Customer Reviews

WWE Day of Reckoning 2

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This year's WWE wrestling game for the Nintendo Gamecube features better visuals, an updated roster, some new wrestling moves, and improved gameplay through new stamina and submission systems. Pretty much every aspect of gameplay in Day of Reckoning 2 (DoR2) is better than the original Day of Reckoning. Improved visuals make for better-looking wrestlers and CAW's (Create A Wrestler; your own custom-made wrestler). The new stamina system reflects the real-world inability to endlessly pound on someone without taking an occasional rest break. The story mode adds a new twist of managing skill points (grappling, aerial, submission, etc.) in addition to physical attribute points (strength, speed, etc.). It takes at least two passes through the story mode to create a perfect wrestler. In a nice touch, you can restart the story mode if you find a part of it too difficult to pass, and keep your wrestler's earned attributes intact.

The new camera system focuses on the active wrestlers instead of showing the entire wrestling ring, and has both positive and negative aspects. The camera system attempts to keep the active wrestlers as large as possible on the screen, which makes them appear more true-to-life, but sacrifices "ring awareness" in return. "Inactive" wrestlers, such as your opponent's tag-team partner, interfering wrestlers in singles matches, or new entrants in Royal Rumble competition, are mostly kept off-screen by the new camera system unless you actively engage them. When these wrestlers are off-screen, it is difficult to keep track of their whereabouts to avoid their attacks and interference with your pin-fall and submission holds.

There are a few things that stayed the same in DOR2, including the inability of female CAW's to participate in Bra-and-Panties matches. The only aspect where Day of Reckoning 2 seems to have regressed is in the artificial intelligence of its characters. In single-player Triple Threat, Fatal Four Way, and Royal Rumble matches, your opponents seem to only concentrate on attacking your wrestler, making these matches difficult to win.

Beyond the three major goals of completing the story mode, earning enough money to buy everything in the WWE Shop, and unlocking the five hidden characters; there is little in DoR2 to hold one's interest for long. The continued exclusion of championship belts from Exhibition mode makes DoR2 boringly repetitive once those goals are accomplished. If you don't have a wrestling game for the GameCube, then Day of Reckoning 2 is the one to get. If you already own Day of Reckoning, you can safely skip this game for something more interesting unless you are buying the game for an avid wrestling fan. DoR2 does not add enough new features to make the game a compelling purchase.
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The Roster: Batista, Big Show, Booker T, Carlito, Chavo Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Chris Masters, Christian, Eddie Guerrero, Edge, Eugene, Heidenreich, JBL, John Cena (he's the WWE champion in the story mode but the game is missing his WWE Champion spinner belt), Kane, Kenzo Suzuki, Kurt Angle, Muhammad Hassan, Orlando Jordan, Paul London, Randy Orton, Rene Dupree, Rey Mysterio, Ric Flair, Rob Van Dam, Shawn Michaels, Shelton Benjamin, Snitsky, Tajiri, The Hurricane, Triple H, Undertaker, William Regal, Christy Hemme, Stacy Kiebler, Torrie Wilson, Trish Stratus.

The unlockable legends: Brett Hart, Hulk Hogan, Mankind, The Rock, Steve Austin.

They scanned john cena perfect, rey too. It has good weapons including the fire extinguisher you can spray with the a button. The steel cage matches are the best especially if you are doing a tag team match. I always use the sledgehammer in matches against carlito and eugene the graphics are great! BUY THIS GAME!!!!!!!! Just for $50.00!!!!!!!!

I've spent the better part of Labor Day weekend glued to this game. If you liked the first Day of Reckoning, you will like the second installment just as much, if not more.


Pros:
The controls and gameplay are exactly like the first. It's very fluid and easy to manage. Not much has changed here and I'm glad that they didn't mess with it.

The AI is much improved. I've played numerous Tag Team matches and the CPU is much smarter than before. Now they will cut off the ring and keep you on their side. They tend to throw you into the turnbuckle and perform a lot of double-team moves. If one of them is pinning you, the other will jump into the ring to try and prevent your partner from breaking up the count. If, by chance, the CPU is whooping you up on your side of the ring, they will knock down your partner before they try to pin you. Don't worry, it's not to the point where it's totally unfair. In my opinion, this makes for a much more enjoyable game. It's a little peskier, but definitely more realistic and fun.

