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Whenever a new wrestling game comes out, there’s really only one question to ask about it: is it as good as Royal Rumble for the Super Nintendo?
   
Indeed, wrestling video games have such a great legacy to live up to that no matter how far technology moves forward, no matter how much more depth and complexity can be added, it’s hard not to compare anything new to one of the many great wrestling games that have come out in the past 25 years. Tecmo Super Wrestling for NES, WWF No Mercy for the N64, Smackdown for the PS1 — these were games which went far beyond being simply good wrestling games; they were some of the defining games of their consoles.
   
WWE ’12 doesn’t exactly seem like the next leap forward for wrestling games — it’s a continuation of the WWE vs. Smackdown franchise, just without the bulky title — but spend some time with it and the subtle refinements to the series become apparent. Better animation means there’s a fluidity to the fighting which typically isn’t there, with far smoother transitions between moves that help to keep matches running at a steady pace. A new targeting system adds a bit of strategy to the fights by allowing you to focus your hits on certain body parts in order to maximize damage to your opponent.
   
Developers have taken care to make improvements to the core mechanics of the game but unfortunately, they still haven’t found a way to present it all as a cohesive package. Road to Wrestlemania, the mode which acts as the single-player campaign, is absolutely terrible. Switching back and forth between three wrestlers, you follow your fighters on their separate paths to wrestling glory through story-driven fights over which you have absolutely no control. There are matches in which you will be shown losing at the end — even if you defeat your opponent with no difficulty — simply because that's what the story dictates.
   
WWE Universe — a slightly more free-form mode which lets you schedule fights on a week-by-week basis — ends up being the go-to mode simply because it allows you to actually win matches and watch your chosen wrestler rise through the ranks through your actions. Creating your own fighter to enter Universe is main reason to play the game — not only is the character creator deep enough to allow you to make anyone or anything possible, you can also create your own finishers, pick your every move and make incredibly elaborate, incredibly silly entrances for the hideous monstrosities you send into the ring.
   
WWE ’12 gets all of the basics right — a finely tuned fighting engine, a few subtle-but-important refinements to aging mechanics, brilliant creation tools — but it struggles to actually do anything new or overly creative with them. It’s fun, but a classic to add to the pantheon of great wrestling games it is not.

Bits & Bytes
   
Despite some sketchy attempts at turning it into a video game in the past, the simply titled South Park will hopefully be the first to actually do the show justice. A full-blown RPG due out in 2012, it’s being completely overseen by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

   
Mel Stefaniuk is a writer who can tell the difference between Mario and Sonic.