WWE 2K20 Review – Rest..In..Peace

WWE 2K20 Review

2K Sports has pulled a Street Fighter V and released an unfinished game. But the big difference between Street Fighter V and WWE 2K20 is that Street Fighter V was incredibly polished upon release, and WWE 2K20 is incredibly buggy. Almost anything the player does results in some kind of bug. Most of them weren’t deal-breakers, but after MANY attempts, I was never able to use Create-An-Entrance for my created wrestler. Ever. At all. And that broke the deal. Sure there’s a patch expected in two weeks, but this game should not have been released without a ton more quality assurance. I still enjoyed wrestling in the game, but aside from an updated roster, WWE 2K20 offers nothing upon launch.

What’s good is that the wrestling gameplay is solid. It’s very similar controls to WWE 2K18, and from what I gather, they’re unchanged from 2K19. The first thing I did was use Ricochet to wrestle Demon Finn Balor, and I had a great time playing that match. But the more I played the more I realized that the graphics somehow got worse from last year! Some wrestlers look fine, but others look like they’re from a PS2 game. It’s a shame that the 2K brand demands that a new game be released every year, because WWE 2K20 was clearly not ready to be released.

In Order To Be The Man

So what does the game have? The section of the game called 2K Central has some really great options. There’s a feature showcase about the Four Horsewomen, where they tell stories about important parts of each of their careers, and the player gets to play through the matches. Very similarly are the 2K Towers, which function like an arcade mode and have players wrestling through important events in wrestlers’ careers. There’s an emphasis on Roman Reigns, the Women’s Revolution, and retired wrestling Legends. There’s also a MyPLAYER mode, which is basically a story mode about two created wrestlers and their burgeoning careers. There’s a female competitor and a male competitor, which allows for mixed gender tag team matches.

And finally there’s my favorite part of any wrestling game: Create-A-Wrestler. All the features of past Create-A-Wrestlers are present. In terms of appearance and moveset, I couldn’t find anything I was hoping would be there that wasn’t. I will be sinking hours into this game making my favorite wrestlers from New Japan and Lucha Underground. The game’s roster is so up to date that there isn’t anyone from present day WWE I want to make, except for maybe the heel version of Io Shirai.

Just what is WWE 2K20 missing? There’s a menu space for WWE 2K Originals. No idea what that is, but the game says “WWE 2K Originals is coming soon! Follow us @WWEGAMES for updates!” There’s no longer a Create-A-Championship mode, but 2K Sports promises that it will come eventually in a future update. And I was hugely disappointed to find out that The Fiend Bray Wyatt is not in the game! He’s coming with a paid update on October 28^th, which will offer some other Halloween-themed skins. From the advertising I saw, I was under the impression that The Fiend would be in the base game. He’s even in the main menu screen video! Was he removed to sell the deluxe version of the game? 2K Sports needs all the points they can get right now, and not having The Fiend in the game at launch was a big mistake.

This Should Get Better

I will be very interested to look at WWE 2K20 a year from now, after some massive updates, and featuring all modes. It’ll probably have the same ugly graphics, but let’s hope that this is a wake-up call to 2K games that they need to release a polished product. Some of us still like having our games on disc when we buy them.

***PS4 Code provided by the publisher for review***