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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2013 7:28:33 GMT -4
Link to IGN ArticleWhen tiny European studio Serious Parody said it wanted to show me its upcoming PSN-exclusive title 5 Star Wrestling, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would this be a realistic wrestling game, or would it be one that prides itself on over-the-top, WWE-like antics? Well, the answer is certainly the latter, because the 15-man team at Serious Parody has put together a game very much designed to catch the attention of wrestling fans that are into the show of it all, just as much as they’re into the technical aspects of the sport.
5 Star Wrestling isn’t a retail game, so there’s obviously going to be a smaller budget behind it. That’s very much obvious when you take a look at some of the game’s screenshots; it’s most assuredly not up to snuff on a graphical level with what Yuke’s has traditionally put out. But it’s what’s underneath 5 Star Wrestling’s hood that’s supposed to be its most appealing aspect. It stresses a more realistic approach, which is interesting considering the wrestling it’s emulating is... well... fake.
But fakeness aside, Serious Parody wants to play-up the idea of Ring Psychology in their game – the notion that gamers will become invested in the stories being told beyond mere combat – and there may be a method to the studio’s madness. It intends to release a constant slew of DLC once the game is released that will keep its fictional storylines moving. The hope is that players may become enamored by not only the gameplay, but the ever-moving plot. Some of the DLC will be free, to boot.
But there are also core mechanics the studio hopes to stress. Wrestlers are designed to react realistically. There will be limb damage and differing arrays of moves depending on if the wrestler in question is fresh or tired. Each of the game’s initial eight characters will have totally unique movesets – including a host of finishers – and because of the fact that Serious Parody can’t take advantage of real league or individual wrestler licenses, you may see some similarities between your favorite wrestlers and 5 Star Wrestling’s roster.
In terms of how you may move your way through the game, and moreover how it aims to keep you occupied, Serious Parody is trying to shove as much into its maiden PSN game as possible. There will be exhibition matches, of course, but there will also be a Challenge Mode catered towards each character, as well as Match Breakdowns that tear apart previous matches and let you know how you played. There will even be some in-game currency that will allow for unlockables and other items to be purchased. However, while 5 Star Wrestling supports local multiplayer, it won’t support online multiplayer. This is something that may be difficult to do on the technical side, but still something that should be considered for a game like this, especially if it aims to build a community.
Serious Parody tells me that its game will launch later in 2013, and that they’re aiming to charge between £15-£20 (or $22-$30). That’s going to be a big ask on a downloadable service that has put a more recent emphasis on making things as cheap as possible. Then again, 5 Star Wrestling does seem to straddle the line – at least in feature-sets – between downloadable and retail. What’s clear is that Serious Parody, the studio behind iOS’ Wrestling Manager, loves the sport, and we’ll be interested to see what the final product looks like later this year.PlayStation Lifestyle articleWith the WWE game franchise hanging on the ropes since the THQ fallout, with future releases being published by 2K Games, it was time for a new contender to enter the ring… And in this corner, hailing from Dundee, Scotland, is developer Serious-Parody with their PS3-exclusive 5 Star Wrestling.
Despite being a newcomer to the PlayStation 3, Serious-Parody has plenty of experience with Wrestling games, having release the best iOS wrestling management game on the App Store. They’re bringing their expertise to the PS3 platform via the PlayStation Network.
5 Star Wrestling boasts the most moves in any wrestling game, with nearly 200 moves per character. It’s not all show, this is professional wrestling, so expect the story to be told in the ring, instead of 30 minutes of mic time from some guy that could never live up to Hulk Hogan in the 80s. The gameplay is more technical and realistic, so planning attacks on particular body parts to hinder your opponents performance is a must—it’s a thinking man’s wrestling game. And Serious-Parody has a new take on finishing moves. Rather than sticking to one or two static moves per character, finishing moves can be chained and differ depending on how exhausted a wrestler is, or whether they’re a heel or a hero.
