It's time to unlearn and step up to Fire Pro Wrestling. For the first time in its run, an American publisher has picked up what's been acclaimed as the best and most true-to-life wrestling franchise in gaming. But is this series, which stresses technical skills over flash and button-mashing frenzy, almost overkill for the average gamer? We're jumping into this series pretty late, and we're hitting the ground running full-on... Will gamers adjust to its unique style of play before giving up? It's worth a try, and here's a hint that should help: don't mash the buttons!
Features
- Technical wrestling from the biggest name in Japanese Pro Wrestling
- Caged octagon Ultimate Fighting bouts, plus six other modes
- Over 200 pre-made wrestlers versed in Jujitsu, Kick Boxing, Luchador, and other wrestling styles
- Create-A-Wrestler with multiple grappling styles
- Four-player mayhem in the ring
- Only for Game Boy Advance
Once again, Fire Pro Wrestling is not a button masher. Have I mentioned that yet? Well, it's important, because for first-time Fire Pro wrestlers, the game is completely unplayable until you get that. It may against your every instinct not to hammer the pad when you see beefy guys on the screen, but fight it. Fire Pro actually penalizes you for pressing buttons out of turn in a grapple, usually canceling your move and potentially giving the opening to your foe. Once you get the grappling system down -- it's a game of split-second timing, and you must key in your move EXACTLY as the two wrestlers grab each other in a grapple to pull off a move -- suddenly this is one of the most precise and skilled wrestling games around.
The difference this wrestling game makes is in the flow -- a Fire Pro match comes about as true to live TV as can be. Just watch a match between two AI players and watch how they use the ring, their bodies, and the crowd. The makers of these games take things incredibly seriously, to the point where if your wrestler gets jacked up in the ring, you can usually not only tell that it hurts, but where it hurts. The codes give individual stats to each wrestler's head and body. You can't see the stats, but you can see their effect. Too many piledrivers and a wrestler will have a hard time staying focused on fighting. Wear out his arm and he'll lose strength (leading to lots of reversals). Their physical abilities are constantly in flux, and that affects the pacing of the match. Even when a wrestler is down, there are a ton of factors that help him get new heat -- sometimes, it's just the sight of his own blood that recharges his reserves.
That's the flow, but how's the feel? As a mat wrestler, very good, but even as respected as it is, the Fire Pro formula still leaves you sometimes wishing for all out mayhem the GBA version doesn't always provide. Bash them for the cheesy games they are, but there's a reason why so many wrestling games are button mashers -- it feels aggressive, and that's wrestling. Fire Pro goes upscale with technique, but loses some frenzy in its evolved skills. There's no heavy-hitting weapons or run-ins, no extreme fast-pace change between lumbering oafs and limber luchadores, and the high-flying moves are pretty weak limited to only certain wrestlers (as well as looking really goofy the way wrestlers float across the screen). That's also a small fall on multiplayer -- get two Fire Pro vets together and they'll put on a show, but tie some newbies in for four-player bouts and there will be a lot less excitement than the old WrestleFest (plus, the experienced guys will have to constantly be reminding the others that this isn't a button masher...)
This is a technical master's game that dares to leave newbies behind. There's no Training mode to teach you not to mash the buttons. There's no Season mode to guide you through the game -- just figure out what type of match or tournament you want to wrassle and get in the damn ring. And the heart of the game, the Audience Match, is brutal on those learning the ropes -- not only do you have to dominate and win, but you must perform for the crowd in one of a half-dozen styles that you can chose from. For a Fire Pro fan, it's a dream. This GBA version is leagues ahead of the SNES imports in terms of details and features, and sometimes even challenges the latest Dreamcast game in extras. There's even a subset game with UFC rules. But the burden of following the rules is on the gamer, and the game is merciless in play until you memorize the moves and the ways to work the game's rhythm. You'll kick butt and still lose because your wrestler got tired in the middle of a beating or because the audience didn't like your one-sided dominance. Aside from some shrieks from the audience every now and again, there's little to tell you if you're playing right, and the coach who pops in between bouts isn't much help either. Not many games leave players hanging out like that.
Luckily, this is wrestling, where fanatics will go to the ends of the Earth and contort themselves in freakish ways just to see if it's possible to make a videogame character bleed. They'll break themselves by any means necessary just to see the game's 43 hidden wrestlers. For mat rats, gameplay is almost second to the stuff that happens in gameplay, and Fire Pro may be a lethal overdose for those who really dig wrestling. The moves are comprehensive beyond belief -- not only are there Double-Team moves, but there are double reversals for Double-Team moves. Nearly any conceivable move in the 'sport' is somehow rendered in the game, including all the patented moves of your WWF and indie faves. Speaking of WWF, there are indeed characters patterned after famous superstars, and although their appearances are altered from the Japanese version to no longer crib trademarked characters, certain tell-tale signs (their move-set, their faces, their body size) give them away. In some ways it's a cheap shot that BAM didn't change things completely (I'm not just crying for the lawyers -- if there's a sequel, they don't be able to get away with this twice, and all your faves will be changed.) But overall, the people who are buying this game aren't getting it for the superstar-alikes, and besides, the character designs are natural -- how else would a redneck old wrestler dress and style his head? What other moves would he use besides the most nasty and violent ones?
Everything about this game screams "wrestling", and while sometimes that scream should have been "fun", wrestling fans tend too focused to fault that. It's aesthetics follow that same purpose. Visually, it's bare and basic, with not hardly the effects and tricks you might expect. Even the flash of the electrified fence has no dazzle, and the lack of more than four in the ring at a time may be a fall for fans of Six-Man Scramble or the new Dreamcast version. But with the killer animation on display showing every muscle flex of countless moves, you can excuse the lack of flash. While the motion is lacking in frames, as any wrestling fan knows, it's all about selling the moves, and here's where Fire Pro excels. And the sound is excellent for the Game Boy Advance -- the atmosphere mummer is sometimes better than the fired-up music, and there are effects in the audio that affect the match. There are no voice samples for the wrestlers, but the crowd does roar up when you're doing well, and there are even a few gags (take a punch to the package and you hear a bell tinkle somewhere down low.) The only thing to take issue with is in the translation. For one, the initial grapplers are almost all white bread honkies -- I guess changing his skin tone is the best way to make The Rock not look like a rip-off, but for those who want a more realistic representation of the WWF, they're going to be spending a lot of time in the Create-A-Wrestler feature. And beyond that, there are a number of things that should have been either changed or simply explained -- for those hip to the international wrestling scene, it's refreshing to see a Japanese game kept intact, but for the rest of us, BAM really should have written in something to explain why all the people at ringside are kneeling on mats at a wrestling match.
Oh, did I mention the Create-A-Wrestler feature? Well, then let me not get into it anymore than that. The more I talk about the inconceivably deep CAW, where every minutiae of a wrestler's appearance from the look of his face to the color of his boots, where gamers become gods shaping their wrestler's skills and weaknesses with mind-boggling statistics, where every move in the book is at your immediate disposal (as are a few that haven't even been invented yet)... the more I talk, the more time you spend reading, the more seconds you waste spent away from this brilliant Create-A-Wrestler feature. And with 73 save slots, you're going to need every second you can spare. I'll shut up now.