Riding the tidal wave of publicity for WWE's annual Wrestlemania event last Sunday was the professional wrestling promotion's latest game, “Legends of Wrestlemania” (for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and iPhone).
The dream-match title allows players to pit the superstars of yesterday, such as Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan, against more modern WWE wrestlers like The Rock and John Cena.
Despite its novel premise, the demo largely failed to give me hope for THQ's floundering professional wrestling game series. But game play was not my most pressing concern while test-driving “Legends” - I was more alarmed by the title's laughable swelling and sculpting of its gladiators' physiques.
I'm not sure why my voicing of concerns about body image in video games was prompted by “Legends” and not any of the thousands of other games populated by hideously musclebound men or impossibly curvy women. Most recently, “Resident Evil 5” reimagines the series' once-fit protagonist Chris Redfield as a meathead whose deltoids almost dwarf Samus Aran's metal exoskeleton shoulders. Even Metallica singer James Hetfield looks much more muscled in “Guitar Hero Metallica” than in real life.
Until “Legends,” developers' tendency toward larger-than-life character models have led me to roll my eyes at the most. But there was something uniquely galling about the bloated behemoths of this latest wrestling game.
Perhaps my ire was provoked by the audacity of THQ imagining admitted steroid user Hulk Hogan with even larger pecs and biceps than he possessed at the height of his drug use in the 1980s. In “Legends,” the Hulkster packs about 20 to 30 additional pounds of muscle (and a few additional inches of hair coverage) onto an already mammoth frame. The choice to design Hogan as even larger than the real-life wrestler tacitly pardons a form of drug abuse already proven to be debilitating within his profession.
The pervasion of performance-enhancing drugs in professional wrestling - and sports and entertainment at large - has been laid more and more bare in recent years. Steroid abuse has enlarged the hearts of WWE wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero, who passed away at the age of 38 due to this dangerous condition.
In spite of these known perils, the same muscle-worshipping culture that birthed massive steroid abuse by wrestlers persists - if “Legends of Wrestlemania” and its absurdly jacked roster is any indication. This fixation with unattainable figures seems to have taken too firm a hold in the human psyche to be shaken by a few horror stories of steroid abuse and premature deaths. And as I alluded to earlier, that same fixation stretches well beyond the world of professional wrestling and far into its constituent fields: sports and entertainment. (The 2008 documentary “Bigger, Stronger, Faster” examines the public fascination with performance-enhancing drugs in much greater detail than I could here).
The long-held expectation that the televised heroes and villains of WWE should all look like Greek gods will likely be reinforced by games like “Legends of Wrestlemania.” In light of growing awareness that these looks are rarely natural, I can only hope some “Legends” players will realize that their pastime has never been more animated.
David Wilcox
253-5311 ext. 245
david.wilcox@lee.net
Despite its novel premise, the demo largely failed to give me hope for THQ's floundering professional wrestling game series. But game play was not my most pressing concern while test-driving “Legends” - I was more alarmed by the title's laughable swelling and sculpting of its gladiators' physiques.
I'm not sure why my voicing of concerns about body image in video games was prompted by “Legends” and not any of the thousands of other games populated by hideously musclebound men or impossibly curvy women. Most recently, “Resident Evil 5” reimagines the series' once-fit protagonist Chris Redfield as a meathead whose deltoids almost dwarf Samus Aran's metal exoskeleton shoulders. Even Metallica singer James Hetfield looks much more muscled in “Guitar Hero Metallica” than in real life.
Until “Legends,” developers' tendency toward larger-than-life character models have led me to roll my eyes at the most. But there was something uniquely galling about the bloated behemoths of this latest wrestling game.
Perhaps my ire was provoked by the audacity of THQ imagining admitted steroid user Hulk Hogan with even larger pecs and biceps than he possessed at the height of his drug use in the 1980s. In “Legends,” the Hulkster packs about 20 to 30 additional pounds of muscle (and a few additional inches of hair coverage) onto an already mammoth frame. The choice to design Hogan as even larger than the real-life wrestler tacitly pardons a form of drug abuse already proven to be debilitating within his profession.
The pervasion of performance-enhancing drugs in professional wrestling - and sports and entertainment at large - has been laid more and more bare in recent years. Steroid abuse has enlarged the hearts of WWE wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero, who passed away at the age of 38 due to this dangerous condition.
In spite of these known perils, the same muscle-worshipping culture that birthed massive steroid abuse by wrestlers persists - if “Legends of Wrestlemania” and its absurdly jacked roster is any indication. This fixation with unattainable figures seems to have taken too firm a hold in the human psyche to be shaken by a few horror stories of steroid abuse and premature deaths. And as I alluded to earlier, that same fixation stretches well beyond the world of professional wrestling and far into its constituent fields: sports and entertainment. (The 2008 documentary “Bigger, Stronger, Faster” examines the public fascination with performance-enhancing drugs in much greater detail than I could here).
The long-held expectation that the televised heroes and villains of WWE should all look like Greek gods will likely be reinforced by games like “Legends of Wrestlemania.” In light of growing awareness that these looks are rarely natural, I can only hope some “Legends” players will realize that their pastime has never been more animated.
David Wilcox
253-5311 ext. 245
david.wilcox@lee.net
