Lights… Music… Fog… And a whole lot of olive oil! That’s my perception at least when I watch a WWE match. Yet I have never played a WWE game before. Reason? It wasn’t really up my alley. But for what I’ve seen, most of them were positively received. They were entertaining, had official backing from the WWE federation and were on all accounts solid games that were created purely for the fun of it, and in consideration of their paying customers. I didn’t think about it any further than when accepting this chance to review my very first WWE game. But was my enthusiasm warranted? Or was it best left in The Undertaker ‘s undies? Let’s find out in our review of WWE 2K20.
What we liked!
- Soundtrack: If there is one thing that I really liked about this one? Then it has to be the soundtrack. These include all the official songs used by these WWE superstars. In perfect quality none the less! Don’t want to play the game but just want to listen to their songs? No problem either! You’ve got a section just dedicated to this. Your own kind of jukebox as it were! You can already imagine where I spent a lot of my time then! Just flipping through the songs.
- HD videos: Some parts of this game (I won’t mention which ones) have video narration to tell either the story or what lead up to this. Told by the real WWE superstar. And this is something that actually caught me off guard. I’m used to just hearing a voice-over narration. And not just that, it’s in High Definition as well! So you can see every bit of the details of these fine men and women! Ehem.
Somewhere between
- A lot of content…: This is actually the only thing that I can put up in the mixed feelings section. The fact that the game throws you a lot of meat that’s stuck to the bone. Now, is this really something that we needed seeing the current state of this game? I don’t know… You can pack a lot of low-quality stuff into a huge box and make it feel weighty. But does that mean you’ll be happy with the low-quality content? Debateable… It’s as if they tried to cover up the fact that it’s kind of bad, with all of these options. I mean, just looking at the length of the main menu gets me winded just by scrolling through the entire damn thing! Add to that, that each option has its own sub-menu? Sigh… I’d have rather seen a bit fewer options and a lot more polish, than this…
What we disliked
- Graphics: My first impressions of this game ‘s graphical qualities are, to say it lightly, abysmal. When I was scrolling through the options of the MyPlayer creation, I noticed something peculiar. The faces. I don’t know where during the development process things went wrong? But its more than obvious that things went belly side up! Starting with the lighting. My character ended up looking as if she was having some kind of fever attack. Glossy, blank stare in her eyes and a pallid skin tone. Then when it came to dressing her, it felt as if her clothes were just some kind of spray-on clothes. There were no clear distinctions between where her skin stopped and her clothes started. That’s a big friggin’ no-no in my book! Then when it came to the surroundings, these looked horrible as well. In the story mode, there are parts that just looked… off. Square boxes with no shadows, making them look as if these were part of the wall instead of their own structure. The crowd that surrounds the ring look as if they were plucked out of those old FIFA games. You know the ones that I’m talking about, the static stick figures that just stood there, waving their arms. The environment itself has a boring look and the physics of, for instance, the ropes? Are unrealistic. This game just looks awful, in EVERY aspect. Not one WWE star looks like their real-life character! I mean… How do they screw this up SO BADLY!
- Bugs bugs bugs: It’s sad when an indie developer doesn’t do quality control. But, sometimes you just can’t blame them as they have a smaller budget. It’s rather unforgivable though when a AAA production does this! They have the budget, they have the people and they have the time to make it possible for doing damage control before releasing their game! But in the case of WWE 2K20, it felt as if they were in the impression that it was in a reasonable state to release. But nothing is further from the truth! A couple of my own personal issues that I noticed: Spider hair. While playing the story mode, I noticed that my protagonist ‘s hair had its own life. It jumped all over the place as if it had its own life. A scene out of the exorcist even! Where my character ‘s head just did a full 360. While funny, I did do a facepalm when I saw this. Lips that would just vanish, exposing their pearly whites while they spoke,… And that’s just scratching the surface! If you’d look at the long list of issues that the game has, and the funny bug compilations that are piling up on youtube, you have to wonder. Why did they ship this in such an awful state…
- Do something…: It seems that we’re not out of the woods just yet people! Because the A.I. of WWE 2K20 seems to be missing as well, maybe one of the planned DLC’s? I don’t know… But currently, there doesn’t seem to be any attendance when it comes to their brain. I was begging the referee to do something different than just stand there while I had my opponent pinned. Obviously that leads to more losses than anything else because I didn’t defeat my enemy in the way that the objective wanted me to! I had more K.O.s because the referee just stood there, twiddling his fingers. When you are fighting in the ring and there’s more than one opponent? They’ll just ignore you. I literally had a match where I was just walking around them. They couldn’t be bothered by my presence!
CONCLUSION
It is my honest opinion that Visual Concept and 2K tried to make this one of their most ambitious WWE game to date. But something went horribly wrong and they failed their intent. With graphics that look extremely outdated, A.I. that serves as a placeholder for hot air and content that feels as if everything was jammed in there just to make up for the poor performance and quality? I can’t recommend this game in any way shape or form. I hope that future patches will clean up WWE 2K20 ‘s act. But in its current state, you’re better off with just playing 2K19 if that ‘s already in your collection.