The grappling action is all controlled in the same way, matches feel very similar and very little has changed in the immediate presentation of the game. Let us first look at the basics – apart from some new additions and tweaks, WWE 2K19 plays in an almost identical way to its previous iteration. ![]() But as you are back again this year, reading these words, there is only one question to answer – has WWE 2K19 delivered where is predecessor could not?Ī fairly even balance of arcade action and chain wrestling grapples A dearth of new ideas, long-standing issues and the removal of some of the more popular recent features made WWE 2K18 feel like a disappointing step backwards for the series. You shouldn’t buy this game at full price, but if you’re one of those wrestling fans who is planning to buy it anyway, then it’s a revelation compared to the last few years of utter trash.Just twelve months ago, I wrote right here that I was becoming tired of the 2K Games brand of WWE wrestling games and that they needed to do something new and innovative to shake up the stagnating formula. I have almost no reason to believe any real money was spent here, there’s no way any game that looks this crummy can’t run at 60 FPS on modern consoles, let alone sub-30 when it has to split-screen two wrestlers. The ever-present content concessions make the game feel cheap, like a budget title inflated to full price because of the name recognition alone.Īctually, now that I think about it, that’s probably exactly what WWE 2K19 is: a secret budget game. I know the cutoff for big changes is somewhere around WrestleMania, but Shinsuke Nakamura’s new entrance is in there, along with the recent Money in the Bank design and arena. There’s nothing here quite as bad as Kevin Owens being stuck as “The New Face of America” for a whole year, but once again, it’s up to the fanbase to plug in the gaps. If you want to change any of the attributes for any pre-existing wrestler, you have to pay $5. Triple H has two themes, but both of them are different versions of ‘The Game,’ with ‘King of Kings’ not available. The B-Team is still all Miztourage’d up, Goldberg and Edge are missing their 100 per cent readily available modern Titantron graphics, and the Shield as a faction gets zero pre-installed representation. Recent NXT Tag Team Champion Trent Seven is nowhere to be found, but his British Strong Style partners Tyler Bate and Pete Dunne are right there. NXT mainstay and fan favourite Nikki Cross is also MIA. Current NXT Champion Tommaso Ciampa is missing, despite being in last year’s game. ![]() Here is the part of the review where I will pedantically list everything that isn’t in the game but should be. I’m sorry the left stick wasn’t at the pixel-perfect angle that would have convinced you to throw my opponent into the corner, photorealistic version of Jimmy Havoc I downloaded off PSN, but did you really think I wanted to throw him into the ropes one foot away from the turnbuckle instead? ![]() But that garbage default submission mechanic is back, the AI remains as brain-dead as ever, and the sheer amount of possible context-sensitive actions available at any given time means you will always be frustrated at your chosen wrestler for doing the opposite of what you intended. That, coupled with smart changes to the default movesets that make it easier for players to do cool things like Daniel Bryan’s corner dropkicks, makes the act of playing WWE 2K19 not completely joyless. Instead, the mechanics feel like a sped-up version of the game we’ve been playing for the past couple of years. That newfound level of creativity doesn’t necessarily mean that the positive gameplay changes come in the form of sweeping reinvention. It’s campy and self-aware in equal measure, completely unashamed of wrestling’s modern soap opera clichés. A lot of the game’s best content can be found in M圜areer, which ultimately amounts to an extremely meta WWE self-insert fanfic. You will then go on to use that information to power up for your battle with Bray Wyatt inside a steel cage. Now, in WWE 2K19, the M圜areer sends you into the physical manifestation of the multiverse with Matt Hardy to learn that you’re a reincarnated polar bear. No matter the specifics, it all comes in the same flavour: boredom. Maybe that obligation manifests in the M圜areer being a joyless, corporate-approved slog up the WWE ranks, maybe every wrestler plays like they’re running through waist-high mud, maybe doing any cool move requires a series of arcane button commands. Because legitimate mainstream outlets like ESPN and Sports Illustrated cover WWE regularly now, the games had to pretend like the whole enterprise isn’t the semi-evolved version of a carnival scam. Even the ones people like have their issues because the “sports” part of “sports entertainment” still hangs there like a bloated, stinking albatross. ![]() You see, the majority of WWE video games are terrible.
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