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Golden Boy®

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There's a learning curve. It feels different from the other games...(which is good). I like what I played thus far...but one major complaint is with the backstage stuff. I just feel like the computer opponent always wants to Irish whip you in random directions. It's a huge pain in the ass just trying to set up a cool spot. We have all these new environmental attacks, and the PC just keeps ruining any attempt I make to use them. Also annoyed that there is still a lot of detection box stuff happening. Still can't break announce tables with random moves...still can't do random moves onto steps, etc. It's nice that we have a few options for doing moves onto stuff like the tables and steps...but the limitations seem unnecessary at the end of the day.

 

Oh...and squash matches are hilarious. I'm not entirely sure what sparks them...but I played a random match with Kevin Owens vs Cedric Alexander...and it was like 30 seconds long. There was a brief blurb about filling a finisher really quickly without getting knocked down...which I succeeded in doing. But I don't know what actually causes the sequence to start. But, yeah...pretty amusing. Bell rings, I throw a few punches, hit my signature, hit pop-up powerbomb...RIP, Cedric. Lol.

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One complaint I do have is that the reversals are harder, in a couple cases too hard. There's a couple moves that are nigh impossible to reverse.

 

Noticed a different feel with reversals also. Not sure I'd say they are harder necessarily...but they feel strange. And I turned off the reversal limit right away. I still think that mechanic is garbage that does more to ruin the flow of a match than anything else...

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One complaint I do have is that the reversals are harder, in a couple cases too hard. There's a couple moves that are nigh impossible to reverse.

 

Noticed a different feel with reversals also. Not sure I'd say they are harder necessarily...but they feel strange. And I turned off the reversal limit right away. I still think that mechanic is garbage that does more to ruin the flow of a match than anything else...

 

 

I'm playing on Legend right now and I think the game would be near impossible without the reversal limit. They reverse even more often than they did last year.

 

tbh, Its a simple weakness I feel with the difficulty being entirely reversal based.

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One complaint I do have is that the reversals are harder, in a couple cases too hard. There's a couple moves that are nigh impossible to reverse.

 

Noticed a different feel with reversals also. Not sure I'd say they are harder necessarily...but they feel strange. And I turned off the reversal limit right away. I still think that mechanic is garbage that does more to ruin the flow of a match than anything else...

 

And I think the exact opposite. I think it makes the match flow better since the AI gets offense and it's not just the player reversing 24/7.

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And I think the exact opposite. I think it makes the match flow better since the AI gets offense and it's not just the player reversing 24/7.

 

 

It makes you work more strategically...but that is not better flow. When I say better flow, I mean playing a proper match like it would look on television...complete with beginning, middle, end, spots, etc. With the reversal limit, the flow is completely broken up and unnatural. At the very least they need to add ways to boost the return of reversals...rather than them just being time-based. Burning unused finishers...something. The system is broken as-is.

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And I think the exact opposite. I think it makes the match flow better since the AI gets offense and it's not just the player reversing 24/7.

 

Noticed a different feel with reversals also. Not sure I'd say they are harder necessarily...but they feel strange. And I turned off the reversal limit right away. I still think that mechanic is garbage that does more to ruin the flow of a match than anything else...

 

 

 

It makes you work more strategically...but that is not better flow. When I say better flow, I mean playing a proper match like it would look on television...complete with beginning, middle, end, spots, etc. With the reversal limit, the flow is completely broken up and unnatural.

 

Not trying to argue btw, but I just don't see how. I turned off reversal limit to try a match and the AI couldn't get one move on me. It was majorly boring unless you let them hit something.

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Let me just say, especially when it comes to backstage brawls...if you have the reversal limit on, you will be out of reversals in about 15 seconds...and the computer has no problem countering all of your moves...so that's pretty much that. You get Irish whipped 15,000 times, run out of reversals...eventually catch a finisher, and get KO'd before you can even explore all the different areas. It's all well and dandy if you're just playing to win. I could win quickly and be done with it...but if you actually want to do things, good luck...

 

Normal matches are fine. I don't really hate the reversal thing nearly as much in a normal match setting. But like I said...they have all these cool backstage areas, and trying to explore them while constantly running out of reversals feels like a broken system to me.

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-Love the changes to entrance creation, I can finally mix and match parts. Also we got 5 new themes this year. Well changed anyways. Movie Star 1 and 2, Chinese Patriot, Ladies Man and Sexy have all been redone to different tunes.

 

-Love the high school/ballroom arenas though it's a shame you can't edit out the WWE logo.

 

-Love different face templates and starting points though morphing has changed a little.

 

-Love the 8 man tag but hate that it doesn't work, haven't been able to clear an entire match. The ref is awful.

 

My career is fun though it stinks not starting with the clothing or moves option you might want. It's fine that you are starting from nothing but I'd imagine the hottest free agent in wrestling has more than basic gear and is more than a 50 overall lol. I like the objective gameplay but the free roam camera makes me nauseous. Motion sickness sufferers beware it can get rough. Plus once you are out of money it takes a little while to earn enough for a crate. I wish they would not have put options like hair, beards and such in crates. That's stuff you need when you are making basic selections for your caw.

