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The latest offering from Wolverine Studios is not a sports game.

OK, now after you’ve allowed that stunner to settle on you for a while, consider what their latest offering actually is, rather than what it is not: Music Wars: Rebirth is a music industry sim that allows the gamer to take on the role of heading up a major music label, managing the careers of established stars, signing acts away from rival labels, and seeking out new, undiscovered talent. It’s a deceptively deep game that seems simple on the surface, but possesses a great deal of hidden depth - even if it is a downloadable title and not some hidden classic that can still only be played on tape drives.

Now, this particular type of simulation game is not without its predecessors. Rob Cooper has, for a long time, offered up a similar game experience with his independent series, Chart Wars. Though built from a decidedly UK perspective, the Chart Wars series saw three main versions released on the freeware marketplace, as well as a final version that never went the full step to a version four.

Also, Music Wars: Rebirth developer Antuan Johnson released three versions of Music Wars to the freeware market before deciding to take the franchise commercial. Do to the game’s freeware background, the most natural question is this: What in Music Wars: Rebirth makes it different enough from Johnson’s previous freeware iterations, to merit a purchase price?

As it turns out, quite a bit. First of all, all three freeware versions of Music Wars were far more limited in scope; at the start of the game, you could choose which artist or band you wanted to control, and then one would play through the game as that band. By contrast, Music Wars: Rebirth shifts the focus of the game from being a recording artist sim to being a record label sim.

This is no small shift; it opens the game up in significant ways, adding an entirely new challenge to succeed in the game. Whereas before you only had to worry about and manage one career, now one is managing the careers of many artists and acts, and miscalculations can be costly.

As the game opens, you can choose either to take over an established label, or start one of your own; the challenge of taking over established labels is that many of them are mismanaged and your task is to bring order to the chaos and turn the companies around. This could mean cutting acts with fat contracts who aren’t performing well, signing the right new acts to small deals so that you can create some cost-effectiveness while hopefully uncovering the next big multinational superstars, or even scaling back some of the extravagant show tours that are flushing money down the toilet at venues that don’t sell out.

Alternatively, at a new label, the challenge is to scout out the cream of the unsigned artists crop – some of whom may not want to sign with you because you’re too small a label – and stay in budget until you can get some singles and albums released and get some money coming in, as well as floating out. Investing heavily in a well-established artist isn’t always the best path for a small label, even if they are willing to sign with you, because they can eat up your limited starting resources quickly before they begin to turn a profit for you.

Either method provides some deep strategic and thrilling game play, and while it may not be quite as interactive as, say, Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero: World Tour, it is nevertheless a fun simulation game for music fans. And the game gets many aspects to the music business just right.

For example, through subtle code-work (rather than over-the-top extremism), Music Wars: Rebirth accurately portrays aspects of the business such as the effects of age on artists. (Hint: after the age of 25 or so, female acts begin to decline in sales, while the career Bell Curve for male artists is less youth-obsessed.)

The game also portrays well the dynamics of how singles sell, versus how albums sell. Other innovations in Music Wars: Rebirth include complete control over your artists’ recording, writing, practicing, and releasing schedule, a detailed economic model, and an evolving industry, meaning the popularity of styles changes as time goes by. All of these are features no previous version of Music Wars offered, and which Chart Wars didn’t even do well at.

Music Wars: Rebirth also features a universe of specific fictional personalities; this is a feature that may remind some PC simulation fans of Total Extreme Wrestling’s “Cornell-verse,” at least in its infancy. While Music Wars: Rebirth lacks the extended backstories for each artist that TEW has developed over the years, it is still a strong core to build upon.

Already, I have developed personal favorites among some of the acts in the game; for me, it wouldn’t be a fun session of Music Wars: Rebirth if there were no Britney Mathis to sign; and growing one’s label large enough to sign a higher-prestige act like Ego Riot makes the achievement of reaching that level of success in the game more memorable.

The game also features an editor mode that is mighty powerful, allowing those interested in futzing with the game before playing it plenty of power to customize the game; these tools ought to make the work of Wolverine’s loyal mod community that much more effective. Already, many from the mod community have rallied around this game to contribute artist portraits as well as work on real-world mod packs and other major undertakings.

Heck, one industrious modder has even rejiggered the game’s purple-themed graphics to a blander silver-gray look that may not be quite as eye-catching, but is certainly highly functional and will be more friendly to users of Microsoft Office, or at least versions of office prior to Office 2007, which introduces a default blue theme, tossing aside its old gunmetal gray design.

