lead to Callihan getting on the mic and cursing afterwards which just was blah.  It screamed desperation like since he was swearing that would get him noticed.  On a related note there were promos throughout the show as well but I barely heard them since my friends and I were too busy talking to really hear, but we don’t watch Dragon Gate for promos, we watch for great in-ring action.

PAC vs. Akira Tozawa – This was one of the matches I was looking forward to the most.  PAC has impressed me with what little I have seen of him and Tozawa was the same.  I have only seen a handful of matches with each, but they both stuck out.  At one DGUSA show I was at Tozawa was in a tag match and whenever he wasn’t wrestling he did a great job of jawing with the crowd that always got me to crack up.  It was not as high flying as I expected from PAC but they also had the low ceiling to deal with.  I noticed him do a move or two from the 2nd rope instead of the top, but that didn’t take away from the match at all.  PAC ended up getting the win and I was entertained the whole time and highly recommend people at the very least checking this match out if they get a chance.

Danny Steel & Charade vs. Sin City Saints – This was a “who?” kind of match for me and I also wondered why guys billed from Boston were “Sin City” Saints, but whatever.  It ended up not mattering as these guys were just fodder for Callihan (ugh) to come out again and suplex the Sin City Saints which lead to Arik Cannon coming out again and yelling at Callihan.  He then suplexed the other team for whatever reason and they brawled into the back.  This was deemed a no contest and was just a waste of time after coming back from intermission.

Yamato vs. Austin Aries – This was the other match I was really looking forward to since it was for the Open Freedom Gate Challenge and Aries has been a favorite since my first ROH show when he was champion the first time around (it was the show he defended against Colt Cabana) .  The stipulation was that if Aries lost he would leave Dragon Gate USA and sadly I had a feeling that pretty much sealed the deal and I was right.  He did not win but the two of them put on one hell of a match that did not disappoint me.  It is sad to see Aries go especially after he just left ROH but hopefully he will pop up again somewhere else (although word is that he was one that tried out for Tough Enough and didn’t make it).

Ronin vs. Blood Warriors – Ronin formed at the first iPPV which I was at and they were big heels, but now they constantly play to the crowd and try to get them to yell “Ronin BABY!” as they come out.  I only wonder if this was done since they are the only stable that doesn’t have a Japanese member.  Either way, these are 3 young guys with lots of potential. They may not be “great” yet but they have plenty of time ahead of them to just get better and they are still entertaining.  This was a great main event with plenty of great spots that showcased all those involved well.  Ricochet seemed to have messed up his spot a bit at the end and I later read that he hurt his ankle and was pulled from the next night’s show, but it wasn’t anything too horrible to say it ruined the match or end. 

4/5 Stars – This was a great show with the replay being highly recommended to order (or the eventual DVD release).  While not the best DGUSA show I have seen, it was still very good and made to look even better after 2 disappointing ROH iPPVs that same weekend (one even being mere hours before).  Check out WWNLive.com for more info and DGUSA.TV to find out when the other shows will be.  If you want something different than the same old boring stuff in WWE and TNA, DGUSA is where I think you will find it.

After booting the game up and selecting where to load/save (yes, every time… why have we not moved passed this and have games just automatically load and save from your hard drive?) you are greeted by Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and The Rock which starts you off seeing the game’s exaggerated style (though you will soon see that some wrestlers are more exaggerated than others).  This sets you up to know that this is not WWE Smackdown vs. RAW, this is not a simulation (yes, even staged things get simulations, get over it) but a much more arcade style game.  While classic themes are playing through them menus you will see that the menu has only a few options on the surface; Exhibition, Game Modes, Create, Xbox Live, and Import but there is still quite a bit to do.

The previously mentioned arcade style is not just for the graphics, THQ had Yukes develop a game that only uses the 4 face buttons to make the game as simple and “pick up and play” as possible.  As a long time fan of wrestling games I have seen many styles and while the Smackdown vs. RAW games may be the most complex to play, that is just to give you as much control over your character as possible to really recreate what you see every Monday and Friday plus one Sunday a month.  WWE Legends of Wrestlemania ditches that total control in the hopes that they can catch some old school fans that want to just play and not have to learn buttons that go into the double digits.  On Xbox the X button does the strikes, the A button does grapples, Y is block/reversal, and B is miscellaneous actions.  Hitting different directions with those buttons and sometimes holding instead of tapping (or double tapping) will give you variations.  While I can commend them for trying to simplify, I’m not sure if that was the best way to do it because now moves are limited so you will see the same ones over and over and you can easily thing that you’re hitting the right direction but the game detected it as a different direction because of how you were facing, or you held the button slightly too long and now you’re doing something totally different.  It works for the most part and it is nice that a lot of the little extra moves show up on the screen to tell you what to press (some grapples are based on just who hits the button flashing on screen first) so you can pick up and play but it gets old faster than it should.  There is a fine line between “pick up and play” and “too simple.”  Sadly this is more on the “too simple” side of things and leads for a lack of moves.  With the lack of moves there is an even bigger lack of reversals.  No matter what move your opponent is doing you will either just shove them out of the way, punch them, or roll out of the way, that’s it and forget about trying to reverse the reversals.

The flow of a normal match basically is you do moves to build up a meter that starts at level 1 and goes to level 3.  The moves done are determined by what level you are at.  Once you build all the way up to level 3 then you can do your finishing move which is as simple as pressing X and A at the same time and doing the on screen button presses.  It is the same for everyone and is not like Smackdown vs. RAW’s setup where you have to have your opponent in a certain position.  Thankfully there are plenty of match types to pick from ranging from your standard and tag matches to specialties like ladder and cage plus the fan favorite Royal Rumble.  The different match types still have you build your meter but now you may have other meters for escaping a cage, eliminating and opponent in a rumble, or climbing a ladder.  Depending on the type of match you pick though the game can be 4 player on Xbox 360 or 6 player on PS3.  No matter which type you pick though there is a life meter for your wrestler which is something that has not been done in wrestling games for years.  While I can see how they were trying to do a throwback to those times in some ways, this is a way they should not have.  It makes it more like a fighting game and you will basically know as soon as a match is over because your opponent’s health is in the red so there is nothing they can do, instead of the back and forth fun that comes from the more recent games.

