Backyard wrestling is violent, bloody and mimics everything that makes the 'sport' popular, including the culture, music and even the violence. But it does make for good video games - the Smackdown! series, Def Jam Vendetta, and I could go on.
Backyard Wrestling allows you to step out of the the staleness of the wrestling genre, and into a groundbreaking new world of open ended gameplay. Punish your opponent in highly interactive sprawling environments implementing instruments of pain like thumbtacks, barbed wire, light bulbs, stop signs, baseball bats, tables, fire as well as...
Unfortunately the game isn’t a whole lot of fun. This game had serious potential amongst fans of the genre, but Eidos and Paradox have totally sacrificed depth and mechanics and put out true garbage.
Initial Release Date: Oct 7, 2003Developer: Paradox Development
Sadly, the sloppy controls and graphics make the game about as fun as a blow to the brainpan with a spiked bat.
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The cartoony violence, blood spills and redneck appeal of Backyard Wrestling’s rural locales and colorful cast of characters wears thin quicker than the time it took its equally-shoddy sequel to come out. This game stinks like raw, untreated, sewage. The gameplay is short lived, repetitive, and poorly balanced.
You can play with a variety of indie wrestlers (who have actually trained), and members of the band the Insane Clown Posse, who own their own indie federation - Juggalo Championship Wrestling. We finally fulfilled our dream of beating guest stars Insane Clown Posse with a baseball bat.
Worst wrestling botches I Botch series I Part 1
The Good and the Bad
Well, where do I begin? Before I talk about the whole game itself, I would say a positive thing or two about this game: The Xbox version has custom soundtrack support. In the game, I can add my own custom soundtrack into the game since the game's soundtrack is horrible. Songs I added are songs by the industrial metal band A Dark Halo (best known for doing the soundtrack for the 2005 game "WWE Day of Reckoning 2"), comedic musician Tom Lehrer, DJ Zapper, Basshunter, ChaseR Basse, Bassuckerz, Amboza, BassFinder and other swedish Eurodance/Hands Up!
The settings in the levels are cool, well made and looks nice. There are plenty of weapons to choose from such as a bat, fluorescent lights, barb wire bat, chairs, etc. and have some killer finishing moves. That's not saying much really, and the unlockable videos are also the good parts of the game.
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Now to the problems with the game. The gameplay is pretty disappointing. The A.I. will constantly throw weapons at you, which gets annoying. Another problem is the violence can come off too cartoonish (that's what LionsEdge from YouTube says in his review), also the A.I. can kick your ass good unless you can pull off a comeback. Single player campaign (aka Talk Show mode) is actually a gauntlet.
The cutscenes are obviously a parody of a talk show (such as Jerry Springer), sometimes it's humorous and most of the time is not-so humorous (and the Santa Claus one is cringe worthy), and the cutscenes looks like the game is trying to preach to the people who like BYW is that BYW is for dumbass morons WTF?! No one wants to play to have opinions shove to their faces. After you complete talk show mode, you unlock wrestlers and you go straight to the end credits after beating the game, that's it.
The soundtrack is the worst I've heard. There's mostly pop punk music (which is cancer to the music industry), metalcore music, nu metal music, horrorcore music, etc. and they all suck. Like I said earlier, Custom soundtrack support is the saving grace so I can put in my own music, like some Eurodance and Hands Up!
The create-a-wrestler mode is a *ing joke. You're not creating anything, you're just choosing a pre-set model. There are moves to choose but you can't preview it (on a side note, what's with the ridiculous names for the recognizable moves (i.e. Frog splash is Launching Pad, Rock bottom is Freefalling, Death Valley Driver is Over the Rainbow, etc.)) Having said that, the C.A.W. mode sucks. Crappy computer AI, and a very "vanilla" Create-A-Wrestler mode just doesn't put this in the same category as Smackdown, Raw, or Wrestlemania.
Gameplay Mechanics and Annoyances
The trouble with BW is that the game’s speed needs to be turned down a notch. The wrestlers zoom all over the place in a not very believable way, and it makes it tricky to grapple with your foes. The AI opponents though never have problems grabbing you though, so they can get on a roll where they mop the floor with you. It doesn’t help that you have no blocking option. This speed also makes it difficult to take advantage of some of the environmental toys.
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There are also a number of annoyances. For example, the computer is able to throw objects with ridiculous accuracy, such to the point that the objects literally arc in mid-flight to nail you. Seriously, if you are in motion when the AI opponent makes the throw, you will still get beaned. Stopping and then running seems to break up the missile lock it has on you.
