Review

<p>Giant Gram<P><br> Giant Gram<p>I used to like wrestling when I was about seven. Those were the days of Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior. Now I couldn't really care less, although I'm told that the wrestling culture has changed considerably, with WWF back on top after a clear lead from the WCW franchise. The likes of Stone Cold make today's wrestling money. With WWF Attitude just announced for Dreamcast, how does this Sega product fare?<p>This is the sequel to the impressive All Japan Professional Wrestling Featuring Virtua, which was converted to Saturn with VFers Wolf and Jeffry in tact. This time said wrestlers remain in the frame, but they are joined by their ninja associate, Kage Maru. This makes quite an interesting start to say the least.<p>The control is pretty fine, despite the lack of any analog happenings. The control is still highly responsive, with familiar VF button sequences producing familiar VF moves, such as the notorious Giant Swing throw.<p>Graphically Giant Gram is fairly accomplished, nothing more. You have your flashy intros and your solid polygon characters, but some parts of the graphics suck, plain and simple. Case in point: the crowd is a flat, two-dimensional shambles, more akin to something out of Genesis NBA Jam. However, the animation is superb, and the overall visual impression the game manifests is undeniably impressive.<p>Each character can easily knock together combos of several hits, making it accessible. Where it really comes into its own is when you string together larger combos, making use of the ring also. This particular innovation certainly wasn't missing in VF3, although the speed and fluidity of VF3 still remains in a class of its own, with this hardly being a potent challenger. Nevertheless, AJPWFV2 boasts several grapples, throws and new techniques that lift it well above average status.<p>Giant Gram includes the standard options, including ranking and versus modes. The tag-team mode is great fun, but best of all is the inclusion of the 'build-a-wrestler' section, where you customise your own warrior! In terms of options this is a polished product.<p>Other touches, such as the compatibility via the VMS of the arcade version of the game and the Dreamcast version along with the impressive range of sound effects and crowd chants, add to the feeling of Sega having handed in a quality videogame. Wrestling fans need not think twice about buying this game (available at Sega Web this week!); non-wrestling fans should definitely check it out at your importer to see if you can get into the game as quickly as I did. An impressive game to slightly relieve the recent software drought.</P>