Day 123: WWE '13 (Xbox 360)

Failing to play today's randomly selected title from my 524 game backlog - I'm playing one every day while furloughed from work...

WWE '13 for the Xbox 360
Previous days' entries can be read HERE.

You know how the bedrooms of teenage boys' tend to have a certain smell?

Maybe you're a teenage boy right now and you resent that, and I get it, I was a teenage boy once myself and I would have resented it then too - But's it's 100% true, and almost everyone reading will know the particular odour I mean.

Well, if a smell could somehow have a soundtrack, the soundtrack for that adolescent tang would be identical to the soundtrack to WWE '13...

I'll confess right up front that I didn't give his game much of a chance. I mucked around for a bit with the character creator, played a couple of basic fights, and then turned it off.

I get that this series has been around forever and has probably iterated in tiny instalments, but the last official wrestling game I played was Royal Rumble on the Dreamcast. Everything about the movesets and mechanics in WWE '13 is completely alien to me - and the game doesn't seem to provide any kind of guidance for newcomers.

I say 'seem' because, honestly, I could barely find my way through the wall of options, all renamed to fit the branding, to get to a basic match - let alone anything more complicated.

And, ultimately, it's that branding that's the issue. Despite being a straight, white, man, there are a few other factors that mean I'm not entirely part of the demographic that the WWE courts. 

It should be said that it would appear the game does a fantastic job of feeding the fan base though, everything is geared around making the game look, sound (ugh), and feel like a legit WWE event. But I'm at least a couple of dozen years, and a few thousand miles, away from the target audience - and I just couldn't get past that.

In my defence - in case that's necessary - I have recently been playing Fight Night Round 4, and despite only having a cursory interest in boxing, it has me completely hooked. I don't really get all the ESPN trappings, and the music is pretty bad, but despite being the fourth in a series I never once felt confused or lost.

What's more, FNR4 is 3 years older than this game, and yet it's a far nicer, more realistic looking product.

WWE '13 - A wall of options, branding, and noise put paid to any chance this had of winning me over before it even started.