5 Star Wrestling will release this summer on the PlayStation Network. And no, you don’t have to worry about this having anything to do with April Fools, because 5 Star Wrestling ain’t no joke!Screens: The price might seem steep for a download title, but eight characters with a ton of moves plus gameplay that at the surface sounds really interesting. Shit, I'll give this a go if I have a PS3 when it comes out.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2013 9:39:16 GMT -4
In depth interview about the game courtesy of PlayStation Lifestyle: Tell me a bit about Serious-Parody. Well we made Wresting Manager on the iPhone and iPad. It was the first wrestling strategy card game for mobile devices and the first iPhone/iPad game to introduce mod tools to the community…We have over 500 cards including hundreds of characters and we knew wrestling fans would love to mod this game, so we gave them the tools to do it and the beauty is, they don’t need to have any kind of programming skills or anything like that. So is Wrestling Manager going to be connected to Five Star Wrestling? Or is this more like an evolution of the project? They’re not really connected but this is definitely an evolution of the product. It is not a wrestling management game this time, it’s a full blown wrestling game like the WWE games. We have the very dark arena, we have the minitrons – which is kind of a meme for wrestling fans. The biggest thing I would say we are bringing to the table is that we are putting ring psychology into the genre. That is a very hardcore thing to do for wrestling games, what I mean by that is, up until now, if you were playing a wrestling game, if you were to attack somebody’s legs they would just basically limp and that would be the outcome. That’s not really a gameplay kind of outcome, because he’s just limping. You can make them submit faster if you use a leg submission, which makes sense, but that’s it. In our game we are taking it to a whole different level. For example, if you injure your opponents legs to the point where they can barely stand up, they won’t be able to lift you up, which means they will no longer be able to do some of their most powerful moves. That is the reason why technical wrestlers like Bret Hart and Kurt Angle attack the legs in wrestling, especially when taking on much stronger opponents. It’s a strategy for leveling the playing field and it’s a basic wrestling concept that’s been missing from wrestling games until now. One of the biggest matches in recent history was the Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels, and Shawn Michaels spent the entire match working over the guy’s leg. He did that to take away The Undertakers finishing moves for example Undertaker tried a choke slam but his knee gave out and it left Shawn in control. In our game that is exactly what happens, if you have worked the guy’s legs and he has to do a move that requires him to lift you up, like a powerbomb, he runs the risk of blowing his knee out – causing him to fall over and become vulnerable.So you are still able to achieve those moves, but there is now a risk factor being associated with them? Yes, in some circumstances if your knee has been that badly beaten and you try it, you could really run the risk of losing the match.So is it a ‘game over’ state from blowing out your knee? No, the match would still continue, but if your knee is that badly beaten and your opponent puts on a leg submission, chances are that you are going to submit.Are there any indicators to what is happening with your character in regards to damage? We have a silhouette of the person, and a color code to indicate damage to certain areas. You will also notice him start to limp because if he you attack that leg that it is going to happen and there’s visible bruising, blood, etc. We think that this a massive improvement on what is out there, even in the broader fighting game genre in a lot of respects. Even in UFC games you can kick a guys leg all day, and then he kicks you with the same leg, which doesn’t really happen in real UFC matches because he stops kicking due to his leg hurting and often they will change stance to protect the leg.
What we are also bringing to the genre is that… if you play a WWE game right now, and you do a finishing move, you always do the same finishing move animation. So, for example if you are using John Cena he will do his “Attitude Adjustment” and it is the same animation every time, no matter if it was the first move he did in the game or the last. If he has wrestled for an hour and all of a sudden he is using the exact same animation, its just odd. In life the guy will get tired, for example in that match at Wrestlemania, the Undertaker hit the Tombstone on the outside and it looked devastating but he was too tired to capitalize on it and he could hardly get back to his feet. It adds a bit of drama to the match like at the end of Rocky 4, where he throws the big punch and they both go down together. Well in our game, if your guy is exhausted and you try your most powerful moves there’s a good chance you’ll be too tired to get up and capitalize on it right away.How many variations are there going to be? Is it just the normal and tired state? Well, we have a power state as well for those times at the end of a match when you want to put all you have into the move. Again, going back to the Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels – At the end of the match, Shawn Michaels is on his feet, barely able to stand and he’s just taunting the Undertaker – eventually Micheals just slaps the Undertaker. Now, the Undertaker just gets pissed off and does a powerful finisher. So that is where we are trying to go with that, you will be able to give it your all.
There is an important gameplay balance here. When you’re momentum maxed out and you gain access to your finishing moves, you have time to do two ‘Quick Finishers’ much like The Undertaker who always did a Choke Slam then a Tombstone, or how Kurt Angle would do an Angle Slam then an Ankle Lock. If you can get both off in succession, chances are you are going to win the match, but there is that added risk factor of your opponent reversing the second finisher. The alternate option is to do a ‘Power Finisher’, it is not quite a powerful as two quick finishers put together but is more powerful than one by itself and your opponent only has one shot at reversing it rather than two.
