This is the first attempt to capture the spirit of the lucha and bring it to a wider audience. It is also being handled by people that know it best. Mexican developer, Immersion Games, handles the duties of staying true to lucha history and maintaining the proud history of Mexican wrestling.
The look of Lucha Libre AAA: Héroes del Ring is pretty great. The game was built using the Unreal Engine 3 and the wrestlers themselves look pretty good. Sweat glistens, the animations are fluid, and the over the top mask designs are charming in a ridiculous sort of way. Though the faces of many wrestlers look strange sometimes and sometimes not at all like their real-life counterpart (Konnan.) It really doesn't matter that much considering half the roster wears masks, but it was a little strange at first.
If you don't want the AAA roster, you can create your own Lucha Libre brawler in an impressively deep character creation feature. You can edit anything from body build, move sets, knee pads, tights, capes, and (most importantly) the mask. There is a dizzying amount of variety and options dedicated solely to creating a perfect mask for your Mexican Luchador. You can customize the materials used to make the mask, the types of eye-holes, whether the mask uses mesh, horns, wings, you name it. I was able to create a fairly solid recreation of real-life wrestler, El Generico, with a slightly tweaked move list, but the end result was mighty impressive.
It is a nice touch that most of the wrestlers speak Spanish during their promos or video segments. The honest-to-goodness feeling of being in Mexico while playing Lucha Libre is aided by the charming surfer rock soundtrack or the traditional weepy guitars from a by-gone mariachi. Overall, I liked the voice acting from the wrestlers themselves but the announcers and commentary during the main matches are simply terrible.
Konnan and his associate deliver the same few lines of dialogue over and over again, despite which wrestler was in the ring or which move was just used. Konnan himself sounds incredibly awkward and stiff when commentating on the in-ring proceedings. This is strange because Konnan has worked for American promotions numerous times over the years and is rather fluent in English, so it just makes it worse that he struggles so much during rather uninteresting dialogue.
