A step-up from last year.
John Cena's Showcase mode is a fun twist.
My Faction is essentially the card collecting mode with online this year. I played more of it this year but it's still not my thing. My Rise is pretty good with two different stories to play through.
My GM seems alright, but I haven't played much of it.
Universe Mode is where I spent most of my time but there's still a lot of work needed to make it stable and great.
It's hard for me to tell if the gameplay is better or not. I'm just used to it at this point.
I'm still having a lot of fun with it but there's still room for improvement.

No matter what I say, never let me buy another one of these things. Nearly the same exact thing as 2K22 with all of the same problems (and even some new ones). Overall it's marginally better at best. Let's start with the improvements:

- Commentary is the best it's ever been. There's still flaws, but this is probably the first time in series history where I'd say it's reached a level of being acceptable
- The timed kickout minigame is the perfect balance of challenging but fair, versus last year's shitty default button mashing
- MyGM has some more depth to it (but still doesn't appeal to me whatsoever)

Yeah that's about it. And the bad? The worst point has always been an issue, especially last year, but I think the refs are the worst they've ever been. Absolutely abysmal AI, they'll run around the ring in a circle before starting a pin count. If it's a tag match forget it, the pin is getting broken up before the ref even realizes what's happening.

They finally came up with a good idea for Showcase mode, fighting against the same person repeatedly instead of playing as the same person repeatedly, and they absolutely ruin it by including multiple MULTI-MINUTE-long real match cutscenes into most of the matches. I want to fucking play the game not actually watch wrestling.

MyFaction continues to just be a shitty desperate-for-microtransaction who-could-give-a-fuck grind mode. Anyone who cares enough about this thing to spend real life money on it should be shot, I don't care if you're a billionaire.

MyRise goes back to its shitty roots with a linear main story instead of last year's fun but aimless approach. There's still side missions but it all feels pointless in the end. The male story is the same story they've been telling every year for half a decade. The female story is much, much worse, absolutely brutal to get through and the unskippable cutscenes are just rubbing it in.

These games exist to make goofy characters to fight your friends with, and it's great for that. If you have a friend to play with, great, go for it. If not, don't even think about it.

Damn they made 23 of these things? crazy.
Bold move to make the cover blank, but hey it's their game.
And yeah, it's alright. Online hasn't been shut down yet, you can still buy the game unlike older releases, but my god I wish they brought back MyCareer as a freeform do what you wish fuckaround mode. The storylines the game gives you in this one sucks, and the mode that sorta gives you that doesn't do it in nearly the same fleshed out way that 16 had it.

Oh yeah and the entrance/victory creator is beyond bad in comparison. So slow, so buggy, so irritating, and so much of it forces you to use preexisting superstar templates for everything. Is it really so much to ask for just general pyro for stage, ring and ramp instead of "HERE IS THIS SUPERSTAR'S PYRO WOOOO-"

MyRise Legacy: Surprisingly engaging and soulful. Had a lot to say about women in the WWE past and present and the conditions they exist in and the conversation around their legacy. Very happy with how it was written and paced.

MyRise Lock: Not as good as Legacy but still decent. "The Lock" himself is pretty unlikable but that serves the story around him so that's fine. Felt like propaganda for the Fed in the end. Bad behaviour is an excuse the Fed gives for many top stars failing out of the company. Ultimate Warrior and Cm Punk being the biggest ones. So the resolution being "See? He stopped being an ashole and worked within the system. That's why he's successful." was more than a little cringe. The story treats WWE as the end all be all of wrestling and gives some lip service to there being other types of success but the Fed remains the place to be. That rubs me the wrong way especially with people like Matt Cardona seeing more success on the indies than he ever has with the Fed. I know this a WWE story in a WWE game but still. It did let me lead faction with Cody Rhodes and Drew Mcintyre which is thematically perfect.

General Gameplay: I tried with this series. I always felt like 2016/17 were a step in the right direction. 2019 was a step down but still decent. But I cant do it. The Creation suite is broken and stunted in a lot of ways but still lets you create pretty much anything you want. I got started making my shows and roster and decided to take a break and actually play. Then it happened. I was playing War Games and literally fell asleep in my chair. Everything about this series is mind meltingly boring. Animations are still subpar, the visuals have no sauce, and the controls are sluggish. Under no circumstances should I be bored into a coma while playing War Games. It brought up decades old feelings on the WWE series. Starting at SVR 2008 these games have never been fun to play. And if there is some fun to be had, some system that really grabs you, it's gone the next game. We have not been able to completely form our CAWS body shape since WWE 2K14. For 10 years. Slobber Knocker hasn't been in since SVR 2006. The whole point of Showcase is seeing historical moments recreated in game. 2K22/23 don't do that. 2K22 let you use the soundtrack as entrance themes. 2k23 does not. Kingdom, Codey Rhodes' theme, is exclusive to him and is lost when you change anything about him, meaning unless you want complete silence when he comes out all the custom stuff for him is locked. Some of the gear in CAW have locked colors. New hair styles look fantastic with good textures. Old hair still looks plastic. There is a lot of good wrestling games out there, old and new. Play those. Stop giving 2K money.

As per usual in yearly release sports games, WWE 2K23 takes what was presented in WWE 2K22, and adds on to it. After a major revamp to how the game plays in 2K22, 2K23 brings a lot to start making the game feel complete again. MyRise has stepped up the quality of their storylines, now with two unique stories, one for each gender, that are decently written and include all sorts of wrestlers from the WWE Universe. Showcase Mode, showing off the career of legend John Cena, remains the series' weakest game mode, giving you a choppy, tedious series of matches that I only care to go through simply to unlock the wrestlers and arenas locked behind it. MyGM got some improvements, including the addition of up to 4 players within the multiplayer portion of the mode, and it remains a whole lot of fun to play with your friends. MyUniverse continues to suffer, even with the addition of the Rivalry system. A few features were actually removed from the 2K22 version of the mode, and it's still completely riddled with bugs, which is unfortunate because MyUniverse has the ability to be the greatest mode in the game. Online versus matches are still hit or miss, and can be filled with people exploiting glitches or abusing certain moves, so wrestler beware.

If you're a fan of the WWE, or wrestling in general, this game boasts one of the greatest customization systems in gaming for creating wrestlers, so you will never run out of new blood for your feuds. It's a lot of fun, and it looks great, however if you're an old school fan of WWE 2K19, you may find that it still does not live up to the more sim-like nature of that game.

And that's the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so.

Clunky and saw a few glitches in my playtime.

Seems to have a reduced number of features vs older games, with predatory currencies, microtransactions and nigh on £100 of DLC.


Bring back THQ.