Obviously the No Mercy game for the N64 was a tough act to follow, but X8 is a competent follow-up nonetheless. There are good and bad points to the game:
GOOD POINTS-
Good amount of wrestlers including Rock, Austin, Triple H, Angle, Jericho, Taker, Kane and new characters like RVD, Booker T, Storm, Hurricane and the nWo to name a few. Characters like Benoit, Rhyno, Flair and Vince can also be unlocked.
Gameplay is fairly simple to pick up.
Some of the moves are fairly well executed and each wrestler has their own characteristic moves. What's good also is you can customise the moves list of the wrestlers.
Wrestlers look realistic and entrances are good, despite some theme songs being absent due to licensing issues or something.
The Hell in the Cell match is brilliant. Best yet for any console. Really well done
BAD POINTS-
The create-a-wrestler is far too basic. There are limited costume choices and the moves are just those in the game (unlike No Mercy which allowed you a huge selection of other moves and finishers). The CAW is just there, really, to allow you to create wrestlers that Jakks didn't have time to put in (Kidman, Saturn, HBK, Billy Gunn, Chuck Palumbo ,etc)
There's no real reward in winning a match- there's no ring bell after a pin and the opponents don't tap out to submission holds (like in No Mercy). It just comes up on the screen as "SUBMIT" which is pretty crap- if they could put in the realism of wrestler entrances, surely they could have added tapping out to make it more realistic.
No story mode.
Some of the finishers don't look great ( the Pedigree, for one, looked better in SD3).
No 'psychology'- in No Mercy you could work over a body part (leg/arm/neck) and your opponent would sell the injury, but there's none of that in X8, which makes it less rewarding again.
THE VERDICT- Not bad- by any means, but it should have incorporated the best qualities of No Mercy and added to them. Hopefully the follow up to this will be a slight improvement and rectify the bad points I mentioned above. X8 is very playable, but it could stand to improve.
