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While wrestling in the US has been ramping up its soap opera storylines over the years, they still pale in comparison to the stories and action that has been happening in Lucha Libre for so many years.  Lucha Libre features lots of huge acrobatics, midgets, crazy masks, haircuts, blood and so much more.  Slang Entertainment has teamed up with Konami to publish a new Lucha Libre wrestling game called, Lucha Libre: Heroes Del Ring.  Hit the jump to read more about our early preview from E3 for this title, and it if lives up to the legend of the Luchadors.

Miguel Posada and Julian Castilo were nice enough to take about a hour of their time to explain the concepts behind Lucha Libre: Heroes Del Ring, and how they planned to capture the feel of the historic wrestling league.

So to start, we were given a little background on Lucha Libre.  First off is that the presentation, which consists of theatrics, acrobatics and story.  All of these items come together to make up Lucha Libre.  Also, the biggest thing that a Luchador, a Lucha Libre wrestler, can have is fame.  When you have a lot of fame, you become far more popular in Lucha Libre.  It was with this tennant that we found the basis of Lucha Libre: Heroes Del Ring.

In our demo session, we were shown the character creation process, which can take up a lot of your time right from the start.  There are hundreds of combinations that can be configured to create a wrestler that is unique to you.  We started the character creation by picking a side.  Apparently, there are two sides in Lucha Libre – the Tecnicos (good guys) and the Rudos (bad guys).  Picking a side will then chart who you can wrestle with, as well as telling you who your enemies will be.  This plays into the single player campaign as you will have paths for choosing either side.

Continuing through the character creation process, we had the ability to choose our body frame, face/hair, our masks, outfits, accessories, our special moves and finally if we want to sport and tattoos.  Inside some of these options, there will be sub-categories for more customization, like nose shape, eyes, mouth and so much more.  Each option seemed to have anywhere from 10-40 options, so again, making a unique character should not be an issue.

From here, we saw several different gameplay styles.  The first was a storyline mission that was in the Rudos campaign.  As the two characters engaged one another in the ring, we all noticed the popularity meter in each wrestlers corner.  As stated before, popularity is a huge thing in Lucha Libre, and it factors into your wrestling moves.  Each move that is in your repertoire has a popularity score from 1-4 stars.  So, if you want to perform a special DDT move and it requires 2.5 stars, you have to have 2.5 stars of popularity at that point in the match.  Also, as you harm the other wrestler, you take down their popularity, leaving them with less moves to perform during the match.  The wrestling in the ring was good, and the animations make the wrestlers look pretty fluid.  However, there are still those moments where you end up with some wonky attacks when you are not facing a certain direction, or within a certain area.  It is nothing detrimental, but it does stick out occasionally.

From this match, we moved into a Mask vs. Hair match.  Okay, just reading that may seem a bit strange, but in Lucha Libre, masks are a huge part of a Luchadors mystery and popularity.  If a wrestler does not use a mask, then their hair is the equivalent of the mask.  In these Mask vs. Mask and Mask vs. Hair matches, you wrestle people either online, or locally on the same couch.  Whoever wins, ends up taking the other person’s mask, or in the case of a Mask vs. Hair match, you cut off someone’s hair.  Also, this is persistent online, so if you lose your mask or hair, you will be maskless or hairless until you win three matches online.  If you have won these items, they will show in your online profile.

At the end of the presentation, we had a few more things of note.  Gamers will be able to have up to four playable characters in the ring at one time, either in online or offline wrestling modes.  There are several different game modes beyond the ones mentioned here.  There were Pride Battles and King of Kings modes of gameplay, which we saw on the main menu, but they were not covered in the event.  Every Luchador entry into the ring has been captured for the game, and can be selected by people for their customized wrestler.  Finally, I asked if the commentary would be in English or Spanish.  We were told that you could have a combination of Spanish with English subtitles and vice versa.  A couple of the big Lucha Libre announces have been put in a recording booth to record commentary and play by play for the matches, all in Spanish.

So far, Lucha Libre: Heroes Del Ring seems to capture the zany antics that all of us might have seen in Lucha Libre when channel surfing on a Saturday afternoon.  The Spanish commentary gives the game some authenticity, and with a lot of gameplay modes, it looks like there will be a lot to do in the game.  With a little more spit and polish over the next few months, I await the final product to get my inner Luchador on. 

NOTE: We have added a few extra shots that we received today, showing off the cover athlete for Lucha Libre: Heroes Del Ring.  The cover athlete was selected via a sanctioned wresling event on the floor of E3.