WWE All Stars is a 2011 wrestling game developed by THQ San Diego.
In a departure from THQ's annual Smackdown Vs Raw series, All Stars takes a more arcade heavy slant with a comparatively smaller roster of current WWE Superstars and Legends in a wrestling/Fighting Game hybrid with exaggerated physiques and moves.
This game contains the following tropes:
- Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: The intro for the D-Generation X challenge has Shawn Michaels and Triple H respectively.
- Button Mashing: When going for a cover, the person being pinned has to hit buttons rapidly to kick out, while the person making the cover can hit buttons to increase the size of the kick-out meter.
- Combos
- Dolled-Up Installment: In the sense that THQ used elements from the TNA Impact game as a basis and heavily refined/reworked it into an arcade-y wrestling/fighting WWE game.
- Dream Match Game: While it doesn't have every wrestler who's ever been in WWE, it does have pretty much all of the most famous ones, whether or not they're currently wrestling or even alive.
- Exaggerated Trope: EVERYTHING.
- Final Boss: One for each Path of Champions: Randy Orton for the Superstars, Undertaker for the Legends and D-Generation X (Triple H and Shawn Michaels) for the Tag Team path. Due to a lack of a Mirror Match feature, these characters cannot be used in their respective paths.
- Heroic Build: Every wrestler is impossibly muscular in the game but Triple H in particular is downright hilariously so.
- Instant-Win Condition: Hitting a finisher on an opponent whose life has been reduced to 0 results in a K.O. and a special pin animation. This makes for an effective way to win 3 or 4 man matches.
- Jump Physics: A lot of the finishers involve some very high jumps.
- Lantern Jaw of Justice: In particular, John Cena's already prodigious jaw is expanded to incredible proportions.◊
- Medium Awareness: D-Generation X in their Path of Champions cutscene.
- Musical Spoiler: The main menu plays the theme of individual wrestlers at random. Even ones you've haven't unlocked yet.
- The Rival: Invoked with the Fantasy Warfare mode, which pits a Legend against a Superstar with a certain theme in the match-up. The ones included in the game are:
- Ultimate Warrior vs. Sheamus (Battle of two brawler-archetypes)
- Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio (Mexican high-flyers)
- Ricky Steamboat vs. Kofi Kingston (Babyfaces with creative, energetic offense)
- Curt Hennig vs. The Miz (Boastful heels)
- André the Giant vs. Big Show (Battle between giants)
- "Stone Cold" Steve Austin vs. CM Punk (Polar opposites; Austin's brawling style and love for beer vs. Punk's technicality and Straight Edge lifestyle)
- Bret Hart vs. Edge (Master technicians)
- Jake Roberts vs. Randy Orton (Sadistic and unhinged wrestlers with snake motifs)
- Sgt. Slaughter vs. Jack Swagger (Patriots)
- Hulk Hogan vs. John Cena (Two of the most popular Superstars of all time)
- Jimmy Snuka vs. Kane (Ruthless and aggressive competitors)
- The Rock vs. Triple H (Former holders of the Undisputed Championship)
- Roddy Piper vs. Drew McIntyre (Scottish Superstars)
- Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker (Continuation of their rivalry from Wrestlemanias 25 and 26)
- Notably, because of career overlap, some of these matches have actually happened (Eddie vs. Rey, Rock vs. HHH, Shawn vs. Taker).
- Rule of Cool: The game is fueled by it.
- Recycled Soundtrack: For some reason, From First To Last's remix of "Hell March" is menu music.
- Shown Their Work: The developers looked through tons of matches from various points of each wrestler's careers to create their movesets, no matter how obscure said move could be. Any discrepancies can be chalked up to Rule of Cool).
- There's also the impressive broadcast-style video packages for Fantasy Warfare mode, simulating how a video setting up the particular fantasy match would look like on WWE programming.
- Spectacular Spinning: Several of the moves are given extra spins and twists if at all possible such as any of John Morrison's big moveset. This even happens to Eddie Guerrero's Frog Splash even though the move doesn't have any spinning in real life, turning it more into a 450.
- Tag Team: There are tag team matches in the game, but all Tag Team contests are under Tornado Tag Rules, meaning all four competitors are in the ring and there is no tagging.
- Ultimate Show Down Of Ultimate Destiny: Imagine Randy Savage perfoming an elbow drop at the same height as the Titantron, only for Randy Orton to counter it with an RKO. Mind you, this is an RKO which is as big as the aforementioned elbow drop.
- Or simply seeing deceased (Randy Savage and Eddie Guerrero) and older (Bret Hart) WWE legends in their prime take on the younger WWE superstars like Kofi Kingston and John Morrison of today's generation.
