(Incredibly Late) Review – WWE 2K15

This year’s WWE game has arrived, and for the first time on the newer generation of consoles. Boasting a whole new level of realism, including a massive upgrade to the graphics and scanning technology on the superstars (the likes of which a wrestling game has never seen before), WWE 2K15 looks like it’s supposed to be a masterpiece in games focused on people pretending to beat the hell out of each other. Unfortunately, the phrase “one step forward, two steps back” defines nearly every aspect of this installment.

Take the mentioned “realism,” for example. Sure, the game looks fantastic, and it finally puts the graphics of WWE games in the same league as pretty much every other sports franchise as of late, and the people who had their faces scanned into the game look better than ever. On top of that, there are tons of additions to the small details. The audience members can actually be seen walking to/from their seats, don’t all look like perfect clones of the person 3 feet away from them thanks to wearing different combinations of clothing & merchandise, and finally include kids. Different facial expressions can be seen on the wrestlers during the match depending on the situation . . . and then here’s where the “steps back” begin, because for starters, some of their expressions look pretty awful. When someone such as CM Punk or Summer Rae smiles, they go from accurate depictions to some kind of fat cheeked abomination, as if someone discovered the “warp” tool in PhotoShop and just went ballistic on otherwise great work. Then for some reason, details such as the color of Triple H’s hair can be way off, despite there being clips from the show itself in the game. A series that boasts itself as being made “by the fans, for the fans” getting something as simple as hair color wrong makes very little sense.

♫ He’s got the whole world in his hands ♫

One of the best additions to this year’s game has to be the fact that there are two full story modes to play through this time around. The first is called 2K Showcase, and it’s basically the same concept as the main modes in the last two games, taking a well known piece of history and letting players relive it or see it for the first time by playing through the best matches. This time, it focuses on the huge rivalries of John Cena vs CM Punk, and Triple H vs Shawn Michaels. Both of these rivalries are depicted fantastically in this game, and it added up to being quite a nice trip down memory lane. They both do take some time to get through as well, especially if you go after all of the optional side goals in each match. The only drawback to this mode is that even if you like all four of those wrestlers, it’s going to feel repetitive pretty fast, as you end up only playing as them for a vast majority of their respective story. It was a good idea in theory, but in execution, only having two rivalries to go through (without the extra downloaded content) leaves the feeling that something better could’ve been done, especially when 2K14 covered the best WrestleMania matches of all time.

The other brand new story is 2K’s signature MyCareer mode. In this, you take your created character from the very beginning of the WWE food chain in the Development Center building, and work his (sorry, no custom women, for some questionable reason) way to NXT, then all the way up to becoming WWE champion, with storylines, rivalries and maybe other championship runs along the way. In my 2 runs through the career, I singlehandedly took on The Shield, battled and eventually joined The Wyatt Family, showed Brock Lesnar what the word “conquer” really means, and even became bitter rivals with a friend’s created wrestler. As brilliant of a decision as this mode is, it’s still far from living up to its potential as well. Realism, even as far as the show goes, is nowhere to be seen here. You can be called the “fastest rising star in WWE history” right from the start, and still only get one match a month because the game only gives you something interesting to do when a Pay-Per-View is coming up (which, by the way, you can only select 3 to be involved with per “year”, no matter what your status is). Then, if you’re lucky enough to get a storyline that leads to a title run, you can only successfully defend it 10 times before it’s stripped from you, supposedly so that you can “go on to bigger and better things,” but in reality, it feels like it’s only so that you’re pushed towards finishing it sooner and therefore have to do more careers just to unlock everything hidden in it. There will be times when it gives you a story that ends with a WWE title match too, but you won’t know it until the corresponding PPV match. These will come considerably early on; I found myself trying to come up with ways where I’d win the match and not win the title (like through count-out) just so that I could extend the length of the career. It almost felt cheap of me to do, but that’s what it took to make the overall length more worthwhile.

