WWE Crush Hour has got to go down as one of the most ridiculous ideas in videogames history. Just look at to the plot: Vince McMahon has now taken control of every TV network in the world. Stop laughing, it gets better. You can now see his WWE superstars in all your favourite TV shows and commercials. Now he’s revving up for his most anticipated debut to date - a no-holds barred battle, where the superstars fight for survival behind the wheel. Welcome to WWE Crush Hour! You read it right, a game where you play as WWE wrestlers fighting in cars. Whatever next? Master Chief in a snowboarding game? Maybe we could call that one Halo Winter Olympics.

The idea behind WWE Crush Hour defies logic so well that your mind will be in a subdued state when you first load the game. Your brain will be trying so hard to explain its existence that it may stop functioning altogether. Any intelligent thought will be blasted away into the ether, leaving you to blunder through the menus until you eventually start a match.

Four of the superstars enter the arena, cueing officially licensed voiceovers and videos - Entering in the luxury sports car, The People’s Champion, The Rock!. The arenas are too big and out of proportion, with the cars looking more like remote controlled ones that full sized motor vehicles. With 30 superstars, it’s also a shame to see that they only allow four in the arena at once. It feels distinctly empty in the massive stadiums which could have been used better.

So you start off with your chosen wrestler and drive off into the battleground. The first and most obvious element that grabs your attention is the weapons, which include laser guns. So now we’ve got WWE wrestlers fighting in cars which have ray guns! The outrageousness keeps coming. The handling is adequate, although aiming those crazy weapons is relatively hard as most of them only fire forwards. It’s just a case of chasing round your opponents with your finger clamped on the trigger until they blow up - repetitive and not an ounce of originality noticeable.

The gameplay is literally driving round, ramming and blowing things up. There’s really not much else to it. It may sound great on paper, but it honestly doesn’t live up to your expectations. The AI is pretty simplistic as well, with the NPCs merely designed to follow the nearest car and fire at them when they are lined up. Other vehicular combat games like Twisted Metal and Vigilante 8 are far superior although the concept is the same. The former had better levels and multidirectional weapons and the latter had online play. Why couldn’t Crush Hour’s developer just learn from the competition? Possibly because they were so tied up trying to make a half plausible plot.

Crush Hour has three game modes; Exhibition, Season and Multiplayer. The first is a basic ‘quick match’ affair, allowing you to play any of the unlocked characters in any of the unlocked maps, whilst Season just does the same, but in a series of matches. The only incentive to do this is that you can unlock cars and game modes, and also watch commercials with the superstars in (wow!). Multiplayer only allows two people to play, which is a shame because four player may have been relatively enjoyable.

Graphically, it’s better than I expected, with a solid framerate and decent lighting. The visuals are full of colour, with golden convertibles, Aztec styled arenas and light blasting out of laser weapons. Characters, whilst only viewable in the menus, are fairly sound, although their only purpose is for scripted events and cutscenes. The vehicle models are reasonable, but nothing special. However, they all come with air conditioning, ray guns and CD auto-changers fitted as standard. The most obvious defect in the visuals though is the aforementioned scale, which makes the cars look like little plastic toys. Then again, Vince McMahon could have shrunk down all of his superstars with some crazy contraption in his volcanic lair. That though, is a whole other story!

The sound is hardly atmospheric, but it is fitting. A host of superstars have recorded sound clips for in-game use, and Jim Ross commentates on the action. Like other WWE games though, the commentary is repetitive and isn’t always completely accurate. The simplistic engine noises are relatively quiet whilst Jim’s speech takes precedence. Irritating commentary, bland audio effects or the mute button? The choice is yours.

After the first day, WWE Crush Hour will probably end up on a shelf, ready to gather dust, while a more worthy game like Smackdown! sits in your PS2. Regardless of how good or bad Crush Hour plays, there’s a chronic lack of things to do. Play single matches in Exhibition mode or play several of them in a series. Apart from the mediocre multiplayer, that’s it. The seriously average gameplay also undermines the lifespan, along with your friends laughing at you whenever you mention to them that you’ve played this game.

I can’t see why THQ thought that it would be any good. The conception of Crush Hour must have taken place in some parallel dimension where logic and common sense are distinctly absent. The Smackdown! games are, without a doubt, the best wrestling games on any platform, ever. So why take the effort to create a spin off title that a) has a ridiculous concept and b) is plainly substandard?

Only God knows how this got past the initial ideas stage. WWE Crush Hour could actually be an April fool’s joke, but alas, it sadly is not. It will stand out in videogames history as one of the largest time and money wasting exercises ever conceived. Buy it if you want to convince yourself that such a game exists, but otherwise stay away and wait for a WWE game worthy of your attention; Smackdown! Here Comes The Pain.