Just like in the "real" shows, Wrestlemania X8 starts off with some pop and pizzaz in the form of a great video intro highlighting this year's Wrestlemania event held in Toronto, featuring highlights of wrestlers such as Triple H, Rob Van Dam and the immortal Hulk Hogan. There are three main modes to choose from in the game: Exhibition, Path of the Champions and Battle for the Belts. Exhibition mode is your standard quick match fix, where you can choose from a huge amount of matches, everything from the standard single and tag team matches to fatal fourways and triple threats. After you have chosen how many participants you want in your match, you can then go about choosing what type of match you want, be it an Ironman Match or the dreaded Hell in the Cell. The Path of the Champions is your Season mode, where you will take your selected wrestler and go after one of the many championship belts in the WWE. Finally, Battle for the Belts is a special little mode where you and a bunch of friends can vy for custom made championship belts in matches you choose.

Overall the gameplay is solid, but uninspiring. You get a total of 10 grapple modes, which are executed by pressing the A button in conjunction with a directional press while in front of your opponent or behind them. In addition to these grapple moves, you also get an assortment of submissions manuevers as well as your standard striking combos. Each character also has a multitude of finishing moves, which can be executed by pressing the A and B buttons together in different situations. For example, the Undertaker himself has three finishing moves: The Last Ride, the Dragon Sleeper and Old School, all of which are performed based on your relative position to your opponent. Each time you hit your opponent, you build up your special finishing move meter, which when filled up completely adds one stock to your character. This allows them to execute their finishing move, and can be performed up to three times in a row depending on how much stock you have in possession. Added to the mix are reversals, which require a good amount of timing on the player's part. Yukes also seperated the reversals, allowing you to reverse grapples with the L trigger and strikes with the R trigger. Press them together and you can even reverse finishing moves and add one more stock to your special meter bar. In a way, they've combined two of THQ's franchises into one by seemingly taking the offensive aspect of Smackdown! and merging it with the defensive aspect of Wrestlemania 2000/No Mercy.

But while there's nothing terribly wrong about the gameplay on paper, in execution there are three big gaps in the game: the pacing, collision detection and a limited move set. With only 10 grapple moves per character, drawn-out matches can get rather boring because of the lack of moves for each individual wrestler. However, that isn't nearly as bad as the pacing that the game is set to, which is far faster than "real" wrestling. Much like in the Smackdown! series, wrestlers get up far too fast from moves even when they are hit with finishers, making the game seem a little less like the real thing. Similarly the collision detection that occurs between all of the characters in a match is far too sensitive. While it is realistic for someone to get knocked down if they are in the path of an incoming front suplex, the number of times it happens in a Triple Threat, Tag or Fatal Fourway match is far too often to keep a steady pace going, which leads us back to square one. However when you put it all together, the gameplay in Wrestlemania X8 is solid albeit flawed.

Although some would argue that the Aki wrestling games during the N64 era are where wrestling games should be headed, Wrestlemania X8 does introduce a lot of aspects to the game that hasn't been seen in North American wrestling games before, such as the ability to choose from simply pulling up your opponent from the mat or to pick them up and put them immediately into an arm and head lock position. In the end, while the gameplay may have not lived up to the hype, Wrestlemania X8 does a very good job in establishing a foundation for Yukes to work with in the coming years. Rome wasn't built in one day folks, and while gamers are coming to expect instant classics from the getgo, one only has to look at series such as Street Fighter to realize that it may take a game or two before it all comes together.

Visually each wrestler is modelled right down to the littlest details on their costumes, such as the straps on Triple H's jean jacket to the gold sequins on Ric Flair's entrance robe. Wrestlemania X8 cranks out four wrestlers, two announcers, and a ref on the screen at 60 fps without any slowdown at all, which is pretty remarkable. The biggest problems that Wrestlemania X8 runs into in the visual and technical department are animations. Every bit of animation is motion-captured (WM2K was hand-animated, Smackdown! was motion-captured), so fighting in the ring can get really confusing, because you'll be able to see a lot of times when animations will just stop because of another one occuring in the ring. The entrances are where the graphics really shine, with a lot of pryotechnics and absolutely beautiful animation. The Hurricane's entrance is particularly good, as are the Hardy Boyz.

If there's any place that Wrestlemania X8 really falters, it's in the sound department. While the in-game music is good (although a little plain), the entrance themes for many of the WWE superstars have been left out of the game, apparently due to licensing issues. In any game that uses music tracks as one of the vital presentational aspects, it really is unacceptable that this had to happen, but no doubt they will return in later editions. The rest of the aural aspects of WMX8 are solid, but like the music they aren't very inspiring. The sound effects for the pyrotechnics are especially woeful when compared to older games.

In the end Wrestlemania X8 isn't a terrible game, but it failed to live up to the (un)realistic expectations that wrestling fans had for it. While there's no argument that the game could've been better, it also cannot be denied that as a whole the game is fairly good, and as it's been stated once in this review, provides a good foundation for the coming installments in the series. Having said that, hopefully THQ are taking note of the shortcomings of the game and preparing to blow us away with Wrestlemania X9.

· · · Reno