WWE '12

I owe the blog an apology. Unlike many of our other contributors - no judgment - I try my best to post about every finished game, book, movie, and TV season in a timely manner. After all, my original intent in starting this blog was to document the lengthy but usually pleasant process of clearing out my backlog. But here's a game I haven't even touched since - let's look on my Xbox.com profile here for accuracy's sake - December 18th of last year. I owe you all, dear readers, an explanation.

The thing is, I think I "beat" this game on - checking again - November 29th. On that day I won the Royal Rumble with my created superstar, earning a trip to WrestleMania in the process. On that same day I won the main event at WrestleMania and was crowned as the WWE Champion, unlocking a couple of achievements. At the time, I figured I'd keep playing for the sake of unlocking more achievements and seeing how my created wrestler's story unfolded through the spring, summer, and following fall. So, at the time, I didn't make a write-up. I should have. I never touched the game again and its existence only crossed my mind again today after hearing that Monday Night Raw commentator Jerry "the King" Lawler had a heart attack live on TV last night and now probably has permanent brain damage.

I bought this game almost a year ago because a couple of my friends did, and we figured we'd have some fun with it on Xbox Live. Collectively, our group had undergone a bit of a wrestling resurgence, attending a few live events in 2011 and doing our best to catch most of the Pay-Per-Views in someone's living room. But interest was certainly already fading by the time this game came out, and when the game turned out to be a glitch-ridden shitfest, no one ended up playing it on Xbox Live after all. In fact, one of the game's many glitches was an inability to connect to the servers following the game's launch. For all I know, they've fixed it now, but for at least a full week after its release, the game was simply unplayable online. In this day and age, really, that's an inexcusable issue for a video game. The glitches didn't stop there. More than once, the game froze up on a menu screen and required a restart. More than once, my wrestler got stuck inside the ropes or the ring. In the former case I was stuck with the ropes running through my body, unable to move and incapable of climbing either in or out of the ring. In the latter case I looked like a legless torso just floating around on the surface of the ring. In both, the match could not be finished, necessitating restarts. Again, this kind of stuff is just inexcusable these days.

It definitely didn't feel good to pay full price to buy something on launch day (something I never do anymore with very few exceptions) and have it be horribly broken in so many ways. Sure, I had my fun creating my character and his dumb gimmicks and such, and then using his eclectic move set to battle my way to WrestleMania and the WWE title. But at its core WWE '12 was deeply flawed in a frustrating way. In hindsight, it's no wonder I never resumed playing after winning the WWE equivalent of the Super Bowl. So at any rate, here I am today, remembering that I had yet to post this game because of yet another ex-wrestler tragedy. It should go without saying overtly, but, yeah - stay as far away from this stinker of a video game as you can.