There's a lot sweat. WWE 2K23 is really a stunning game, but all I'm able to take into consideration is how bloody sweaty everyone is. Wide gross rivulets of sweat cover every inch of exposed skin, and I'm honestly impressed by the way the wrestlers may even grip each other without slipping away.
There are a lot of different grapplers from through the WWE's history here, and they're just soaked in sweat. Kurt Angle? Sweaty, Rob Van Dam? Sweaty. WWE 2K23's biggest feature is a John Cena career retrospective that has you fighting against Cena in some of the biggest matches of his career. Win, and you'll ensure Cena takes a loss. It is a genius idea, since it lets WWE 2K23 sprinkle in wrestlers from throughout the company’s history in the best form of their career. They are all sweaty.
It's not only a number of historic matches, either. The Showcase mode features matches created by Cena himself, live footage set in an audio booth, chatting away about some of his greatest matches and why these were so pivotal to his career. Then you will combat him, completing a number of objectives to let the match engage in roughly just like it did in the real world.
There were a couple of these matches within the hands-on. A match against Kurt Angle in a 2002 episode of Smackdown lets you control a WWE Champion-era Angle because he batters the young upstart, but the real highlight for me personally was managing Rob Van Dam for any 2006 ECW One Night Stand match, with RVD facing off against Cena, himself the WWE Champion at the time.
This is exciting because I saw that match at that time, and teenage me has a lot of half-remembered memories of the crowd being absolutely wild. This is played out in the match itself, too, using the game cutting from in-game to archive footage at pivotal moments so that when you complete the objective that sees you winning over Cena. It feels like Stuntman – keep in mind that? – however for grappling.
There's a lot of scripting going on here between the switches between archive footage and in-game effects, with some bespoke moves making a look and feel to capture the spirit of the match. It is a cool feature, using the right level of reverence, also it should be enough to get the juices flowing for any wrestling fan. As a lapsed fan, it's exciting to see matches I remember, and this is probably the the easy way revisit them.
This Showcase mode may be the game's savior, because beyond this WWE 2K23 feels clunky, with wrestlers handling like shopping carts, listing from quick time event into quick time event until somehow you are looking at a finish because you can't flick the right stick up at just the best time to escape a pin.
I still enjoyed it – playing as (former game journalist) Asuka I'd a fun time battering Shayna Baszler. Asuka's entrance is equally as huge as it is within the concert events, and there's a real sense of momentum towards the actual moves themselves, particularly when I acquired used to the sport. After I won the match, though, I was told it had been lackluster as it did not have enough drama.
Elsewhere, I took control of Cena himself for any Wargames match. If you aren't acquainted with this – I wasn't – it's basically two rings enclosed in a single big cage. After the match, two teams of three wrestlers will be kicking the shit from one another, but in the beginning there's only one wrestler from each team scrapping, with a brand new wrestler released every 60 seconds to become listed on the fray. Each new wrestler enters the cage having a weapon, generally, and if anyone leaves the cage it is a forfeit. It's a lot of fun, but there is notable slowdown each time a new wrestler entered the world, while I found AI wrestlers were frequently trying and failing to grapple me as i was belting their friends. It seems like the game is tighter in the one-on-one matches, although I am gutted I didn't check out the Royal Rumble mode, which was unlocked within this hands-on build but I didn't have time to properly take a look.
Honestly, it is a weird game. If Street Fighter 2 is about balletic grace, this really is more about watching two drunks fighting in a vehicle park. It's gutting, because wrestling is certainly not, it's a weirdly joyous mixture of incredible choreography and chiseled athletes throwing one another around a diamond ring with seemingly little concern for his or her own safety. It’s an art – a kind of dance combining pantomime villains with (simulated) extreme violence.
If you already love WWE, you can enjoy the game despite its flaws, which lovingly recreated John Cena highlight reel does something fascinating that I'd love to see in FIFA or other sports titles. This isn't your final form of the sport, but I'm wary – and secretly looking forward to seeing which of Cena's other huge matches allow it to be into the Showcase mode.
WWE 2K23 launches on March 17 for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