The storyline is also improved. You must still use your created wrestler to play in the Story Mode. In the first DoR, you basically went through the same storyline with each franchise. This time, you start off on RAW and eventually find yourself on Smackdown. The biggest improvement to the storyline is that there are a few occassions where you are asked to choose your destiny. For example, you are given the choice of choosing your Tag Team partner when both of those wrestlers approach you and express interest in pairing up with you. I've only come across about two or three of these instances so far so I only know one storyline. I assume (and hope) that if I had chosen the other options, I would be in a totally different scenario. Nonetheless, just having the option to make choices is an upgrade over the first game.

The Create-A-Wrestler is about as deep and intuitive as the first. I've heard that there might be a few less features but I haven't really noticed. When creating your wrestler, you must now take into consideration his/her Skills when you are distributing his/her Attribute points. The Skills are what you need to raise in order to unlock new moves. There are several Skills categories including Grappling, Striking and Dirty Tactics. As your Skill level rises in each category, new moves will become available to you. As a result, you must find a good balance when you distribute your points. If you distribute too many Attribute points, you will be stuck with very weak and unimpressive moves.

Also new to CAW is your Call Name and Location. Just like in real wrestling, there will be a ring announcer who says the name, location and weight of the wrestler who is about to enter the arena. While this is a neat feature, the Call Name is limited to a number of preset recordings that are pretty generic (ie. The Alien and The Monster). Actual names are included as well but you will need a common name like David or Jennifer to be able to use this. If you don't like those, you don't need to use the Call Name.

The graphics are great and a lot better than the first DoR! Everything is so much smoother and cleaner. The faces are more detailed. This game probably has the best facial reproduction that I've seen in a video game. New camera angles are also another fine addition.


Cons:
The game's soundtrack is lacking. All the wrestler's themes are there, don't worry. But there is no licensed music on this game like there was in the first. Now there are a bunch of cheesy rock instrumentals to take its place. They're not too bad but they're not great either.

There are still no voice-overs. All the dialogue is still in plain text across the screen.


Summary:
As you can see, there aren't too many negatives to this game. What negatives there are don't take away from the overall experience either. This is a great game and a worthy sequel in the DoR franchise.

It's da bomb! The graphics are as realistic as it gets and every bit of your brain can be used. When you're on a submission, there's one of four pain choices to choose from (drain, submit, taunt, and rest). Your opponent must choose the same choice as you in order to escape the hold.

The new stamina is slightly awesome. almost every move you make reduces your stamina a bit. Sounds bad? Actually, it's part of the realism. See, once your stamina's gone, your person gets tired and weakens everything. But, a good rest will restore your stamina.

Story mode continues where the first DoR left off. Your titles gone, and you must win it back. Although one of the main objectives is winning the championship, another thing is important to the storyline, and that's a personnal rivalry. I not at that part yet because i'm stuck on Summerslam, a nearly impossible match (a fatal-four-way cage)

CAW is top-notch, but a bit inferior to the first DoR, because in order to access a move, you must raise a stat attribute. And many must be raised quite high.

Anyway, this game rules. When it comes to getting this game, TRUST NO ONE!

REKANIZE!!!

This game is GREAT. I love the season mode as well. and don't worry there are no "GLITCHES" in this game unlike WM21 for Xbox. Over all worth buying if you like the first DOR.

My cousin bought this game the 4th day it came out and we started playing it. We were impressed, very impressed. DOR2 has more to this game then the 1st one. The graphics are amazing. New characters like Eugene, Muhamad Hussan, Rene Dupree (Comes out with fe'fe), Cristy Hemmy, (But no Lita grrrr). I'm kind of saden about the legends though not really. Stone Cold Steve Austin, Hogan, The Rock, and Mankind (But no Andre). The New submission and Stamina system are great in this game. There are a couple of glitches and loading sucks. But other than that This game beats all other wrestling games. This maybe the last THQ wrestling game for GC (Probably DOR3 for Revolution) but this is the greatest of all time. Don't rent it. Buy it you'll love it

I was very pleased with this game. It's a very big improvement over last year. But first things first, the negatives, loading times can get a bit annoying in the caw mode but nothing too major..minor things like Christian not having the C on his tights, Mysterio doesn't have his gloves, Orton doesn't have his wrist tape are noticable but not a huge deal. The gameplay hasn't changed very much which is actually a good thing, the new stamina meter really adds alot of realism to the matches. Blood staining the mat is great also. As far as my view thats basically all the good and the bad summed up. Overall if you're going to wine about little things then you wont enjoy the game as much. But if you're a true wrestling gamer and can enjoy a game for the gameplay itself and the OVERALL presentation then this is a great buy and a great upgrade from last year.

