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WWE Wrestlemania X8 Review - Gamecube

There have been wrestling games as long as there have been consoles, and they've ever so slowly gradually caught up with what the wrestling actually looks like in real life. Still, there is work to be done, as seen in Wrestlemania X8, but in a few years time, you won't know the difference between watching a match on your console, and watching a match on TV. Wrestlemania X8 brings wrestling to a whole new echelon for Nintendo, and in no way it is an unpleasant mania.

Wrestlemania X8 was made in the time when the WWE was being sued by the World Wildlife Fund, because the WWE was called the WWF (World Wrestling Federation). The WWE lost the case, and this is why they are now known as World Wrestling Entertainment. Because of this, they had to "get the F out" as they so politely told us, but in Wrestlemania X8, some logos still cleave to the original WWF sign. This shows us that the game is a little obsolete, but it doesn't really have much impact on the quality of the game play.

Game Play

The controls in Wrestlemania X8 are a little edgy, and take a while to get used to. But once you get full grip of what every button does, you'll be a pro wrestler in no time. It must be said that learning how to pull off the different types of grapple moves is quite challenging. There are heaps of different moves that each wrestler can perform, but you'll find it hard to do the ones that you want to do, unless it's a special move.

There are 2 bars for each wrestler, and a parallelogram indicating how much momentum the wrestler has. If it's blue, you're pretty much screwed; if it's red, you're pumpin'! The other 2 bars both work with each other. The bar that is separated into 3 different segments and lights up yellow gradually indicates how many special moves you can pull off. If it's got all 3 lit up, and you're The Rock, try for a Rock Bottom, followed by a People's Elbow, followed by another Rock Bottom! The bar below that indicates how far away you are from getting the next yellow segment lit up. The more manoeuvres you do, the more it goes up. There really isn't anything more to it.

In the main menu, you can select from 3 different game modes:

• Exhibition - You can set up ANY type of match that you wish, whether it be a tag team match, a triple threat match, if you want it in a cage, or just in the normal ring. You can find all of your hearts desires in this mode.
• Path of a Champion - Choose from 6 different titles, and climb the ranks in order to gain enough respect from the crowd to ... (continued next page)
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