BTB # 20: The King is Back
Adam Ryland has been creating some of my most played games over course of essentially the past two decades. He’s most known for creating Extreme Warfare Revenge, a text-based wrestling promoter sim. For a fan of pro wrestling, it is still one of the easiest and funniest ways to go “Yeah, I would be a great booker”. You sign wrestlers, book your own shows, deal with wrestlers going to rehab, the real fantasy of being the person behind it all. It is a game that is incredibly easy to “rig”. Get the right combo of high work rate wrestlers and you can run that until you’re kicking WWE’s butt from pillar to post. Doing that is still pleasurable. The numbers do go up. When you try to meet that game on its own terms though, grounding yourself in it, it gives you this giddy experience. Plus there are mods to update the roster and stuff. I wouldn’t say it is bare, but EWR certainly felt very plug and play at the time. “At the time” for me was when I was about 12, playing on my dad’s old work laptop
Going to fast-forward now as Ryland goes on to create the Total Extreme Warfare series which is cranking up EWR several notches in every direction. Lots of folks prefer EWR for the simplicity. The game fills the void without having to sink hours into. For me though, TEW straddles line between turning into too much micromanagement and just enough fantasy/strategy. There are more forces put upon you in your role. Creating killer show after killer show is great but if you can’t do so without mixing up the talent, having engaging rivalries, and figuring out ways to expand your territory. Unlike a sports management game, you are able to carve out a niche, but it does need to be a sustainable one. Though, typically you are playing to be the #1 promotion in wrestling, but if you are at the level of a modern GCW or IMPACT, that growth would take a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of good dice rolls. Being the #1 promotion in your region or staying as a mid-level promotion, trying to handle the onsault of the bigger companies nabbing talent and building up your next generation so that when your stars go to greener pastures, you are ready to elevate folks.
The game isn’t licensed in any manner so Adam created the CornellVerse. Still think that alone is such an understated achievement. He takes a lot from the real world, having some promotions and dynamics be almost 1-to-1 replicas of current and historical wrestling promotions. Also at times taking archetypes and smashing them into one promotion. There is enough that isn’t a carbon copy of reality that makes the world feel alive not like someone who simply lacked the rights to build a game. With every iteration Ryland moves the timeline forward, seeing changes that help create new dynamics as well help the game world feel more in line with the real world. Meaning, things like the WWE Network gets replicated in game which adds a feature and a dynamic that wasn’t in play before. The actual changes, wrestlers swapping promotions, promotions folding, promotions merging, and new territories opening up such as Australia or India, are done in organic ways that make me lose my mind with every interaction. What makes the whole experience work though is the sim. The world moves around you. Dynamics between you and other promotions change, whether you have an ally, foe, or maybe losing your spot as the top hardcore promotion in the region. Everyone else’s relationships change as well. As a mid-major promotion starts making a push to be a legit player, maybe they start signing up all the talent from a competitor. Maybe in Japan a generational talent is putting on 5 STAR matches on every month. Every year you get a list of the best wrestlers on the planet, and a bunch of other superlatives. Your world is building an almanac. That’s all I want from these games. Feel like history is being made. Not grand scale history, but “on May 2021 I put on my fifth best event in company history” sort of history.
The demo for the latest TEW, aptly named TEW2020 came out this week. I have been playing a good bit of WMMA5, the MMA version of this game, recently and couldn’t wait to jump back into this universe and see what’s changed. Off the bat, major happenings in Canada, Japan feeling like it is open game, and my favorite promotion to start with, CZCW, having just enough developments to make me want to choose them again.
Then I started playing though. The UI…I don’t know why they’ve done what they’ve done. It is ROUGH.
That’s an example of a skin mod that someone is working on as well as the base game. Usually these mods at a nice bit of flourish but for this iteration, it might be absolutely necessary.
It all really doesn’t matter if booking a show feels good. It is such a weird thing. Even that though felt off. Drag and Drop booking not being the default is such an odd decision. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why it wouldn’t be a default. You don’t have to drag and drop if you don’t want to even with it on. Not sure if that makes sense if you haven’t played these games. When putting together a match you select from a set of various options, 1v1, 2v2, 1v1v1v1, ect. Then you select the participants. Previously each wrestler had pushes. So your main eventers, your openers, and your middle of the event wrestlers. This game does away with that for “perception”. It doesn’t matter if you want your pet project booked as a main eventer, if the crowd views them as a midcarder, they are essentially that. I have mixed feelings on that. It doesn’t really “take control away” but instead you have to change your path to getting folks where you want them to be I think. Off track here, but essentially you are given the list of wrestlers on your roster and can filter the list to folks that aren’t in matches already and by perception. The default way to select a wrestler is to have the list and then select from a drop down on the left of the screen. Drag and drop means if I see them on in the full list, I can just move them over to the actual match. EASY. Even if you can “enable it”, not having it be the default forces me to believe they have weird ideas on how people play these games.
Okay, so putting together a show still feels about right, once I turn the Drag and Drop on. Watching the show play out is next and…I don’t know. The game is a text sim. Numbers are a part of the DNA. But even with the previous games it didn’t feel so cold. There was context to the numbers, there as pieces of information that were insightful and that you could help build off. It seems that was cut in half in exchange for adding numbers. I already am frustrated that in EWR, the game gave you a silly match recap, move by move that ruled and I don’t get that anymore. Don’t take away even more from me.
As of a few days ago, the game got pushed back to May 14th. It was supposed to be out this week. I was really excited. Given the way the game looks and how clumsy some of it is though, I think this is a must. Heck, I didn’t even mention how annoying getting in and out of screens is. You can open a dozen windows but the only way to exit each one is a small X. That shouldn’t be the way! Ugh. The developer put together a diary of all the new features so I need to go back and read that. I think I need to remember that this is a one person game and it is honestly the only thing like it. That doesn’t mean I’ve got to eat the crap, but maybe some things are worth forgiving if there really are things that make TEW2020 feel like a fresh experience.
Well alright, just bought Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate for Switch so will be sure to type up more on that. Thanks!
