By playing through the game’s Storyline mode you earn cash which can be used to unlock new arenas and Create-a-Wrestler goodies. Speaking of Create-a-Wrestler, this is the most feature-rich CAW to appear in a GameCube wrestler to-date. Players have more options for wrestler appearance than ever before. Objects are now placed on the wrestler through the use of a coordinate specific system. Instead of selecting a hat and putting it on your head you can pick the hat and attach it to any body part you’d like. You’ll also have full control over your wrestler’s entrance. From the camera angles, to the pyro, to the lights, you control it all through the use of a pretty simple mechanism. It doesn’t come close to touching the one found in
WWE RAW 2 but it’s a damn fine effort.
I realize that the GameCube hasn’t been a breeding ground for graphical powerhouses but some games have really shown what the system is capable of;
Day of Reckoning isn’t one of them. Most of the character models lack that extra bit of refinement that gives them life and personality. When Kurt Angle pulls down the straps to go for the finisher you’ll see him reach for them in one animation and in the next one they’ve suddenly disappeared. This is also a fault of poor texture work on the part of the artists. Everything looks really bland due to the sub par textures used in the game. Animations look good for the most part but they could have used a bit of fine tuning here and there. Probably the only aspect of the game that looks really good is the pyro effect and that’s cutting it close. More needs to be done to beef up the game’s look because in its current state it’s a pretty bad mishmash of poor design and ugly textures.
In the past we’ve complained endlessly about the inane commentary of the
Smackdown! franchises. Well maybe we should have kept our mouths shut. Instead of play-by-play the game employs a licensed soundtrack that had us annoyed from the onset. Without a doubt, this is the worst use of licensed music to-date, period. The rest of the sound effects are par for the course.
When you set aside the horrible audio and the poor graphics a pretty good wrestling game lies beneath. Day of Reckoning has the best storyline of any grappling game to-date and a wrestling engine that holds up its end of the bargain. It still lags behind the
Smackdown! line of games but Nintendo fans finally have a wrestling game that they can be proud of again. Don’t expect the second coming of
No Mercy, but
do expect to be thoroughly entertained.
B-
It doesn't come close to the Smackdown! franchise but it's getting there. A cleaner grappling engine and a better CAW mode round out this much-improved entry in the GameCube wrestling market.
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