Okay, so as with every year it's a wrestling game that's built around creating your own content and battling it out in the ring. The usual universe mode is in there as well as exhibition and online with new additions of '2k showcase' (which is historical feuds (well 2 of them, with more coming as DLC)) and career, which is more like the story modes that used to be in the game years ago.
The in ring work has defiantly been improved, with stamina a big factor, meaning you're often crawling to the ropes to drag yourself back to your feet or reaching an arm out for a desperation cover. There's more OMG moments than ever and no longer do opponents just get up after a few seconds from the big moves, if they're hit hard, they're staying down for a good while (though this can lead to easy count out victories). The one issue I do have is the tie ups at the start of a match which take form of a rock paper scissors mini game then a thumb stick rotating mini game and gets tedious after the first couple of times, but you go through it in every singles match. Still though, they've ultimately made the wrestling better than for a long time, although they've not exactly reinvented the wheel.
So, the game modes. The 2k showcase is pretty good, though is just another way of doing the attitude era and history of Wrestlemania modes from the last couple of games. You get some nice history of the feuds (CM Punk vs. John Cena and Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels) with the pre PPV match hype videos being shown and match objectives to try and repeat from what happened in order to unlock more stuff. Career mode is pretty disappointing though in that you can't change the difficulty. In 2K showcase you can change the difficulty so coupling the hardest difficulty setting along with trying to hit all the match objectives can actually be quite challenging. In Career mode though, you're stuck on normal, and after the first 10 or 15 matches once you've boosted your stats enough so that your guy isn't out of stamina after 2 moves then it gets far too easy. It's straight up not fun to play because it's so easy and you can zone out to it. Also, it takes forever, it took me over 7 hours to get to being on Smackdown and after a few more I'm still not on Raw or even at a mention of getting a shot at the title.
Online causes some problems too where you can't search for matches like you used to be able to and would make sense but you have a background search on that connects you to any random match (despite me setting that I didn't want any 1 on 1 matches, yet still that's all I seemed to get put in to) and there's still lag, a problem that has plagued this game series ever since it got online capabilities, which is crazy 'cause it seems like the perfect game to play online. Universe mode is basically the same as before as is exhibition.
The problems then. The roster has been slimmed back, and though I personally appreciate the NXT guys being in it, I'd imagine that more players would prefer the types of extras they had in the last couple of years from the annals of Wrestlemania or the attitude era, they don't even have some of the current main roster (though not the biggest names but still show up a fair bit) like Zack Ryder. Some of the models are terrible (as ever) and (also as ever) the characters are very outdated. The Shield broke up in May, right? The game didn't come out for another 6 months but those characters are still in shield attire, group, entrance theme, move set, commentary lines and everything. Maybe it's just me but I feel if sports games like FIFA can update players clubs and stats weekly based on performance (and even create new players if a youngster has broke though or has been signed from a club not in the game) all for free, maybe Yukes could do a couple of updates with at least attire, music and videos changed, even if they can't change the commentary lines or create new move sets. (after all, who listens to the commentary anyway, and you can change the move sets yourself).
The match creation modes have been trimmed too. A couple of years ago a great idea was implemented in to this series by having basic matches to choose from and then loads of options to modify from there on to make whatever match you want, whether it be ever likely to happen or not. This has gone now and we are back to what we had before with more rigid match options and no room to modify them.
The biggest problem of all is the create a wrestler. Yukes have always strived to add more and more content every year to the CAW mode, but they appear to have gone backwards this year. Many clothing, hair, face and other options are out as well as classic wrestler entrances to choose from, create a finisher and create an entrance video. To no fault of their own as well you can no longer upload your own songs for entrance themes, so they could have at least added a wider selection of choices rather than just generic ones that someone has sat at a computer for 5 minutes making. This has always been one of, if not the strongest staples of the WWE game series but it's suddenly been stripped down.
Talking of music the menu has become boring. Maybe I'm the only person sad enough to want entrance themes in the menu, but last year another good feature was added (that has also been taken away this year) where you could turn on and off which themes you wanted in the menus and create your own play list. This year we've been stuck with a soundtrack of music that John Cena (yes, that John Cena) himself chose to curse us all with. It didn't take me 2 minutes to turn them all off so now I have silent menus.
So, the game may have improved in the ring, but all the creative things that had made it fun in the past have gone, and they've not made any big leaps forward with online or graphics for their big release on the next gen systems (or are the current gen by this point? It has been a year after all). That's why this is going to have to get a 5/10. Must do better. Finally now I can get to the game I've been waiting for! O
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