It’s been too long since we’ve since had a great WWE video game. Back in the day, we all whiled countless weekends with WWF No Mercy or the early Smackdown! titles, but for years now, WWE games have, like the company itself, been sailing a sea of mediocrity. There was some hope WWE games may find their feet again once 2K Games grabbed the license from the now-departed THQ, but aside from slower, more sim-like in-ring action, the WWE 2K series has been more of a merely okay product.
Of course WWE 2K series doesn’t have to change, hardcore wrestling fans will continue to buy the series regardless, but it could be great. It should be great. Here’s a few things that could take modern WWE video games from “Must I?” to “must have”…
Abandon Realistic Graphics
Every year, WWE breathlessly touts their latest game’s “incredibly realistic” graphics, and every year we get a game where everybody but John Cena and Randy Orton look like weird, lump-faced potato men. Why does this always happen? Well, each new entry in the series sells approximately 2 to 3 million copies, which isn’t bad, but it’s a fraction of the 6 to 7 million the Madden and NBA 2K games sell. It’s an even more paltry compared to FIFA, which moves 15 to 20 million copies every damn year. WWE games are always going to look a step or two behind the times, because they can’t afford the triple-A production values you see in an NBA 2K or FIFA.
How do you solve this dilemma? You get out of the realistic graphics arms race altogether. Look at 2011’s WWE All Stars – it’s intentionally cartoony graphics are still more appealing than anything in WWE 2K16. I’m not saying all games should look exactly like WWE All Stars, the action figure physiques were a teeny bit ludicrous, but some sort of stylized, maybe cell-shaded visual revamp is in order.
Regular Roster Updates
The four best reasons roster updates need to happen.
The fact that WWE games still launch with rosters that are six months out of date is an embarrassment. Madden has been doing weekly roster updates since 2007. I’d be totally fine with roster updates being a paid service. For, say, 30 or 40 dollars, you buy a year-long “season pass” that guarantees that if any new wrestler debuts, anybody changes gimmicks, or say, the entire women’s division gets revamped, your game will be updated with the new characters within a month. If 2K Games can stuff more than 120 characters into WWE 2K16, they have the development bandwidth to keep up with the 10-or-so new faces that get added to the WWE roster each year.
An Online, Connected Career Mode
Continuing on from to the last point, going forward WWE 2K‘s career mode should take place in an accurate representation of WWE. If somebody wins a title on TV, that wrestler should be champion in career mode. The New Day suddenly starts being awesome every week? Make sure those dudes are a stable in the game.
You can still have the classic career mode stuff where you level up your character and move up the ranks, but now you can be a part of actual WWE PPVs. Challenge Brock Lesnar or derail the Roman Reigns express – if you haven’t worked on your character enough, you may get squashed, but if you’re lucky, you can change what’s actually happening on WWE TV. Career mode wouldn’t be able to follow WWE storylines exactly, but making it closer to real life would make it infinitely more immersive and gratifying.
Streamline Character Creation
Which of these 35 identical hairstyles will you pick?
Most gamers (and a lot of game designers) think the best character editors are the ones packed with the most finicky details. This isn’t really the case. A good character editor should allow a player to make varied characters as quickly and easily as possible. Lately, character creation in WWE games has been the polar opposite. You spend two hours toiling away on a character, and he ends up looking like…a guy. Maybe he’s kind of fat or wearing Totino’s Pizza Roll trunks, but he’s nothing worth showing your friends.
The classic N64 WWF games are still the character creation high-water mark, because you could create two or three characters in an hour and have them all look totally unique. You could tinker with your moveset for hours if you wanted to, but you didn’t have to. I’m okay with having a fewer options if it makes character creation feel creative and fun instead of like homework.
Different Wrestling Styles
These two guys shouldn’t be wrestling essentially the same match.
One of my enduring pet peeves with WWE video games is that every character is more-or-less the same once they get in the ring. It doesn’t matter if you’re Daniel Bryan or The Great Khali, you move at the same speed, and your matches look pretty much identical. Grapple, slam, punch, kick, taunt, repeat.
