Electronic Arts


WCW Backstage Assault Review

By: John Doe

Mainstream (Read: Fake) wrestling has inexplicably become ungodly popular with young people, with millions upon millions of teenagers playing right into WWF Owner Vince McMahon's greedy little hands. I can just see him sitting in his easy chair in his mansion, with an evil smirk on his face, laughing at how easy it is to sell a concept to people as long as it involves imitation violence, large breasts, and razor thin plot lines. " Muahahahahaha, the world is mine!" But anyway, while WCW isn't nearly as popular as WWF, it still has its share of fans as well. Which comes to explain why this utter piece of wrestling doodoo came about.


The idea for BSA is a cool one: No fighting in the ring! This mechanic allows you to go all over the place and beat each other's heads in,which will probably be fun for those who soak up the melodrama inherent into today's wrestling. However, this game is more Fighting Force than wrestling and wrestling fans may not be all that impressed.

The graphics in WCWBSA are absolutely pathetic! The characters all look terrible, with unrealistic textures and malformed polygons, and don't accurately represent the characters at all. The backgrounds and environments in which the action goes on are all well and good, but the characters are obviously the main focus of this game, and they just look terrible. Also, the animation is very coarse looking, and there's very noticeable slowdown at times, which only makes the game even more of the visual disaster.

The music is ok, but it's very repetitive, featuring track after track of generic hard rock and metal. And the announcers, Tony Schiavone and Billy Heenan, make you want to throw something at your TV! Their repetitive quips and irritating voices are just too annoying for words! Aaaaah! The crisp sound effects of hits, slams and grunts are the only truly cool part of the sound in the game.

Frankly, WCW Backstage Assault is simply not much fun. The entire game focuses on backstage battles between numerous competitors in the WCW (Which isn't exactly a big surprise considering the title), and most of the battles just involve punching, kicking, and hitting your competitor with any weapons you can get your hands on, and this really can't hold your interest for longer than 15 minutes unless you have an IQ of under 10. (Or if your stupid enough to actually watch Wrestling. Just Kidding!) You don't get much in the way of variety, with only two modes in single player, and one very weak multi player mode. The only replay value in this game is that there's some secret stuff you can unlock by winning a certain number of matches, but with a game this crappy, why bother?

I would recommend that, for the love of Pete, that you stay away from this game! Don't rent it, don't buy it, and if someone tries to get you to play it, hit them over the head with a chair!






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