Indeed.
THQ San Diego really pulled out something remarkable with this game. For as small and as limited as it is, what little it has, is packed with depth and playability.
It really set the bar for what the japanese Yukes studio has to live up to now.
I have a feeling that one of the things they aren't telling people yet is that they are also bleeding their new focus on Gameplay into online play as well.
They've gone far and beyond to introduce algorithms that detect the steady regularity of button presses per second in order to knock Turbo controllers from working in Breaking Point, and the Pin system as well. So, I have a feeling that they are trying to live up to All-Stars, becuase I think it's honestly apparent they need to, now.
I just wonder if Yukes is up to it, because in all honesty, my faith in the japanese company is slipping a bit, with all of the limitations they've hit in the past, and glitches that did everything from lock up games like SvR 2007 in the create-an-entrance, to load times in 2009 killing the game dead, forcing a reset and other such physics glitches, like the one where players sink under the ring and start twisting.
Of course, I've always said they were good games if you can get past their predication for being buggy and glitchy games, but even so, that kind of stuff does add up over time, when wrestlers still clip, and become suddenly invulnerable and so on.
It seems like they are fixing a large amount of things, but All-Stars set a bar for how matches play in the ring, that this game honestly has to really work hard to match and rise above, imo.
I mean, even though I don't play online very much at all, still, SvR games just don't work online with tournaments and playing against strangers. And hence why no one does it.
But with this All-Stars tournament showing what is really capable, and being a game that is suddenly on the level of a Street Fighter II level of Tourney and Competition I really don't think they want to lose that with any future product they make from now on.
Granted, i'm not a huge fan of playing games online, or joining tournaments or even playing games against others to win (rather than to have fun which is what I vastly prefer), but I do realize that there are a LOT of game players and wrestling fans who really feel that in this day and age of Online Multiplayer, how important it is for them to also have a game that works this well in that regard.