After being speared and thrown through a fire door by a 350-pound opponent, I retired from my career as a backyard wrestler and decided it'd be a lot safer behind a keyboard, though I did smash one over his back. However, that didn't stop me from dreaming about bashing light bulbs over peoples' heads and power bombing them through burning tables, and thanks to Eidos and their hardcore wrestling game, Backyard Wrestling, I'll be able to quench my thirst for extreme violence without the trips to the emergency room.

What I love about this game is its no fear attitude, its aggressive refusal to be a cookie cutter wrestler. Instead of being confined to a ring or backstage area you'll battle in multi-faceted and multi-tiered environments that are fully destructible, so if you see a house in the background chances are you can climb up to the roof and plancha onto your opponent, who'll likely be lying atop a table. The extreme violence should capture the essence of this pop culture phenomenon, and Eidos promises that Backyard Wrestling will be excessively bloody to satisfy fans of the hardcore. There are dozens of weapons you can use to bludgeon and mutilate opponents including barbed wire, baseball bats, thumbtacks, car doors, stop signs, fire, light bulbs and tables. The game also features objective based game play that'll allow you to unlock bonus videos, levels and characters.

Speaking of characters, Don't Try This At Home features over twenty hardcore wrestlers from the Backyard Wrestling world including Sabu, Mdogg20, Insane Clown Posse, The Masked Horn Dog, El Drunko, and Rude Boy. However, if you'd rather craft a wrestler in your own image you'll be able to give birth to your hardcore creation in the games create a wrestler mode.

The graphics look great, featuring very detailed environments and character models that take realistic-looking damage across their bodies depending on the punishment that's been doled out, so it's common to see foreheads sliced open and blood spilling down the faces of hapless victims. Hit someone with a chair and blood will shoot out in all directions, and whipping them into fire will set them ablaze.

In addition to the impressive graphics the game's soundtrack looks equally pleasing, featuring tracks from several artists including Insane Clown Posse, Anthrax, American Hi-Fi, Sum 41, Andrew WK, Rancid, Bowling For Soup, Biohazard, Sepultra, Chimiara and many more.

While the visuals are nice looking and the soundtrack impressive, I certainly hope the action's intense and the game play seamless. The game has hard-hitting moves and tons of ways to easily dismantle opponents, but it may fall flat if the controls are clumsy. Also, while one of its aims is to shock and amaze us with its brutality, the game play really needs to shine because after we become desensitized to the violence, lighting opponents on fire, however cruel, is going to seem commonplace and not as exciting as it seemed those first few times. I hope I don't lose interest too quickly.

Backyard Wrestling has a lot of great parts falling into place but it's going to be the game play that'll make or break it. If Paradox can avoid the pitfall of clumsy controls, which often plague wrestling titles, and make the hits intense and brutal, Don't Try This At Home may be THE wrestling game to pick up this year. Check it out early October 2003 for the Xbox and PS2 and keep the baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire at home. You'll thank me later.