5 Reasons Why Booking Revolution Is The Best Wrestling Game Of All Time
4. Actual Match Ratings Means Actually Thinking Like A Booker
Booking Revolution is the only wrestling game to award matches you participate in star ratings - thus youre wrestling for quality, not competition. The difference is a game changer, and you will nevereverrrrrr look back. Its one thing to beat your opponent with a spear. Its another to hit the spear, realize the match is tanking, and decide to improv a little a hyper violence by lighting a nearby steel chair on fire and wailing on your opponent for a couple of seconds to juice the match quality. Meanwhile, in the WWE 2K series, the ultimate objective of a given match is to win. Creativity simply isnt rewarded. Its far easier to win in the ring via the same five moves, than it is to spend time setting up a bunch of furniture the AI isnt going to tread near or use, anyway. While Booking Revolution still feels like a fighting game, with health bars and special meters and your opponent trying to win, the idea is to switch between the characters to set up spots and feel the tangible rewards from them. Placing a ladder on top of an announce table, dragging your opponent on top of it, and then tossing them off via a power bomb or suplex into the ring, through another table, leads to a noticeable pop in star rating (and some awesome sound effects) - and is exciting in its own right to pull off. There are countless ways to increase excitement, but there's consequences too; barbed wire cage matches, or brawls with explosives involved run the risk of injury (or even death) for your competitors, especially those with low toughness ratings - but the violence can make up for a lack of wrestler skill or popularity (looking at you, CZW) and trick the audience into enjoying themselves. Conversely, non-hardcore multi-man tag-team matches are sure to excite the crowd, but may leave your roster a little thin as you continue to book the card - meaning you may have to re-use a wrestler (and they hate that!). Theres also wrestler styles to consider, as pitting Big Show and The Great Khali in a submission match isnt going to be good news for anyone due to their low 'skill' rating, nor would pitting Chris Jericho and Daniel Bryan in a no-rope fist fight, due to their relatively low strength attributes. Beyond that, there's a little thing called status. If relative newcomer Dolph Ziggler beats The Rock in a 30 second two star match, youre ultimately hurting both guys because the match failed to deliver on expectations. If the Rock goes over Ziggler in a four star affair, both guys will come away with more popularity because the match was so entertaining. If Ziggler goes over, well, you may rocket him to stardom, but The Rock may lose some valuable popularity points in the process - which may be a good idea if his hefty contract is expiring and you want to low ball him on the next offer. The matches are great fun to watch and play - thanks in part to a branching animation system that can see powerbombs reversed into sunset flips, powerslams reversed into RKOs, top rope splashes countered in to belly-to-belly suplexes (or "OH MY GOD!" inducing Tombstones), and countless other combinations that can leave your jaw on the floor. On more than one occasion youll go for what you assume will be a match ending maneuver, only for your opponent to counter with a slam or takedown that changes the course of the bout - sometimes you'll see three or four of these counters in a sequence and the creativity is matched only by the response from the crowd and uptick in match rating. Ultimately all these variables converge in a roller-coaster-ride of an adventure, where wrestlers can get hurt, die, walk out, show up drunk - and if they have creative control, randomly change their hair style, name, or finishing move without any notice - but much like real-life, most, if not all, is forgiven if YOU can get in the ring and wow the crowd.
