WWE Day of Reckoning (Game Cube, 2004)

WWE Day of Reckoning on Gamecube is everything that it's predecessor, Wrestlemania XIX could have been. With that said, does it make Day of Reckoning a great game? No, although to be fair, it Is the best wrestling game so far on the 'Cube. Let's get to the basics...

Create-A-Wrestler - My personal favorite part of wrestling games is the CAW mode. WM XIX had one of the crappiest CAWs that I'd ever seen. Thankfully, DOR makes improvements by leaps and bounds in this department. You get about 10 character models for a male or female and you can change any of their features from make-up, to body type, to their ring attire. You can also customize their ring entrance with pyro, lights and some cool new ring tunes. It's easily the best one on the Gamecube so far. So for that, DOR CAW gets a definite thumbs up from me.

Gameplay - Okay, here's my biggest gripe with DOR: It plays almost exactly the same as it did with Wrestlemania XIX, with few changes. I'm tired of the same old, same old way of wrestling that the Gamecube has been offering for years. I want something fresh and new. While the basic mechanics of the game remain the same, they have expanded upon the location-specific damage that they implemented in WM XIX. They've taken a page out of PS2's book and put a little figure next to each wrestler's health bar that indicates what body part you're attacking and how injured said body part is. Not enough has been changed since it's last installment, so DOR Gameplay gets a thumbs down.

Graphics - Okay, so the Gameplay sucks, well what about the graphics? Thankfully, what the makers of the game neglected in Gameplay, they more that made up for with prettying up the game. I'd sat that they're probably on par or better than those of Here Comes the Pain on PS2. Yep, they're THAT good. Thumbs way up for graphics.

Story Mode - With the utter crappiness of WM XIX's story mode, anything other than a MAJOR overhaul of story mode would have to be viewed as a total failure of DOR. Nobody wants to wrestle security guards in malls and abandoned construction sites. People want to make their way up in the WWE, winning titles and kicking butt along the way. This is what DOR gives us. You start out at the very bottom, having to work your way up from WWE Developmental, to WWE Sunday Night Heat, (Jish Note: It was a SURREAL experience!!!) to the big time of either Raw or Smackdown, depending on which one you choose. The downsides? Well, you can only play through story mode with a created wrestler, and you don't really have any control over what your character does (Unlike in Shut Your Mouth and Here Comes the Pain on PS2) which pisses me off to no end. My character joined Undertaker's New Ministry without it so much as asking me if that's what I wanted to do. The addition of the story mode is a major improvement, but the total linear-ness of it earns a thumbs-in-the-middle for the Jish-meister.

Misc. Stuff:

-Several new moves have been added to the game such as Eddie Guerrero's Three Amigos, to John Cena's Throwback, to Mark Jindrak's Mark of Excellence. Nice attention to detail there.