 

About to start Universe Mode....

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Also annoyed that there is still a lot of detection box stuff happening. Still can't break announce tables with random moves...still can't do random moves onto steps,

I really hope they go back to this some day. SVR 2011 had a perfect weapons physics system. I really just want to be able to slam people onto stuff. That's all I want.

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I've had fun playing some matches, but does it seem like the controls are a bit off for other players? By that, I mean that there seems to be a bit of a lag in the responsiveness from when I push a button to perform an action and when that action is performed, like grapples and strikes.

 

For that reason, the gameplay does feel a bit slower than last year's game, so I did feel like I had to adjust to a new game. I haven't spent too much time with the game though other than having played about three exhibition matches.

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I'm enjoying it somewhat, like Universe needs fixing, with the promos, AI needs to stop breaking out every entrance, Last Man Standing meter needs sorting as it doesn't come up when I was down & the frame rate needs fixing for 6 & 8 man matches.

 

But I've had some cool matches, mainly tag matches with DIY. I did an 8 man tag and if the frame rate didn't drop would have been really fun. So I think once the patches fixes things it'll be an enjoyable game.

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THE GMoPinion

As usual I'll be sorting this review into three categories, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good being all the things I find fun and enjoyable about the game, the bad being things I dislike or feel needs work about the game, and the ugly being about glitches and bugs; my final thoughts and score will follow at the end.

 

The Good!

 

WWE 2K18s marketing was heavily focused (for what there was of it) on its new graphics engine and fidelity, and for the most part it absolutely delivers in that criteria. Lighting and models look absolutely stunning in entrances, and they look noticably improved in-match as well, though not to the extent of the entrances. Facial expressions have been at least slightly improved, though they still look very uncanny valley-esque on caws.

 

The meat of the game is of course the gameplay, which will have mentions both here and in the "The Bad!" section. The improvements themselves are fantastic, with the carry system looking great and for the most part fluid, and the new selling and position feeding systems looking spot on... most of the time. Another thing that will get a mention both here and in "The Bad!" is the reversals. Timing has been adjusted for minor reversals and while I feel that was needed and thus is being mentioned here, I feel they went to far on them which is why I'll also mention them in "The Bad!". Suffice to say though, they aren't as ridiculously easy as they were in WWE 2K17.

 

Universe modes improvements have been small but so far that i've seen those small improvements carry a large impact, with me getting multiple cutscenes and rivalries forming much more naturally than they have in the past. That said, I hope you like falls count everywhere and triple threat matches, because once again Universe mode is obsessed with booking them.

 

My Career mode has seen a dramatic change and in my opinion, an improvement. With a much more focused story comprising of what so far seems to be a miriad of smaller stories. A few bugs have hampered the experience, such as the modes text consistently referencing the wrong wrestlers in side quests which can make hunting down the wrestler you're supposed to attack a real frustration, but I assume that will be patched fairly quickly.

 

While some may find Career modes lootboxes to be a problem, I personally quite enjoy them as it adds a degree of randomness in upgrading your character, though alternative options would've been nice as well.

 

Create A Wrestler has also seen a very large improvement, and one I'm very happy to see. With the return of face templates, its much much easier to make caws that not only look real, but also look very different from each-other, though I must say personally that I wish they'd also kept the texture options from 2K17 and allowed us to mix and match, as I feel that would've made things even better. Happily, an option has been added as an alternative to the hated and reviled stretch and fade of logos when placing them in caw mode, and for the most part, save for pants and tights, they're practically completely limitation free. The only limitation being the crotch reason and each leg on pants and tights are counted as separate parts when using that function and don't overlap which can be frustrating when trying to place logos on the side of a caws leg. The cut between the two however is nice and straight so a user can quite easily cut a logo in half and it should place just fine with each section.

 

All these improvements are fantastic, however this also leads me to...

 

The Bad!

Almost the things wrong with WWE 2K18 at the time of release can be summed up in one single experience I've had. It was a 3 vs 3 tag match I was put into in career mode in which I had the objective of Win the match with 3 or more stars, me being the one pinning, and I had to hit at least 2 finishers. This match took me over an hour to complete, and was so horrifically frustrating that I nearly turned the game off entirely.

 

The problems start on the technical aspect, the framerate for anything above 4 man matches is garbage, with the specific match I had playing out almost completely in slow motion. Not a good start.

 

The next problem I experienced was the reversals. Remember how I mentioned they'd be getting mentioned here too? Well, here we go. In my subjective opinion, they went overboard on making how difficult it is reverse. The timing is ridiculously slow and when some moves have no charge up animation to judge off of, this can lead to ungodly levels of frustration. This is for the player of course, the AI is a god amongst men when it comes to reversing even on normal and hard, Legend I found is unplayable at the moment until the reversals are fixed.

