THQ's other wrestling games feature a multitude of match types and arenas and DoR2 is no different. You can take part in Ladder, Hell in a Cell, Tag Team, Hardcore, TLC (Tables, Ladders, and Chairs), First Blood, and Fatal Four Way contests, among other cool matches, and there's a crazy amount of venues including Wrestlemania, Summerslam, Day of Reckoning, Heat, Raw, SmackDown, Velocity, and several others, each of which features a distinct stage.

Since you can target the referee, he actually becomes an even more important part of the matches. You can just run his @$$ over and then pull out all of the stops to deliver the big hurt on your opponent(s). Are you wrestling in a match where you can be disqualified for using a weapon? Just take out the ref, then pull a chair, working fire extinguisher, table, championship belt, or whatever you can find underneath the ring and just waffle people with it, then dispose of the evidence and resume playing by the rules. Are you about to get pinned in a tag team match? Don't instruct your partner to just break up the cover. Tell him or her to knock out the referee, allowing you to get a much needed breather. Those are just other ways how Yukes has managed to make the gameplay deeper than in previous titles.

I love this game but it's not without its problems, targeting being one of the biggest. You cycle between wrestlers using the c-stick, but while battling against 3 competitors it's difficult to tell who's looking at whom. Furthermore, your character will default to whichever wrestler attacked them last which is a huge pain if that attacking wrestler lost interest and left while a brand new one took their place.

The AI is also quite annoying because at times it's totally clueless. Wrestlers will just stand around, even when someone's ascending a ladder and trying to grab the belt. It's not so bad when I'm the one trying to win the match, but it sucks when I really need my tag team partner and he's screwing around.

Picking up weapons is another bothersome feat but only because doing it requires pressing X. Problem is, X also picks people up off the mat, meaning that if a fallen grappler and a chair are in close proximity nine times out of ten you'll go after the wrestler and not the weapon.

I'm also not too thrilled with the Story Mode. A continuation of last year's Day of Reckoning's narrative, it lacks excitement. There are no voices whatsoever, and the situations that arise, while cool by WWE standards, aren't anything that I haven't experienced before. Also, since the story picks up right where the other left off, it would make sense to be able to import the created wrestler from the first Day of Reckoning into the sequel, but you'll have to go into the CAW and create another one from scratch. It's not a huge deal, but it disrupts the story's flow. However, the biggest offense is requiring players to wade through the entire mode to unlock Hulk Hogan. It's certainly a huge incentive, but I wish Yukes went about it a different way.

Legends are another area that bothers me. Having Steven Austin, The Rock, and Mankind is very cool (Bret Hart and Hogan round out the package), but THQ needs to do a better job negotiating with the WWE on this matter. Austin's cool, but he's far from being considered a Legend just yet and the same goes for Mankind and The Rock. Since the WWE makes such a big deal about its Hall of Fame induction ceremony, it should push to include some of those wrestlers. SmackDown: Here Comes the Pain has an excellent roster (Legion of Doom, Roddy Piper, Superfly Jimmy Snuka, Sergeant Slaughter, Hillbilly Jim, The Iron Sheik), so it's a bit perplexing why DoR2 has such a small collection of guys.

Complaining about which Legends THQ included in the game is nitpicking to the extreme so I'm going to stop there. Besides, there's too much to love about Day of Reckoning 2 to constantly b!$%h about things that have very little bearing on the product's overall enjoyment. This is easily one of the top ten greatest wrestling games ever made and the best to appear on the GameCube. In fact, it's so fantastic it's actually made me excited about the next-gen WWE games, because if the powers that be can put out a game of this quality on a current generation machine, I cannot wait to see what they have in store for Revolution. However, being that we're stuck in the present, I strongly suggest that you to purchase WWE Day of Reckoning 2, for not only is it just a blast to play, but it's also the most accurate representation of sports entertainment that I have ever seen.