This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360 and tested on the PlayStation 3. No significant differences were noted.

The pie-eating contest turned ugly when the last chocolate cream pie came up missing.

WWE Legends of WrestleMania is best described as a hot mess. THQ and Yuke's new casual franchise celebrates 25 years of WrestleMania, and succeeds in being a wrestling game that is simple to play for the fight fan virgin. But the real kick in the teeth is that it has been marketed to fans of THQ's other wrestling games, who are used to something a little more robust. The game will please fans that want a watered-down, simplified version of SmackDown vs. Raw, and piss off fans of that series for trying to hold their hands as they pull off even the most mundane of moves.


Legends of WrestleMania is, as promised, easy to pick up and play -- unfettered by a ton of moves, a complicated control scheme that requires multiple button-taps and presses, and the deep countering system for which SmackDown vs. Raw is known. Now every move is positional and situational. Each character gets a handful of moves that deliver grapples, striking moves and reversals. Everything else in the game happens depending on where you are and what you are doing.


As you successfully pull off these moves, you'll fill up your Momentum Meter and enter tiers of power, each offering more powerful moves and culminating in a third tier that gives you access to your finishing move. This system forces you to build up Momentum to win a match, while making sure that your opponent is sufficiently worn out for you to deliver a successful pin or submission. The game also adds a new taunt system that gives you immediate boons, like a small jolt of temporary speed, by using up your Momentum.

In the '80s, this is how we dealt with Iranian aggression.

Legends of WrestleMania also adds a series of new moves called Chain Struggles. When initiated, you battle your opponent using a series of random, context-sensitive button-presses. Time them just right and you'll pull off a special move that does extra damage, or else you'll take that damage yourself. There are 16 Chain Struggles, encompassing every situation: running, on the ropes, lockup, Irish whip, on the turnbuckle, etc. While I want to bitch about the audacity of Yuke's to infuse God of War-style play into its wrestling game, the Chain Struggle system adds an extra layer of challenge that is interesting. Free pass.


Finishers also require you to complete a short chain of moves to execute them properly. For example, to use Stone Cold Steve Austin's Stunner, you have to pull off two of his other moves first -- the Lou Thez press (with punching, of course) and his familiar elbow drop attack. Pulling off these chains rewards you with the painful Stunner.


While I like the simplified play that Yuke's has created in Legends of WrestleMania, it's hard to get by the general sloppiness of the game's controls. Many of the same button-presses are used for multiple moves. For example, it's tough to grab an object when the same buttons are used for running, or to climb the turnbuckle in a cage match when the same button combos are used to climb out of the cage. This is one of the biggest problems with moving towards a positional control system: It causes "move confusion."


You end up making mistakes you wouldn't make if the controls were a bit more specific to the situation. The two bumpers and two trigger buttons that aren't used in the game could have been tied to different functions, but Yuke's must have decided that this would be too complicated for newbies. I'd argue that it is much more complicated for newbies when they don't get the intended results they expect. When they find themselves running instead of grabbing an object, or climbing the cage when they want to pull off a simple frog splash, that's frustrating.

That reminds me, someone needs to clean the men's room.

That frustration extends to other aspects of the game. Grabbing a weapon now requires having your opponent in a certain position outside the ring. You can't just press a button and rummage underneath the ring like you can in every other THQ wrestling game. Moving to new areas is also vastly different than in SmackDown vs. Raw: Now you'll have to get your opponent in a certain state, be in the right spot, and press the A button to transition to other areas around the ring. In the new area, you'll have to pull off a similar move to transition back to ringside. These situational elements can be jarring, even for a grizzled old veteran like me, so imagine the level of confusion for new players.


On the plus side, it's a lot easier to pull off a lot of the special moves needed to win matches like Steel Cage, Hell in a Cell, Submission, Ladder and Battle Royal. Climbing a ladder to grab the belt is as simple as pie, and escaping from a steel cage is a matter of pressing a few buttons.


And while I'm speaking about positives, it is important to point out the one thing Yuke's did right: the ability to import roster data from SmackDown vs. Raw 2009. This includes player-created characters and the entire SVR 2009 roster, giving you access to a pretty exhaustive selection of superstars. Doing so also unlocks extra tiers in the Legend Killer mode, which is used primarily as a way to gain experience for created characters. The one caveat is that the game gives you way too much experience, making character-building a relatively short activity. For example, clearing the first tier will give you over 1,100 experience points, enough to nearly double your superstar rating. While this is great for fast-tracking character development, it also lessens the satisfaction of building a character in the first place.


I've talked a lot about what is in the game, but Legends of WrestleMania has a startling number of omissions in the roster. Much of this is political, and some of it is related to legal issues. Characters like Diesel, Razor Ramon, Mick Foley and Jeff Jarrett aren't in the game because they work for a competing wrestling organization.

Andre slams Studd with ease.

But others aren't here either because Yuke's made some bad choices, or because the WWE told them to exclude the wrestlers. How can you relive the '80s WWE without Tito Santana, Mike Rotunda, Barry Windham, the Wild Samoans, Capt. Lou Albano or the first black WWF Tag Team Champions, Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson? And how can you enjoy the '90s without the likes of Mick Foley, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall or the full cast of D-Generation X? These omissions really hurt the product, and take from away the historical value of the game. It's tough to see wrestlers in all these wonderful WrestleMania video packages but not have access to them in the game.


Of course, this explains why the handful of game modes feels so scattered: It's covering up the fact that some of the best matches in WWE history can't be played. Mick Foley will never fall off the top of a steel cage onto a waiting table, and Hulk Hogan won't fight his longtime ally Randy Savage, because someone made a decision to exclude them.


What it comes down to is consistency. Legends of WrestleMania is highly playable, save the few areas of move confusion and the hand-holding the game forces you to endure. The problem is that the entire package feels like it was slapped together. I sympathize with the developers, because this is really a first draft of a different kind of wrestling game, which had to be done in time to help market and cash in on WrestleMania. That's a shame, because with a little more time to refine the controls and certain gameplay elements, I could overlook the rest of the game's many shortcomings.


This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.