WWE 2K17 EGX Preview

I consider myself a fairly big wrestling fan, as I type this I’m wearing a Kevin Owens official wrestling T Shirt. The TV show is my most common way digesting the brand, as I’ve avoided the WWE games for a while. Over the past few years they have had an over reliance on trying to be a simulation product, rather than what wrestling is; a silly form of entertainment where men and women hit each other with chairs.

I completely avoided last year's release as form of protest, I couldn’t stomach paying full price for a game I’d find entertaining for a few weeks before ending up bored. By limiting gameplay features, I mean the annoying chain wrestling and crippling stamina feature. Two things that really soured my 2K15 experience.

2K17 doesn’t feel like a massive jump forward in terms of mechanics but some of the issues I have with the series have definitely been addressed. Matches no longer start by forcing players into chain wrestling (THANK YOU!), this is a change that many players will welcome. Grapples, submissions moves and context sensitive moves have all been given a revamp, button mashing has been replaced with time focused minigames. Submissions now involve a QTE that involves moving the analog stick in opposite direction of your opponent, it’s not too difficult to defeat the AI, but it makes things very interesting on multiplayer. The new QTE sequences take a little bit of getting used to at first, but they start to feel far more natural once you have become acclimatized.

Each wrestler now has their own set of movement animations thanks to a motion capture, this means that every wrestler looks and feels like their real life counterpart. It feels great to swap between wrestlers as each one has their own animation set, something that removes some of the homogeneity between characters. The wrestler entrances have all been revamped, rather than individual cut-scenes entrances now happen in real time with either player having the ability to interfere. This means the person coming out first can be invaded as they walk to the ramp, or the person coming out second can be interrupted by the person stood in the ring. This is a nice touch for those that wish to play as a heel character, as it gives them the ability to pull off a classic bad guy move.

The stamina system is still here, but it feels far less intrusive than it previously was. Rather than remove it completely, 2K have just made it less taxing; I’d rather they move it completely, but beggars can’t be choosers. I played a few matches and had no issues with my wrestler ending up overly fatigued, something I found really annoying on 2K15. As it stands, the build I played was a little glitchy in places, weapons on the floor clipped against other items and the table I put AJ Styles through reacted very weirdly to being destroyed. Weapons have always been an issue in WWE games as the engine struggles to distinguish them when they are forced to interact with players. I imagine this will be fixed as the title is polished for release though.

As it stands, WWE 2K17 is a big step towards the product it should be. Much like the Pro Evo series, the WWE series to be improving every year. It’s not the new engine they desperately need, but it is a smaller set of fixes and improvements that make the game far more appealing than previous iterations. I’m excited for this, and that’s the bottom line cause Stone Cold Thomas said so.