Rasslin' Video Games

[Cliff Hanger]

Immediate thoughts and observations after 2 hrs or so playing 2k24 before work:

 

1) it feels significantly more difficult. That's not a bad thing in the early going, but as I get deeper into Faction mode it's gonna piss me off.

2) Vince's face has been blurred out in the historical footage. No idea what the WM17 match is gonna be like. Corey Graves hosts the intros and narrates the historical footage; after 3 matches Hogan is the only other person to do new jnterview footage (but between Savage/Steamboat, Hogan/Andre, and Rude/Warrior, Steamboat's the only other one still around)

3) a lot of the Legends are gated behind Showcase matches; guys like Warrior and Savage who are usually purchasable are now there. (I wish there were a way to get the Deluxe Edition without having to get the Supercharger; I'm weird and I LIKE having a shop full of little things to unlock)

4) they added all the Big Event stage dress for NXT except I think Heat Wave, which is cool. 

[No Point Stance]

What even is Faction mode? What little I know of it suggests that it's some kinda card trading game, which always sounds like a pathetic waste of space and development resources. Think I clicked on it once in 2K23 and then reset the console two pages into the intro, I was so uninspired.

[Cliff Hanger]

30 minutes ago, No Point Stance said:

What even is Faction mode? What little I know of it suggests that it's some kinda card trading game, which always sounds like a pathetic waste of space and development resources. Think I clicked on it once in 2K23 and then reset the console two pages into the intro, I was so uninspired.

It's basically an arcade tower mode with EA Ultimate Team-style gachapon card drawing to unlock new characters. It's hypermonetized to shit and back, unfortunately, but you get enough freebies to hold my interest. You set up teams of 4 men, 4 women and a manager, and throw them at a series of matches with various rule sets. Right now, only the nerfed lower-quality versions of characters are available, more will roll out over the coming year and eventually most new cards will have better stats than the "real" versions in the other modes. I wish it weren't so determined to bully me into spending more money (I will not be spending more money), but I find it really relaxing to play with a podcast on because it's just an endless string of matches with different rules.

[No Point Stance]

Yah, fuck that. Anything built around microtransactions can kiss my ass.

[Technico Support]

1 hour ago, Cliff Hanger said:

It's basically an arcade tower mode with EA Ultimate Team-style gachapon card drawing to unlock new characters. It's hypermonetized to shit and back, unfortunately, but you get enough freebies to hold my interest. You set up teams of 4 men, 4 women and a manager, and throw them at a series of matches with various rule sets. Right now, only the nerfed lower-quality versions of characters are available, more will roll out over the coming year and eventually most new cards will have better stats than the "real" versions in the other modes. I wish it weren't so determined to bully me into spending more money (I will not be spending more money), but I find it really relaxing to play with a podcast on because it's just an endless string of matches with different rules.

Wow.  Reading that got me like

 

[NikoBaltimore]

I tried some of that last year but figure if I'm going to kill some time then might as well try MyRise instead of MyFaction.  For one it doesn't involve microtransactions and it does unlock some random stuff I might not need.  But it's fine.  Plus this year's MyRise sounds a bit more interesting than last year.

Also from the sounds of it I'm glad I don't have to do the random bullshit in Showcase just to progress through the matches.  As long as I unlock the stuff then I'm cool without having to see every cutscene.

[Ramo2653]

The main appeal to MyFaction this year to me is that you can actually unlock people to use in other modes this year. I'd never touch it otherwise.

[Ramo2653]

The model choices are always interesting in these games too. Like Josh Briggs has his usually jeans and plaid cutoff outfit but Brooks Jensen has his red shorts with stripes side and slick backed hair from his brief run with Kianna James last year. 

I think playing back to back years in 10+ years for me helps with the mechanics for this game since there's a lot of stuff you can do. But I'm digging it again. Just gotta wait for the creators to fill out these rosters a bit.

[Travis Sheldon]

2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Wow.  Reading that got me like

 

It's one of the things that help me not to play EA or 2K sports games.

[Technico Support]

42 minutes ago, Travis Sheldon said:

It's one of the things that help me not to play EA or 2K sports games.

