Note: This is not Wrestlezone’s final review of WWE 2K17. Since 2K did not send out early review copies this year, this is day one of our three day hands-on coverage, accompanied by daily live streams, which will culminate in a final review and score this Friday.
Yesterday, Tuesday October 11, was launch day for this year’s version of the annual WWE and 2K Sports offering, WWE 2K17. I had the opportunity to sit down with game on day one and live stream over six hours of content, playing through various modes and match types with help from our Wrestlezone viewers and live community.
My first impression? This game is surprisingly polished when compared with earlier entries in the series, and a heck of a lot of fun.
It’s hard to say which area of improvement I’m most impressed with, because the game runs so smoothly in almost every area I’ve tried out so far – for the most part. There are still some frustrating bugs that will hopefully be patched out. For instance, when using my Create-a-Wrestler Young Bucks tag team, sometimes I’d successfully superkick The New Day and immediately throw up the “Too Sweet” and fire off a few crotch chops for good measure, aaaand…. sometimes I’d hit the taunt button and flop on the ground, remaining there lifelessly until a computer opponent picked me back up.
But that’s really my biggest issue with WWE 2K17 so far. Seriously. That one glitch in that one tag team match, in over six hours of play, is my biggest, most frustrating and glaring issue with the game so far. Granted, I haven’t even touched MyCareer, so there’s still time for my expectations to be crushed like Kofi Kingston and Big E’s dreams, when I took the WWE Tag Team Championships from them and brought them home to the Bullet Club.
I’m a long-time fan of Create-a-Wrestler modes in pro wrestling video games. I’ve put together my favorite wrestlers in games going back 16 years to the vastly underrated WrestleMania 2000 on the N64, and this year’s suite might be the best yet. It’s not even that the content available is so much more than last year’s 2K16, although there is some there, it’s just that it all runs so, so smoothly.
Want to download a featured star from the Community Creations online portal? In past games you had to deal with inconsistent servers, if they let you on at all, accompanied by long download times once you finally searched half a dozen times to get to the content you wanted. This year it took me about 15 seconds to get online, find Harambe, and download that mighty, majestic beast straight into my custom character slots (of which there are plenty).
Load times are another major improvement. Because there’s so much customization in wrestling games, sitting through loading screens made creating wrestlers, teams, entrances and the like a super time-consuming, at times arduous process. With WWE 2K17 you barely notice the wait times. I was able to download the Young Bucks, set them up with their own Outsiders-inspired entrance, hook up their tag team finishers (More Bang For Your Buck is actually in the game), and incorporate them into Universe Mode seamlessly.
These seemingly minor changes might not sound all that impressive, but if you’re a long-time player of the franchise than you know the pain of sitting through loading screens, glitchy servers, and bad UI just to have all your hard work putting together the perfect Green Ranger CAW look like crap compared to the in-game packaged Superstars. Oh, that’s another thing. All match-up screens now use in-game character photos, so your CAW stars don’t look like old N64 knockoffs next to the guys and girls already in the game.
I mean, LOOK AT THAT! That’s not even a proper screenshot from my PS4 – it’s literally a picture taken from my iPhone of my television. Look at the shading! Look at the sideburns (RIP)! Look at the Bullet Club swag!
I’ve been able to have really fun matches with just about anyone. If you match up guys around their own skill level, anyone can have a back-and-forth contest that feels just as exhilarating (or more) than the actual WWE television product. In particular, I’ve had a shocking amount of fun playing as the “Lone Wolf” Baron Corbin, whose moveset is powerful and unique, as well as some included legends – my personal favorite among them being the WCW version of Flyin’ Brian Pillman.
Oh, that’s another thing. They’ve changed the way unlockable legends work. In past games, you unlocked a lot of legends using the 2K Showcase modes. Well, there are no Showcase modes in this year’s game (trust me, that’s a good thing), so now you have to “buy” all the legends you want using in-game currency, similar to how you buy stat upgrades and swag in NBA 2K17. You make that paper by wrestling five-star matches, or as close to them as you can get. Every time you step into the ring there’s a star meter at the top left corner of your screen, racking up points for every move, transition, counter and finisher you bust off, to a maximum of five stars. The higher the star rating, the more cash you earn towards unlocking your next legend.
Just because I’ve been asked about a dozen times, you can indeed wrestle a Hell in a Cell match with the women. In fact, I haven’t found anything you can’t do with the women, other than intergender matches (unfortunately) and dress them up in pre-created male Superstar outfits. By the way, I’m not sure if you could do this in last year’s game, but you can totally swap out gear on WWE Superstars with the press of a button. Want to put Undertaker in Big Boss Man’s blue getup? Done. AJ Styles in a Los Matadores costume? Done.
There’s a ton of mechanical upgrades too. Taunt in the corner and you grab onto the ropes and do one of a variety of different corner poses. There are a ton of OMG! Moments, including the insane Sami Zayn spot where he leaps through the ropes and DDT’s an opponent on the outside. Tables and ladders have been reworked, as have triple threat matches in a big way. Now, to stop them from being constant handicap matches, you will occasionally roll out of the ring to recover in a 3-way dance. On the floor you’ll quickly recover stamina and special energy; you can hit the ring early to break up a pin, but it will come at a cost to that stats as well. It’s a really nice balance, and I find myself playing triple threats more often than not now.
There’s a lot – A LOT – more I’d like to cover, but this is just my day one hands on with the game, and I need to save something for day two, and get back to live streaming. Check out our coverage later today on Wrestlezone.com, and check back tomorrow for my Day Two analysis, and Friday afternoon for the final verdict!
