After WWE 2K20 proved to be a total technical failure, Take Two vowed to get better and screwed an extra year on WWE 2K22, which should act as a quasi-reboot of the series. A lot has stayed the same, but with new controls, numerous adjustments to details and the re-implementation of the GM mode long awaited by fans, at least the foundation is reasonably stable again. And the publisher wants to build on that with WWE 2K23. The basic gameplay has changed very little this time, but there should be plenty of new match types and adjustments to the various game modes. We were able to get an idea of some innovations at Take Two in Munich. During our visit, the focus was on the one hand the Showcase mode, in which John Cena accompanies us through his career, and on the other hand War Games, the big match that is traditionally held at the PPV Survivor Series. There, two teams fight each other in rings enclosed by a cage.
The showcase mode: Brawl by numbers
But let’s get to that first showcase: In it, John Cena looks back on his achievements as a wrestler. Because his career is presented under the motto “Never Give Up”, it is not about his greatest successes, but above all about his autumn defeats.
So, unlike before in the series, we don’t even play Cena himself, but always his respective opponents. Before we can bash him, Cena tells us a few bars about the ECW One Night Stand event, his opponent Rob Van Dam, the upcoming title fight, its importance and the special location. As soon as the ring bell rings, we then have certain actions to carry out in order for the story to continue. The mode is the same as the previous one except for the change that this time we’re playing against the cover star and not with him.
WWE 2K23 Hands-On Preview: Showcase, Framerates and War Games (2)
Source: 2K Games
The idea of changing your character from match to match is interesting in itself, and at least in our little playthrough session, only a few tasks required performing a specific move that we had to look up in the menu beforehand. Anyone who has mastered the basic controls should know roughly what to do.
In the end, the mode is a nice history lesson, as in the predecessor, but it deliberately doesn’t allow much playful freedom.
May the war games begin
The new match type, on the other hand, feels fresher War games on. Here two teams compete against each other in a cage match. Our version involved 3vs3 matches in a cage that was open at the top. 4vs4 matches should also be possible. We don’t yet know how much the game mode can be adjusted beyond that.
One wrestler from each team is already in the ring at the beginning, after a countdown has expired, opponents are then added in turn until all participants are in the fight and the match officially begins. Which team wins is decided by pinfall or submission.
WWE 2K23 Hands-On Preview: Showcase, Framerates and War Games (3)
Source: 2K Games
Unlike other matches, the ring in War Games is larger, more precisely composed of two rings and then encased in a steel cage. This peculiarity presented the Visual Concepts development team with a surprisingly difficult task. Lead Gameplay Designer Derek Donahue tells us that the ring in the middle of the level was actually always set in the old engine and that the distances to the corner posts and ropes are based on this. A simple copy & paste maneuver would have resulted in the game being completely destroyed. Instead, War Games is a type of game that had to be created from scratch. This actually applied to every single interaction with the ring and the cage. Fortunately, after the WWE 2K20 disaster, there was enough time to completely overhaul the engine. Even before WWE 2K22, there were ambitions to finally integrate the mode into the game. And now the team had both the tools and the time to make it happen.
The good thing about the extra work, Donahue says, is that elements like the short distance between the two rings could be incorporated better than if War Games had simply been cobbled together from various other modes.
In our hands-on session, War Games was a lot of fun, but the two rings were difficult to see even with only six participants at the same time. Chaos has also always been a part of the design of WWE games.
In general, we could only see a few changes to the gameplay. Grapples and subsequent moves seem slightly smoother than in the predecessor and there is another pinfall mini-game to play if you are sent onto the boards and covered. However, we have not seen any fundamental changes so far.
WWE 2K23 Hands-On Preview: Showcase, Framerates and War Games (5)
Source: 2K Games
One thing that unfortunately also has to be noted is that Frame rate of the PC version. WWE2K23 was included on the computer provided to us frequent frame rate drops to fight, especially when performing jump attacks or other big moves in full swing. The console versions, on the other hand, do not seem to have any problems in this area. WWE2K23 appears on March 17, 2023 for Playstation 5, Playstation 4, Xbox Series, Xbox One and PC.