Just...reading a whole paragraph about microtransactions and bullshit that's on top of a game you already paid $60 - 70 for, some game mode specifically designed to nickel and dime you...fuuuuuck.  I expect that from free games, sure.  But this?  This is just gross to me.

[Cliff Hanger]

I feel like I should mention that I have not spent a dime on that mode in the 3 years it's existed, I just play til it gets too hard to continue without spending money and then nope out. But I certainly don't blame y'all for just avoiding it entirely.

 

At the very least you may want to boot up the mode one time to unlock classic Seamus (including his theme song) then bail without actually doing a match.

[Chaos]

1 minute ago, Cliff Hanger said:

At the very least you may want to boot up the mode one time to unlock classic Seamus (including his theme song) then bail without actually doing a match.

I was wondering if Sheamus was the unlock for everyone.

Also, what characters are still locked in the roster after the super charger? I know there's a couple. 

[odessasteps]

Creed and Breeze are streaming it tonight for the curious. 

[Cliff Hanger]

1 hour ago, Chaos said:

I was wondering if Sheamus was the unlock for everyone.

Also, what characters are still locked in the roster after the super charger? I know there's a couple. 

I'm still at work and can't check yet. The ones I know for sure are Steamboat, Savage, Liz, George Steele, Andre, retro Hogan, Rude, Warrior and Heenan. In later matches I'm not sure who's completely locked and who's just a Persona. There's also the fictional characters from prior years' Rise stories in this year's Rise, not sure if there are any Legends locked like Molly and Jean-Paul Levesque last year or if it's just arenas and fictional chars.

 

ETA: Okay, while there are a lot of alternate versions in Showcase, it looks like the only other totally-locked wrestlers are Bret, Shamrock, Angle and Rousey per the Universe Mode char select, though there are 3 "???" entries that presumably come out in either Rise or, like Bruno last year and Dom the year before, are un-advertisrd Showcase rewards for 100%ing the mode.

Edited March 5 by Cliff Hanger
Added the list of totally-locked chars

[Ramo2653]

As someone who bought the super duper special ultimate edition, I have some MyFaction slots to unlock:

Someone between the Elite Cody Action Figure and Elton Prince

Someone between The Hurricane and Ilja

Someone between Seth and 2015 Seth so I'm guessing another Seth variant

Someone between Trick Williams and Triple H

The all have a MF indicator next to the slot. There are unlocked people for me with a SHC indicator (Andre, Bret Hart and '92 Bret are examples) so I assume they would come from the Showcase mode but they were available for me once the game unlocked for me last night. It was actually kinda cool to unlock guys after I played the showcase mode last year after holding off for so long so I assume there won't be extra guys for me to unlock after that.

And I can't see myself dumping money into MyFaction if there's only 4 people to unlock and they're most likely variants of existing wrestlers.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

I haven't played a Smackdown / 2K game in forever. So this may be a dumb take. But I do play Madden Ultimate Team every year. It's basically the only mode I play in Madden. And I get everyone poo - pooing micro transactions. But if its anything like MUT, you don't have to spend money right? Like I didn't even buy Madden this year. Got it free with Gamepass a few weeks back. Built up a 91 rated team already without spending a single cent.

Is that possible in this? Or is this full on the only way to actually play the mode and have fun with it is spending money? Can't you just get good at the game and grind it out and use in game currency to buy the stuff? I'm not at all interested in buying this, tho I am curious about the answer after seeing everyone post about it.

[Cliff Hanger]

3 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

I haven't played a Smackdown / 2K game in forever. So this may be a dumb take. But I do play Madden Ultimate Team every year. It's basically the only mode I play in Madden. And I get everyone poo - pooing micro transactions. But if its anything like MUT, you don't have to spend money right? Like I didn't even buy Madden this year. Got it free with Gamepass a few weeks back. Built up a 91 rated team already without spending a single cent.

Is that possible in this? Or is this full on the only way to actually play the mode and have fun with it is spending money? Can't you just get good at the game and grind it out and use in game currency to buy the stuff? I'm not at all interested in buying this, tho I am curious about the answer after seeing everyone post about it.