Although you can pin your opponents, the majority of your wins will come by scoring a knockout, which is achieved by depleting your opponent’s health. This makes the game feel more like a straight Beat ‘Em Up. The makers of the game probably want to emphasize crazy action, but they actually could have had a good strategy vibe if they’d used a Def Jam Vendetta style pinning system.
Environments and Interaction
The environments are full of items to interact with and destroy, or bash over the head of the other guy, causing blood to spurt out real horrorshow. Levels have things like a mattress that can be lit on fire, windows you can be tossed into, and spectators who will occasionally get involved by taking a swing or throwing something at you. You are also encouraged to climb up to high levels and jump on your opponents below, or drag them onto tables so you can smash them right through. My favorite levels are a strip club, where you can toss opponents into a giant aquarium, causing it to shatter, and a talk show set.
The typical play field consists of vertical surfaces you can ram your opponent into (cars, posts, aquariums, gasoline pumps), objects you can throw or slide across the screen (chairs, televisions, shopping carts), and flat surfaces you can climb onto (tables, crates, dumpsters). Scattered on the ground are various friendly items you can throw.
I say "friendly" because they will graciously follow and pelt your opponent eight times out of ten, no matter how poor your aim or how fast he runs. Along the perimeter of each stage is someone throwing things, striking you, or setting you ablaze if you get too close. They are friendly, too, since they never give chase or throw very far.
The complex moves of a good fighting game and the strategy of a good wrestling game are nowhere to be found. The season mode is easily completed in a couple of hours and consists of matches interspersed with segments of a trashy talk show. The show is not very entertaining, but it's something to break up the first few hours of play.
Create-A-Wrestler Mode
The create-a-wrestler is about as limited as you will find. You name the combatant and choose from among fifteen character models; each with four palette-swapped outfits and three skin tones. Then you chose from a list of styles to determine the strikes, throws, and taunts that will be used. Finally, you pick four grapples for the A button and four for X. That's it.
The Create a Wrestler mode is pretty perfunctory, and cannot compare to those offered by the Smackdown! series. I will grant though that it’s a breeze to use and use quickly.
Personal Experience
Before I first played Backyard Wrestling 2 I first played Backyard Wrestling: There Goes The Neighborhood and honestly, it was a little bad. The controls in the game are hard to maneuver with combos, performing a finisher makes it difficult, and the bad part in this game is the grappling and reversals which makes the game which makes the game harder to play.
The Talk Show mode in Today's Topic didn't make any sense like why they are fighting each other in the backyard, why are they fighting in the meat shop. There are so many questions about how and why it started which makes the story nothing but adult jokes and violence. Another thing that is absolutely bad is the character creation. All you have to do is change a character mode, change the skin, and change a fighting style with no previews and that is it. This is the real reason people say this game is bad.
One thing I like about the game is actually the music and the arenas which make it fitting for backyard wrestling. I really liked this game, for its controls, soundtrack, the playable characters like M-Dogg20, Violent J, Shaggy 2 Dope, Sabu, El Drunko, and other characters, the weapons that I can use in the fights and the Backyard Wrestling videos and JCW that I unlock in story mode, and boy are those videos really fun to watch, so that's why I gave it a really high rating because I had fun and it's still fun to play.
The Bottom Line
Overall, the game is okay (or nearly bad). Do I recommend this game? I would say not really. If you like this type of game, this one is for you. If you like good wrestling games, don't bother with this game. Good wrestling games I highly recommend are WWF WrestleMania 2000, WWF No Mercy, WWE SmackDown!: Shut Your Mouth, WWE WrestleMania XIX, WWE Raw 2, WWE SmackDown!: Here Comes the Pain, WCW vs. TORONTO (djc) -
Taking pride in its sleaziness (you can unlock videos of the real wrestlers in action, including some scantily clad babes), Backyard Wrestling ain’t for the kids, but it isn’t a horrible game, unless you get all of your opinions from Joe Lieberman and the soccer mom talk show circuit. But it can’t compare to the other quality wrestling games out there.
It's interesting to watch one or two of the movies if you haven't seen any of the dozens of news reports on backyard wrestling that run during network sweeps, but so much footage is recycled and it is somewhat poorly produced due to the nature of the beast, that you might not even feel like watching all the movies. The women constantly pull at their bikini straps and arch their backs, but the clothes stay on, despite the games "M" rating. This is one of those times I can't even recommend a title as a rental.