The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I bet when you ask a wrestling fan what they want from a wrestling game, they would say they want all the moves, a hardcore fighting game where they can do everything from the show.

They’re wrong.

The wrestling part is such a small part of wrestling. The vast majority of these shows aren’t the fights. It’s the soap opera. It’s the backstage plots, the betrayals, the trash talking.

I don’t claim to know much about wrestling or wrestling games, but I certainly haven’t HEARD of a wrestling game that really covers all that backstage drama stuff. With TNA Wrestling for the iPhone and iPod Touch, that is the majority of the game. And goodness, it’s pretty darn awesome.

I’m sure if I were a fan of TNA Impact! I would probably love this game even more. It certainly seems to have a full list of people whose names I should know, who I can either insult, fight, or team up with and befriend. I mean, I don’t know these people, but it seems to have everyone, and after you beat them, then you get their signature move to use in the ring, which would please fans, I would think.
However, I can only look on the game as a fan of dialog-driven RPGs, and as one of those, this is by far one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had on my iPod.

You start the game by making your wrestler. There’s not an overwhelming amount of customization options, (You can only choose between three facial portraits, for instance, though they change color based on what you’re wearing, your hair color, etc) but you can choose all your colors and what kind of things you’re wearing, and generally make your guy look unique. I picked a really creepy picture, and created Taco, a wrestler with green hair for the lettuce, a yellow wife-beater and boots for the shell, and a pair of pink briefs, for this spicy hot nature. I then jumped into a world of wrestling and intrigue!

The majority of the game is conversations, which are very important. There are branching paths depending on your choices. You often have at least 3 dialog options any time the game stops you. Every time you say something, you get general XP, as well as experience in one of two areas: Face, where you are the kind of wrestler who the crowd loves and works the crowd to your advantage, or Heel, where you’re a villain character everyone loves to hate. These unlock various “Crowd Support” powers, depending on what you level up. You also gain new wrestling moves in the ring from your general experience.

The combat itself is completely turn-based, and is oddly kind of similar to Fallout. Every turn, you have a certain number of BP. You spend these BP on various actions. Slapping someone only costs one BP, but if you want to clothesline someone, you spend a BP to run and bounce against the edge of the ring, and then another to slam into them. As you level up, you unlock combos: lists of moves that, if you do all of them in a row, you do a special finisher. These start out simple, like grabbing someone’s head and slamming them to the ground, but end up, towards the end of the game, being things like throwing people out of the ring and then jumping off of the ropes onto them. Each of these moves requires a kind of “quicktime” event of sliding your finger about or pushing a virtual button. They work well and are pretty fun to do. (and having to hit two buttons at once for “Eye Gouge” is just too awesome.)
To counter these moves, each wrestler gets three “defenses” per match. These are gone once they are used, but can be regained with enough crowd support, though they can only be recharged once. Avoid simply makes you run out of the way, avoiding an attack. Counter turns an attack against your opponent, and Reverse not only turn the attack against your opponent, but ends their turn, even if they still have plenty of BP.
At first, you’ll feel like there’s no way you can lose. That would be fine for me, since it’s a pretty casual experience. But you soon figure out that there is much more strategy to it than you would first think. If you don’t use your defensive moves correctly, you WILL get schooled, and it quickly becomes very important to use your turns pumping up the crowd to use your crowd powers. It gets surprisingly tough. I kinda liked that.

What’s mostly entertaining about the game, though, is the dialog. I don’t know if wrestling is normally this bad, but EVERYTHING in this game is so ridiculous and stupid, it is hilarious. I constantly found myself laughing at the absurdity of it all. There’s something special going on when someone threatens to take you down with his special move, “Defribri-see-you-later”. The writing was entertaining. Oh yes.

So yeah, I have completely gotten my $5 bucks worth out of this game. It’s of a solid length, and it is funny and a lot of fun. Granted, it didn’t work for me immediately, but after some help on that front, I have absolutely no complaints. TNA Wrestling is a very easy recommendation.