WWE 2K16

Last week I received the opportunity to fly out to San Francisco, California courtesy of 2K Games to preview WWE 2K16, the latest game in the WWE video game series.  As a fan of WWE I was excited to take the offer to fly out and thanks to WWE 2K15 hitting Steam earlier this year, that put me in a pretty good position to compare what I experienced with 2K15 against what I previewed with 2K16.  While I did enjoy WWE 2K15, I still had quite a few complaints that I was hoping would be addressed with WWE 2K16, and for the most part they were.  That being said, let’s dive into the squared circle once again.

I spent most of the time working with the Exhibition, Creation, and WWE Showcase modes to see how they stack up against last year’s versions.  WWE Showcase Mode didn’t seem to differ much from last year aside from the fact that there was only one available; Stone Cold Steve Austin.  I know Austin’s on the cover but I figured there would be at least two showcases to play through, though maybe more will come in future DLC packs.  Beyond that I didn’t notice anything different from last year’s iteration.  The showcase starts off with Austin’s win at the 1996 King of the Ring, complete with his entire victory speech where he states that “Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!”.  It’s also very nice to hear the team of Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross on commentary again.

I played a couple more matches beyond that where I fought Bret Hart at Survivor Series and then again at Wrestlemania 13.  Much like last year all you really have to do is win the match to move on, but if you complete the “optional” objectives you’ll relive some of the more important moments of the matches and also unlock items such as arenas and superstars.  Beyond that though, I didn’t see much of a difference from WWE 2K15, and that’s not a bad thing.  I enjoyed 2K15’s showcase modes other than I wish a few had gone on longer.  I’d have to imagine that Austin’s showcase mode will go on for quite a bit with everything he’s done in his career.

I spent a lot of time just playing exhibition matches to check out the controls and the mechanics and most of it seems unchanged from last year, though there are a few changes worth noting.  Reversals have changed a bit and you have a limited number of them to use.  Below your stamina meter are yellow blocks, typically between three and five.  One of these blocks goes away when you reverse most moves (some more powerful moves require two blocks) and they’ll recharge over time.

On the one hand this makes for a more realistic match as not every move will get reversed and you have to decide when you should reverse a move and when you should hold off and let your opponent wear himself down.  On the other hand though, if you run out of reversals you’re a sitting duck as you’re basically helpless until one of your blocks recharges and it can take a minute or so, during which your opponent will be beating the daylights out of you.  Overall I didn’t mind this change that much, but there is one change I was starting to loathe at the end of the event: submissions.

When you applied a submission maneuver to an opponent in 2K15 you had a meter you had to fill up by rapidly pressing a button, but if your opponent wasn’t weak enough if would quickly empty out and the hold would break.  That makes sense, it portrays the fact that you have to wear down your opponent before applying a hold.  WWE 2K16 introduces a new way to do this which is a wheel where there’s a red bar and a blue bar.  The attacker moves the red bar and the defender moves the blue bar, and whenever the two meters cross each other the circle starts to fill red.  If the defender keeps his bar away from the attacker’s bar, the red starts to go away.  If the wheel fills up with red, the defender submits and the match is over.  That means that if the defender is really unlucky, they can be made to submit within the opening moments of the match.  This is probably the only thing I experienced that I did not like at all, and this is how my run on Showcase mode ended as Bret Hart had locked me in a random submission hold and after about twenty seconds I couldn’t keep my blue bar away from Hart’s red bar long enough and I submitted.

Beyond that there’s not much more in general gameplay that I noticed was different.  The pin mechanic is about the same, but where as in 2K15 you had to hold a button to fill up a meter and release it at the right moment, it’s the opposite in 2K16 as a circle will fill up and you have to hit the button when it hits a green area.  However, I did notice that on missed attempts the bar will move when it goes to fill up again, but overall I like this mechanic a bit more than last year’s version.  Also you can now do things like run in at the start of a match as your opponent makes his way to the ring, pin with your feet on the ropes, and even argue with the ref about a two-count (though that opportunity never came up for me…but then again I typically played as a babyface and that’s something a babyface doesn’t do).