That takes care of Exhibition, but what are the legend killer and WrestleMania Tour modes?  Legend Killer has you pick a created wrestler (which is not surprisingly less in depth than in the Smackdown vs. RAW games) and go through multiple “tiers” of wrestlers.  Think of it like a fighting game where you go from one fighter to the next, but this time you go through 10 wrestlers in a row (without the ability to save in between) to unlock something afterwards.  Don’t get too excited though, all unlocks are just alternate costumes or some video clips, nothing major.  Once you get through the 3 tiers there is a final tier that is every wrestler in the game in a row.  If you didn’t realize how shallow the game was before, you definitely will once you play this mode since it forces you to play for an extended period of time in just plain old one on one matches.  The majority of your time (well, the majority spent having fun anyway) will be in the Wrestlemania Tour Mode where it is obvious most of the effort went into.  There are 3 sections to play, Relive, Rewrite, and Redefine.  In Relive you do just as it says, you play a classic matchup from a Wrestlemania event as the person who won and you win that match to move on.  In Rewrite you change the outcome – you may play as someone who merely won by DQ in the actual event but now get a decisive victory, or just change it because they wanted something different.  Finally in Redefine they change the match types so you will now take what was a standard match and now it is a Hell in a Cell years before the match was invented or a submission match (and a few other various things they threw in randomly).  Before each match you play you will be treated to a nice video that shows what lead up to the match at Wrestlemania followed by highlights from that match.  These videos can be watched at any time in the Movie Theater mode (along with the others you unlock).  What makes this mode more fun despite the fact that you’re locked into being particular wrestlers in particular matches is that there are a series of challenges setup for you to complete.  Instead of just doing whatever you want and winning to move on you have to do certain moves or actions that mimic what was done in the actual match.  The closer you get it to that match (aka, the more challenges you do) the better your score is and you need a certain score to move onto the next match.  This leads to a different way to play since you will now not just be fighting to get the better of your opponent and win, but make sure that you do those 3 grapples, put him through that table, etc.  When doing certain challenges the game will also sometimes do different moves than are available in the Exhibition mode giving the matches even more authenticity without the complex control of Smackdown vs. RAW.  As I mentioned, this is both good and bad how it is setup.  The issue is that it can still wear old quickly and once you’ve done a match there is little (or really no) incentive to do it again if you’ve done all the challenges. 

I found that once I did Legend Killer and Wrestlemania Tour modes I was done with the game.  Why? Because the multiplayer sucks, which is a major killer in a wrestling game.  I bought this game on PS3 because it had the ability to do 6 player instead of 4 so that meant that it had to be so much more fun, right?  Well, in their infinite wisdom, Yukes made the HUD take up way too much space so when you have 4, 5 or 6 people playing it really makes it hard to see what’s going on.  My friends and I were trying to do a Royal Rumble and there were the 6 meters for building up levels/specials plus the rumble elimination meters popping up and we could barely see anything that was going on in the ring.  This was somewhat of a problem in the Smackdown vs. RAW series and that is why they eliminated the HUD for the most part in Smackdown vs. RAW 2010, but it was still never as bad as in Legends of Wrestlemania.  It was pretty much unplayable and we quickly stopped playing because no one was having fun.  They wanted pick up and play, yet everyone was constantly stopping and asking how to do moves.  While it was nice that someone could reverse a move simply by hitting a button before someone else, if they didn’t know the controller layout they were at an immediate disadvantage.  If you tell someone “this button always reverses” they can handle it, but now they had to remember which button was B and then hit it before their opponent.  It boiled down to whoever knew the controller better winning, which is exactly the kind of thing you are trying to avoid when making a simple control system.  Other little details like the lack of a rope break and no ref on screen really made it seem rushed and unpolished.  While it was cool that you could import the wrestlers from Smackdown vs. RAW 2009 it was a very little used feature for us.  The wrestlers stood out since they were not of the same art style as Legends of Wrestlemania and if you are someone who owns Smackdown vs. RAW you have little reason to play this since it is so limited.  We did it but since we knew the Smackdown vs. RAW versions so well we kept trying to figure out how to do specific moves just to find out that you couldn’t even do them thanks to the simplified control scheme.  A great idea but you need a better game to care.  Also, you could import from Smackdown vs. RAW into Legends of Wrestlemania but you couldn’t get the Legends of Wrestlemania characters into Smackdown vs. RAW.  I understand they didn’t come out at the same time, but it was only 4 months difference so they definitely could have planned that better or even done an update to the game. 

WWE Legends of Wrestlemania seems a bit rushed and unfocused and I can really only recommend it to fans of yesteryear that don’t like Smackdown vs. RAW for some reason or other.  You will grow tired of it quickly, but it is also an easy 1000 achievement points (or platinum trophy on PS3).  The game sold poorly as it should have and that is why WWE All Stars does not share the name or style, they realized they messed up.  On the plus side if you really still want to play it is very cheap at this point.

3/5 stars – Some fun can be had for a few hours on your own, but never with friends.  Since it is so cheap now I boosted the score a bit because of it.  It will also be fun to watch the videos, but only once.  THQ should just focus on adding more legends into the main WWE Smackdown vs. RAW series since that’s the only method that seems to work.