Well to begin with, I have a confession to make. I did not play WWF No Mercy on the Nintendo 64, and only once did I play its predecessor, Wrestlemania 2000. I am a big fan of the Smackdown series so I may be a little bit biased in this review, but I aim to keep it as objective as possible.

The main concern with any game, but especially in wrestling games, is how the game plays on a base level. For this, Yukes have tried to mix it up a little by combining some gameplay elements of both the previous Aki games and their own successful Smackdown! games. What they have done is slowed the pace somewhat from Smackdown! and added in a reversal system. Now the player can reverse both punching attacks and grappling attacks by pressing either the R or L buttons respectively at the right time. Timing is crucial and at first it can be quite tough to get right, but once you have the hang of it it feels very natural. As just stated, players can use a variety of punch/kick attacks by using the B button plus a direction on the stick, or can use one of 5 set grapples by again pressing a direction on the analog stick and using the A button. The move used on the opponent is also dependent on where they are in relation to you, i.e. facing you, facing away, on the ground etc. However, the move list is very limited. It seems most wrestlers share pretty much all the same moves bar some specific ones for wrestlers such as Kurt Angle who has many suplexes or Rob Van Dam who has a large set of his own style movements. This does limit the gameplay a lot as one of the biggest selling points of the Smackdown! games was the fact each wrestler could pull off a large amount of moves and the player could at times be quite inventive with what they came out with. This is not the case here.

Wrestlers have the ability to fight in and out of the ring, but this is where it ends. There is no backstage area here but the players can walk up the ramp way. There are two announce tables, each of which the player can put their opponent through, but the way in which the table crumbles is very unrealistic. Instead of seeing it fall apart as we do on TV, the tables seem to have no transition between being upright and having both wrestlers lying on a heap of broken chipboard. To say it looks messy is an understatement. There are also a variety of weapons that can be used, even in normal matches. The wrestlers can pick up weapons from under the ring that range from chairs to trashcans that actually dent. I nice touch, but one of few.

WWE Wrestlemania X8 is not the feature rich game that many were hoping for. Both the Smackdown! series, and that of Aki both had a large variety of matches and in the case of Aki, strong single player games to boot. While Wrestlemania X8 does have a wide range of matches, from ladder matches to cage matches to table matches to hell in a cell matches, it does not offer the player any form of single player career mode. Instead Yukes have opted for a game mode where the player must choose a belt to go for (all the belts are represented here, with the exception of the Women\'s title) and must battle their way through various opponents and matches until they finally face the champion to win the belt. While this has some use to it in that it gives the game an easy \'pick up and play\' factor, it does little to give it any sense of involvement and limits the single player experience immensely. The player is simply thrusted into match after match and gets very boring fast. Yukes did a little to spice this mode up, by entering the player into gimmick matches closer to the end, but at times these can be so frustrating due to the computer AI, that you just wish you could play a singles match so that you could get the torment over with.

Exhibition matches are really where this game will get its most play. There are many match types and match options available here, the biggest improvements over it\'s contempories being the Hell in a Cell match. The Cell is now the correct size in relation to the ring and this adds a lot of depth to this match type. Players can escape the cage by irish whipping their opponents into the side of the Cell until it breaks and they then have the freedom to wrestle outside as well as climb to the top and with enough effort, get the cage to break on the top, sending the battered wrestlers to the ring below. One aspect I would have liked to have seen would be throwing wrestlers off the top of the Cell to the outside or through the announce table, but alas, as with many aspects of this game, it doesn\'t quite make it so. The ladder and table matches also deserve mention, in that they are both steps back from what Smackdown had already managed to achieve. The ladder match has always been my personal favourite gimmick match as it is so versatile and allows the player to really be innovative with the gameplay. However, although this ladder allows you to set it up in the corner, or have the player lie on top of it, it is clumsy to use and slow to climb. This makes doing moves off the top of it difficult and rarely do you manage to pull off the move you want. Another sore point for the ladder is that it is not possible to pull off a finishing manouver from the top, if your character has a top rope special move. As this is RVD\'s first inclusion into a WWE video game it is disappointing to see that you cannot hit a five star frogsplash onto an opponent on a table from the top of a ladder.

This brings me neatly onto the table matches also. While you can set tables up in the corner of the ring, when you put a person through it, the table will spring away and disappear into the crowd. It is very sloppy and would have been a great touch to actually see the debris of the table stay in the ring. Even the tables that are broken normally fade away into oblivion shortly after it is broken. You simply do not feel like you are putting a player through a table made of wood and no longer is it satisfying to do so. These two points make the fabled Tables, Ladders and Chairs matches somewhat forgetful also.

The graphics on the other hand, have to be commended. Each wrestler, be he a top main eventer or a lowly mid carder, has been expertly modelled and finished to perfection. There has also been bump mapping applied to each wrestler and they all shine under the arena lights. The arenas too have been crafted exquisitely and really show off what can be achieved with a little time and effort. While there is little interactivity with any part of the sets, when the camera pulls back you really do get a good sense of the size. The lighting effects used here are also very good and the dynamics of these lights show as they gleam off the player or when the player is doused in coloured lights during their entrances.

Every WWE game these days requires good, life like entrances to get the player involved with the match they are about to partake in. However, this is quite a let down in WMX8. While many wrestlers do have the entrances that you would see on Monday night Raw or Smackdown!, the animations were clearly not motion captured, and those who walk do so very awkwardly. WWE Wrestlemania X8 does feature pyrotechnics for wrestlers who require them however, and although that particle system isn\'t perfect, it does add a nice touch to something a lot of other games in the past have felt could be done in other, less effective ways. It should be said though that they do, at times, look more like water than fireworks and have no gleam to them, casting no light on the surrounding area. The music for the entrances, however, cannot be excused. It seems Yukes have been very lazy in this department and have failed to gain the rights to many of the wrestler\'s proper entrance music. While you could understand some like Edge, who has a song from Rob Zombie, such wrestlers like The Hardy Boyz, who have had the same music for years, has been replaced with some generic rock track that not only doesn\'t suit them, makes the game look like it was made by amateurs. I really feel that Yukes should have taken the time and effort here to get as many of the wrestler\'s music as possible. Instead we are left with a little over two thirds of the correct entrances. Very disappointing. Those left though, are also not of great quality and left sounding tinny and low.

But this is carried through to the music and sound as a whole. While Yukes may have had success in the gameplay departments before, I feel they must have taken on a five-year-old boy to take care of the sounds and background music for the game. The punches sound like something out of a poor TV movie and not a single sound effect was captured realistically and the overall atmosphere is very limited thusly. You may also find yourself turning the music played while you fight off as well as this generic rubbish was most likely found on a royalty free CD.

However, despite all it\'s flaws, you do end up with a sense that the game is quite well rounded. It may not have been finished properly with regards to the music or move set (or in fact many other areas) but what is there is a solid game. I honestly cannot recommend this to those who hate wrestling anyway, and I would probably find that those who only mildly enjoy the WWE grappling action will again not want to bother with it, but for the hardcore fans, I feel that there can be some enjoyment found here, but rent it first, otherwise you may find you spent your money for nothing. Almost literally in fact.

Seth Powell