Trailer Thoughts is a new frequent series that will be featured on Vortex Effect. Instead of simply posting game trailers thrown our way by PR people, we’re going to provide thoughts on the trailer and score the trailer’s effectiveness on a Hyped/Meh/Soured scale.
THQ released the official WWE ’13 launch trailer today, and you can watch the almost 2:30 trailer above. The game releases tomorrow for PS3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii.
Official trailer description:
The official launch trailer for WWE ’13, featuring the all-new “Attitude Era” Mode, Predator Technology 2.0, WWE Live audio presentation system, WWE Universe 3.0 with “Creative Rabbi” Paul Heyman, the best Creation Suite ever and the largest roster in franchise history!
The launch trailer begins with the same CM Punk vignette that airs during the television commercials. It’s a very good little vignette with CM Punk talking about the revolution, being the best in the world, and putting “Attitude” back where it belongs. If only CM Punk actually brought Attitude back in a non-gaming capacity.
It’s not surprising that the first gameplay stuff touched on in the launch trailer is the new single-player campaign, Attitude Mode. It’s by far been the most interesting looking mode since it was first announced. The Road to WrestleMania stories were decent at best, but lacked any replay value whatsoever. Last year’s WWE ’12 had a great story, but the execution around it was ultimately boring and annoying because there were too many cutscenes in matches (that completely ignored the reality of what was happening in the ring) and because of the insane amount of pointless handicap backstage brawls.
As the trailer points out, this year Attitude Mode features over 65 matches, over 20 “classic” videos, new cinematic cutscenes, over 150 historical photos, and over 100 unlockables; including superstars, attires, championships, and more. That’s a lot. We’ll see how well this actually turns out, but it’s looking like a pretty big improvement over the Road to WrestleMania mode of years past.
The trailer boast that Predator Technology 2.0 allows for smoother and more responsive gameplay than ever before, but I question exactly how smooth it’ll be. The Predator Technology last year was good, but the physics were all sorts of janky resulting in weapon glitches and some unintentionally hilarious bad spots. While the new catching finishers and back and forth spots look good in the videos, I seriously doubt they’ve fixed the issues with the animations and physics that were prevalent last year.
I’ll give them credit on the inclusion of the OMG moments. Those look really cool. Maybe at some point we’ll be able to break the barricade down and then actually walk into and fight in the crowd. Small steps and all that jazz. I’m actually looking forward to taking Ryback and Big Show and collapsing the ring (Ryback is December DLC of course, and I assume he’s one of the guy who will be able to break the ring, I don’t know. I’ll be disappointed if he isn’t.).
The launch trailer shows off that WWE ;13 features the “biggest roster of all time.” I’m fairly impressed with it. It’s not the 150+ of UFC Undisputed 3, but it’s big enough. Of course it’s easy to claim “biggest of all time” when you consider there’s three versions of Mick Foley, three versions of Triple H, and two versions of quite a few other superstars as well. But oh well, it IS a great roster and I’m looking forward to running an Attitude brand and a current brand.
People who purchase Fan Axxess will get two exclusive wrestlers: DDP and Goldust. If you’re a PS+ member, I really hope you haven’t thrown down $20 on Fan Axxess yet. And if you haven’t, don’t! Wait until the PS Store updates tomorrow, as Fan Axxess will be 50% off for Playstation Plus members, making it quite a steal at $9.99.
Other than Attitude Mode I’m really looking forward to seeing exactly how improved Universe 3.0 is over the previous two versions. Judging by what they’ve said leading up to launch, it’s looking like this is the Universe mode I’ve been wanting since they first announced the mode two years ago. But then you always focus on things they’ve said you can do, and then you start playing it and find out that you can’t do A, B, or C and then slap yourself because there’s still needless limitations in it.
We’ll see if that’s the case this year. I don’t want to see my tag teams breaking up. I especially don’t want to see stupid “remarkable” matches like John Cena versus the surprise mystery man that ends up being WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross (that happened a ton to me last year after downloading the Jim Ross character). This year they’ve added an “Inactive” brand, so those superstars I place on “Inactive” better actually stay inactive.
I’m also looking forward to seeing how the branching storylines play out in Universe mode and how often it happens. That has the potential to be a really cool feature, and it does give us some control over how things go (I may not Epico to turn on Primo). Of course it’s not going to matter any if we only get the option to exert control 10% of the time. We’ll see.
All in all, the launch trailer for WWE ’13 didn’t tell us anything new, but then I don’t think anyone would expect it too. It ran down pretty much everything that matters (with the exception of online, particularly Community Creations, which I have my doubts about actually being fixed). It did it’s job and is effective.
WWE ’13 releases tomorrow. We’ll have a review up at some point, but don’t ask me when because I don’t even know why I’ll have a copy.
HYPED
i’ll wait until it has been out for a while to check all the reviews. I am too into Assassin’s creed 3 right now!!