WWE Day of Reckoning 2

I've got to admit, I've reviewed a bunch of wrestling titles and without exception, they're always deeply flawed creatures. Sometimes they've got a few bright shining jewels, but on the whole, I can't say as I've found a title I'd really recommend. Until now.

First, I watch wrestling on a weekly basis, and this game is grounded in some of the most current wrestling storylines from Smackdown and RAW!. It's old enough that you'll still see characters like Hassan, but certain dramatic events from the storyline of the show have been used to tie together not only the shows, but the first Day of Reckoning game. Although the story mode isn't voiced, and it is played out in pretty typical fashion, it's definitely a plus point.

However, every game has a heart, and this game's heart is definitely the ability to customize a character all your own. Using DoR's character creation mode, you can customize nearly anything about your character, up to and including the pitch and yaw of their eyes. Plenty of dressing options are available, including various types of pants and even full body tattooing. Plus, once you're done with the character creation, you can create an intro for the character, either completely from scratch, or from prebuilt templates that let you use one of the WWE superstar's intros.

Finally, as far as wrestling games go, DoR is beautiful to look at. It for the most part captures faces particularly well, and the character models aren't copied duplicates of one another with various deformed bodies. Aurally there isn't much here to listen to, as the characters aren't voiced, but there are plenty of theme songs in the character creation mode, so you get a lot of choices in that respect.

There's so much good in this game that I've run out of space to talk about the gameplay. The gameplay is a dream. It's logical, well thought out, rarely requires any button mashing, and has a great tutorial that for the most part, walks you through the entire thing. What's not to love! Go buy this game!