Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes the Neighborhood
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In an announcement made exclusively through IGN today, the European publishing giant Eidos Interactive has officially unveiled the sequel to last year's solid-selling grappling experiment Backyard Wrestling. Known more formerly as Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes the Neighborhood, this follow-up is once again being developed by the fighting freaks at Paradox Entertainment and features several new enhancements to the gameplay, graphics, and presentation. The most highly touted of which, would have to be the inclusion of the "Enviro-Mental" software engine and the much-needed head-to-head online support as a supplement.
"Harnessing the power of the Enviro-Mental gameplay engine, Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes The Neighborhood will continue blazing the trail of unprecedented environmental interaction and over the top violence," says Kevin Gill, Brand Manager at Eidos. "The inclusion of online play will finally allow gamers to deliver pain to opponents from around the world. With its completely re-designed and expanded create-a-wrestler system, an impressive new grappling system, more diverse move-set, solid hardcore soundtrack, and online play. BYW2 offers the complete wrestling package this fall."
Getting away from the official announcement and to be more specific, the "Enviro-Mental" engine is Paradox's way of addressing a lot of the concerns and problems that players had with the original. So while the first game boasted a decent amount of interactivity with backgrounds and weaponry, Backyard 2 takes it a step further by making almost everything in the environment useable and destructible. In the early levels we were demoed, for example, fences, tables, and lawnmowers could all be utilized as both stationary and melee weaponry; and were even picked up and thrown later as projectiles. Luckily, Paradox has also eliminated the "heat-seeking" tendencies of weapons and has made it a lot harder for opponents to hit each other from long distances. Furthermore, weapons can no longer simply disappear after one use and will now slowly deform and break over time as they would in real life. Other new gameplay conventions, like the CPU-controlled onlookers that leave the crowd to get involved in the fight, and unique grapple animations for each weapon already help to make the game a lot more appealing.
Happily, there's a great deal of strategy to how players use the weapons and environments around them too. Setting fire to a boat that serves as the means to get to the roof of a house, for instance, effectively cuts that roof off from being used for high-flying attacks -- which can just about cripple more acrobatic combatants and force them into different tactics. But since There Goes the Neighborhood abides by the philosophy of every action having an equal and opposite reaction, the fire can also be snuffed out with a fire extinguisher and open up access to that roof once again. Additionally, should players sprint around the level just throwing things until someone gets knocked out (a common cheese tactic in the original), they'll lose energy from their sprint meter and eventually be forced to slow down. And should they decide that they don't like where they're fighting, players can even break down certain segments of the level and step into an all-new environment. It's little touches like these that make Eidos hopeful that the game will be a lot deeper and more compelling for returning fans.
Of course there are additional changes to Backyard 2 than just what we've mentioned above, as Eidos has also listened to complaints about the grappling system. For starters, gamers can finally take their wrestling expertise to the mat and perform grapples from the ground. The lame headlock tie-up from the first game has been nixed as well and has been replaced by a number of different animations that varies from character to character. While we're on the subject of grapples, move sets and attack types are a lot more diverse too, with a far greater number of holds and strikes than what we saw before. But don't worry, Eidos has made sure to include the Def Jam-like super moves for an extra bit of pizzazz when the time comes.
http://xbox.ign.com/articles/508/508425p1.html
Page one^^
http://xbox.ign.com/articles/508/508425p2.html
Page two^^
I copied page one, so click the second link to find more info.
