WWE 2k14 wasn’t one the franchises that made the big jump to the new generation launches last year of the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One. It’s taken over a year but the first WWE games for both these brand new platforms are here. The question though is, are they ready?

There are many things that are familiar with the last two games in the franchise in 2k15, the main story modes recreate moments from a point of WWE history. The only difference this time from the previous games is that instead of recreating key Attitude Era of WWE or moments major moments from the 30 years of Wrestlemania you get two very specific and far less interesting points in time. You get to recreate the feud between HHH and Shawn Michaels in 2002 and the feud between John Cena and CM Punk in 2011. This unfortunately isn’t as fun as the previous games modes of the same vain because you get an less interesting cast of characters to play with from both eras, a cast of characters that doesn’t really add to the rosters and tons of matches repeating themselves over and over again.

The other single player game modes aren’t all that interesting either. There’s one takes you up the roster as a developmental talent of NXT to a bonafide WWE superstar. This mode just leads to one pointless match to the next with tons of dialog boxes explaining what you need to do to continue moving up the WWE ladder that doesn’t lead to anything fun. The other mode to be found is the WWE Universe mode which makes you the general manager of all the shows, it hasn’t changed too much from previous games but if the idea of being the booker is appealing then you’ll have some fun with this. It does however feel a tad bit dated because it still acts like there’s different rosters for different WWE shows that isn’t the case in current WWE TV for awhile now.

There is a lot of the same plethora of modes you’d find in previous games but plenty of game modes and create modes have been cut from this year’s version. Theres some head stumpers here like the fact you can’t do a 4-man Hell in a Cell match while the options for 2 person and 6 person HIAC still exists. Theres other modes missing like guest referee or just something as simple as tornado tag team match. There’s also fewer creative modes such as lacking create a championship, create a storyline or even the ability to add custom songs which would help update the outdated roster found in the game. The gameplay in WWE2k15 is largely the previous years same though they’ve slowed the flow of the matches a tad. I enjoyed this slowed down approach but it’s not going to make or break the game either way or make for a drastic change in the overall flow.

The online mode has been iffy from my experience. Playing online seems to have a slight delay from when you press a button on your controller and it happening on the TV. This might just be a matter of being matched with laggy opponents but I haven’t had a smooth experience from the people that I’ve played with online. You also you can’t just wait around in a lobby for playing against strangers, you can just tell it to match you up and it’ll interrupt what you’re doing to tell you it’s found an opponent.

The graphics have improved over last year, especially in the faces for Superstars who have been scanned in for the game. My biggest complaint would have to be there’s been no attempt to make good facial expressions so you’re missing half the equation for realistic faces. This takes away from the realism when these’s highly detailed faces have no emotion to them. The rest of the game has seen upgrades with a higher resolution and frame rate however this added quality makes the game seem faker than it was before since you can notice where flaws are when the lack of detail would hide it before.

WWE 2k15 is probably not the game you should be picking up, WWE 13 and 2k14 were both better games and there’s definitely going to be a better version next year once they’ve had a chance to start bring back the old features . While it’s not horrible this year you’ll be better off picking up an old version and waiting for next year for them to sort the issues out.

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