Rasslin' Video Games

[Kevin Wilson]

My copy just arrived and I haven't started it yet. My only concern with a new developer is look - the fact is, wrestling games are always janky, even the "loved" ones like Here Comes The Pain and No Mercy had rough animations, collision detection, and some glitchiness. I haven't played 2K22 yet so I can't comment on it yet, but as long as its "fun" and not broken its a step in the right direction.

My concern with a new developer and making a game from the ground up, the first year or two almost by default are going to be rough. I mean look at AEW, they released some early video and most fans are critical of it. Lack of impact, too fast, rope detection isn't good, etc.  All true, but again, what wrestling game hasn't had these issues. 2K22 may indeed suck and not be fun, I'll find out shortly, but I do think that no modern wrestling game will ever be "great" at the animations, the best we can hope for is good mindless fun.

[Chaos]

11 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

My concern with a new developer and making a game from the ground up, the first year or two almost by default are going to be rough. I mean look at AEW, they released some early video and most fans are critical of it. Lack of impact, too fast, rope detection isn't good, etc.  All true, but again, what wrestling game hasn't had these issues. 2K22 may indeed suck and not be fun, I'll find out shortly, but I do think that no modern wrestling game will ever be "great" at the animations, the best we can hope for is good mindless fun.

I think EA having the UFC license will at least give them a good starting base. I really enjoy EA UFC 4, which is the most I've played of any in that series. However, you're right in saying that EA wouldn't get it right until maybe the third game if ever.

I impulsively bought the NWO edition last night and touched about a half hour of it. I do not like the controls so far. The timing on the reversal stuff I've not gotten down, and I've lost two matches from not getting the pinfall meter down. Granted, I'm not great at timing based stuff, but I also instinctively keep wanting to muscle memory the 2k19 controls by using the triggers for reversals. 

Edited March 9, 2022 by Chaos

[Technico Support]

A meter, minigame, or any other such nonsense to kick out of a pin is and always has been fucking stupid.  Firepro had it right.  Just hold down a button to try to kick out.  If you have energy left, you can kick out.  If not, then you don't. 

Edited March 9, 2022 by Technico Support

[Craig H]

I always preferred mashing the shit out of the A and B buttons for the AKI games whenever you're getting pinned or trying to not get KO'd. Mini games and QTEs in wrestling games, and honestly, most games at this point, are lame. QTEs were fine back when you couldn't fluidly do shit that those old God of War games were trying to do. Development has come a long way since then.

[Technico Support]

I was playing GTA Online last night and two of us were fending off bad guys while one goober kept trying and trying forever and just could not crack the safe.  Fuck minigames.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Technico Support

[NoFistsJustFlips]

I hope everyone that gets this game enjoys it. But I can't get into any wrestling game not based off of the AKI engine. It's so smooth and easy. A grapple button & a strike button. Strong & weak versions of both. It's simple. It's fun. You don't need to memorize anything. But there's also a deeper level of play once you master the timing. Why any wrestling game tries to do any other style of play is baffling to me.

At first blush hearing about EA potentially getting the license made me wince. Backstage Assault left a lot of bad taste in my brain lol. But after seeing UFC being brought up, yeah actually. The UFC games are way more fun than any wrestling game in the last 20 years (to me). Maybe EA is the way to go. Just from a freshness point of view the 2K games are essentially the same as the Smackdown / Smackdwon vs Raw series. The same thing since 1999. Any new ideas or innovations could be a welcomed breath of fresh air.

But take that for what it's worth. My two favorite wrestling games in the last 20 years were All Stars & Battlegrounds. Both of which have somewhat similar engines to AKI games. And the only Smackdown game I ever liked was Here Comes The Pain.

[Craig H]

Again, EA is only the publisher. It matters who is developing the game. Whoever developed Backstage Assault wouldn't be touching a WWE game. 

[Technico Support]

1 hour ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

I hope everyone that gets this game enjoys it. But I can't get into any wrestling game not based off of the AKI engine. It's so smooth and easy. A grapple button & a strike button. Strong & weak versions of both. It's simple. It's fun. You don't need to memorize anything. But there's also a deeper level of play once you master the timing. Why any wrestling game tries to do any other style of play is baffling to me.

 

Imma let you finish but the old NJPW Playstation games had a really good rock paper scissors system for grapples/subs/strikes, too! 

I had a modded PS in '97 and Toukon Retsuden 2 & 3 and loved those games.  I was beyond psyched when I found out that Yuke's was developing a WWF game.  Imagine my pissedoffedness when I found out they'd rebuilt and simplified the elegant, awesome control scheme instead of porting.

Strike > Grapple

Sub > Strike

Grapple > Sub

Tremendous.  Now you got me itching to fire up the modded PS Classic

Edited March 9, 2022 by Technico Support

[NikoBaltimore]

2 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

But take that for what it's worth. My two favorite wrestling games in the last 20 years were All Stars & Battlegrounds. Both of which have somewhat similar engines to AKI games. And the only Smackdown game I ever liked was Here Comes The Pain.

All Stars was the shit.  It had the wacky arcade vibe and just flowed so damn well.  I think Battlegrounds was supposed to be the spiritual successor to it but it was too slow and clunky for my liking.  HCTP's a damn good one and has me itching to play that again.

As for games kind of based on the engine did you try Day of Reckoning 1 and 2?  Both were pretty damn solid and while it's been a while I had lots of fun playing them.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

Never had a Game Cube so I wasn't ever able to play either Day of Reckoning games.

And agreed on All Stars being the shit. Had some epic half hour matches on that with friends. It was a lot like the AKI engine in that once you learned it and got the timing down it had so much depth. Banking finishers for the sole purpose of being able to counter finishers and shit. Battlegrounds tried but agreed the play style was slower and not as good.

That rock, paper, scissors style engine Technico described sounds like it could have been fun. Never had a chance to play any of those games. My PlayStation 1 game of choice was WCW vs The World. Not quite as good as the n64 games but still fun. And WORLDS better than Warzone & Attitude (and the piles of shit that were Nitro & Thunder).

[NikoBaltimore]

I actually tried Warzone and Nitro again for nostalgia's sake.  Dare I say it Warzone wasn't too bad once you got the hang of how to do enough moves to get the win.  But Nitro still sucked though I had the most fun playing with other people on that anyway.  We'd fuck around on that and would get excited when one of us would pull off a big move.  But nowadays against the computer it's just fucking awful.

At some point I think I need to compile a top ten but if I do I'll need to take out No Mercy and Fire Pro for the sake of fairness.  There's been some damn good stuff over the years that either still hold up or make me wish to find a way to play it again.

[Technico Support]

This is where I remind everyone that you can mod a "PS Classic" (essentially a Raspberry Pi in a mini PS case that comes with a handful of old PS games) and have a complete emulator to play old games from the PS1 generation and before.  I got it to play some Dreamcast stuff but it's a little choppy.  Is it okay to talk about ROMs for systems that are 25+ years old?

Edited March 9, 2022 by Technico Support

[NikoBaltimore]

That might be a bit close to the "As per usual - no discussion of the illegal stuff." tag at the top of the section.  But at least you're buying official hardware before doing whatever.

[Casey]

Xavier Woods was playing the Rey showcase and he had the option turned on to button mash X to kick out. I much prefer that over the meter game (it’s still an option tho).

Also if EA did the next WWE game, it would most assuredly be one of their in-house studios, just like with the UFC games. And Backstage Assault was co-developed by EA as well, they weren’t just the publisher.

[Jiji]

Fightful suggested it could be EA Vancouver, which is the studio behind the UFC games. 

edit: i'm still going to get the vanilla version of this game. i'll snag the nwo stuff later individually. the engine seems kinda fun and most people i follow on twitter seem to be enjoying the gameplay. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Jiji

[Chaos]

 I haven't touched the MyFaction stuff, but it seems like there's only a couple of difficult trophies by looking at the list to Platinum this thing. Like, beat Roman on Legend mode is this year's Beat Taker at mania.

[DragonZombie]

WWE2K22 packs

Spoiler

Banzai Pack
Release Date: April 26

Yokozuna

Umaga

Rikishi

Omos

Kacy Catanzaro

Most Wanted Pack
Release Date: May 17

Cactus Jack

The Boogeyman

Vader

Ilja Dragunov

Indi Hartwell

Stand Back Pack
Release Date: June 7

Hurricane Helms

Stacy Keibler

A-Kid

Wes Lee

Nash Carter

Clowning Around Pack
Release Date: June 28

Doink the Clown

Ronda Rousey

The British Bulldog

Mr. T

Doudrop

Rick Boogs

The Whole Dam Pack
Release Date: July 19

Rob Van Dam

Logan Paul

Machine Gun Kelly

LA Knight

Xia Li

Commander Azeez

 

[Craig H]

Ummmmmmmmmmmmm

Banzai Pack:
Release Date: April 26
Yokozuna
Umaga
Rikishi
Omos
Kacy Catanzaro

One of these things is not like the other...

[Casey]

Yeah that pack would have been perfect for Bull Nakano

[Zakk_Sabbath]

Took the plunge and bought 2K22. I needed a wrestling game for PS5 (I suck at FirePro) and I've beaten 2K19 to absolute death. Haven't had a chance to fire it up yet since I'm at work, but most of what I'm seeing is putting the game at roughly 7/10, so I decided to roll the dice since it's at least functional unlike 2K20.

[Kevin Wilson]

Overall not a bad list of DLC, some lower level NXT wrestlers that missed the cut plus some legends we don't see as often in their video games. It is still a lot of wrestlers, I mean its close to 200 but the gameplay still has to deliver or it doesn't matter. I still haven't started playing it yet, soon as Horizon is done its next on my agenda (plus maybe if I wait a few weeks they'll patch anything super wonky)

[DragonZombie]

IGN gave the new WWE2K game 8 on the score.

[Zakk_Sabbath]

6 hours ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

Took the plunge and bought 2K22. I needed a wrestling game for PS5 (I suck at FirePro) and I've beaten 2K19 to absolute death. Haven't had a chance to fire it up yet since I'm at work, but most of what I'm seeing is putting the game at roughly 7/10, so I decided to roll the dice since it's at least functional unlike 2K20.

Update: Sony is currently processing my refund. It might hit different, but that don't mean it hits good. I haaaaate it. Hate it. Not a single update to Universe mode, not a single update to any of the creation suites. Looks like another year of 2K19 for me. It looked a little prettier, but that's about it. Time to let someone else take over the series. Hoping for some AEW/Yukes news SOON.

[Casey]

I just did a 10-ish minute back and forth match between Rhea and Sasha while the game is downloading still, and it’s not that bad honestly. Gameplay, to keep, feels slightly different than what I remember from 2K19, but still familiar enough that I’m not lost. It’s weird that the male characters look way more detailed than the women, though.

I have to laugh at one the trophies being basically sponsored by Snickers. That’s funny. I also have a feeling that getting the trophy for beating Roman Reigns on Legend difficulty is going to end with me buying a new controller out of rage.

[AxB]

The Spinning Nothingbreaker is a great move!