I’m not saying every wrestler should fight completely differently, this isn’t Street Fighter, but there should be a handful of unique styles. And these different styles should interact in unique ways – if you’re playing as The Big Show, you should have to use a different strategy to beat Kalisto than you would to best Mark Henry. It would be a way to make fans of all eras of WWE games happy. If you like the simulation style 2K Games is currently doing, play as a technical specialist. If you want a faster, simpler game, go for a speedy striker like Daniel Bryan. And if you want a guy who falls on his head every second move and sometimes wins by accident, pick Sin Cara.
Focus On Pace And Momentum
Good wrestling is all about playing with the pace of a match. You have your slow bits that build anticipation, followed by your action-packed flurries. Wrestling games generally do a terrible job of replicating this, but it’s the key to making virtual wrestling matches feel like the real thing.
I’m not a game designer, so it’s hard to say exactly how this would work, but I envision something like a “pace meter.” When the meter is high, characters can move faster, strikes do more damage and it’s easier to reverse big moves. When it’s low, grappling and controlling your opponent is encouraged and submissions are more effective. Depending on your character’s wrestling style, they’d excel at one pace or the other – you’d try to take advantage of the slower moments as Kevin Owens, and strike when the pace quickens if you’re AJ Styles.
Alternate History Showcases
What if this guy’s team won?
The 2K Showcase mode has consistently been the best part of recent WWE games. Playing through legendary careers and classic rivalries is fun and educational, but where do you go with Showcase mode? You can continue to draw from history, but the novelty is going to wear off before long.
How about going crazy and embracing a little fantasy booking? What about a Showcase that imagines what would have happened if WCW won the Monday Night Wars? Or if Brock Lesnar never left for the NFL and UFC? Or Stephanie McMahon married Test instead of Triple H? Okay, nobody actually wants to see that last one, but playing with history would give the WWE 2K developers an chance to stretch their imaginations, and give wrestling fans an extra thing to bicker and kvetch over. Win-win.
Online Fantasy Federations
Your options for playing other people online in the WWE 2K games remain painfully limited. You can face another player in a one-off match and, well, that’s about it. Again, looking to other sports games, most of them given players the option to run their own online leagues for years. It’s a proven feature that’s perfectly suited to WWE. Let players set up their own feds with their own titles, authority figures and shows and let them battle it out. Yes, I know fantasy wrestling is painfully uncool, but then so are wrestling video games, so whatevs, man.
Fun, Nostalgic Collectibles
WWE are curators of a massive store of wrestling nostalgia, and WWE games should take better advantage of it. Take a page from the Super Smash Bros. series and have a series of collectible trophies or trading cards. Let players unlock classic clips and all the WWE-owned entrance themes. Toss a couple classic games like WrestleFest or WWF Royal Rumble on the disc as super secret Easter eggs. You own everything wrestling fans love, WWE. Give a little of it back.
Lock The Commentators In A Room Until They Record Something That Isn’t Trash
Admittedly, the graphics guys captured Jerry Lawler’s “ain’t give a sh*t” vibe pretty accurately.
Honestly, I’m not sure how to fix the commentary in WWE games, but Christ on a bicycle, something has to be done. I think the main issue is Michael Cole, Lawler and JBL just aren’t willing to sit down in the booth for long enough to do the job right. As a result, every line of commentary is a generic platitude or robotic-sounding first take. Usually a charming combination of both. If you have to go down the commentary hierarchy to find somebody who will take the job seriously, I’m more than willing to accept Byron Saxton, Rich Brennan and Corey Graves doing all the commentary. Or sh*t, get Hornswoggle and Jojo to do it. I don’t care. I couldn’t be worse than what we’ve been getting.
There you are – a few ideas for improving WWE games from a guy who’s played almost all of ’em. Got any brilliant ideas of your own? Scroll on down and strong-grapple the comments section.