Unfortunately, neither of my runs included letting The Streak live, but it’s a possibility.

If there’s any one thing that long time wrestling game fans will criticize the series for, it’s that the gameplay pretty much never changes from one game to the next. For the most part, that remains true here, but there are some additions to the experience as a whole . . . they’re just weird additions, to put it lightly. Now, when the match is just beginning, attempting a grapple move now triggers a grappling minigame, in which the 2 players must first basically play Rock Paper Scissors to get into the initial hold, then move the right thumbstick in a circle to find the “sweet spot” and get the next move before the other player does. Although this only happens in some 1-on-1 matches, and the few superstars in the “super heavyweight” class don’t do it at all, it just feels wrong and it slows down the pace of the matches for no good reason other than “realism,” though it really just makes most of the roster act like MMA-style grapplers, which as any fan of the brand knows isn’t true. What’s even worse is that it seems all too often that your AI opponent winds up automatically on the right spot in the grapples, and there’s nothing you can do about it if you’re currently on the receiving end of the hold.

Further slowing down match pace is the new stamina system. Now, there are 3 stages of stamina that a superstar can go through depending on how much energy they use or how much damage they take. If the stamina gets too low on the last stage, doing big moves will tire your character out, making them stop for a breather or be slow to get back to their feet after doing something like hitting a finisher. While this feature does make sense in theory, it’s not pulled off very well. Some of the guys who pull off explosive matches on a regular basis seem to get tired out way too fast if you try playing them according to what their real life counterparts can handle. This is partly due to the fact that all of the wrestlers’ stats are still determined by how popular they were at the time of the game being made, instead of their legitimate skill levels or agility. Often times, I found myself pulling off a big move, and then staying down equally as long as my opponent, defeating the whole purpose of doing that move in the first place. Basically, the feature either needs some better tuning and balance, or to just be removed entirely in the next game, because the WWE games have succeeded in the past from having just the right amount of realism while still acknowledging that it’s just a game (one about a sport that’s equally entertainment, at that), and it all just doesn’t feel right when that mix is changed. Although both of these features can be turned off in the options menu, those choices are completely ignored once you’re playing either of the story modes, which just adds on to the feeling of them being forced. Add on some other questionable decisions, such as very unnecessary camera shakes whenever a punch or kick hits, and it gets very confusing trying to figure out if they really did want it to be true to the real life product or not.

Don’t be mad, Cena, there’s always 2K16!

Above all else, the WWE series has been praised for offering an incredible amount of customization options to its players, from characters to championship belts, arenas, and finishing moves. In 2K15, the list stops at characters, because none of those other options are even available this time through, and even then, it feels very bare-bones when compared to how many options the previous games had. Granted, this time around you can fully edit the attires of the existing roster, so you can make them look completely ridiculous, or add in a more up-to-date or retro look to the best of your ability (not just color swapping like the previous “Superstar Threads” feature was), and there’s finally a system in place to upload images to the 2K servers to use on characters as you see fit (within reason and while staying appropriate, of course), but the overall number of clothing options themselves has been drastically reduced.

Overall, it’s hard to recommend WWE 2K15 to anybody, unless all you have is a new-gen console and you’re just aching to beat up people in wrestling gear, in which case it’s your only option at the moment. The scattered improvements give me hope for future releases, but the insane number of missing features in this one is just unforgivable. I have to admit, I did still find myself having some fun playing it, even if that fun wasn’t at the same level as it was for the previous two years. It’s not necessarily an awful game by any means, but it’s certainly far from being The Great One.

WWE 2K15 Score: 6/10 Version Played: Xbox One Also On: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 What Was Played: Just about everything the game has to offer.

Jeremy Harrison has been into gaming and just about everything nerdy or out of the norm for as long as he can remember. He likes to keep an open mind about things, but also has a strangely high amount of fun getting into a rant or good debate. . . which is probably why he was recruited to this site in the first place. You can Email Jeremy or follow Jeremy on Twitter @NightmareAsylum or Facebook