I like wrestling. There is an astonishing amount of wrestling on TV every week, so I hardly consider myself an expert on the art form. Basically, I'll watch any WWE pay per view in retrospect that seemed to have excellent matches on it, and I really enjoy going through the WWE Network to watch older matches at my leisure. There have been stretches in the past few years where my wife and I have watched every episode of Raw or Smackdown (never both at the same time), and there have been times in the last few years where I've gone months without watching any Raw or Smackdown. For a lot of wrestling fans, it seems like they exist for wrestling rather than vice versa, and when it feels that way for me, I just tap out and take a break, and haven't really noticed any real issues getting back into it when I feel the itch.
Professional wrestling is a fun and greatly misunderstood art form by the general population, whose perception appears to be "don't you know that it's fake?" Yes, the wrestlers are not actively trying to bludgeon their opponents into submission or unconsciousness. Yes, the ending of wrestling matches and several spots throughout are planned ahead of time. Yes, I still like it. It's live stage fighting that requires an incredible amount of athleticism and acting ability to do well, and if you enjoy watching staged fights in John Wick or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it's not that much of a stretch to enjoy some good old fashioned wrasslin'.
We recently introduced our son to wrestling, and he, like all 11 year old boys, adores it. He's asked over and over for a WWE game for him to play, and so we got him WWE 2K19 for Christmas. As someone who hasn't played a wrestling game at all since WCW/NWO Revenge, I decided to give this one a go, since it was in my house and all. I also decided not to buy the newest one due to the awful reviews it got.
Like most sports games, I jumped right into the "My Career" mode, which has you creating your own wrestler, and taking him through a story mode in which he has to progress from down on his luck independent wrestler to the top of the WWE universe. The character creation options were a bit weird. It was hard to find a lot of stuff after creating your character. For example, I couldn't edit my guy's hair at any point after creation (I'm sure it's there, but it wasn't easy to find), and I could never get my guy to be truly clean shaven. He had these hideous five o'clock shadow sideburns the whole game that drove me nuts. But the breadth of options you have for creation are pretty impressive, even if the UI isn't the best. You can edit your guy's teeth, removing any you want, or making them into pointy vampire fangs. He can have a lot of body oil, some body oil, or no body oil. His skin can take just about any tone you want, from white to black to Satan red. You can put him in robes, pants, shorts, tank tops, sheep masks, etc. You can pick from a wide variety of wrestling styles, and the game defaults your character into a moveset that fits that style. You can also edit this moveset with dozens of additional moves as you please.
The actual game play is...ok. The game seems to revolve around a strategy that mimics how a "real" wrestling match happens. The participants trade offense, building up momentum until a finisher is unleashed, and the crowd holds their breath and waits to see if a 3 count will happen. You can reverse your opponent's attacks by precise inputs, and you have the opportunity to work individual limbs to soften up your opponent for submissions on those limbs, or finishers to them. The hit detection can be very weird at times. You can be facing right at your opponent and run at them, and instead of a dropkick hitting them in the face, you'll go sailing off in a weird direction. This is particularly exacerbated in matches featuring more than two wrestlers, as you'll occasionally get distracted by other wrestlers and shift your focus without your input. This inputs are particularly frustrating when trying to get into and out of the ring. If you can figure out exactly how to get your wrestler to step through the ropes and stand on the apron instead of going all the way out of the ring every time, you're a better man than I. And if you try to step out of the ring but are too near the turnbuckle, you'll just hope right up. Oh, and don't try to get back in the ring if you're too near to the steel steps, or you'll grab the steps instead. I did enjoy the matches on the whole, but am also totally burnt out upon finishing the story.
It's also plagued by weird bugs, which is funny given that apparently the newest game is even worse on this county. There was one match in which my son's opponent literally levitated in mid-air with his feet behind his head wiggling wildly, looking like some sort of bizarre flying octopus. I also had matches end with my team getting pinned, but was credited with the victory anyway. Sometimes your tag attacks will be executed by you and an invisible phantom ally, as your real tag partner waits happily on the apron. These are just three of the many weird bugs that happened during my time in the game.
The commentary is REALLY poor. There were tons of times I would be in singles matches and it would be talking about how great these two tag teams are. I don't know how many times I heard the same comment when doing a move that I was going to break my opponent's arm, sometimes ten times in a single match. Sometimes while chaining together a bunch of moves in succession, the commentators will simply list off their reactions to them in order, even if there commentary is now about ten seconds behind the actual move on which they are commentating. Of the many modern sports games I've played, this one has the worst commentary.
The actual story involved in the My Career mode was really delightful, to be honest. It leans into all of the tropes of professional wrestling, but as it only really has to focus on adequately "booking" a handful of characters, rather than a roster of dozens, it's able to tell a longer and more focused story that builds characters in a more intelligent way than most wrestling storytelling is capable of doing. The pacing felt really weird and non-WWEish, in that my character went from (spoiler alert), an indie wrestler to main eventing Wrestlemania for the Universal Title in one calendar year, but I understand why that is. Some of the character development arcs didn't make enough sense, particularly that of your relationship with Triple H. But some also really shine, like the story featuring Bray Wyatt and "Woken" Matt Hardy that culminates in a brawl outside the Wyatt Family compound and a trip to the Multiverse to wrestle Bret Hart (if you don't like wrestling, you have no idea what I'm talking about, but then again you probably also never clicked on this to begin with). And the final swerve and match setup are really great long burn stories. I would have loved it if they could have made separate stories for a tag team, a heel, and a face, but there's a ton of voice acting and work that went into this story, so I get it. And you can at least make some heel choices throughout if you want to.
There are a TON of wrestlers to pick from, but a lot of them are pretty shamelessly put behind a paywall. To 2K's credit, all of these wrestlers can be bought using in-game currency that you can earn by doing pretty much anything, but if you really want to broaden your roster beyond the current WWE roster and live out all of your Sting vs. Undertaker fantasy matches, get ready to grind or get out your credit card. A few more freebies of some icons would have been nice, but at least you have the option to get all of the greats.
There are modes in this game. Lots of modes. I don't know what most of them do. But if you want to do it, you probably can. They have enormous amounts of customization options for your matches, from managers to rules to venues. If you want to battle at Hell in a Cell, go for it. Elimination Chamber matches? You got it. Money in the Bank? Yup. The Royal Rumble? Go wild. Ladder match? Do it! And so on, and on, and on. Remembering all of the rules about how you climb the ladders/cages, grab stuff, and interact with your various environments can be challenging, and information about the controls is buried within layer upon layer of menus, so good luck. But with this many different ways to play, and the huge amount of actions possible in professional wrestling matches, a bit of control overload is really impossible to avoid.
I enjoyed WWE 2K19, but it is definitely for a certain audience: kids and hardcore wrestling fans. I'm not hardcore enough to explore more deeply, and this is coming from someone who truly enjoys the art form. Maybe I need to check out Fire Pro Wrestling, but I feel remarkably burnt out on wrestling games for the time being. This game is way to buggy, weird, and complex for the average person who just wants to smash someone across the back with a steel chair. I'll give it a 6.5/10.
-TRO
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