WWF WrestleMania 2000

I feel confident in assuming that Wrestlemania 2000 was basically a tech demo for Virtual Pro Wrestling 2: Royal Road Succession [バーチャル・プロレス2 〜王道継承〜], because holy shit most everything about the campaign mode was refined in VPW2. Road To Wrestlemania mode sucks a lot, especially compared to Royal Road Succession, its VPW2 counterpart, because it is so goddamn bloated, with eight extremely repetitive shows per month that eventually lead up to a pay-per-view card somewhere down the line that you really couldn't give a shit about. (Also, since there are so few PPVs in the campaign, it's always extremely weird to see something like the WWF Championship defended in a steel cage on Heat out of nowhere.) Everything about VPW2's campaign just feels so much more cohesive, not least because you only have one singles belt to worry about in the campaign, and you don't have to see a show introduction every single bloody week. Also, the difficulty ramps up significantly during the title defences, and it's bloody frustrating when your opponent counters literally everything you do and you don't have the reflexes to get through the match.

Above everything, this was released during a dull period in the WWF's history. For the most part, the WWF's Attitude Era output has aged incredibly badly, because outside of main eventers like Austin, Rock, Foley, Triple H and so on, the roster really didn't have much in the way of depth. Nobody is particularly important at this time, nobody is ever really elevated, and apart from a few standout matches (thinking specifically of Edge and Christian vs. the Hardy Boyz), there were very few truly memorable undercard matches at the time. Granted, this would change around about the time this game came out, when Chris Kreski became lead writer, but this doesn't change the fact that nobody in this game's roster really matters outside of a few big names. It's amazing just how remarkably No Mercy improved on this in their career mode, in line with how Kreski's writing improved everyone's storylines on Raw and Smackdown.

Overall, WM2000 is decent, but that's it really. It's as mechanically sound as the AKI games before and after them, but the roster, the story mode and especially the uneven difficulty spoils it a bit. Just stick to VPW2 and WWF No Mercy, because they have a lot less bullshit than this.

THQ and AKI have a stab at a WWF game after having blessed the N64 with WCW vs. NWO World Tour and Revenge in prior years. WrestleMania 2000 feels much the same as those games, just with a new license and a small handful of new features such as female wrestlers. It's decent, but doesn't do a lot to stand apart from the many WCW and WWF games that were available on the console by late 1999.