WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS

[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote] I don't have a lot of history with WWE games. I basically had no love for the mainline games that Yuke's and Visual Concepts were/are in charge of making them, and I did not have access to consoles for most of my life so I missed out of stuff like WWE All Stars. But there is one game that I fondly remember from my childhood, one that I loved a lot and would always play it whenever I got the chance: WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game. Without a single shred of doubt, that game is the most fun I've had while playing a officially licensed WWE game. It was so easy to pick it up and start playing, all of the playable wrestlers had character-specific special attacks and finishers, the match commentaries were energetic and the audiovisual presentation was on-point, as expected from the talented team at Midway Games. [b]WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS wishes it was as good as that game.[/b] [h2]Most of the game's features will become inaccessible if the servers go offline? OH JOY![/h2] The game's problems start from the moment you get to the main menu. A lot of things in this game either try for or require a constant, uninterrupted connection to 2K Games' servers. Trying to open the main menu? The game tries to log in first. Want to start a exhibition match or open the campaign menu? The game tries to log in first. Wish to take a glance at the 3D models of all included superstars? The game tries to log in first. And the worst thing is, these constant login attempt pop-ups happen back to back, with each of them taking up to 40 seconds before going away and letting you do what you want, should your internet connection pose any problems. And this directly affects the gameplay as well. Should you run into any connection problems or try to play the game offline, you will quickly notice that three different game modes (Tournament, King of the Battleground and Battleground Challenge), both of the wrestler and battleground creators, the store, and all of the match rewards will be disabled unless you go online. And no, the rewards system is not designed like Mortal Kombat 11, where the game remembered what you did and gave you your rewards the next time you went online. If you are not online when a match starts, your rewards are GONE FOR GOOD and the game makes sure to let you know that. And don't you dare try to defend this by saying "Just get better internet bro". The game's always online requirement raises legitimate concerns. Should the publisher, 2K Games, pull the plug on this game and shut down the servers, a majority of this game's contents will become inaccessible and you will have access to an utterly inferior version of the game you spent your hard earned money to buy. Not that I would recommend the game if this wasn't the case here. [h2]This is just normal wrestlemania with fancy effects...[/h2] I don't know about you, but I found the gameplay in WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS to be utterly boring; Especially for a game that declares it's an arcade game. Let me tell you why I feel that way based on my experience with WWF Wrestlemania Arcade Game. In that game, the gameplay was extremely fast and felt more like a traditional fighting game rather than a traditional WWE game, as expected from the developers of the original Mortal Kombat trilogy. Players traded blows at fast speeds, each character had special abilities and attacks (for example, The Undertaker's moves created a shadow/darkness effect), each character had access to finishers in addition to pinning the opponent (for example, The Undertaker pushed the opponent inside a coffin), you could freely change where you wanted to attack by simply moving around, and multiple consecutive hits caused a combo counter to appear on the screen. WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS is not like that and actually feels like a normal Wrestlemania game with fantasy elements and caricaturish wrestler designs (I will talk about that later) tossed in. Your attacks are way too slow, your special attacks are way slower, and your combos feel unsatisfying as the direct result of those. The overall game speed is much slower than what you expect from an arcade game. The special attacks are nothing special, just being some normal wrestling moves with a bunch of visual effects and cinematic camera angles, in a futile attempt to make them look flashier than what they are. The characters barely have any differences in terms of their available move set. There are no finishers and you need to win the match utilizing normal WWE rules. When going for a throw counter, the game gives you literal miliseconds to see the button you have to press, process what you saw and then input the button. The commentary is incredibly lackluster as well. The result of all this, is an "arcade" game that feels more repetitive, annoying and boring than fun to me. Sure, the game also introduces stuff like environmental hazards, weapon pickups and the ability to break the wrestling arena, but when the core of the gameplay is designed in a way that makes it not fun to play, no additional feature can magically make the situation better. It also does not help that the game fully expects me to play it for an extended period of time, as an excessive amount of stuff (skills, arenas and wrestlers) are locked behind the very lengthy campaign mode that suffers from constant difficulty spikes. Well... either that, or I have to grind/buy the currency types this game has in order to unlock everything from the shop. [h2]Why does my character look like their face has gotten crushed by a truck?[/h2] The state of the gameplay, with it being a normal WWE game with fancy effects, really makes it feels like even the developers were not sure about what they were making. Something that I can also say about the game's visual presentation and especially the character designs. Some of the wrestlers in this game look fine, while others look either overly goofy or downright horrifying to look at. The custom wrestlers you take control in the campaign mode also have some of the worst character designs I have ever seen in a video game. And all of this is further noticeable through the horrible, amateurishly designed still-images that you see at the end of a match. The animations that are used in the character select screen and during the entrances are very rough and displeasing to look at, turning the wrestler entrances into tasteless jokes that you never would want to watch again. The wrestler select screen is horrendous too, making me wonder if anyone in the development team has ever seen a player select screen in fighting games. I mean... [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3660770462]JUST LOOK AT THIS![/url] Why are the wrestler slots placed under each other in a singular column?! Why should the wrestlers' 3D models take the majority of the screen?! Who was in charge of this?! Who approved this?! If you want to play a WWE game that actually feels and plays like an arcade game, just go and play WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game. Maybe WWE All Stars would also be a great choice as well. Just don't play this one. WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS is a game that is created in a way to push microtransactions through an always-online requirement, and has no respect for you, your hard-earned money and especially your time. [h2]TL;DR[/h2] Looks bad, feels boring and is designed in a way to push microtransactions. Not to mention a majority of its contents are bound to a constant internet connection and can get inaccessible at any moment.