Finally, compared to the freeware version of the game, the whole user interface is much more solid and well-designed. Wolverine Studios graphics designer Ivan Carrillo helped Johnson out with this aspect of the game, and the game is the better for it. Certainly MW:R is more pleasant to look at than the splashy, hard-to-read-text-against-it Britney Spears concert photo that served as the backdrop of one of Johnson’s freeware version releases of Music Wars.

All of these aspects are strengths of Music Wars: Rebirth and provide a solid core game experience for fans of the series. However, that is not the whole picture. Like any game, Music Wars: Rebirth has weaknesses and areas where improvement is needed. The drawbacks are these:

One of the first things gamers will notice is that only a handful of the game’s acts have proper portrait art in place. This is due, in part, to the limited team working on the game, since much of Music Wars: Rebirth was completed by Johnson himself, with little outside help. Though the game has been officially released, only about 20 percent of the artists and acts in the game have portraits included in the initial install.

Johnson’s plan is to add more artwork to the game as he releases updates, but in the initial install, don’t expect more than about 20 percent of the acts to have portraits. This will improve, of course, as time goes on, and the portraits included in the game so far are fine, high-quality, high-detail works of art that are certainly worth the wait.

Another drawback to the game is the somewhat sales-centric model used in the game. For this first version of Music Wars: Rebirth, Johnson’s goal was to reflect the actual behavior of Billboard-style singles and albums sales charts. This approach generally reflects retails sales figures of traditional record shops as its economic model, with media exposure playing a minor role of influence.

Of course, this is a “stuck-in-the-’90’s-at-best” economic model. The game does not include or take into account the influence of music videos (an industry reality since the early 1980s), nor the production time or expenses involved. The game also makes no effort to reflect non-retail-store sales that are part-and-parcel of the music industry in the 21st century. That means iTunes and other forms of MP3 sales, as well as the negative stat of illegal music downloads, is not included in the current version of Music Wars: Rebirth, which makes the game – fun as it is – feel a bit dated.

Another disappointment is the lack of any sort of multiplayer mode around which online “leagues” could be formed, similar to Wolverine’s sports titles. Imagine playing competitively against other human label owners to sign a top unsigned act like Britney Mathis, the sort of bidding wars that could be built around online play. The possibilities for having charts that rate record labels against each other in profitability, sales and such might provide a whole new competitive play aspect to the title. However, any form of multiplayer option was ruled out for Music Wars: Rebirth, although Johnson did admit in an interview with DigNews.com that it remains a possibility for future versions if sufficient demand develops for a multiplayer mode.

At this point, interactions with artists are relatively limited within Music Wars: Rebirth. One interacts with their artist when signing them or negotiating a new contract, and one also interacts with the talent if you work them too hard and they get too pissed at you to ever re-sign with your label. (Once this error is achieved, by the way, you can never win back the artists’ affections, so play carefully!)

Music Wars: Rebirth also has the ability to add in things like relationships between artists, which allows them to collaborate but also can take them out of action for several months, if that “collaboration” leads to a pregnancy. Some of this is in the game by default, but far more random events can be added in via the editor interface. By offering such powerful customization tools, Johnson has given gamers the ability to improve the game themselves to quite a significant degree, and the value of this should not be underestimated.

Finally, the game could stand for a lot more data to be added into the database; for example, if one’s record label is based in the US, there are many concert venues of every size in which your acts can perform, ranging from tiny to huge. However, in most other territories (the game features six major media markets) there are only Tiny and Small venues to be found; while this works early on in the game, it can be a limiting factor once you hit International status; it just seems weird to have Ego Riot (for example) play to crowds of 60,000 in the US, and be even more popular in, say, Japan, but limited to played in ventues under 10,000 people.

Despite its shortcomings, however, Music Wars: Rebirth is certainly more than a fresh coat of paint on an old piece of freeware. It is a complete, from the ground up reimagining of the franchise into a form that is deeper, more comprehensive, and more engaging than any previous freeware version. In fact, most of the shortcomings of the game simply demonstrate the “being rebuilt from the ground up” nature of the title. Wolverine has a sterling history of responding to customer feedback and incorporating suggestions from their loyal customer base, and Johnson has proven to be no different than the rest of the company.

Johnson has promised to work to continually improve on MW:R in successive updates, adding more bands, more portrait art, and more data as time goes on. The FirstAccess stage of the game’s development ferreted out quite a few problems and, as a result, the game is relatively light on the bug reports and need for bug fixes following the official commercial release of the game. If this low occurrence of game bugs continues as a trend, that will enable Johnson to continue to build the game out as time goes on, updating not so much to fix broken code, but to add new content to the game.

