WWE Crush Hour

Can you guess whose car this is? Thought not.

WWE Crush Hour is a wrestling game in name only. Like Twisted Metal and Cel Damage, Crush Hour is a demolition derby which allows the player to go up against his favourite wrestlers in a duel to the, er, something. The game provides a few different modes of play. The easiest to get into is the quick-start exhibition mode, where the player can choose a wrestler and arena, set up some game rules, then launch straight into the carnage.

In addition, there's a season mode which leads through a series of competitions in much the same vein as the career mode in true wrestling games. Finally, there is a multiplayer mode, which provides a split screen two-player version of exhibition mode.

Ding Ding: Round One

Why doesn't he just take the jet instead?

Thirty of your favourite wrestlers and 13 arenas are available to play, although some are initially locked. Making an appearance are the likes of The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, and Brock Lesnar. Each wrestler is given his own custom vehicle (although with a few exceptions such as The Undertaker's famous trike), but I was unable to see what relationship existed between the cars and the wrestlers they were supposed to represent.

Each vehicle offers a basic fire mode and a unique powerful finishing weapon, which is charged by doing damage to other cars. I'd like to say that each car also has unique handling and performance but, in all honesty, they don't.

Let's burn some rubber

Next generation graphics?

The first thing you'll notice on firing up the game is that none of the cars actually behave like cars. The vehicles appear to glide around the bland looking arenas like hovercraft. This is most noticeable when driving at full speed into a wall. The vehicle will float up in the air and then float back down again. This is most noticeable if you do it in a corner - the car does a lovely impression of a nice floaty tennis ball, bouncing around between the two walls.

As there appears to be very little inertia or momentum, it makes the vehicles very easy to control - the cars move more or less like the Spy car in the original top-down scroller, Spyhunter. Some might say that having a car that doesn't handle like a car is a bit of a drawback for a driving game but surprisingly it really doesn't seem to matter. The focus of the game is blowing things up, and you get to do plenty of that.

Where do the wrestlers come into it?

You wouldn't expect this to handle the same as the trike, would you? It does.

They don't, really. Although the arenas are modelled around WWE Event sets, none of them are particularly distinctive or interactive. The wrestlers themselves make the occasional utterly inappropriate sound bite, but other than that, they could be replaced by garden vegetables or different varieties of forest wildlife. There is no really feeling of taking part in a WWE Event. It's a bit like playing a demolition derby game while someone is watching the wrestling in the next room with the sound turned up.

Jim Ross, the WWE Commentator, narrates the action with a series of disjointed and, once more, inappropriate clips. Rather than adding a dimension of realism, this only serves to confuse you - "What? Did that happen? Where?" The music is, as you would expect from any WWE Game - elevator music for headbangers. The sound, overall, is very weak. The weapons sound underpowered and none of the vehicles sound particularly beefy.

Next Generation Gaming?

Meet the new goal - same as the old goal.

Graphically, WWE Crush Hour is mediocre at best. There are a few nice weapons effects, but other than that the textures and models are bland. Everything moves very smoothly, and there's no sign of slowdown, but given the simplicity of the arenas, this really isn't surprising. I came away from the game with the feeling that the WWE franchise had been bolted on top of an average game to try and improve it. The presentation isn't great and there are many missed opportunities. One of the best things about wrestling games is watching all the over the top bluster and posturing, but that is almost completely absent.

It's not all bad, however. One must bear in mind that this is a budget release, and as such will surely provide a few hours of entertainment to die hard wrestling fans. While never satisfying, it is fun to simply charge around the arena shooting randomly at things, but the game simply doesn't allow any kind of strategy or involved playing. For fans of the destruction demolition genre, Twisted Metal and Cel Damage do it far better.