REVIEW – New year, another WWE adaptation. The franchise, mainly known in North America, is an annual release by 2K (=Take-Two) and has had a simplified gameplay in recent years to make it as easy as possible for fans to get into the game, which heavily relies on professional wrestling and its theatrical style, but compared to recent years, it’s not sure if it’s worth spending $70 if you bought one a few years ago.

Experience a gripping retelling of WrestleMania’s greatest moments in 2K Showcase of the Immortals in WWE 2K24, where you can relive a collection of some of the most unforgettable, career-defining matches.

Headlong into absurdity

The more a wrestling game focuses on the insanity, the more it can engage players, and WWE 2K24 being what it is, fans can certainly get busy quickly with decades of wrestling history at their disposal. The crazy gameplay can include throwing weapons (and it looks exactly as stupid as it should), and there will also be a constant exchange of blows with your opponent via a QTE. You can even smash your opponent until you can throw them into a coffin (Casket mode) or an ambulance (Ambulance mode), and you may not even need to know how to use it, as chances are it will just be random smashing that will be used during the match. Meanwhile, the referee role can be played by another wrestler that we can control (Special Guest Referee), and here you have to time when to call a move a foul, or when one person is pinning another, or you can get bored of the whole thing to get into the fight, and if you do this at a sufficiently unexpected moment, the match can be just as unpredictable as watching a program on a TV channel.

Showcase mode encapsulates four decades of Wrestlemania, so it won’t be what we’ve seen in previous episodes, so if we’re tired of John Cena, we’ll get Hulk Hogan instead, brother. In this game mode, you win if you defeat your opponent, but if you want more rewards, you have to replay the matches as they originally happened, so you have to follow a specific order. Only now, success depends more on artificial intelligence, or making the right move at the right time. But one rule must never be forgotten: you can leave the ring, but you have to come back as soon as possible, because the referee can disqualify you. If he starts counting, there is a risk that if we miss something in the match, we will have to start all over again because we cannot count on checkpoints.

Ass in the ring

There are two other career modes. Undisputed focuses on male wrestlers and Unleashed focuses on female wrestlers. One is about challenging Roman Reigns after he relinquishes his title after thousands and thousands of days, and the other is about moving from the independent scene to WWE and the scandals that come with it. Using social media, improving our stats, those are not left out either. And then in MyGM we can create our own matches to make as much profit as possible, in MyFaction we have the same microtransactions (Ultimate Team, only Take-Two style…). But now it feels like it’s an annual game, so there’s never enough progress to say it’s worth investing in this year’s installment.

There are a lot of characters, a lot of opportunities for fun, but it is a niche game, at least in Europe. It’s not for everyone, so it might not grab your attention, but it’s certainly better than WWE 2K20, which saw a change in development, with Visual Concepts taking over from Japan’s Yuke’s. They’re also the guys behind the NBA 2K games, and you could see how deep the studio was being thrown into the water. But time has proven the studio right.

Finishing move to win(?)

WWE 2K24 gets a 7/10 because it can be fun to play. The moves can be tied together nicely, the stronger finishing moves (super finishers) are nice, but the AI can still be frustrating, the hair physics (and sometimes the ropes) still have a tendency to look off, and it’s nice that WrestleMania has been given a sort of playable documentary (something like this was done recently in a MotoGP). There are returning game modes, and that’s good. The more options the game offers, the more WWE 2K gets back to where it used to be, back in the PS1 and PS2 era. And there’s still a long way to go. So for those who like WWE, you can think of the rating as an 8.5/10, because you’ll be able to experience a lot more of everything Visual Concepts’ product has to offer.

-V-

Publisher: 2K (Take-Two)

Developer: Visual Concepts

Style: pankration

Release: March 8, 2024.