Some items and features often wished for in this game may never see the light of day in this version of Music Wars: Rebirth. For example, Johnson has stated that to be the case with music videos on Wolverine’s forum boards and in interviews. Like all developers from Madden on down, some ideas had to be back-burnered until the next major release of Music Wars.

While the game still has room to grow to its full potential, it is off to a solid start and is a significant enough upgrade from previous freeware versions to merit a purchase price, if for no other reason than the game will be constantly improved for the life of the product, just like all of Wolverine Studios’ sports titles.

In the end, Music Wars: Rebirth may feel a bit less than finished due to the portrait art deficit, but given the promise of future updates and the titles’ core improvements and re-visioning of the franchise from the ground up, it is certainly worthy of consideration by industry simulation fans with a passion for the music business.

I’ve played demos of Total Extreme Wrestling long before I was asked to review this title, and I must say that with this latest version, the game has improved considerably. While there is still room for growth, with this version Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 officially becomes “playable” in my book.

What were the problems with previous versions? Well, for one thing, the series seemed dead-set on including a graphical wrestling match simulator that simply never worked very well at all. The graphics were barely up to eight-bit standards and the keyboard commands were simplistic, frustrating, and largely undocumented. Even walking down to the ring was a chore too ugly to contemplate, let alone do regularly. (Or am I thinking of Wrestling Spirit, Adam’s other wrestling title? I think both had that ugly match simulator at one point…)

Fortunately, the series has taken a turn in a markedly positive direction. TEW 2008 seems to have abandoned the graphical match simulator entirely (Yay!) and settled firmly into the PC text-based sports management sim category. And if anyone is thinking that such games went out of vogue with PC tape drives, think again. The interface for this game is quite good, and a marked improvement from previous outings; the level of art design is also a significant step forward.

For anyone who’s wondering what this type of game is and how it would compare to, say, Smackdown vs. Raw 2009, I would say this: think about that mode where you get to book Raw or Smackdown, making matches and filling out storylines and feuds… only imagine a version of that that actually works and is far, far deeper. Start going along those lines and you’ll have an idea of what kind of game TEW2008 is; and it does hold some addictive gameplay appeal for all the wannabe wrestling bookers out there.

Developer Adam Ryland, who has a clear love for pro wrestling (as well as mixed martial arts, but that’s another game…) has been perfecting his formula for several years now, and this time out, the result is a playable game, but not one without a rather steep learning curve.

One of the difficult aspects of TEW2008 is that there’s not an in-game, step-by-step tutorial as you’re getting started. The mysteries of the many and deep options within the game remain mysteries except by trial and error. Of course, there is some scant “getting started” information in a Word document, if you hit the right Help option; and it’s enough to get you through booking your first TV event.

But as for strategy on how to play the game well and earn good results? Well, there’s not much to go on within the game. Part of the challenge is that, for legal reasons, TEW2008 can’t emulate any real wrestling organizations or personalities. Therefore, there is no WWE, no TNA, no New Japan in the game. There are organizations reminiscent of them, but that’s all.

The game, in fact, is set in a fictional world called the “Cornell-verse,” and so unless you’re a longtime fan of the series and know what the heck is going on, it’s easy to get lost. For example, I started a freestyle career as head booker for the game’s WWE-like organization, SWF. With a roster clocking in at around 52 wrestlers, including a few who are “in development,” though most are active, it’s hard to know who’s who and how to book them.

Were the game licensed and able to offer up real-world figures, it would be easier to follow. After all, if I’m in WWE booking Raw, it’s easy to know that Randy Orton vs. John Cena is a main event-caliber match, and one you might want to save for a PPV. However, in the SWF, despite some helpful tools like the “creative meeting” to rank who’s hot, who’s not, who’s a main eventer, etc., it’s just a mammoth task to familiarize yourself enough with the cast at your disposal in order to properly book a show.

For example, the current SWF champ with the game starts is Jack Bruce, who’s slightly like Jeff Hardy. He’s a main event face, so I quickly involved him in a “challenger steals championship belt” storyline against Remo – who turned out, upon further inspection, to be more like MVP than Batista. So even though he’s a main eventer, he wasn’t a top one and my first couple shows and first PPV did poorly.

All the booking elements you might be familiar with from Smackdown vs. Raw’s GM mode are present here, but much deeper. You are expected to have some main storylines running through your broadcast, but it’s never made clear how many storylines are ideal to manage at one time. I chose four, and it seemed perhaps a bit much as I had to fit in a lot of angle elements into my programming grid, and average only about four or five matches per 90-minute broadcast.

