Wrasslin'!

So, Fire Pro Wrestling Returns.

I came home last night to find it on my doorstep, the Amazon box smiling at me like a benevolent angel. I ran to the kitchen, ripped the packaging apart like some wild beast, marched triumphant to my room, and fired up my trusty ol' PS2.

My joy lasted about five minutes before I snarled, "FUCK this game!"

FPW is an interesting game. It's a 2-dimensional (that's right, 2-D)wrasslin' game. It's done by Spike, the people that made No Mercy, that most holy relic of the genre. It's all hand animated, and the animations are, by turns, both shoddy and incredible.

The menus in this game are, for the lack of a better term, retarded. I mean, seriously. You use all four of the primary buttons to navigate these monstrosities, sometimes in mystic combinations that I'm half-convinced require some form of ritual sacrifice. There's little in the way of help, and the translations are hardly top knotch, leading to an orgy of confusion. More than once I've found myself scratching my head, thinking, "What the hell does that mean?" while pressing buttons at random, hoping for the best.

The gameplay is...strange. I've yet to truly decipher it. Yes, decipher is the correct word here. The game itself is like some sort of fiendish puzzle, a form of madness taken shape, where the rules are seemingly written at random every time you start a match. How is it that I, playing Kane (though, of course, not actually Kane, but a wrestler that looks and wrestles exactly like him), can beat the everliving tar out of the computer for seven straight minutes, only to tap to a submission to a part of my body that has, to my knowledge, not taken any form of punishment? I shouldn't be surprised, of course: this is a Spike game, where submissions rule the ring. I learned (and abused) this in No Mercy.

These computer opponents, as you might have been able to figure out by now, are hard. I have the computer on its lowest difficulty setting, and I've yet to win a match. No, wait...I did win a match. I set the difficulty to 1, picked the "God of Japanese Wrestling", then made my opponent a woman. And even then it was a close thing. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, the hit detection throws me off. I often attack and miss completely, only to be kicked in the face for my troubles. The second is that I've yet to fully figure out the grappling controls, which are as alien to me as Mars.

I'll reserve judgement until I get a little more time in with it, but my first bewildered impression is surprisingly negative. This game is a pain in the ass to control, though given time and practice I could get used to it. Like Mase said, it's got a learning curve.

I ran the epic game last night, and I fear for it. Not because of the players, or because of my lack of preparation. This time, the fault may be lain squarely at the feet of the system. The Epic Ruleset for D&D 3.5 is a bloated monstrosity, which isn't helped by the fact that we have three spellcasters in our group. Almost all of our playtime was dedicated to spell preparation for a fight which never even happened. If this keeps up, I'm seriously not interested. It's boring, and not really fair to anyone involved.

We'll keep going, then I'll probably put it to a vote if it keeps up like this. Life's too short for shoddy gaming!

That's it for now. Peace!