Possibly my favorite wrestling game ever
I’ve been playing wrestling games since the PS1—heck, even before that in arcades with Matt Mania and WWF Superstars and the like, or even WCW on the SNES. I loved the N64 Aki games (US and Japanese, with No Mercy and Virtual Pro Wresting 2 being two of the best wrestling games ever) and really liked the GameCube Day of Reckoning games. I played all the Smackdown games and loved Here Comes the Pain and the early Smackdown vs Raw games. I played all the Japanese PS2 and PS3 wrestling games including all the Fire Pro’s, King of Coliseum’s, All Star Pros (ASPW3 was great, but limited in game types), and all the US and Japanese Dreamcast wrestling games (never could get good at Giant Gram and none of the Dreamcast wrestling games really hooked me). 2K19 was a great game on PS4 as well, but I didn’t realize how much the pacing and reversal meters were holding back the fun until 2K22 came out. I enjoy wrestling games and I’ve played a lot of them—great ones like No Mercy, VPW2, HCTP, ASPW3. Really good ones like 2K19 SDvsRaw, WCWvsNWO, etc. Good ones like most of the SD or 2K or FirePros (and, although super limited, Battlegrounds). Average ones like TNA, Legends of Prowrestling, etc. And terrible ones like Thunder, Backyard Pro, Backstage Assault, Royal Rumble on Dreamcast, etc. I honestly think I’ve tried every wrestling game released on console (US and Japanese), and all the arcade ones as well. All that being said, 2K22 is possibly my favorite wrestling game ever. It is one of the most fun, has great controls, a lot of in-depth modes, a great career (not perfect, but very good), very nice graphics, great animations, an amazing library of moves, a nice roster, up to 8 wrestlers in a match, custom matches —it’s just a ton of fun and I’ve already put more time into it than any wrestling game in probably the last decade (and I still haven’t even tried GM mode (but plan to)). I’m glad to hear this game has done so well after the terrible 2K20– it sounds like 2K23 is happening, and as an evolution of this game, it has a very good chance of being fantastic (I’d like permanent tag teams and factions added to career with tag titles added to the singles titles, and a career history with wins/losses, titles held and length of title reigns to give career more weight, and I would LOVE to be able to make the Royal Rumble a “win by pinfall or submission only” match like you could on the Aki N64 games, but overall 2K22 is a great game). Read more