 

The biggest problem I had with the match though was the AI. I'm going to be blunt with you, the AI is not good in WWE 2K18. It's passible in singles matches, but in multi-man matches it is absolutely abysmal. Its fairly easy to tell they did not have enough time in the dev cycle to properly program the AI for the new features. Or Yukes are incompetent. Or both. Probably both.

 

The AI has an obsessive love for using the drag system to put the player on the ropes, or for dragging the player over towards a corner only to snapmare them before they reach it. Over. and over. and over. In fact they will pick you up out of a sitting position, do this, and snapmare you right back into a pinning position.

 

The AI Luckily seems a little less obsessed with the carry system, but it has the bad habit of initiating a carry only to break and stand still and do nothing until you break out of it. As you can imagine, this sucks because it breaks the immersion of a match.

 

I've had tag matches where my tag partners refuse to tag me in, where the AI breaks entirely and everyone excepts me just ends up standing still and doing nothing, and good god the games AI abuses the ever loving hell out of the new hot tag system.

 

Yeah, there's a new hot tag system, and its awesome! But it gets mentioned here because the game uses it constantly. constantly. The entire time you're on the ground or you're opponents on the ground, they're crawling for a hot tag, and the AI is ridiculously fast at it so get used to going to stomp them only for them to get the tag in the mean time. 15 times a match. I really like the new hot tag system but I think the amount it happens in a match needs to be drastically reduced.

 

Finally, the new position feeding system and selling systems, while absolutely fantastic, really feel like they needed more time in the oven. The AI often doesn't know how to handle it, and there's these weird points where animations will either appear to be skipping frames of animation, resulting in a jointed skippy feeling, or the animations feel oddly sped up or slowed down (not just a problem with the sell and position feeding, some regular moves seem to suffer this as well). This can result in the speed of a match feeling really off, jumping from really fast, almost arcadey one second, to slower than even a simulation style game should feel the next. There's a lack of consistency there that really hurts the match flow in my opinion.

 

Finally, the problems with this match at the end. The first time I played this 3 vs 3 match, I finally ended the match after 20 long and infuriating minutes... only to realize as the screen came up that I forgot to hit my finisher a second time. So how did career mode handle this? It forced me to do the entire match again. Another 40 minutes of this horrible match where I was afraid to tag in my partners because the AI isn't smart enough to tag me back in when I want, so I spend the entire match struggling with the lightning fast reversal timing, super slow framerate, and desperately trying to hit finishers on my opponents while the AI became the Sun Wukong of reversing, before finally hitting 2 and spending 10 more minutes trying to get the 3 count because as usual the enemy AI will ALWAYS come in to break up the pin and the ally AI will ALWAYS move slower than them, ensuring they can't stop them from breaking said pin up.

 

2K, Yukes, look; if you're going to put us into team-based multi-man matches in career mode, you NEED to give us the ability to control our allies. I understand the point of career is for us to be that specific wrestler, but if you can't get the tag team AI good enough to fix these problems, then its non-negotiable, we HAVE to be able to control our allies.

 

Finally, while I enjoy the lootbox system, the amount of VC you recieve for matches, even 5 star matches (which are much harder to get this year) are pitiful. Nowhere near enough. As much as I hate to admit it, I feel its quite obvious they originally intended for microtransactions for VC before the whole NBA 2K18 debacle shot that idea in the foot with a rocket launcher filled with jalapeno hot sauce. Career mode is going to be a frustrating slog if this isn't updated in a patch.

 

As a personal aside, I would also still like to see the running speed and animation updated. What wrestler has ever used a light jog on a sunday morning to hit their running finisher for the win?

 

Anyway, moving on to...

 

The Ugly!

Here's a quick list off the top of my head of bugs, glitches, and other technical issues i've experienced so far.

 

Losing the ability to climb the turnbuckle, getting stuck on the ground unable to get up, the AI freezing up and doing nothing, the royal rumble mini-game seems impossible to win, the horrible framerate issues, and though this is a very small issue, sometimes the game doesn't recognize you're charging for a back finisher and faces them front.

 

Conclusion!

I am enjoying WWE 2K18, but its easy to see that the game is suffering from the WWEs mandatory one year release cycle and Yukes being the developers, something which unfortunately is not really fixable in either case. The good is there, but the issues are clear and present at launch, though I believe a good deal of them will be fixed once patches start rolling out, this review of mine is focused on the game as it is now as I type and as it is now as I type is a frustrating culmination of potential held down but a bad AI, framerate issues out the wazoo, and a need for more time to work on it.

 

The game is fun as hell when it's working correctly, easily the best WWE game (subjective opinion before the No Mercy crowd jumps on me like hyenas on Scar); when it's working correctly. When it isn't, it varies from a slight annoyance to a huge frustration. And I should never feel frustrated when I'm playing a WWE game, it allows me to live a dream I never could accomplish in reality.

Overall Score!

 

6.5 to 7 out of 10

If the majority of the problems i've pointed out our fixed, the score jumps to

8 out of 10

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This review was written spontaneously and if I think of more to add I will do so in the future.

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