Story: I was seven years old, Christmas was approaching and in between my doses of WCW, an advert for a game called WWF Attitude kept playing. At this point, all I knew was that WWF was wrestling...and that's it. I was a WCW fan, but that was to change, thanks to this game. In fact, if it was not for this game, I probably would have stopped watching wrestling the moment WCW stopped showing over here. I got this game for Christmas and for a long time it was my favourite game (mainly because I had two PS1 games at the time). I loved to create my own characters and attempt to use them to destroy my opponents...usually ending in disaster. So, what made this game so addicting to me as a seven year-old? And does it still have the same effect on me nine and a half years later?
Why I Liked It: Even though I had no ideas who these guys were (except The Rock, my friend loved him so I knew who he was), I loved the different characters of the WWF. My favourite was Gangrel, a vampire who would drink "blood" from his goblet and spit it into the crowd. As a child I loved this and he became one of my favourite wrestlers when I started watching the WWF (even if he rarely ever appeared by that point). Another wrestler I grew to like thanks to this game was Kane. I thought his music was awesome, but I still feel ashamed that I actually thought he was a robot for many months until I finally saw him on television. This is because of his voice in the game, another thing I loved about this game. Before every match, the wrestlers would trash talk each other. In fact, I used to start matches just to hear them talk. I also liked the commentating, but I was not used to hearing voices in games by this point.
My Opinion Of It Now: The actual matches are boring. Compare it to the Smackdown! series, it just takes so long to finish a match. I always wondered why I never managed to win one of the belts in the game. It was because it just could not keep me interested in it for that long. The characters walk so slow and I can never get used to the controls (perhaps this is a side-effect of playing too much Smackdown! games). It is not the worst wrestling game I own (WCW Mayhem may just take that honour, I haven't played it in so long), but it is definitely not the best. It has aged terribly. The only thing I would say I like about this game is the nostalgia factor. This was the game that originally got me into the WWF (WWE now-a-days) and so I have a place in my memories for nearly every guy in this game. However, I would rather keep this game in my memories, than have to play it again.
Score: 4/10
