WWE' 13 Review

The main focus this year for WWE'13 has been the Attitude Era, and with that comes a brand new mode called "Attitude Era mode" gone is the lame and boring RTWM mode and in its place is a mode were you can play through historical events during the Attitude Era. A major plus for this mode is that the mode isn't overly scripted like last years were you had to press a button to finish a match. The Attitude Era modes main objective is for you to recreate the moments so with that comes a checklist of objectives that you have to do in the match to recreate the real match by doing this you can earn certain unlockables that range from wrestlers, alt attires, modes, arenas and more. If you want to just play the match then that's fine the mode doesn't force you to complete any of the optional objectives if you don't want to do them.

I thought the Attitude Era mode was a very good addition to WWE'13. The new mode was very well done compared to last years horrible RTWM mode.The Attitude Era mode was very nostalgic to play through, and I thought THQ managed to capture the Attitude Era really well. After finishing the Attitude Era mode you will unlock some very cool things like classic photos from the Attitude Era. If you were also wondering the Attitude Era mode should take you around 10 hours to complete.

The new creation mode from last year Create An Arena is actually Create An Arena this year and not Create A Ring like WWE'12. This year you can actually edit the stage to make a completely new stage, make a historical stage from the past or even edit a historical stage and add your own twist to it. Not only are stages editable the actual arena itself can be edited to be a small arena, normal arena or stadium that a Wrestlemania would take place at. Along with these new features everything from last years Create An Arena has been brought over to make it a true Create An Arena mode.

While on the subject of creation modes there is a new edition to the WWE games creation modes and that is the Championship Editor. Don't get Championship Editor and Create A Belt confused because the two modes are completely different. Championship Editor allows you to edit any of the 30 Championship titles in the game. You can edit certain parts of the tile like the strap color and also the color of the plates.

It's been a while since new match types have been added to WWE games. I think the last WWE game to have a new match type was SVR10 with the addition of the Championship Scramble match so it's great that this year we see the return of the Special Ref match and the I Quit match. The match types haven't come back exactly the same as there are some additions to each match. Special Referee has a "Fairness meter" if you play as the ref. If the fairness meter goes to 0 you will be rewarded with a cutscene with John Laurinaitis telling you that you are out and a new (A.I) ref will be added to the match. I Quit match now has a meter that is similar to the submissions Breaking Point meter, and it works much better than in the past were it was just randomly generated/based on the characters health. I was happy with both game modes, and the new additions to each mode works very well some might not like the fairness meter but I didn't mind it to be honest.

My favorite mode in WWE games since SVR11 has been Universe Mode. Universe Mode is your WWE as you control what you want in and out of your WWE Universe. Last year was a nice improvement from SVR11 but there were some major problems and features missing from WWE' 12's Universe Mode
like Free Agent wrestlers randomly popping up in your shows or your WWE champion ending up being the #1 contender for the U.S title, and finally there were some features needed to really expand the Universe in WWE' 12 like Stat tracking so thankfully this year a lot has been fixed in Universe Mode.Wrestlers can now be deactivated from the Universe so they don't pop up on your shows anymore, rankings can be edited so you can remove people who you don't want in the rankings (Like the WWE champion in the U.S title rankings for example and WWE' 13 has added stat tracking that will track certain things like title histories, Royal Rumble stats like eliminations, times won and time in the ring, Wrestlemania stats and Money In The Bank stats.

Other new features I have come across is the option to edit what storylines you want OFF or ON in Universe mode so if you hate those scenes that break up Tag Teams all the time you can turn Tag Team storyline off and not have to worry about your built up teams randomly breaking up. Another annoying feature we didn't have the option to turn off last year was injures but this year you can. Another nice addition to WWE Universe 3.0 is the ability to actually restart Universe mode from scratch which is really good for me because I have wanted to restart Universe in the past additions of Universe.

