$20 Game of the Week: Total Extreme Wrestling 2005

Warning: If you’re one of those people who believe pro wrestling is real, or you’re confused about weather or not it isn’t, then you’ll want to skip past this review.

There is no shortage of wrestling titles that allow players to step inside the ring, but how many allow them
to step behind the curtain or even into the front office? No I’m not talking about Smackdown vs Raw’s General Manager mode. I mean taking the role of the Vince McMahons,the Eric Bischoffs, the Bill Watts, the Vince Russos, or the Paul Heymans and deciding who gets the push, who gets buried, making deals, securing talent, negotiating contracts, and everything else that the head booker does. Well, Adam Ryland’s Extreme Warfare series has been letting players do just that. It’s been around since 1995, and in 2004 it changed its name to Total Extreme Wrestling and made use of a windows interface. Although 2010 is going to be released soon (if it hasn’t been already), 2005 is available for free at the site at www.greydogsoftware.com.

Like its predecessors and sequels, TEW 2005 is entirely menu-driven. That means you won’t be seeing any matches, controlling any wrestlers, or participating in any wrestling action. What you will be doing is selecting one of several promotions, and do what you can to take it to the top. You’ll set merchandising, book angles, set matches, decide who wins, and even set the length of the segments of your television product. You’ll also have to deal with wrestlers and their egos, and like the stuff you see on tv, you’ll also have to deal with backstage drama. The menu interface is sometimes hard to work with (especially when trying to book angles) and the game could benefit from some kind of tutorial mode, but once you get the hang of everything, you’ll easily get sucked in. You’ll be booking PPV cards, promoting matches, and negotiating with talent just like a real promoter.

If you’re what they consider to be a ‘smark’ (wrestling lingo for smart fan) or wrestling insider, TEW is the perfect package for you. Wrestling fans will get a kick out of taking control of what goes on behind the scenes…. as long as they realize and are willing to come to terms with the fact that pro-wrestling is scripted.