TNA Wrestling Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

A new way to wrestle?

As I check for greying hairs in the mirror and glance at my ever developing paunch, I wonder if there is a future for an ageing reviewer in mobile games? Mobile games are meant for young kids - how can I maintain finger dexterity and reaction speeds to match our readers? Do wrestlers have the same concerns as they get older? Is this a tenuous link to TNA Wrestling which seems filled with wrestlers of a certain age?

TNA Wrestling is gradually emerging as a decent challenger to the WWE thanks mostly to its impressive wrestling talent of favourites that even fogies like me recognise. Total Nonstop Action Wrestling was born from the political fallout in the NWA and features Kurt Angle and Scott Steiner to name but two old school favourites; it seems the older they get, the more punishment they take. TNA is still sports entertainment but the use of a hexagonal ring and the occasional un-choreographed event attempts to bridge the gap between WWE and UFC.

WWE is no stranger to mobile gaming but these fighting games are notoriously difficult to get right. In fact anything other than casual or driving games can be problematic for the humble mobile. How do you stop a fighting game turning into a button mashing marathon? Remove all time pressure and make it a tactical battle. In a similar way to Doom RPG and Orcs and Elves, Longtail Studio has created a turn based fighting game set in the squared circle hexagon.

The control system is a little confusing but the basics are as follows. Your wrestler has a number of battle points that you can use to perform moves. The bigger the move, the more points are required. You can string punches and kicks to create combos ranging from an eye gouge to a German suplex. You can also use your battle points to pump up the crowd - this will boost your adrenalin and fill your green bar that's used for special moves. Now it gets complicated, your green bar has 4 segments. As each one fills, you are granted a single-use defensive move such as a counter or reverse. You can also use the filled segments for more offensive moves and hit your opponent with knuckledusters. As you continue the fight, the levels build up once again. There's also the obligatory stamina bar and once you've smashed your opponent into the red zone you can perform a signature move and get the pin. Chairs, crazy somersaults and general nuttiness abound aplenty.

The game starts off with a single story mode which sees you start as a new wrestler as he struggles on his way to the top to become TNA World Champion. Longtail Studio and AMA are more known for their casual story-based applications such as AMA Speed date and AMA Heartbreakers but they have incorporated their experience into the story line of TNA.

Wrestling and gesticulating banter go hand in hand and with TNA the two elements interweave seamlessly. As with their other titles, you have to make certain choices during the story. Do you choose a witty rebuke or spit in Kurt Angle's face? Each will have slightly different responses and more importantly earn you different XP. Following the wrestling traditions, you can be a face/hero or a heel/villain and tailor your comments appropriately. There is a slight variation in the plot but you can expect plenty of back stabbing whichever path you choose.

Integrating the XP system into both the plot and the fighting gives a perfectly balanced mix of action and dialogue. The fighting itself is not quite so well balanced. The fights are tough and the opponents are always that little bit more powerful than you. You do have infinite attempts to win so it's just a case of learning the confusing mechanics and making the most out of your special moves. Regulars readers of Mobile Game Faqs will know that we try to take the game as far as we can before writing our reviews and after 10 long hours and countless rematches we finally became TNA world champion. Without giving too much away, the game is very long and sees you start as a member of a tag team and then progress through all the pay per view extravaganzas to become ultimate champion. Lumberjack and gauntlet matches are included and the only thing missing is a cage match. Once you complete the story, tournament mode is unlocked and is filled with different game modes and challenges for your character to face. Unfortunately the difficulty of the story mode is such that some might not actually make it to the end.

I would love to have given this an Ice Cold Award as it has provided hours of entertaining but there are a few issues. I’ve already mentioned the difficulty but the graphics could also be a little better in places. The little cut scenes and intros are great but the screen is constantly divided in half; the top half shows the action and the bottom displays the dialogue or the punch options. It is only a small screen and sacrifices have to be made but a full screen mode for the signature move would have worked beautifully and showed more than just a mass of limbs in mixing in midair. Apart from those little niggles, Longtail have created an intelligent game of an intelligent sport (no really it is).