Sadly there were some down points to Universe and it's mostly the cutscenes. Universe 3.0 was advertised with branching cutscenes and during my pretty long Universe playthrough I didn't come across many branching cutscene at all which really disappointed me as I was really looking forward to the new branching cutscenes. The non branching cutscenes I did get are still random as hell at times for example there was a match between Cena and Punk which Brock Lesnar interfered to help Punk, and then next week instead of Brock vs Cena it was a Tag Team match with Cena and Lesnar teaming up. Universe 3.0 was fun again this year but there are still some problems with this mode that I hope get fixed.

For years I wanted much more realistic audio in WWE games so I was happy to hear that WWE' 13 will have something called "WWE Live" which means there was going to be a much needed audio overhaul. The crowd in WWE' 13 sounded a hell of a lot better than it did in WWE' 12. This year during entrances the crowd doesn't just boo and cheer there can be some entrances for heels that start with a nice cheer but then it is eventually drowned out in boo's (This happened with Daniel Bryan who also has the "Yes" chants during entrances) there are also some pretty cool new crowd chants in the game.

I remember one good chant during the A.E mode in a No DQ match when you hit someone with weapons the crowd will start shouting "EC DUB EC DUB EC DUB" which was a very nice touch. WWE Live worked well for the crowd but not for the commentary as it was pretty damn bad still. There were some commentary lines in WWE' 13 that were in games as old as SVR07! One I remember from Micheal Cole who says "These superstars are so unpredictable I have a hard time thinking what there going to do next" commentary also still sounds really dull and boring like past games so I hope in WWE' 14 THQ will work on commentary because it really needs a overhaul. I will say though JR does an awesome job with Attitude Era commentary it's just the main games commentary that comes off really bad.

Finally there has been some good additions to the gameplay this year in WWE' 13 with the addition of the OMG moments. The OMG moments range from breaking the barricades (All 4 corners can be broken) to
actually being able to break the ring. The best OMG moment in my opinion easily is the catching finishers. Everything about the catch finishers was great like how well the move connected to make it look really smooth and just the fact how awesome they really look. Look out for the RKO and Superkick catch finisher because visually I think they look the best out of them all. Other new gameplay additions I found in the game is improvements to the limb targeting system in WWE' 12 there were only really one move you could do to each part of the body but this year there are a lot more moves you can do to each body part compared to last year. Gameplay just feels smooth altogether I had hardly any problems connecting with the moves like the clothesline while in WWE' 12 I would have to repeat the clothesline until it actually connected with the character.

There was something I hated in past WWE games that has been partially removed from WWE' 13 and that is when destroyed objects randomly disappear so this year you can expect to see the damaged announcers table parts and the cage wall from the Hell In A Cell still be there after being destroyed. In WWE' 14 it would be awesome if we could finally use the bottom part of steel stairs (They still disappear this year) There are still some down sides to the gameplay like the weapon physics which are actually getting worse as the years go on (SVR11 actually has much better physics than WWE'13) and character models still have the glitch were they sometimes stretch so the arm goes all around the body for example. The last bad thing I found was the game would freeze on me at times when the character models would glitch so this really needs to be patched by THQ in the future.

The Final Verdict 

WWE' 13 is a great wrestling game and big improvement over WWE' 12. The addition of the Attitude Era, OMG moments, KOTR, I Quit Match, Special Ref, Stats in Universe, improved crowd audio, editing belts, Create A Stage all on top of what we got last year in WWE' 12 = Awesome. I like how smooth the gameplay feels and also how you can choose what type of match you want like Quick for squash matches, Normal for matches like last year and epic matches which trust me are epic.

I had a Punk Vs Bryan 30 minute war that ended in Punk tapping out to the "No Lock" with blood dripping down his face trying to reach the rope (Blood looks awesome this year and Breaking Point submissions last much longer) There were some down parts to the game like the gameplay glitches, Universe still being a cutscene mess at times, bad commentary in the normal game and the weapon physics getting worse (Title belt flying across the arena) Overall though WWE' 13 is in my opinion the best wrestling game we have had since SVR06.

+ Attitude Era Mode
+ Improved crowd audio
+ OMG moments
+ Amazing amount of replayability

- Universe still needs some work in places
- Bad weapon physics
- Freezing/character models glitching
- Commentary outside of Attitude Era mode

Final Score

8/10