#Wwe 2k battlegrounds reviews how to#

What it all boils down to is that Battlegrounds’ combat is totally passable as a quick party game that you play for an hour or two and then move on to something else, but measured by any other sort of standard, it falls flat on its face. Of all of the mechanics Battlegrounds brings to the table, powerups are by far the best, and the one that fits best with its overall theme. Some are extremely powerful, with my favorite being a buff that adds another layer to the pin minigame, forcing your opponents to mash even faster if they want to break a pin. These are temporary buffs that can either increase the damage of your strikes, give you some health regeneration, or make all of your attacks unblockable.

One final notable wrinkle on the arcadey nature of Battlegrounds’ combat is the powerups, of which you can select three before each match. Measured by any standard other than as a brief party game, it falls flat on its face. As a result, many of my most competitive online matches of Battlegrounds were also among the most miserable: we just took turns reversing everything, with neither of us making much progress toward ending the match. It simply gives you way too much time to reverse throws and attempts to balance that by having throws cost a portion of your Heat meter, which is what’s used to execute your signature and finishing moves. That said, my biggest gripe with the gameplay of Battlegrounds, aside from the poor hit detection, is the reversal system. It’s similar to what WWE All Stars did with its class system, but here it’s less about defining a style of play and more about defining what specific cool things you can and can’t do. Powerhouses are slow, but have attacks that can power through their opponent’s strikes Brawlers can create weapons like steel chairs and motorcycles out of thin air and have extra power on their strikes Technicians have extremely powerful throws and can even cause limb damage, which will cause opponents to stagger around briefly High-Flyers can jump off the ropes, use running throws, and get to the top rope faster than other classes and All-Arounders can do a little bit of everything. There are, at the very least, a few meaningful differences between each of the five classes.

But aside from that, these characters play exactly the same. There are some slight differences, with a few select characters having one or two moves that are unique to only them, and every character has their own signature and finishing move. So Shinsuke Nakamura has almost the exact same moves as the Miz, Charlotte Flair has almost the exact same moveset as Stephanie McMahon, and Triple H has almost the exact same moves as Andre the Giant. Worse still, these moves are copied and pasted onto virtually every wrestler that falls within the same class of either Powerhouse, Brawler, All-Rounder, Technician, or High-Flyer. The movelist for every character is extraordinarily thin for a wrestling game, even an arcadey one, with each wrestler only having a small handful of basic combos and throws. Namely, any semblance of depth or complexity to its combat.

The movelist for every character is extraordinarily short.This puts Battlegrounds in a unique position of being by far the most approachable wrestling game for complete newcomers in years, but it also comes with a pretty substantial sacrifice.

#Wwe 2k battlegrounds reviews how to#

To tell someone how to play, all you need to do is show them a controller and say “Here’s your punch button, here’s your kick button, this is how you throw, this is how you block, remember to press the button on screen when you get grabbed to do a reversal, and if someone tries to pin or submit you, just mash these buttons.” Done. You don’t have to worry about chain wrestling, timing-based pin minigames, cat-and-mouse submission minigames, how to set up and climb ladders in ladder matches, how to place your opponent on a table in a table match, etc. The one thing that WWE Battlegrounds has going for it is that unlike many other wrestling games, it’s immediately intuitive.