Now if you try to do the power finisher towards the end of the match, that means putting in too much effort if you are already extremely exhausted, so you might get it but you might be too tired to capitalize on it afterwards.How do you build up the momentum meter? Attacking your opponent, taunting him, etc.Are there tables, ladders, or any of the more popular hardcore aspects that are happening in wrestling? We can’t discuss weapons right now but we will have some typical wrestling styled things. Our focus currently is on the actual wrestling match itself.Will you guys have any licensed wrestlers at all? No, we aren’t attached to any brands out there, there are no real wrestlers in the game, these are all our own characters, etc. Luckily, the flip side to not having a license is that we can actually be more creative. We do not have to pump out sequels and we can iterate on this through DLC, so people won’t feel like they’ve had to buy the same guy over and over again. I’ve bought every wrestling game for the last 20 years, I must have bought HHH like 50 times.What about ring location aspects, things like touching the ropes? We have count outs, we have rope breaks, we have all the things you would expect from a standard wrestling game and like I said, the beauty of not having a license is that we can get a little creative with some of that stuff. If we want to let players set ‘Count Outs’ to 20 seconds instead of 10, that’s up to us, we don’t need to get permission to do it, so all our design choices are about ‘what’s good for the game’ rather than limiting ourselves to ‘what fits a brand’.Are characters able to dive over the ropes, or off the top of the turnbuckle? Yes, we have move positions from all over the ring. That was one of the big things we looked at early on, and we wanted to make sure that everything was covered. As an example, in TNA games you weren’t able to do back grapples, only front grapples, and WWE All-Stars didn’t have a submission system… We have back grapples, front grapples, top rope, apron grapples, ground grapples, running grapples, a submission system… I mean, of course we have a submission system, it is a wrestling game, submissions are huge part of wrestling. How can you have wrestling without submissions?When is the release window for the game? We are looking at summer.Have you set a price to launch at? Not yet, we have a rough idea but we are not talking about price just yet.Will it be retail and on the PSN store, or will it just be digital download? It’s exclusively on the PlayStation Network. I know some people would prefer to have it on a disc but we’re only a small team and doing retail would mean having to put our resources into getting shelve space in shops rather than building the game.Anything you would like to add? I just want to emphasize that we’re all about the wrestling gameplay. I’m really proud of some of the things we’re doing and most of this stuff should have been in this genre for a hell of a long time. When you think about it, Bret Hart dominated the wrestling industry for years and every match he would have a strategy but for what ever reason, the strategy element has been missing from wrestling games. If it wasn’t Bret taking Diesel’s legs out at Rumble 95, it was Angle taking Undertaker’s legs or CM Punk taking Randy’s out which stopped him doing the Punt Kick…Wrestling is about telling stories through actions in the ring, its about David vs. Goliath, Good vs. Evil and above all else it’s about strategy. So that is what we are bringing to the table with 5 Star Wrestling.
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2013 16:34:06 GMT -4
First little bit of gameplay shows off what happens when you take someone's leg out. Also shows a pretty cool remake of Goldberg's Spear from SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2013 5:43:05 GMT -4
Here's their Q & A session from Monday, or if you don't wanna click the link, here you go. Question 1 by Ricky Schmidt: “When will we see gameplay footage?”By now, you’ve seen our first ‘Dev Clip’ highlighting one of the key gameplay features we’re bringing to 5 Star Wrestling. Could Cena’s injury angle have been timed any better? There’ll be more videos coming very soon.Question 2 by Brian Long: “Will the game focus on individual wrestlers or will there be a promoter mode included as well?”As the makers of Wrestling Manager for iPhone, we are dying to put a feature like that in 5 Star Wrestling. This is something we will aim to bring you down the line, potentially as DLC but it’s not something that will be in the game at launch. Much like WWE ’13, our main single player mode is a Challenge Mode.Question 3 by Alistair McMillan: “What Existing Wrestling Game Will 5 Star Most Resemble?”Tough Question!
The one I’d most like it to be compared with is WCW vs NWO: World Tour. The reason we all know and love No Mercy, is because the developers nailed the gameplay in World Tour, then built on that with tons of features. That’s what we are doing. The difference is, THQ had to release a sequel in order to add more features, where as we can release new content as soon as we have made it.Question 4 by William Schlicht: “Will you please add online play to the game?”When I ask people what their favorite wrestling games are, I’m never surprised when they say Revenge, Here Comes The Pain or No Mercy, none of them needed online for us to enjoy them and believe me, neither does 5 Star Wrestling. We’re not ruling anything out when it comes to DLC because we have big plans for this game post release but online gameplay will not be part of the game at launch.
