Last year’sWWE 2K23was an outstanding follow-up in a new era of Visual Concepts taking the lead on development. Long-crafted by Yuke’s, the WWE 2K series changed and evolved over time to become one of the best-crafted wrestling games ever made withWWE 2K19still holding up as something I can see myself playing for many years to come. With the shift in developers in2K22came an increase in features like MyFaction to extend the life of the game alongside changes to the core gameplay that can be both a blessing and a curse over time depending on what kind of match or era of pro wrestling you’re trying to replicate.
With stiff-looking heavy strikes across the board, every era in wrestling - whether it’s the punch and kick-filled ’80s with the goal being to ensure the action looked credible and everything hit flush, or the modern age of impressive-looking and sounding-strikes being replicated – has largely been kept intact from the VC era’s beginnings. The shift in developers, however, led to things like the loss of grapple-based striking with the right trigger and the loss of two front heavy strikes from five to three. With that loss came the addition of a combo system to add more slots in movesets for strikes and grapples at the expense of them being a bit tricky to remember, but being a Godsend for submission-based wrestlers and wonky for offense-based brawlers.
Killer Movesets
One downside to the new combo system is the inclusion of a boxing-style block and an odd-looking combat roll to avoid contact being made that sticks out like a sore thumb when you’re having Bruno Sammartino in a match and he just rolls out of the way – something he would never do. In prior wrestling games over the years, this kind of feature would be restricted based on either style or weight class and after a few games of it being included here and being exactly as weird-looking to have every weight class work largely the same, it would be nice to see options to restrict some aspects of the block and roll to weight classes or adjust it in movesets.
Even with that issue,WWE 2K24still does an admirable job of replicating many different eras and wrestler styles – a near-impossible task in the best of circumstances and one made harder by the showcase mode aiming to replicate many of the biggest matches in the near-40 year history of WrestleMania. Starting at WrestleMania III, which was the first truly large-scale stadium event under the WM branding, players can enjoy a large amount of classics over the years with some of the company’s best-ever matches replicated alongside iconic moments involving the Undertaker’s legendary streak.
Showcase Showstealers
The new ambulance match is something that players have seen on WWE TV a few times over the years, most recently with NXT, and it’s a match type that hasn’t been seen in a game that I can recall. There have been plenty of games with them included as props, though, with the best usage probably being the Day of Reckoning games on the GameCube that allowed you to have entire matches culminate on top of one with brawling and violent sound effect work on the metal structure itself. Now you can not only fight on the ambulance, but dive off of it with huge leaps of faith to deal out massive damage. It’s also possible to do things like grapple carrying slams and powerbombs into it to set rivals up for a faster defeat. Strangely, unlike the Royal Rumble, there are no finishers set to that match type, so maybe that’s something we’ll see in future games.
WWE 2K24 Set Up For Greatest Success in Series History
WWE 2K24 is set to deliver the best-playing WWE experience in modern history and our time with it reveals massive improvements.
One cool thing that separates2K24apart from every WWE 2K game so far is the inclusion of the highest-amount of finisher slots in a wrestling game since the GC days. Then and before that, in the N64 days, you could generally have one finisher set up in pretty much every major in-ring position for each character. The N64 games did them based purely on positioning, while the GC games gave you over half a dozen finisher slots to choose from across any position you wanted – so if you had a character that never flew, you didn’t have to waste a finisher moveslot on them. Now, players can have five signature moves set across a single moveset and three super finisher slots on top of the two regular finisher slots. The three-slot super finishers can be things like an avalanche stomp or trifecta of Cross Rhodes, but sadly no avalanche Cross Rhodes yet, although maybe we’ll see that added in via a move pack DLC later on.
Roster Revelations
Having this kind of in-ring flexibility makes it possible to have the best-possible versions of wrestlers throughout history via both the regular in-game roster but also community creations as well. Kevin Owens is someone who sprang to mind as benefiting a lot from this the second I played as him since you normally would have to go through and pick and choose moves he did on the Indy scene and either make them finishers or turn things like his WWE finishers into regular moveset slots. Now you can have the best of both worlds and wreck folks with the stuff he hasn’t done in a decade for the sake of everyone else’s health and create modified dream matches like redoing his WrestleMania 38 classic with Austin, but using a lot of his neck-based offense on the Texas Rattlesnake.
The emphasis on in-ring flow extends to everything from being able to use ring announcer tables as both a regular fighting structure that won’t break right away and instead needs a special attack to trigger to the revamped backstage brawl. In the case of the announcer tables, they’ve found a nice mix of using them like they were in No Mercy, where they were basically a fighting structure unto themselves with interesting mechanics like throwing people off of them onto a waiting chair where you could have a partner dive onto them. Now you have a similar mechanic available – just with a lot more moveset flexibility in terms of what you want to do with the table.
Revamping the Past
Visually this is the best-looking entry in the franchise yet with the usual caveat of odd-looking character models. Most of the mens' models look good, but some of the women get re-used models that haven’t held up as well over time. Beyond that, revamped environmental animations for things like broken glass and interactive environmental pieces in the backstage brawl help a lot to make those matches feel more organic. It’s also nice to see animations for carrying moves onto environmental pieces change depending on what they’re done to; so doing a powerslam onto a car hood, for example, looks and feels different than doing one onto something like a barricade.
The in-game commentary is largely excellent, although the lack of commentary during the Showcase mode stands out rather sharply once again. The atmospheric music playing throughout the matches does add drama, but isn’t as engrossing as things like evenWWE 2K20having commentary for showcase matches with custom lines for it. It also stands out to have Corey Graves do makeshift commentary in recap videos for the showcase mode that pales in comparison to the original commentary. Thankfully, the sound effects for strikes and attacks onto various surfaces help make up for some audio shortcomings. Ditto the outstanding in-game soundtrack, which you can mix up with some of Post Malone’s hand-picked songs or use in-game wrestler theme music.
Closing Comments:
WWE 2K24is a flawed pro-wrestling game, but it’s still the best overall gameplay experience in the Visual Concepts era. The showcase mode is among the best in series history and the in-ring action hasn’t felt this good sinceWWE 2K19. In some ways, this is the best-playing game in the WWE 2K series thanks to the addition of so many different interactive attacks and the addition of super finishers and more move slots makes for more exciting matches across every mode. If you’ve been itching for a new WWE game, this is a worthy pick-up and a fantastic successor to prior entries.
