WWE 2K17

I am a huge wrestling fan, playing the WWF games dating back to the days of the NES so when WWE 2K17 was released I was all in. The thing is, any annual release style game never gets the chance to reinvent itself. The previous year's game had one of the best single-player modes (featuring Stone Cold Steve Austin) since 2K took over the license, but for this year's game, it fell kind of flat.

Replacing It With Nothing

I have to get this out of the way. The previous games in the WWE 2K series featured a main single-player mode called WWE Showcase. It let you play out the events of a classic feud or in the case of WWE 2K16 the career of Steve Austin. For WWE 2K17, they took that mode out and replaced it with nothing! Not only that, they then tried to reintroduce that mode and expect us to pay for it via DLC!

My Career

The main mode in this year's game was My Career. Although if you played this on the Xbox 360 or PS3, this mode is missing! The idea of My Career is great, you create your own wrestler and you start off at the bottom of the WWE as a trainee. The goal is to work your way up to legendary status.

It is a fantastic idea and in some ways, they do pull it off. The mode is a tad slow, but if you get a connection to your created wrestler, this mode can get you pretty invested in what is going on.

WWE Universe

The other main game mode in WWE 2K17 is WWE Universe. This lets you take control of the WWE. You get to decide what the rosters for each show are, create your own shows and PPVs and decide what the storylines will be. I love WWE Universe mode and while it may have the odd bug here or there, as a wrestling fan this is a mode that I spent a ton of time with. Also, if you are playing the PS3 or 360 version, this is your only single-player mode!

So Close To The Real Thing

Visually when WWE 2K17 gets it right it knocks it out of the park. Some of the character models in this game (and the series in general) look incredibly lifelike. However, others can look flat out disturbing. There is also an issue with hair clipping through the bodies which has been happening since the days of Smackdown on the PS1 and it is still not fixed. The game also has incredible production values, the wrestler entrances show off the character models and the incredible arena designs too. You have a great roster of modern and retro starts and the ability to create your own wrestler and download one’s others have made is here too.

It’s Like Being In The Ring!

By the time we got to WWE 2K17, I feel that 2K had developed a decent in-ring formula and decided to just stick with it. The gameplay here is fine, it is very, very similar to WWE 2K16 and the following years 18, but I have always had fun with these games. There is a massive selection of match types and sometimes a match can have some awesome back and forth action that gets you heavily invested in the action. However, they really did not try to add anything new for this year's game and that made a lot of people mad!

Pros:

• The roster is stacked
• My Career has some good ideas
• A great selection of match types
• Matches can be very exciting on some occasions

Cons:

• Removing Showcase Mode was a bad idea!
• The whole game feels very half-baked