Then we have the entrances which are quite the improvement from previous versions.  In every other WWE game I’ve played you’ll have a wrestler make his or her entrance, the screen fades to black (and maybe to a loading screen depending on the game/system), then wrestler number two makes their entrance, and so on.  In 2K16 it’s completely seamless.  Your wrestler comes out first, then as their music is still playing when you’re in the ring the camera might briefly cut to the commentary team “talking”, then the next wrestler’s music will play as they come to the ring.  The entrances and titantron videos look really good this year and the wrestler models look a bit improved over last year as well.

Next I dabbled in WWE Universe Mode to see what all that entailed over last year.  I didn’t do much with it in 2K15 admittedly, but it looks pretty good in 2K16.  You can still play though the matches and rivalries, you can put together teams and allocate championships, but something I didn’t notice from last year unless I missed it is the ability to create an entire show.  You can put together a show consisting of 3-7 matches for a minor show (such as Superstars or Main Event) or 5-7 matches for a major show (Raw and Smackdown), then put together your matches, rivalries, and so on.  You know, just in case that four shows a week isn’t enough for you…or if you think you can put together a card better than the WWE can.  I didn’t really get time to check out My Career mode, but from what I’ve seen and understand it looks like from a gameplay standpoint it functions similar to WWE 2K16; create a superstar and move through the ranks from the Performance Center and NXT all the way up to the Hall of Fame.

Finally I looked at the mode I was most interested in seeing if it’s been improved; the creation suite.  If you’ve played WWE 2K15 then you might have noticed that the creation modes were…lacking so to speak.  In 2K16 it’s been vastly improved.  To get the easy stuff out of the way first, you can create both superstars and divas this year and the creation of both of them seem improved a lot with more options for how you physically look, plus the fact that you can create a diva at all is an improvement over last year where you could copy an existing diva and just change a couple aspects.  Something new I noticed was how certain attributes are distributed.  You have a few sliders and how you move them affects if your superstar is respectful or disrespectful, prideful or egotistical, and so on.  There was also an option to import a photo of your head/face into the game, but there were no cameras setup to allow me to mess around with that option (the previews were all done on PS4s), but that would help someone like me who can’t recreate themselves in a wrestling game to save their lives.

The naming has also been improved a lot.  There are a lot of first and last name options, plus the nickname selection has been improved.  Furthermore you can have your name announced in different ways by putting the nickname before, after, or in the middle of your name.  Outside of that I didn’t do much with creating a move set or an entrance as I have the tendency to take all day on those, but I did briefly look at them and they seem about the same as last year.  I am disappointed by the fact that there aren’t too many generic tag team entrances and only four three-man tag entrances: New Day, Evolution, The Shield, and The Wyatt Family, and no options for a custom or generic three-man entrance.

The last creation option I looked at was one that a lot of people wanted to see return: Create A Championship.  I rarely ever did anything with this option when it was present in any previous games, but if I pick up WWE 2K16 down the road I’ll likely spend some time here.  Basically just imagine how you’d like a custom championship belt to look and you can do it.  I didn’t dive too deep into it because, again, I’d be there all day customizing a belt, but you have a wide variety of plates, designs, colors, and patterns to use.  Heck, you can even make a belt with a plaid color design.

The highlights of the event were getting visited by WWE superstars Daniel Bryan and Dean Ambrose, as well as a mini-tournament at the end where the two finalists took home a replica WWE Tag Team Championship belt and the winner got a black baseball bat autographed by Sting.  Sadly I didn’t fare all that well as I only got Sami Zayn to the second round before being taken out by Finn Balor, but the highlight of the tournament had to have been a 20+ minute semi-final match between Finn Balor and Neville that had it been featured on NXT, it would have easily been match of the night.

My main complaint going into this was the lack of the Four Horsewomen being playable in the game (Bayley, Charlotte, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch), but I’d consider that only a minor nitpick after playing the game itself.  After playing WWE 2K15, 2K16 is a major step up.  There are a couple of areas that I believe still need some work.  Aside from the aforementioned submission mechanics, some animations could be improved.  The most notable is for Enzo Amore and Big Cass when they make their entrance to Enzo’s “My name is Enzo Amore” routine, namely their arm motions when Enzo exclaims “and you can’t…teach…that” as they really don’t match up.  Beyond that though I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game and am looking forward to playing more when it comes out.