WWE 2K22

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WWE 2K22 review
Dan Lenois

Review

Brawl your own way

Few videogame franchises have stood the test of time better than the WWE games. For practically as long as the organization has existed, especially since its rebranding back in 2002, licensed video games have been pumped out on a regular basis, with extremely varying degrees of quality. In recent years especially, WWE games have taken an extreme nosedive, but with Visual Concepts and 2K helming this year’s instalment, promising a true next-gen WWE experience aimed at long-time fans, heightened promises merit heightened expectations.

The story campaign starts with a bang, and ends with a whimper


I don’t think anyone expected deeply philosophical or heart-wrenching dramatic storytelling from a WWE game, but one would at least hope that 2K22's story-driven "MyRise" campaign would maintain the absurd low-brow over-the-top theatrical flair that's always been at the core of the WWE. But so many of the narrative elements, particularly the written dialogue and voice acting, both fall completely flat. What makes this worse is that the facial animations on basically every character during cutscenes are hilariously awful. It’s extremely difficult at times to pay attention to what's being said, when the player's eye is instinctively drawn to the inexplicably bizarre facial animation that almost invokes flashbacks to Assassin’s Creed Unity.

What’s far worse though is the game's cringe-worthy attempts at smacktalk between characters during the conversation sequences that act as interludes connecting the fights. WWE 2K22 utilizes an "A or B" type conversation flow, where the player has to pick one of two possible responses, one usually being a neutral or indifferent response, and the other being a provocative or aggressive response. This functions like an unimpressively minimalistic version of the "backtalk" feature from Life is Strange: Before The Storm, but instead of being able to continually twist the other character's words against them over a series of short exchanges, with the goal of winning each short exchange and thus verbally outwitting and/or intimidating your opponent. The discussions here in WWE 2K22 just drone on for an arbitrary duration until the game decides of its own accord that enough is enough. Instead of leaving the player feeling empowered by putting down their rival by smack-talking them to their face, the lack of interactable options takes the player out of the moment. This drives home the most notable issue with the campaign: Everything that happens outside the ring is far less interesting than what happens inside of it.

Controlling the pandemonium


Within minutes of starting it up, it becomes indisputably clear that WWE 2K22 was not natively designed with PC controls firmly in mind. 2K22 is a game intended to only be played on PC using a console controller, which mostly negates the point of playing on PC to begin with. Mouse controls are completely overlooked in favour of relying on the "J" and "K" keys for your primary and secondary attacks, along with "L" for blocking. While this can still functionally work, it’s an extremely awkward default setup for combat controls. Admittedly the game does allow for key rebinding, but the ability to correct porting mistakes does not undo the fact that that layout was flawed, and not in line with what anyone familiar with PC gaming would natively expect.



While the story campaign itself is the epitome of unintentional comedy and poorly-written cringe, WWE 2K22 is at its best in the Exhibition game modes. No additional padding or fluff needed. You have a fair assortment of game modes, including solo fights, 2-on-2s, 3-on-3s, cage matches, and many other modes inspired by decades of WWE history. More or less everything you would hope for in a WWE video game is here. You have a decent assortment of playable wrestlers, each of whom have their own lengthy introductory cutscene, because of course, no WWE fighter would be complete without their signatory entrance. While the animation quality still isn’t anywhere near cutting-edge for a game of its license and budget, it’s more than serviceable.

In WWE 2K22, the blood might not flow, but cash will


2K has never exactly been subtle when it comes to their universally-terrible implementations of microtransactions in their sports games, and WWE 2K22 is no exception. Given the extreme backlash following the release of NBA 2K22 last year, 2K attempted to get ahead of the criticism leading up to the release of WWE 2K22 by assuring fans that microtransactions would not be "pay-to-win" in nature. This is true in most aspects, setting aside the fact that, as with their previous sports games, WWE 2K22 does have a card-based deckbuilding game mode, and one of the only ways to get new cards is by purchasing them outright. The only justification for this not being pay-to-win is that the player only gains an advantage against the game's AI, rather than against a fellow human player. This falls into the category of the classic Star Wars line of "What I told you was true, from a certain point of view." If your game has a game mode that is designed to push players toward spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on card packs to gain an advantage over their opponent, even if it's not a human player, it's hard not to, by definition, view this is a pay-to-win designed system.

Pinning down the problems


WWE 2K22 is many things, but one thing most of us can probably agree on is that it is not, as retired WWE wrestler Bret Hart would say: "The Best There Is, The Best There Was and The Best There Ever Will Be". While WWE 2K22 might have made considerable strides forward in the area of general stability, compared with its infamously terrible launch, it’s doubtful that the studio will bother continuing to support it for much longer. One doesn’t have to be The Rock to know that 2K is probably already cooking up a new annual instalment. Here's hoping that in-between now and then, the publisher learns from both the successes and failures of WWE 2K22 and use that as a guide to give players a true WWE experience worthy of the license.


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7.0

fun score

Pros

Exhibition matches are fairly fun, weapons & finishers add to the chaos, sound effects are highly immersive

Cons

Facial animations are often dreadful, story campaign is a waste of time, poorly-chosen default keybind controls