OK, maybe that’s WWE-standard. Trouble is, as I looked at other CPU-controlled feds who are out-performing me, they have more matches, fewer angles, and fewer overall segments and obtain better results. I programmed my first two shows like a current Raw broadcast, with interviews, video segments, skits and hype segments as well as matches. My average grade was a C+ and my PPV result was lower, which “hurt” the SWF’s overall popularity. I ran an average of 18 segments with about five matches per broadcast, mimicking the Raw formula to a T, and I get a lot of “Yuck!” as a response from the game.

So either I’m really needing to put in a lot more hours learning my roster – a considerable time commitment considering I’ve already spent over five hours reading bios and the like – or the game has some sort of winning formula that I just haven’t mastered yet. And again, it’s not like there’s a tutorial for this stuff.

Booking is the heart of this game, and it can be a real hoot; but knowing your roster is a real key, as if you don’t, you’ll get feedback like, “You used Randy Bumfhole too much in this broadcast.” OK, he’s the tag title holder along with his brother; I put him in a match at the PPV to place the straps on more popular wrestlers, and then made him the victim of a post-match beat-down by Vengeance to advance a storyline I have going with him. That’s too much? Ugh! How am I supposed to know this?

Now, on the upside, there is a whole mod support community over at publisher Grey Dog Software, who are hard at work on a “real world mod” that will replace this confusing, overpopulated fictional universe with recognizable wrestling feds and personalities, much like Wolverine Studios attracts for their college and pro basketball games. At this point, I’d have to say that a real-world mod would make TEW 2008 about 500-percent more accessible.

That being said, I do get the sense that TEW 2008 is like a huge, hibernating bear. There are a lot of powerful tools in here, and once you learn how to use them properly, you can obtain a game experience that roars. But there is still room for refinement.

For example, while it’s great that there are a ton of storylines available to choose from, what is really frustrating is searching through all of them to find one of the small handful of appropriate elements you need to advance a storyline. In my belt-stealing storyline, for example, the storyline outline told me my next segment had to be an “Escapes with Belt – So Close” element. I searched high and low and couldn’t find a Narrow Escape segment that specified “with a belt.” So I booked what I could find and my storyline didn’t advance. Ugh.

One way to improve TEW 2008, and hopefully it can be handled in an update rather than having to wait for TEW 2009, would be to have storyline steps dynamically linked so that if you click on “5. Escapes with Belt,” a short list of acceptable options would appear, rather than having to search a massive list, even if you narrow it down by broad categories like “Confrontation.” Linking storyline steps to acceptable segments to fulfill those steps would be a huge help, especially to newcomers.

It would also be nice to receive booking tips within the game that give you the option to click a couple buttons and have some necessary elements auto-filled. For example, let’s say you’ve booked your main event, a couple title defenses, and some angle segments that satisfy the three or four storylines you’re currently running, but you have 40 minutes remaining to book and about a dozen key stars who deserve some kind of appearance on the broadcast. In that event, it’d be nice to be able to click some key stars, maybe one or two other elements, and then hit an “auto-book” button that would fill out the rest of the schedule.

Or, if you’re putting together a storyline, it’d be nice to have a storyline-checker to remind you of key considerations. For example, I did a “three challengers” storyline for my Shooting Star title, and got that storyline started on my Tuesday broadcast. Next day, my email told me one of my wrestlers had been caught by drug-testing doing ‘roids and I felt he deserved a one-month suspension.

Turns out, he was involved in the “three challengers” storyline and I had to kill the entire storyline. It would have been nice to have a warning pop up saying, “Wrestler X is involved in Storyline 4,” and then be offered the chance to replace him in that storyline with another wrestler, or to choose a lighter punishment so as not to kill the storyline.

It may sound like inattentiveness on my part, but remember, my roster is 52-wrestlers strong, and I added five key free agents recently to bring that count to 57. It’s hard to keep 52 fictional wrestlers straight in your head, so some idiot-proof warnings and tools would be a huge help.

In the end, Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 is a powerful, deep and addictive title that finally brings this storied franchise to a level I consider playable; there are still key elements that could help make the game more newbie-friendly and lessen the steep learning curve involved, however, and until more of those are addressed, the game simply cannot be considered top-notch.

That said, it’s come a long way since the last couple versions, and the improvements do make the game quite appealing. With the support of a mod-community – a modern-day essential for games of this type – a real-world mod pack might make the game a bit easier to navigate, though improvements to the storyline-database interface and some idiot-proof options would also help.

The core product is quite good; Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 is quite playable, even if it is still unrefined. The point here is that the potential long present in this series is finally rising to the top and soon – perhaps through some game updates, or maybe by TEW 2009 – the current algebraic complexity and steep learning curve will be addressed so that TEW can become everything it should be. Until then, the game is still very good, but falls just short of world-class status.