You can have fun with it for a good while for free, probably all the way thru the current single pllayer content. But when the new additions start dropping, the free packs will leave you at a huge disadvantage. If you send a Gold or Emerald-ranked guy in against someone who's spending real money to get Diamond level cards as soon as they start getting added, or into a 3v1 handicap vs the CPU, you'll be up against someone with double your life bars who hits way harder than you. Last year I tapped out after chapter 5 of 9 of the big Proving Grounds mode (each chapter is 30 matches with 3 difficulties, and you get either a free pack of cards or a single high-level card for beating a five-match sub chapter with the Legend difficulty on every match) and at about week 22-23 of the smaller towers that get added Mondays--though I could still enjoy the Faction War 4v4 matches.

[NikoBaltimore]

Like Ramo I got the super deluxe pack and got most things unlocked from the start.  Only thing to unlock were the WM arenas from Showcase Mode so to breeze through it I changed the difficulty and sliders then put it back to normal once done.  I saw some wrestlers where still hidden in MyFaction but unless there's a list I'm not seeing much urge to do much with the mode.  I did go in and got old school Sheamus and might dabble in it some but we'll see.

[Cliff Hanger]

21 minutes ago, NikoBaltimore said:

Like Ramo I got the super deluxe pack and got most things unlocked from the start.  Only thing to unlock were the WM arenas from Showcase Mode so to breeze through it I changed the difficulty and sliders then put it back to normal once done.  I saw some wrestlers where still hidden in MyFaction but unless there's a list I'm not seeing much urge to do much with the mode.  I did go in and got old school Sheamus and might dabble in it some but we'll see.

So two I know in there are Elite John Cena (same action figure gimmick as last year, use code YOURSTORY2K24 to get it) and Trick Williams 22 (basically the version from last year's game). It looks like the main things unlockable now (more may get added) otherwise are parts for create mode, and Trick is tied to collecting a particular matched set.

[Cliff Hanger]

I regret to inform everyone that there is no "whoop that trick" chant in Williams's intro. Maybe one of the DLCs will address this grievous oversight like last year when they fixed Sami's music. After work I'm probably going to finally buckle down and make one of my Rise characters (those always take me hours because I'm not super inclined toward that type of creativity but I am still weirdly persnickety about them being good enough). I want to finish one of the stories and Showcase pretty soon, at which point I'll go back to Like a Dragon and this game will mostly be me doing Universe and Faction modes while I listen to podcasts for a bit

[No Point Stance]

Please tell me the GM mode is back (and hopefully expanded). It's likely the only reason I'd buy this year's game.

[Cliff Hanger]

25 minutes ago, No Point Stance said:

Please tell me the GM mode is back (and hopefully expanded). It's likely the only reason I'd buy this year's game.

It's back. I don't know how expanded it is beyond a wider variety of GMs and brands because I've never played it in 2k22 or 23

[username]

5 hours ago, No Point Stance said:

Please tell me the GM mode is back (and hopefully expanded). It's likely the only reason I'd buy this year's game.

I watched one of those pre-release streamer vids where one of the New Legacy Inc fellows interviewed the guy in charge of GM mode for like a half hour, the mode seemed to have a bunch of stuff added and tweaked but I'm not familiar enough with said mode to know for sure how significant it was. You can make trades now if that helps?

[odessasteps]

I take it you’ve never watched Creed and Breeze on Battle of the Brands?

[Cliff Hanger]

I got to the points where Brock and Vince really couldn't be erased--Austin/Rock at WM17 and Brock/Taker at XXX. Vince appears un-blurred in video footage of his run-in and is referred to as Mr. McMahon in Graves's narration, but you never see him in the game engine. The Brock match is exactly what you'd expect, you play as him and he gets talked up hard, but when you beat the match you get the arena, those versions of Taker and Heyman, but not the guy who you played as.

 

I get that 2k were over a barrel and there was no good way to handle this that didn't involve delaying the game til they could replace two matches the mode would feel bizarre without with something different. But it just feels so fake and weird to have Brock in for that one match, or to blur Vince's face in all the scenes of him holding a mic up to Hogan or Bret and then spend several minutes showing him and talking about him.