More product than performance.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/72553/wwe-2k25-switch-2-review
The world of professional wrestling (or sports entertainment, in current parlance) has been a fixture of nearly my entire life. I remember sleepovers at friends’ houses where they had VHS tapes of Hulk Hogan facing off against the likes of The Ultimate Warrior, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, and The Undertaker before he went on a Kid Rock-fueled mid-life crisis “American Badass” version of himself. My love affair stems from the attitude era, with figures like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, HHH (Along with Generation X) and Mankind took center stage. I didn’t have discriminating taste, so I also adored WCW with “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan and the NWO, Goldberg the one-trick pony, and now yoga enthusiast Diamond Dallas Page (DDP). It hit at the right time in an impressionable teenage me watched with wide eyes at the obscenity on display, whether it be all the boys in school emulating DX’s “suck it” crotch chop or attempting powerbombs in the backyard. I understand now the wicked behavior behind the scenes, but the counter-culture nature of the Attitude Era matched the tone of the time. How else would Limp Bizkit be featured in a trailer for one of the biggest matchups of The Rock vs. Stone Cold? I bowed out during the transition to what’s now known as the Ruthless Aggression era, but with the lead-up to Cody Rhodes’ win over Roman Reigns for the title and The Rock’s persistent ability to insert himself into the center stage with his main character energy I started casually watching again. World Wrestling Entertainment is an apt name for what the product is today, and that ethos is on full display in WWE 2K25.
WWE 2K25 feels at home with the slate of other 2K Games’ sports titles. It’s a surprisingly grounded, heavier feeling character movement with a stickiness in grappling, punches, and kicks that feel like choreographed movement rather than heavy blows. The control scheme is an uncomplicated, familiar language to me – light attack, heavy attack, grappling the baseline, with different directional inputs producing different attacks. Players can get locked into tangos where a radial icon pops on screen. When that happens, different directions will prompt options like transitioning the grapple or attacking. Then another empty circle pops on screen, and each player must find the right direction to fill it like a meter and win the encounter. This structure is used similarly when outside the ring, on the top of the turnbuckle, or on the outer edge of the ring. Peppered into the mix are short quick-time events. If you’re on the receiving end of a slam or string of heavy attacks, a split-second button icon pops on screen, and if you time it right the wrestler will perform a counter. It feels very antithetical to the sim ethos the game seems to follow. That said, I think the fundamentals are sound. Once the opponent has been adequately pummeled you can pop the finisher on them, including an option to put yourself in a stance while they’re getting off the ground. In most instances, this is as the name suggests the final attack needed before being able to execute the three-count. An interesting twist is match ratings. Through a match, the crowd will respond positively depending on the excitement from the fight. Not repeating attacks yields a better response. You can taunt the other wrestlers or fans to elicit a reaction from the crowd. The rating system encourages you to think in terms of not only winning the game but also having an epic showdown. I like it in theory more than practice, because sometimes I just want to squash the competition, but there’s no glory or excitement when the outcome is preordained, I guess.
There’s a robust set of match types, features, and modes to explore. Table matches, Hell in a Cell, Royal Rumble, and Elimination Chamber are a handful of them. Most matches let you choose whether they’re one-on-one, triple threats, or more superstars at the same time. You can also adjust individual rules for each match type such as win conditions (pinfall, submission, etc.), amount of health, and whether ring-out exists. Frankly, I could have been a happy camper spending all my time picking a match type and jumping right into the action. The other modes try to expand into more grand showings. MyRise is the standard career mode, where you customize a character and go through your story of stardom as the number one pick of the WWE draft. Dialogue is hokey, and the scenarios try to blur the line between performative and actual drama that splits the difference in an unsatisfying way, but has enough meat on its bones for someone looking for the drama and spectacle beyond the individual matches.
A showcase mode aptly features the Bloodline, with matches mirroring the superstars’ history as well as some dream match ups. I didn’t grasp how far back the lineage went intertwined with professional wrestling, so it was neat stepping as far back as Yokozuna and experiencing how the group came to prominence present day. I dabbled in MyFaction, Universe, and MyGM, but none of them were able to grab me during my time with the game. I’ve grown tired of games underpinned by opening digital blind packs of cards with progress that hinges on spending currency. The Universe mode is the closest to what I was looking for, a more substantive mode than custom matches. One in which you choose a WWE superstar and try to work your way to success by clinging to which events you want to dominate in (Raw, Smackdown, or NXT). Not every mode is going to appeal to me, I get that. The problem is that several of them aren’t compelling to me and have a level of overhead that makes the time investment too high.
According to 2K, the game features more than 300 superstars along with a healthy number of venues, ranging from WCW’s Hollywood Havoc pay per view along with Smackdown and WrestleMania. Create-a-character has a But here’s the problem – a good half of them are not available from the jump. You can’t touch them before jumping into the other modes and making progress in them, MyRise & Showcase modes as the biggest barriers. If the wait is too long, you can also purchase them in-store using virtual currency. I don’t understand the move outside of pressure to drop cash on virtual currency, side-stepping the grind present in-game. I’m sure there are plenty of players who will naturally play through these modes and over time unlock pre-goth Rhea Ripley or several iterations of CM Punk, but Kurt Angle, Booker T, and Batista are stuck behind paywall hell? I understand those characters are old hat today, but it’s emblematic of a terrible ethos this game lives by. I want my full roster, unobstructed by time sinks and walled gardens. The situation stinks and makes the game feel incomplete.
One thing modern-day WWE does best is presentation. The pyrotechnics, the large, flashing bright lights adorned throughout the entrance stage and around the ring itself, and the indulgent walks to the ring the superstars do are all on display. It’s an important pillar of pre-match anticipation, but it didn’t take long for me to hit the skip button. The arena level presentation hits all the right notes. What doesn’t are the character models. There are some characters that just look off. Of all people, HHH might have been the worst, with a flattening of facial features that are ugly in a way only a mother could love. This isn’t a reflection of Switch 2’s power differential with its competitors – the gameplay runs seamlessly; the graphics are downgraded but not obscenely so. It’s a fundamental visual miss that’s surprising for a form of entertainment that’s so focused on presentation and opulence. WWE 2K25 has the bloodline faction painted all over it, with manager Paul Heyman’s expressive face meeting you at every step. They want you to know that the bloodline is THE dominant faction in wrestling entertainment and Roman Reins is your tribal chief, title belt or otherwise.
Another elephant in the room to address is the user interface. There’s a bell curve to in-game menus and user interfaces. Most fall in the middle, being workman-like and something you don’t think of one way or another. WWE 2K25’s menu navigation is atrocious. Scrolling through pages of menus using shoulder buttons, with each mode having a Russian nesting doll sensibility of submenus with ever present Paul Heyman posing with exaggerated expressions and a self-seriousness that is comical. Loading times generally is not an issue in isolation, but with each submenu comes a load time that is cumulatively slow. It’s a severe amount of bloat that separates the player from the action for too long.
WWE 2k25 is a game with a solid, satisfying gameplay foundation, a flashiness befitting the product, and options galore to play your way. It also has game modes that aren’t all that compelling, a questionable presentation of their superstars’ appearance, a silly amount of self-importance, and a user interface that rivals the worst design this side of Sakurai menu screens. For me, returning to wrestling games with WWE 2k25 is like returning to your hometown after being gone for a decade. The bones are still there, you can see the resemblance in the local landmarks, but the people are different. You meet with friends to reminisce, but the dive bar is now a flashy speakeasy with a cover fee.
Topic: WWE 2K25 (Switch 2) Review (Read 31 times)
