WWE 2K22 Review

The wrestling video game. It’s always been a staple for the WWF and other companies over the years. While the early games on the earlier generations of consoles, like the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES, were simply cash-ins on the product, a new and exciting way to bring the kids in and make some additional revenue, things would slowly evolve over time. Once the Nintendo 64 entered the fray, things changed. Beginning with WCW/NWO World Tour, wrestling video games began becoming natural extensions of the action we would view in the ring, arguably hitting its apex with WWF No Mercy. From there it would be an up and down adventure over the decades, which many fans will still argue what is the most superior wrestling game of all time. Hell, almost a year ago to the day we listed our Greatest Wrestling Video Games of All-Time.

Upon the closure and bankruptcy of THQ Games nearly a decade ago, 2K Games would pick up the reins of what had become a massively lucrative franchise, to varying results. This all culminated with WWE 2K20 a few years ago, a game that was lambasted as a bug-ridden mess. While the game was playable and even had some bright spots, the backlash was so severe that 2K announced they would be taking a year off, something very rare in today’s day and age of yearly sports releases. 2K said they acknowledged the mess the game had become and would take the extra time to build a new engine and instead of a regular yearly re-skin, they would rebuild the game from the ground up. In the interim, they did release WWE 2K Battlegrounds (which we reviewed here) which is more of an arcade brawler than wrestling sim.

So, now that we’re caught up, the time has finally come for 2K and WWE to release WWE 2K22, promising that it hits different. Having had some time to dive into the game and get used to the new engine, how does it pan out? Well, arguably much better than most could have hoped.

First things first, let’s talk about the presentation. To say this is the best-looking WWE game ever would be an understatement. Now using the same photo-realistic scanning tech used in 2K’s lauded NBA games, the superstars of WWE have never looked this good in a video game. This carries around to all aspects of the game as seemingly everything has been improved, right down to the weapons actually breaking in real-time (I can’t recall any of the other games where the kendo sticks actually splinter upon several uses). There are still the occasional chopping issues with long-haired superstars and certain other minimal issues, but overall this is the best looking game in wrestling history. On the audio side, things aren’t as good. During the story modes we get the same standard reading off a cue card performances from pretty much anyone who talks, but in a way that is to be expected and not exactly a downside. As for the soundtrack, a lot of ballyhoo has been made about Machine Gun Kelly being the soundtrack’s producer. I suppose your mileage with this will depend on your personal music taste, but for me personally the songs chosen generally don’t hit the mark, with the exception of Motorhead, because it’s Motorhead. It does at least make sense for Bad Bunny and Poppy to be included as those songs have been heavily featured on the programming.

The much-touted redesigned engine is the true revelation with WWE 2K22. Seemingly completely redesigned, the best way that I could describe the control scheme, is it is a baby mixing together some of the best of the N64 controls and some of the PS2 era controls, with a smattering of the GameCube’s incredible stylings, and you get the new 2K22 controls. It is a marked improvement over the past few years’ worth of games, and along with the renewed graphics it makes for an easy play and enjoyable experience.

The Showcase mode this year focuses around the long career of certifiable legend and cover star Rey Mysterio. Spanning from 1997 right through to 2020, there’s a very eclectic mix of matches, some making more sense than others, all narrated by Mysterio himself in a sit-down interview. Featuring only one non-WWE match, his absolute classic with Eddie Guerrero at WCW Halloween Havoc 1997, the layout of the mode is a big improvement, with the in-match recreations cutting away to actual match footage and then back into the game. The only real downsides are that Mysterio doesn’t exactly have the charisma to carry the interviews off in an exciting manner, and some of the match choices are odd at best. Either way, it’s a nice fun way to blow off a couple of hours.

The rest of the modes are all-around updates to what have become the standards, featuring Universe Mode, MyRise (the new career mode for your own created star, featuring both male and female stories with branching storyline arcs) and the return of the beloved GM Mode with MyGM. There is also the new MyFaction mode, which mixes many of the other modes together with a trading card game. To say it is a huge game would again be putting it lightly. I’ve been playing the game for nearly a week now, and I’ve still barely scraped the surface, let alone been able to fully dig into all of the modes.

The Creation Suite once again returns, allowing you to create everything from your own Created Wrestlers, all the way through to Championships and even Money In The Bank briefcases. If I were to try and go through all of the options available, this review would likely be coming out closer to a month or two from now. Everything has been given a new coat of paint and there is very little to complain about in this regard. Perhaps the only nitpick I could throw out would be the absence of a feature from the Xbox 360 generation where you could take any MP3 you have on your hard drive to make your entrance theme. But beyond that, and again with the return of being able to download and share your own creations and others, you can infinitely keep your roster up to date or bring in former stars.

Before we wrap this up, we should address the elephant in the room, which is the roster. As has been an ongoing controversy since the pandemic era, WWE has unfortunately released talent in droves, resulting in a huge portion of the current roster in the game no longer being with the company. This is something that 2K simply cannot be penalized for but is entirely on WWE themselves. If 2K were to remove any wrestlers that had been removed from their contract, the roster would bear more resemblance to those of the Super Nintendo era featuring a minimal roster, something that would surely turn many fans away. It has always been an issue with these games that you would see a roster slightly outdated but never has it been more prevalent than in WWE 2K22. On the flip side, it does give us fans an opportunity to give many of our favorite stars the type of booking they perhaps deserved.

WWE 2K22’s tagline is “It Hits Different” and after some rough patches, I can feel confident through my experience in saying that this is easily the best WWE 2K video game since their takeover (see what I did there) of the license from THQ. It is still far too early to tell whether it will stand with the heavyweights like No Mercy or SmackDown: Here Comes The Pain, but it is without a doubt the best wrestling video game in years and fans can rest easy with any reservations they may have had going in.

Note: A review copy of WWE2K22 was provided by the developer for this review, and was played on an Xbox Series S console.