by Jeffrey Jacques Sobral, WrestlingNewsWorld.com
At the end of November 2014 WWE released their new entry in the yearly WWE 2K videogame series and since it was the first WWE game to be released on the next-gen video game consoles, the expectations were high. After seeing the first gameplay videos the fans were losing their minds because never before had a wrestling videogame looked so realistic and fluid. When the game was released however, it was met with mediocre reviews and a lot of negativity from the fans on social media with people calling it one of the worst wrestling videogames of all-time because a lot of game modes that were beloved in previous entries had no longer found their way into the new game. Now a lot of the criticism directed toward this game was deserved but at the end of the day, there are still people playing this game and enjoying themselves. With the transition to the new consoles and a new engine running this game it is understandable the creators had a lot of work on their plates and I don’t blame them for not being able to include all the features they had included in earlier games. I think WWE 2K15 set a very solid basis for future entries in the WWE 2K series in which we will undoubtedly see a lot of these beloved features return.
One thing a lot of people did seem to agree on when talking about this game was that the 2K showcase mode, which is WWE 2K15′s equivalent of a story mode, was very well realized. In this mode we relived two of WWE’s most iconic rivalries in the stories of John Cena vs CM Punk and Shawn Michaels vs Triple H. With the announcement of there being only two rivalries in the original game, a lot of people were pretty disappointed but at least these stories where quite substantial with the Cena/Punk story including 19 matches to play through and the HBK/HHH story including 14. A few weeks before WWE 2k15 was released 2K announced a season pass which would include all the new 2K showcase DLC and the exclusive character of WWE Diva Paige, which had me spend another 25 dollars for this season pass on top of my 100 dollar Hulkamania special edition. That’s all good though, if there is some more good gameplay hours to be had in this game and some new characters I would be satisfied.
The season pass was set to include three all-new rivalries, with the first one focusing on the 2011 Christian VS Randy Orton rivalry, the second one would take a look at Mark Henry’s Hall Of Pain run from the same year and the final one that is still to be released will focus on the career of the Ultimate Warrior. A lot of people were very critical on these choices and understandably so, these are not necessarily the rivalries best suited for a showcase in WWE 2k15 and the complete lack of a story taking place in the Attitude Era is a bit disappointing. I like to look at what this DLC does bring to this table though, and not about what could have been, so let’s take a look at the first two expansion packs we have received so far.
First up was the “One More Match” expansion pack which was released only a couple of weeks ago and is about Christian and Randy Orton. This is definitely a memorable rivalry for me as I still very vividly remember these events that took place in 2011 when Christian finally had his big moment and all of a sudden, out of nowhere some might say, a Randy Orton appeared dethroning the World Heavyweight Champion Christian just five days after winning it. This would be the start of a rivalry that lasted from Extreme Rules to Summerslam, which translates to 9 matches in the game, which is considerably shorter than the original rivalries in the game. You can play through these 9 matches in about two hours, which isn’t very long but the story is a fun and memorable one and it is a good way to relive this rivalry. Orton and Christian are both very fun to play as and switching between the two characters keeps it interesting. The expansion also adds the characters of Edge & Christian which in all honesty should have been in the original game but I’m happy we finally have them and they also offer us a few new versions of wrestlers that they were already in the game like Randy Orton, Sheamus and Mark Henry. Overall I would say it’s a fun DLC but ten dollars is quite a lot of money for such a short DLC which doesn’t even offer that many new characters, I would probably give this DLC around a 6 out of 10, It’s enjoyable if you are a fan of the game but it’s nothing special.
This week the second expansion pack entitled “Hall Of Pain” was released and the first thing that I noticed was that it once again only spanned across 9 matches which is once again pretty short. Once you start playing you quickly forget about that though because once Mark Henry jumps off the second rope to crush Big Show’s leg with a chair, it looked absolutely brutal and I was having fun. That fun quickly turned into being a bit bored because playing as Mark Henry for nine matches straight can get a little boring, where the “One More Match” DLC still had you switching between Randy and Christian, this one only let’s you play as Mark Henry. Within two hours I had reached the end of this story and I couldn’t help but think why they had such a massive timeskip in the middle of the story, you don’t even get to play the match where Mark Henry loses his World Heavyweight Championship to Big Show, who would then lose it to Money In The Bank- contract holder Daniel Bryan. That is just very weird to me, especially because you join Mark Henry on his journey to the WHC and when you finally have it they don’t even really show you how he lost it. Where the first expansion still gave you Edge and Christian as new characters, the only new character in this expansion is The Great Khali, and then there’s some more new versions of already existing characters which means the game now has 4 Randy Ortons, 3 Mark Henrys, 3 Daniel Bryans and 3 Sheamus characters. That’s just a bit ridiculous to me, a lot of fans were expecting quite a few new characters with the season pass and up until now we’ve only had three, luckily the path of the warrior promises to bring us a lot more WWE Legends so we still have that to look forward to and I will also be reviewing that. Both expansions did have beautifully edited videos in between the matches but the WWE has always been good at that. I would give the hall of pain DLC 5 out of 10.
I hope tje Path of The Warrior DLC will have more value, because these expansions aren’t worth your 10 bucks a piece, unless you are a very hardcore fan of the game and it’s showcase mode and you want a few extra hours of gameplay from it.
by Jeffrey Jacques Sobral, WrestlingNewsWorld.com
