‘WWE 2K25’ Review: Reigning, Defending, but Disputed

Although real-life villain Vince McMahon was compelled out of the WWE, and underneath disreputable circumstances, in January of 2024, when it comes to the on-screen story, most will inform you the top of the McMahon period creatively was April 7, 2024. That was the day that Roman Reigns’s legendarily tyrannical run as Undisputed Champion got here to a righteous finish at Wrestlemania 40, by the hands of “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes.

It’s now been a yr because the WWE has been totally underneath Paul “Triple H” Levesque’s stewardship, and that point has been marked by dizzying highs, terrifying lows, creamy middles, and extra. And as soon as once more, 2K’s annual WWE-branded sports activities launch is supposed to encapsulate the broad spectrum {of professional} wrestling promotion in the mean time of the sport’s improvement cycle, which seems to focus on someplace round fall of 2024.

With WWE 2K25, the highlight is once more on Roman. To the sport’s credit score, although, it displays effectively upon the established order of the brand new period of the WWE. Versus the times when McMahon’s inventive fetishes guided who bought to be a major eventer, Roman’s existence on the prime of the cardboard is a much more welcome, natural presence right here. Sure, he’s the duvet boy this yr, but within the context of many of the remainder of the sport, he’s yet one more top-tier character in a a lot wider pantheon of A-list performers who’re given ample time to shine. As Cody Rhodes’s theme says upfront, wrestling has multiple royal household, and he should share the highlight, not simply with the present champion, but with members of his personal lengthy and legendary household.

Particularly, Showcase Mode begins with the autumn of Roman’s empire, then proceeds to inform the story of his Bloodline by way of a sequence of fantastical matches. Some are actual matches whose histories you’ll be able to rewrite (letting Yokozuna beat Hulk Hogan, or Umaga beat John Cena), some are pure fantasy (the Dudley Boyz of their prime in a TLC match towards the Wild Samoans), and all of them present a deep respect for the Samoan legacy within the WWE. It’s a powerful little bit of kayfabe storytelling, with Paul Heyman enjoying a masterful, scenery-chewing function because the tribal storyteller spinning endlessly fascinating fables of the Samoans that got here earlier than.

Elsewhere, the MyRise story is a surprisingly twisty angle about an invading faction of NXT wrestlers rebelling about the principle roster’s mishandling of their greatest stars after being known as up. There’s a shocking quantity of inside baseball at play right here, slyly speaking across the concept of your customized protagonist coming in from the likes of New Japan or AEW, and enjoying up some frequent complaints about inventive. The largest flaw, as normal, is a few iffy voice performing, from the protagonist in addition to the established WWE Superstars thrown into the combination, although some do higher than others (Drew McIntyre, particularly, totally understands the task). Nonetheless, there’s fairly a little bit of participant freedom to method MyRise with extra company than earlier years.

That’s a very good factor, since WWE 2K25’s one huge misfire is its pseudo-RPG mode, a really actual incarnation of Roman’s vaunted Island of Relevancy. The self-esteem isn’t the worst concept. An open-world techno-Polynesian Disneyland the place Roman is actually the Shang Tsung for a wrestling-based combating match, a la Mortal Kombat, is strictly the type of over-the-top ridiculousness that professional wrestling excels at. Nonetheless, the execution feels as gross and mercenary because the still-present MyFaction card recreation that this sequence continues to push on gamers. It’s even worse because the two modes share a forex and, you guessed it, a microtransaction system.

That is likely to be forgivable if the mode felt significant, but lots of its quests quantity to senseless collectathons and low-cost visual-novel-style interactions with Superstars. We’ve seen this idea executed with depth and panache in Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8. Within the flowery prose of the WWE’s chief inventive officer, WWE 2K25’s Island can’t maintain their jock by comparability.

Fortunately, the remainder of the sport affords a tweak and spitshine to a largely perfected system you’d count on from a yearly replace, with technical chain wrestling returning, intergender matches—one thing we’d like extra of from the actual deal—an all-killer soundtrack for as soon as, and an infinite roster that largely nonetheless presents the parents you’ll see operating the ropes on Netflix each Monday, which wasn’t even a assure the final two years. Regardless of capitalism rearing its ugly head, WWE 2K25, just like the WWE itself, is in a steady place, a frontrunner price acknowledging.

This recreation was reviewed with a code supplied by fortyseven communications.

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