I know it’s strange not having online gameplay these days but we’re a small team and we have to choose where we put our resources. Think about it like this, if the creators of TNA Impact had chopped the Online aspect of their game, they could have had those programmers putting in the basics like ‘Back Grapples’ and making sure key characters like Kurt Angle had his ‘Ankle Lock’. The game could have had more moves in general which would have significantly improved it. Instead they were left with an online feature that nobody wanted to play because most people got bored of the gameplay very quickly.Question 5 by Kanaldeckel Warte Noch Werfer: “Is it your intention to be a competitor to wwe-video-games?”I see no reason why we need to compete. I’m a huge fan of wrestling games and I play them all. That said, if you only buy one this year, you have a choice. You can either spend big and get another Yukes made wrestling game or you can try something new for a lot less money. 5 Star Wrestling is bringing a ton of innovation to the wrestling genre. It will be out several months before the WWE game and at less than half the price of a WWE game. IT IS A STEAL for wrestling gamers!Question 6 by Arthur Holland: “Will there be JCW, TNA, WWE SUPERSTARS??”5 Star Wrestling is the Pro Evolution of Professional Wrestling games. We don’t have any licenses and there’s a big advantage to that. Have you ever wondered how good the WWE games might be if they didn’t have to take out every person that left the WWE? There has been over 400 wrestlers in the Smackdown series. We will never have to take a character out of our game. Just think how big our game will get.Question 7 by Nick Smith: “If a wrestler just has lifting moves but can’t do any of them due a damaged leg, then don’t that render the wrestler ‘useless’ for the duration of the match?”The wrestler isn’t rendered completely useless, he just has to approach the rest of the match with caution. There’s a damage recovery system that will restore parts of your health if you don’t take any further damage and you will still be able to hit some lift up moves but every time you try one, there is a risk that your leg will blow again.
There’s nothing stopping you making a dramatic comeback.Question 8 by Karlen Hovhannisyan: “How much masked wrestlers would be there?”At launch we have 1 masked wrestler.Question 9 by Peter Pinto: Any chance it will play like No Mercy at all??No Mercy is one of my all time favorite games. I’ve spent years playing it and know the game inside out. It has unquestionably influenced my design with this game. The vast majority of our move positions are in No Mercy, there is a momentum system too. Also, No Mercy had more moves per wrestler than any other game (153) which is one of the main reasons the gameplay is so varied and we’ll have even more than No Mercy.
But I’m not going to say this is the next No Mercy. Every developer does that and it’s as cheap as Mick Foley saying ‘Right here in…_________ City!’. As you can see with our Dev Clip, we are bringing something fresh and there’s a whole lot more than that coming too.Question 10 by David Penton: So what will the DLC be?I can’t make any announcements about future content but I can say we aim to bring more DLC than all of the WWE games combined. We’re not looking at this as our chance to make a yearly sequel. We’re looking at this as our chance to build a game that keeps on offering new fun ways to play, with new characters and new game modes.
Everything from Characters to Online to Create Modes, Stories, Match Types, Moves, Weapons, Gameplay Additions, Costumes, etc. There is nothing we can’t add and nothing we won’t add. It’s really just a matter of time.”
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2013 15:13:13 GMT -4
New update concerning finishers:
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2013 2:08:20 GMT -4
Second Q&A is up here, or you can read it below. Josh Kisling "How many wrestlers will there be?"5 Star Wrestling will have 8 characters available at launch.
Ring Technician (Baby Face) Ring Technician (Heel) Risk Taker (Baby Face) Risk Taker (Heel) Brute (Baby Face) Brute (Heel) Showman (Baby Face) Showman (Heel)
Each character brings something different to the game.
For example, Mike Iceberg has a ton of powerful moves and as a 'Brute' he can take an incredible amount of damage to his upper body and head which makes him hard to attack. if he gets on a role early in a match, he can squash his opponent in a matter of minutes. However, his stamina decreases at a faster rate than other wrestlers and his powerful moves can become risky depending on how he is attacked so long matches don't go in his favour. He might not be the best choice in an Iron Man Match, unless you really want to test your skill. James Lee Moorhouse: "Are you looking to send a message to 2K saying this is what we expect from a wrestling game, or is this just to provide wrestling fans with an alternative?"I'm really proud to say that the features we have shown so far, seem to have fired up the wrestling game community and I am incredibly grateful that true wrestling game fans are getting behind our little indie game. We certainly didn't set out to send 2K a message, we just set out to make something which core wrestling game fans would hopefully think was pretty cool. John Usher: "Why no love for the Xbox?"I can't stress enough how complicated and expensive 3D wrestling games are to make. When Yukes made their first 3D wrestling game, each wrestler could only do approximately 20 moves, they only had 1 match type (1 vs 1 Wrestling Match), there were no Challenge Modes or Weekly Events, they didn't have a complicated health/damage system, they didn't have various types of finishing moves (or any finishing moves at all for that matter), etc.
