WWE 13 Hands-On Impression

After walking away from the THQ area with a grin on my face, let me assure you right now there are plenty of OMG moments in WWE 13.

I found it to be an honor to grab an XBOX 360 controller and embrace the revolution. WWE has come a long way from the 8-bit Nintendo era, it even progressed from the super powered Monday Night Raw, Royal Rumble and In Your House.

This is the year that ALL WWE fans can leave No Mercy and WrestleMania 2000 in the dust and proclaim WWE 13 as the best experience since last night’s RAW. We already know that WWE 13 will have the largest roster ever in any WWE title, but what else will it have?

Happily the first thing that made my eyes light up was the return  of Special Guest Referees. That’s right, your favorite superstars can now be thrown back into the squared circle to call the match. In the demo, they didn’t wear an official WWE uniform but one can assume that should be tweaked down the line.

Graphics are indeed remarkable in WWE 13. What some gaming companies do is give you the best of their graphics in cut scenes, but it continues with the in-ring action and so forth.

I also like the consistency between wrestler’s entrances. What I mean here is normally a wrestler would walk down the ramp, get into the ring, leading to a quick load. WWE 13 speeds up the pace with quicker load times. In fact, and hopefully the same can be said in the final build, there was no loading time or freeze ups at all.

Gameplay itself is fluid. In a way, I immediately felt a slowdown in the pace of the match this year, but I also noticed how realistic the game felt. Ialso picked up on plenty of new animations, from the simple grapple system to the complex fighting styles.

When performing key OMG moments or finishers, developers have resubmitted the multiple replay feature, a popular option used back in WrestleMania 2000. My only issue with this, would be the full screen replay felt a bit force-fed. While going to the next level I would’ve liked to have seen replays appear in the bottom right corner, similar to any live WWE television broadcast.

The crowd has an amazing boost which not only builds the adrenaline during your matches, but also gives off that authentic arena atmosphere that we’ve grown to love at the live shows and at home. Not only that, the WWE universe have different sets of clothing to wear, depending on the era you choose to play in.

Even with all the previous mentioned it wouldn’t be complete without the WWE Attitude Era. I was able to witness a bit of the Texas Rattlesnake in his prime all over again. Oh, you didn’t know? It started with Austin squaring off with Road Dogg Jesse James.

In Attitude Era, the concept is of course to win, but how you win makes all the difference. There are Bonuses in each match. For example, in the Austin/Road Dogg match not only did I need to win, but needed perform a finisher on Billy Gunn while pinning Jesse in under two minutes.

Doing this type of task is what will help you unlock wrestlers throughout your game sessions. It will also unlock more and more unbelievable footage, facts and gamplay.

The only hiccup I noticed was when launching an opponent against the bottom left barricade, when I ran to attack him, we both almost glitched into the crowd. We were definitely both gliding back into the crowd, but as I backed up we came gliding back to the outside ring area.

WWE 13 feels as promising as it looks. I’m eagerly awaiting October to get my hands on this bad boy.  With more announcements still to come, such as the updated WWE Universe and more, I am ready to receive and give respect where it’s due.