Though the same engine largely remains in place and a few older animations have still somehow remained, WWE 2K22 is a sizable step above anything that the WWE 2K series has put out to date – especially on PS5. And honestly, that feels great to say after the absolute, stoat-banging abomination that was WWE 2K20. At launch for example, I’ve yet to see a single glitch anywhere in the game after nearly 30 hours play – no wrestlers getting their limbs caught up in the ropes, ladders bouncing up into the heavens or faces exploding in the Create A Superstar mode. With two and a half years of development time on the clock versus the usual ten months or so that the series usually gets, WWE 2K22 shows a great many strides taken elsewhere in its design. Though I certainly appreciate that these rosters are finalised a fair way ahead of time, it’s somewhat bad optics to see so many superstars that are now with other competing promotions still featuring in the game not least because it makes WWE 2K22 feels more dated than it actually is. Speaking of the last few years, it’s a touch disappointing to discover that nearly twenty percent of the superstars from WWE 2K22’s roster are no longer with the company. Simply put, WWE 2K22 plays so much better than any WWE 2K game in the last ten years. Contests between two hoss wrestlers now feel appropriately devastating, while a match between a pair of technical savants is now filled with the sort of furious reversals and counters that one would realistically expect. Taken together with the new hybrid combination system, which allows wrestlers to chain together strikes and grapples into a single stream of continuous aggression, WWE 2K22 is resolutely capable of replicating the sort of ebb and flow of the sort of real-life wrestling match that got us all watching and so compellingly engaged in the first place. These evasions however cannot be used indefinitely as they require a small quantity of stamina to pull off – encouraging frugal and strategic use of them in each match. Something of a first for the WWE 2K series, wannabe superstars can now deftly roll/cartwheel/dodge out of danger at a moment’s notice, simultaneously getting them out of danger while also forcing the enemy to readjust their position before the next attack. That’s not all – in addition to having infinite reversals, WWE 2K22 also brings a new combo breaker mechanic which allows you to snap the momentum of a combination attack so long as you’re able to match the button press of the incoming attack with the same attack yourself. WWE 2K22 thankfully ‘future endeavoured’ this concept, instead allowing players to unleash an unlimited number of reversals upon one another and thus restoring much of the frenetic nature of competition within the squared circle as nature intended. This resulted in contests largely devoid of skill or fun where one player would simply wait for the other to run out of reversals before wailing on their defenceless foe en route to an easy victory. An absolute exercise in frustration, WWE 2K20 absolutely undercut any enjoyment that could be had with the game by only permitting players to only use a finite of reversals.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |