Get your roody-poo, candy ass over to the Smackdown Hotel, because 2K's WWE series is once again back with their yearly release of WWE 2k24. WWE 2K24 celebrates 40 years of WrestleMania history, honoring the fans with a whole new batch of WWE superstars and legends, plenty of fan-favorite and quality-of-life additions, and a retrospective showcase through some of the best WrestleMania matches in WWE history.
While this year's newest additions aren't exactly huge, the amount of tune-ups and small additions are enough to make 2k24 feel a lot better than last year's release. You get new matches (Guest Referee, Ambulance, Casket, Gauntlet), animations are cleaned up (especially with Irish Whips), tag matches are fixed (tag partners can only come in the ring once per tag), and MyFaction specific models are now usable in other gamemodes.
This year's Showcase mode takes you from iconic historical matches such as Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant and Ultimate Warrior versus Rick Rude all the way up to modern day with Cody Rhodes versus Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 39. The mode brings some WWE legends into the game, like Ricky Steamboat and George "The Animal" Steele, and some great variants of the Legends we already had, like '94 Shawn Michaels. Like the previous two games, the mode leaves a lot to be desired, but it cleverly mixes real life footage into the game's animations, and is at least expansive enough across WWE history to pique most wrestling fan's interest for at least one playthrough.
The game's story mode (MyRise) returns with another new set of stories, one in the men's division and the other in the women's division. The stories are alright, and it's fun to listen to some of the WWE stars do their best at voice acting, but you're more likely to play through the mode to unlock the specific arenas and Create-A-Wrestler items locked behind the story.
MyGM, the solo or multiplayer competitive management mode, gets a bunch of new features such as trades, new match types, and scouting. Universe mode gets a few new Rivalry cutscenes, but not much else except for some handy bug fixes. MyFaction is about the same as it was, but like I said, even if you don't like the gameplay of the mode, you may have an excuse to play through to unlock some specific wrestler variants.
2k24 feels great to play, even if the series has become more arcadey since 2k19. As I say with all sports games, this is once again a moment that shows how valuable a second year of development would be to these games; but for being whipped together in basically a year of work, WWE 2k24 is at least a whole lot of fun.
While this year's newest additions aren't exactly huge, the amount of tune-ups and small additions are enough to make 2k24 feel a lot better than last year's release. You get new matches (Guest Referee, Ambulance, Casket, Gauntlet), animations are cleaned up (especially with Irish Whips), tag matches are fixed (tag partners can only come in the ring once per tag), and MyFaction specific models are now usable in other gamemodes.
This year's Showcase mode takes you from iconic historical matches such as Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant and Ultimate Warrior versus Rick Rude all the way up to modern day with Cody Rhodes versus Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 39. The mode brings some WWE legends into the game, like Ricky Steamboat and George "The Animal" Steele, and some great variants of the Legends we already had, like '94 Shawn Michaels. Like the previous two games, the mode leaves a lot to be desired, but it cleverly mixes real life footage into the game's animations, and is at least expansive enough across WWE history to pique most wrestling fan's interest for at least one playthrough.
The game's story mode (MyRise) returns with another new set of stories, one in the men's division and the other in the women's division. The stories are alright, and it's fun to listen to some of the WWE stars do their best at voice acting, but you're more likely to play through the mode to unlock the specific arenas and Create-A-Wrestler items locked behind the story.
MyGM, the solo or multiplayer competitive management mode, gets a bunch of new features such as trades, new match types, and scouting. Universe mode gets a few new Rivalry cutscenes, but not much else except for some handy bug fixes. MyFaction is about the same as it was, but like I said, even if you don't like the gameplay of the mode, you may have an excuse to play through to unlock some specific wrestler variants.
2k24 feels great to play, even if the series has become more arcadey since 2k19. As I say with all sports games, this is once again a moment that shows how valuable a second year of development would be to these games; but for being whipped together in basically a year of work, WWE 2k24 is at least a whole lot of fun.