Review by: Michael Barnes

Lucha Libre AAA: El Heroes del Ring breaks my heart. It’s a game with a fresh, heretofore unexplored and very interesting subject that lies somewhat outside of the usual cultural bounds of video gaming. It’s been developed by folks with a genuine sense of passion and enthusiasm for the absurd drama of high-flying masked men grappling with pride, audience loyalty, or their hair on the line. The game is licensed by and carries the AAA brand, the biggest and most popular wrestling promotion in Latin America. It could have been a game that introduced acrobatic, over-the-top characters like La Parka and Cibernetico to the rest of the world, but sadly, it fails on almost every level.

When I first loaded up the game, I was actually quite excited about getting into it and the style, music, and visual tone of the front-end introductions and menus had me completely psyched. I didn’t even want to start playing the game just yet when I saw that there was a custom Luchadore builder. I spent 30 minutes building my Tecnico (good guy) wrestler alter ego, Miguel Machetazos. Creating your own Lucha mask is a blast; I settled on a green and purple number with a giant cross on the forehead and batwing ears. Wardrobe, facial hair, and the other usual character creation attributes are there and you can also customize the wrestler’s entire move set.

But once I put my Luchadore in the ring in a one-off Pride Battle against real-world fan favorite La Parka (a good guy Grim Reaper that does a little softshoe), any hope I had for the game being worthwhile fell apart. The first thing you’ll notice is that the wrestlers are extremely slow, as if they’re walking with lead boots through tar. The game runs on the Unreal Engine 3 chassis, and I think that was a big mistake—they should have licensed something like Namco’s Tekken 6 code to capture something with more speed and finesse.

The second thing you’ll quickly notice is that the controls are woefully unresponsive, making R1/RB counter attack presses a hit or miss affair and grapples subject to the poor collision detection and clipping errors that plague the entire game. I don’t know how many times I accidentally rolled out of the ring while trying to climb the turnbuckle or when I just could not pick up a chair.