The pitch I’d heard when this game was running the preview circuit was that it was a wrestling game targeted at average joes, and I can definitely see how that would be the case. The premise itself is transparently designed to sucker in the non-fan: half the roster is made up of superstars from the 80s and 90s — the sort of guys you remember seeing on TV when you were a kid — and the other half is made up of dudes that are rasslin’ in the WWE of today, presumably there to bolster the interest of the nostalgia crowd (though how even over the top attack animations are supposed to make the likes of Jack Swagger or Drew McIntyre interesting is a mystery to me). The game plays less like your typical Smackdown vs. Raw affair, and more like a Marvel vs. Capcom game; they even put out an All Stars branded arcade stick to coincide with its release. And the gameplay is actually pretty compelling and, more importantly, approachable.

At face value, the fights are a fairly straightforward affair. There are two buttons each for strikes and grapples, and certain combinations can pull of a wrestler’s signature moves under the proper circumstances. In contrast to other games in the genre, there’s a heavy emphasis put on executing combination attacks — while each wrestler has only a handful of standing striking moves and grapples, stringing together a combination of light attacks and either a strong attack or grapple can result in pulling off a move you wouldn’t otherwise have access to in your arsenal. Beyond that, each wrestler is designated as either a grappler, a brawler, an acrobat, or a big man, and each style has its own unique qualities. Brawlers and big men can charge up a powerful striking attack, acrobats can perform quick springboard arial moves from the second rope, and grapplers can execute not just striking combinations, but can transition their grapple attacks into multiple successive suplexes with proper timing. Brawlers and grapplers can also charge up their grapple, but near as I can tell the only move you can actually execute with it is a boston crab, which leaves me kind of scratching my head.

Beyond that, countering is actually a fair bit more intuitive than I’d normally expect. Every move can be countered, and the timing varies from move to move. An on-screen indicator signals your opportunity for a reversal, but by the time you see it, you’ve more than likely missed your chance. It’s not really there to test your reflexes though, but to give you a gauge of what to shoot for in the future. Despite some early frustration, before long I was countering strikes and grapples on a fairly regular basis. You can even counter counters, which makes dealing with an often cheap AI a lot less stressful.

While there are a lot of great ideas on display here, unfortunately they fall flat just as often as they hit. Starting with the obvious, this game redefines ugly. THQ decided to go for an over the top style here, and this manifests in the form of insanely stylized moves (for example, Hulk Hogan leaps fully 25 feet into the air for his signature legdrop while simultaneously doing his “listening to the crowd” gesture) and character models that run the gamut from hideous (Big Show) to goofy (The Rock) to downright terrifying (Edge). As a bonus, each character’s torso is about as big around as an oak. Sadly, their heads have not been inflated to match.

Beyond that, there’s not a whole lot of depth to the game modes available. Match types are sufficiently varied — there’s 1v1, triple threat, fatal four-way, handicap, extreme, steel cage, and tag team (tornado only; this here’s an arcade game!) — but the single player story offering is fairly shallow. There are three “story” missions that task you with taking on The Undertaker, Randy Orton, and DX respectively. However, aside from a couple of poorly cut promos, each one is practically identical; win 9 matches, then take on the title character(s) in the 10th. Bonus points for the inclusion of Paul Bearer were quickly revoked once I remembered how annoying he is to listen to. There’s also a mode labeled “Fantasy Warfare”, but it’s just a series of 1 on 1 matches between old and new stars with similar gimmicks. Each one has a video introduction, for whatever that’s worth.

Still, the most disappointing misstep on display in WWE All Stars is the lack of variety in wrestlers’ moves. While each wrestler has a handful of signature maneuvers, beyond that every grappler, big man, brawler and acrobat shares a virtually identical set of grapples with only about a dozen varieties of striking moves between them. If you’re of a mind to circumvent that by rolling your own created superstar, prepare for disappointment; created wrestlers can only be given one of the existing wrestler’s predefined move sets. You can select a finisher, but most of those are locked away at the onset. Even with the anemic single player options available, some more dynamic move sets would have really helped give All Stars some lasting appeal, but unfortunately the developers dropped the ball.

So, while WWE All Stars has a face only a mother could love, and while you can blow through the single player modes in a matter of hours, it still manages to be a pretty entertaining little game. I certainly don’t think it’s worth $60 of my hard earned cash, but neither did I feel particularly cheated by Blockbuster’s exorbitant $9 rental fee. If you’ve got even a passing interest in wrestling games, and especially if you’ve got a like minded friend, at the end of the day it’s definitely worth checking out. Just don’t tell THQ you bought it used.

I have a long history with Magic: the Gathering. I remember buying my first deck of Revised Edition from a hobby shop in the Roosevelt Field mall. I remember hunkering at the folding table in Vin’s basement as we played a 4 hour stalemate with our 12 inch tall decks. I even remember, with no small amount of shame in retrospect, opening my first pack of Ice Age, finding that every single mana card was misprinted, and marching right back into the comic shop and asking that they replace them with “real cards”… god do I remember that part. Still, the last time I so much as looked at magic cards was ’round about 5 years ago (in Japan no less — Brayton invited me to a booster draft in Nagoya), so when I noticed Wizards had published a Magic game on Xbox live arcade, nostalgia took hold of me and I finally gave in and downloaded the trial version last night.

The last time I played a Magic the Gathering video game, it was in ’97, and the experience was what you might call less than overwhelming. The interface was ugly and cumbersome, there was a tacked on and silly overworld map and pseudo-adventure game mode, and, as I quickly learned, many cards didn’t actually function properly, making them useless. The bar, and my expectations, were set pretty low. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be absolutely fantastic.

For starters, the interface is gorgeous — the table and menu options are clean and functional. Also, whenever your opponent plays a card, pulling one of the triggers will zoom in on it and pause the action so you can read its text. I didn’t get a chance to have a look at the tutorial system, but if the in-game messages are any indication, the developers seem to have taken great care to make sure newcomers don’t get lost. Every time a card is played with an ability that hasn’t been seen yet, it pops up a helpful description to let you know how it’s going to affect your game. If that’s not enough for you, there’s a system by which you can mentor or be mentored by other players online — though I imagine how useful that is depends heavily on the install base.

I’ll be honest, I was a little worried I wouldn’t remember how to play, but it didn’t take long for everything to come flooding back to me. Luana shook her head when I started complaining that the game had given me a green slow burn creature deck to use against red weenie/direct damage. She asked, “Do you even know what you’re doing?”, to which I scoffed and loudly proclaimed that I was, in fact, an expert. I think she jumped when I shouted “How does 15/15 trample work for you, you little bitch?!” as I celebrated my 9th inning victory.

Yeah… it’s safe to say I had fun.

Sure, there are a few niggling details that irk me, but nothing too major. It’s easy to pause the game timer and not notice, it can be awkward to skip the too-long damage animations, and the timing for abilities like regeneration takes some getting used to. That said, it’s fairly likely I’ll be buying this some time in the future — anyone playing?