There is part of me that would say that this is the best wrestling game available on the Gamecube. Of the four WWE titles, this one is probably the best, though i still seem to find myself playing the first one more, and though it definately improves upon every problem that I had with the first one, it doesn't go much beyond that, and it seems to have sacrificed a lot of soul, or art design in favor of better graphics, and a new control scheme which I like, but I just can't help but feel like they didn't try that hard with this one. It seemed like with every installment they kept trying to get better and more out of their titles, and with this one, they just kind of said, what can we get away with. I mean in is a finished and polished game, it just feels like they didn't shoot very high on this one. I mean at this point, any wrestling game that you are going to get, its probably not going to be all of them, you want the best of a genre for your collection unless you are a big collector, in which case you are already going to get it regardless of my review, but for my money, Day of Reckoning is the better game, but still its good enough to make you really think.

I was thrilled by all the options that Smackdown vs. Raw had for PS2, which is actually more than what I can say for Day of Reckoning 2 for Gamecube when it comes to game options. I thought that since this game was a year newer and the graphics were better than Smackdown vs. Raw as well as it having all the new wrestlers I like such as Carlito(I spit in the face of people who don't want to be cool!), Snitskt(It wasn't my fault!), Mohammad Hassan(Too bad he left the WWE, hope he comes back at some point) and the new theme musics such as John Cena's and Edge's, I thought with the obvious things this game had that Smackdown vs. Raw didn't have, that this game would be the bomb and blow the other one away, that actually wasn't the case.

This game actually lacked quite a few things, more than one would like to admit if they were looking forward to it being the best game to come out so far.

For one thing, Kurt Angle's "You Suck!" chants weren't in the game. Even though I SOMEWHAT like Kurt Angle, it was still fun to hear the crowd chant "You Suck!" to him, even if you don't totally agree. I wish one of those so-called hometown heros would've beaten him in his Kurt Angle Invitational. Ever since he became a bastard with it by often going too far with what he did to those so-called hometown heros and now that he isn't offering the Invitational anymore, that definitley sucks. Seeing one of those guys beat him and getting his medal would've been great(not the retarded Eugene who did it instead).

Another obvious thing that was missing in the game was Lillian Garcia's voice whenever you choose the Raw arena because she's the ring announcer of Raw. Also, they didn't have Jerry Lawler or Jim Ross or Jonathan Coachman talking during the match like with Smackdown vs. Raw.

And one of the most obvious, MOST CRUCIAL things the game didn't have that Smackdown vs. Raw had were the actual game options during a match. One of those missing options was you getting to have a manager at ringside for either wrestler or letting both wrestlers have managers. When you watch wrestling on TV, you never see a show where a manager at ringside doesn't get involved during the match. The fact that this game took that option away was bascially taking away the whole feeling of WWE. Afterall, what good was Mohammad Hassan being in the game if Daivari was never there?, the fact that Daivari was in his corner in the WWE made Mohammad the recognized wrestler that he was. And what about Edge? He's supposed to have Lita in his corner likes he normally does on RAW. It's simply not pro wrestling if there's no such thing as no managers at ringside.

Another option missing was the handicap option. This game just offers a 2 on 1 handicap match, it's missing the 3 on 1 option. 3 on 1 handicap matches have happened. Just look at the thing with Goldberg vs. Evolution in 2003.

It's also hard to make your wrestler get in and out of the ring using the controls.


Those were the cons, but here are the pros, the improvements this has over Smackdown vs. Raw,

1. Better graphics.
2. New wrestlers and new theme musics.
3. More realistic where it shows your opponent slowing down with fatique after the match goes on long enough.
4. The 2 on 1 handicap match can be either "Normal" or "Tornado".
5. You were able to continue your assault even after the match was over for a few seconds.

If this game had all the options that Smackdown vs. Raw had while still keeping all the pros listed above(and adding Daivari and Lita to the roster at least as managers), then this would've blown Smackdown vs. Raw out of the water and would get 5 stars.

I had the same problem like one reviewer. Should I pay $50 dollars for this game or wait till it goes down to $20 in a year? I said screw it, and decided to buy the game. The loading seems to take awhile, unlocking superstars is a pain, last man standing match is confusing, and the crowd gets in the way of the picture when fighting on the outside. Other then that, its a fun game. The controls are the same as the first, which makes it easy to learn and fun. The game is life like almost, and the new stars are fun to play. I recommend if you like wrestling games. If you dont, then dont even bother.