WWE Survivor Series

In my opinion, every single wrestling game that has been released for Nintendo’s Gameboy or Gameboy Advance has been completely mediocre. You can’t hide from the fact that wrestling just isn’t any fun with two moves at your chunky, blocky fighter’s disposal. In keeping with its redevelopment of the WWE brands, THQ presents us with WWE Survivor Series for the GBA and is surely hoping that this is the game to turn the handheld tide.

WWE Survivor Series looks the business on the GBA’s small screen. The characters are fairly well animated at times, as clear as you could wish for, and a fair feeling of power comes across when you throw a punch or pull off a DDT. All of the official WWE logos, trademarks and signatures are in place as you would expect and on the whole, everything couldn’t really look much better than it does. Sure, a few of the animations fail to impress by seemingly containing less frames than they really should, but on the flipside, some of the moves look as polished as can be.

In addition to this, the game plays surprisingly well and certainly a lot better than the previous GBA wrestle-‘em-ups from THQ. In single-player, you choose the show that you wish to work for (Smackdown! or RAW) and battle your way through a series of challenges until you take home a belt or two. A limited roster of characters is available for use, and these all come with the required “finishing” moves and signature takedowns, as well as miniaturised entrance performances. After the show has been chosen, your thumbs feel OK. After your first match, they’re aching a bit, and after you’ve failed to beat the first three challengers, you need to soak them in water.

This is simply because WWE Survivor Series puts up such a stiff challenge. Sometimes, the challenge is unfair but somehow strangely believable. Take my match as Triple H against Randy Orton, for example. Through the early sparring, Orton was on top by a sliver. I fought back, slammed his face into Hunter’s knee a few times, threw a couple of DDT’s his way and generally whooped him until I was able to pull off my finishing move – the deadly “Pedigree”. After hitting the move successfully, the next logical thing to do is to go for the pin, which only got me a two count. The match went on, with Orton being beaten to a pulp until I got another successful Pedigree in, and went for the cover again. Again, a two count. This time, Orton gets up, goes for the cover straight away, and gets a one-two-three.

It makes no sense, but yet it seems to happen in match after match. Technically, the game could be classed as above-average, but no matter how many times you make use of the more-than-adequate control system and your far-too-limited selection of moves to grind your opponent down, they always seem to pop back up and have the amazing ability to pin you without really doing any work beforehand. Some will accept this as a challenge, as I did the first three times it happened. Others, will get angry, put the game down and not play it for a week.

Whether you’ll get any satisfaction from WWE Survivor Series depends entirely on which of the above actions you’d take. If the latter applies to you, you might not want to bother. However, if you’re a fan of the genre and are willing to roll with the punches and get back up to fight another day, you’re looking at a game that whilst not lasting you an overly long time, will provide a solid challenge and enough entertainment to warrant a purchase.