Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This At Home - Xbox

The concept of toy fighting has come along way since we were nippers, giving each other Chinese burns in the playground. What was once a bit of harmless fun (okay, maybe not all of the time...) has now evolved into a US phenomenon that, as the title and age rating of this latest Xbox release will attest, involves big guys knocking the absolute stuffing out of each other in any way that they can.

The concept, then, of Backyard Wrestling sees players take on the role of an aspiring wrestler, who must be prepared to endure extreme amounts of pain and take incredible risks in order to move one step closer to the BYW title and ultimately be crowned 'The King of Hardcore' (surely there are more pleasant ways to go about receiving such a title). However, the road to glory is a long one, and a dangerous at that, as a range of pretty gruesome weapons play a big part in the proceedings, including the likes of thumbtacks, barbed wire, light bulbs, baseball bats, tables, trash cans, and - rather ironically - stop signs.

The game itself places you in an assortment of fully interactive, destructible environments - such as a mansion, a truck stop and, rather obviously, a backyard - and sees you battle it out in true Backyard style: dirty. And by dirty, that means getting to grips with a large array of ultra-violent moves - such as grappling, throws, and hand-to-hand combat - and subsequently brutalising your opponents into submission.

A healthy roster of real life BYW stars feature throughout the game, including the likes of Mdogg 20, Josh Prohibition, Rudeboy, and Madman Pondo. Each wrestler is faithfully represented by their respective detailed character model, itself made all the more realistic by the game's grisly damage modelling system. As such, throughout the duration of each bout, the characters get cuts, bruises and gashes all over their bodies, depending on the moves they've been doing, and more painfully, what moves have been done to them.

As concerns regarding violent content in video games continually escalate, Backyard Wrestling is going to do absolutely nothing to convince sceptics that games are just a bit of harmless fun. But generally they are. And so is this. Perhaps a great deal more so than those agonising Chinese Burns from back in the playground...
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