#Wwe 2k 16 game archive#
With its clever use of archive footage and the enlisting of Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler to provide the commentary, the mode is a celebration of everything that's great about professional wrestling - the pageantry, the over-the-top drama, and above all, the nostalgia. Although not new to the series, its a wonderful feature and one that should truly delight hardcore fans. The 2K Showcase also returns, and this time charts the career of cover star Steve Austin. Taking a personalised Superstar from the little leagues of NXT right up to the Championship Belt is one of the most enjoyable sports game career mode experiences around, and while it may not reach the heights of Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain, 2K16's variety of matches, rivalries and PPVs - all as you level up and customise your grappler - makes for a hugely compelling timesink. The roster was too small and the game modes you've come to expect from the franchise were either truncated or missing entirely.ĢK16 largely puts that right, with an expanded, richer M圜areer mode, a huge selection of wrestlers to choose from - albeit limited when it comes to Divas - and a fully featured create-a-wrestler suite. Sparring was buggy and felt frustratingly unresponsive at times, and it seemed like huge amounts of content had been lopped out of the game at the last minute. 2K15 was the series' first next-gen release and had clearly been rushed due to struggles with the transition.
Tyler Breeze is about to find out if he's been a naughty boy.įor starters, it would have been very difficult for 2K16 not to represent some improvement from last year's iteration. So how have they managed it? The answer is - excuse the pun - quite hard to pin down. Not since the 1-2-3 Kid beat Razor Ramon has there been such an unlikely turnaround. By finding that sweet spot between "sports" and "entertainment" the developers have managed to create what, for my money, feels like the best wrestling game experience for at least eight years. I'm pleased to report that WWE2K16 bucks this trend. Whereas once every console owner would have a Smackdown! or WCW vs NWO in their collection, the titles seem to be released now strictly for members of the IWC. The joint efforts of developers Yuke's and Visual Concepts have been universally poorly received and, somewhat tragically, the genre has been sidelined.
#Wwe 2k 16 game series#
It's fair to say then that, in recent years, the WWE2K series has failed to rise to this challenge. Enjoying wrestling involves a leap of faith, and, more than anything, it's this gap between the real and the imagined which makes creating a compelling wrestling game so difficult.
Unlike, say, FIFA, a WWE game shouldn't strive to be a true representation of its source material. Those punches aren't connecting, the barbed wire has caps on and, let's face it, the People's Elbow really doesn't look like it would hurt that much.
For the most part, it's a sports sim: the performers can be motion captured and the action digitally recreated just as you would with a football or basketball game.īut professional wrestling isn't a sport. When you think about it, a wrestling game represents something of a unique proposition for a developer.