WWE 2k19

The series isn't trash, I've played and owned every game from the First Smackdown to WWE2k16....but I had to give up at that point due to the same bugs cropping up every year and the utter disappointment that the Universe mode has evolved into. I hear the latest game was very grindy and riddled with micro-transactions which is pretty much the nail in the coffin of me ever buying another game in the series.

Microtransactions only really affected MyCareer. Thankfully that's a mode that I never touch because unlike in FPWW, I absolutely hate using CAWS in WWE-licensed games.


WWE 2K17 is a bit buggy, but no worse than 2K16. I find it to be significantly better too.

I mostly kept up with the series since the Smackdown days but I think I've finally given up on the series. It has a beautiful presentation, but they don't know what to do with Universe and the overall gameplay- specifically the computer AL- always leaves me wanting more. Maybe, if they can clean up the bugs and figure out Universe I'll check it out when its on sale but more likely is I'll sit this year out.

I've been pretty hardcore into making CAWs in the series for years but I think I finally reached my burnout point with WWE 2K18. I'm at the point where that's the ONLY thing I like to do in the games anymore (I'd play matches online with friends but every year it's the same broken lagfest BS over and over). I know my own impulsiveness too well to say that I'll never get the game but if I do, it will be well after release and not for $60.

I feel the WWE 2K games are less bad and more uninspired. Untapped potential. More often than not stuff is taken out just to be put back in as a big new feature in like a year or three. So they come off as little more than a roster update at best, and a neutered experience compared to previous years at worst. The career mode is basically just an endless slog of matches with little context or motivation for doing it, with logic-breaking progression (I have to give up this title to go after this title, but rather than having a match where the objective is to have a good match but lose you just kind of leave the title on a desk somewhere and move on like you never had it) rather than some kind of RNG feud based progression.

Honestly, it showcases a basic lack of understanding of how wrestling works. Winning titles is great and all, but nobody gives a crap about a wrestler who wins a title if he's never had any feuds. They should go back to the drawing board on Universe and Career mode and find a way to somehow combine them. Or at least the structure of them. Have it be that the game contains a ton of feuds, with cut scenes and microphone work specific to the storylines. Have certain storylines be title specific, with other stories being #1 contender match based. So you could randomly, based on previous win loss performance get put into a feud with somebody like Seth Rollins where the winner becomes #1 contender, and then next month you go into a World Title storyline with Rusev for example.