All I'm saying is, we've poured every penny we have into making 5 Star Wrestling and if we had spent a large portion of our resources on supporting multiple platforms, our game wouldn't have even half of the features that we have now.Silva McClaire: "Will there be any Female Wrestlers in the Game? if not, will we be able to make them as a CAW?"The characters in the game at launch are all training to be the World Champion. They are all Men and all Heavyweights. Our goal is to expand the game so much that we end up with full blown Women, Cruiserweight and Tag Team divisions but there are technical challenges to all of those things and when we do add them all, we want to make sure there is unique gameplay for each character. The way we see it is, we are building a 5 Star Wrestling Promotion from the ground up and right now we have to establish the 'Main Event' wrestlers.David Bentz: "Will created finishers be in it. If so will it include created submission?"Sadly not. Never say never when it comes to DLC though. We aren't taking anything off the table! Arafat Rahman: "When Will It Come Out"We're still aiming for the end of Summer 2013. We'll give a firm release date much closer to the time.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2013 2:53:15 GMT -4
Taking from the second Q&A and everything shown so far, here's the conclusions I've come to as far as the roster. Added in the game's name for Lesnar/Goldberg.
Ring Technician (Baby Face) - Angle (Four Olympic Slams have been shown) Ring Technician (Heel) - Pegasus Dynamite/Chris Benoit (Pictured) Risk Taker (Baby Face) - Gregg Hearty/Jeff Hardy (Shown from the beginning) Risk Taker (Heel) - Harvey Dee/Rob Van Dam (Pictured) Brute (Baby Face) - Mike Iceberg/Goldberg (Spear was shown in first development clip and he's also been pictured) Brute (Heel) - Ragnabrok The Conqueror/Brock Lesnar (Pictured twice) Showman (Baby Face) - Jonny "The Bull"/The Rock Showman (Heel) - Andy Organ/Randy Orton (RKO counter to Twist of Fate in dev. clip #3 preview)
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2013 3:11:53 GMT -4
Well here's this..
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2013 19:51:28 GMT -4
When is this coming out? I haven't seen it on PSN yet.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2013 20:36:36 GMT -4
End of the summer is all they said.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2013 0:23:25 GMT -4
Cool! Well I will definitely buy it and support it. Looks like it could be a blast and hope it gets lots of DLC.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2013 9:01:25 GMT -4
Looks like they had to push this one back. It's release on PS3 and such is uncertain now.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2013 4:32:23 GMT -4
Looks like they had to push this one back. It's release on PS3 and such is uncertain now. No, it's not. They just pushed it back so they didn't have to cut features from launch.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2013 4:34:06 GMT -4
Here's your (apparent) final launch roster.
Ring Technician (Baby Face) - Pegasus Dynamite/Chris Benoit (Pictured) Ring Technician (Heel) - Curtis Angel/Kurt Angle (Pictured, shown in several development clips) Risk Taker (Baby Face) - Harvey Dee/Rob Van Dam (Pictured) Risk Taker (Heel) - Gregg Hearty/Jeff Hardy (Pictured, shown in several development clips) Brute (Baby Face) - Mike Iceberg/Goldberg (Pictured, shown in several development clips) Brute (Heel) - Ragnabrok The Conqueror/Lesnar (Pictured twice, F-Five animation shown) Showman (Baby Face) - Jonny "The Bull"/The Rock (Pictured) Showman (Heel) - Andy Organ/Randy Orton (seven million cutter animations shown)
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Post by MT on Sept 14, 2013 6:25:46 GMT -4
These names are gloriously silly and harken back to the unlicensed games of old.
Curtis Angel? Was his dad Curtis Hughes and his grandfather The French Angel?
Also, Andy Organ? Does he use the "big package"? How about the Money Shot?
---for the record, there's already been a Johnny The Bull....he spells it backwards now though, I think.
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