WWE 2K24 is coming March 8, bringing with it a ton of new features, including four new match types, as well as an updated roster that encapsulates more than 200 playable current-day WWE Superstars and Legends. I was recently invited to attend a 2K closed press event in Tampa, Fla., just before The Royal Rumble for a first-impressions hand-on experience with the game, as well as sitting down for a one-on-one with Creative Director Lynell Jinks.
WhileWWE 2K23impressed me so much that I heralded it asthe greatest wrestling game ever made(sorry, Smackdown! Here Comes The Pain fans) and I placed it inmy Top 10 Games of 2023 list, the demo I sat down with is looking to up the ante already. And while that demo was limited to a handful of match types and a limited roster of just two dozen Superstars, which I’ll list later in the article, I’m quite impressed with what I’ve seen so far.
Bringing Out The Ambulance
One of the biggest draws for this year’sWWE 2Kgame is the list of four new match types that are being introduced. I shared an Xbox console withGame Informer’s Marcus Stewart, and this was the first two-player experience we jumped into together. After our wrestlers made their entrances to the ring (Sami Zayn for me, Seth Rollins for Marcus), the flashing red lights and siren activated as the ambulance slowly backed down the entrance ramp, adding a sense of tension and excitement even greater than what I’d been experiencing with the standard match types.
We took turns battling it out inside the squared circle before eventually going back and forth trying to toss each other into the back of the ambulance to win the match (and sometimes climbing the ladder on the side of the ambulance to toss each other around on top of it, just for kicks).
Once you’ve tossed your opponent inside, closing the doors follows the same mechanic as performing a submission, although the first door seems to favor the person outside the ambulance, while the second and final door takes it much easier on the person inside. In two-player mode, at least, it seems almost impossible to win unless your opponent is stunned just before going in, which, sadly, was what happened to Sami after receiving a curb stomp just outside the ambulance entrance. Still, what a ride.
Building New Possibilities For Players
Sitting down with Jinks later on, he was happy to have so many additional match types in the game, with Special Guest Referee, Gauntlet, and Casket matches making up the rest of the list of debuts. WWE 2K23 only sported one new match type, War Games, which took up a lot ofVisual Concepts' creative resources, as it was the first time in the series that two rings were placed side-by-side with a cage around them and wrestlers entering the match on a timer.
“It took so much effort to get the [War Games] match type stood up, and chippable, and tuned, and fun, right?” he tells me. “This year, we’re like, ‘All right, what are some of the things that we kind of had to put on the back burner for 2K24 in order to support War Games in 2K23?’ Ambulance was high on that list. Special Guest Referee’s been on the list for years, but it required us to rewrite our entire referee engine in order to support the ability for a user to take control of the referee and have enough actions and animations to support said actions, right? So, those were the top of the list.”
In fact, there are three different Gauntlet modes coming, allowing you to choose the number of Superstars you’ll be facing in a row, and a single loss means you’re done. Jinks called Gauntlet Turnoil his favorite new match type in the game, explaining, “It’s old-school. To me it, like, pays homage to the old-school horde mode where it’s like, you start at one, and you try to either, you know, defeat four or 30 Superstars that are coming into the ring to try to beat you, and if you lose, it’s over.”
Battling It Out Backstage
While the Backstage Brawl isn’t considered a new match type, it might as well be, for all the new interactive elements that have been added in. The match type now supports four players instead of two, as long as you’re playing online, but you can still have up to two players offline with the rest of the Superstars being controlled by AI. Also, all weapons can now be thrown at opponents, adding a little range to your arsenal in no-DQ settings.
“So, it keeps us on our toes, and it also allows us to invent new technology … to try to chase that ultimate goal, which is realism, which is our staple.” - WWE 2K24 Creative Director Lynell Jinks
But what really makes this mode feel fresh is the new, interactive environmental elements that have been thrown in all around, such as an elevator for reaching those upper areas faster, a vending machine that dispenses weaponized soda cans when you toss someone into it, and an ambulance that now supports all the same functions at the one in the Ambulance Match. I didn’t get to try this bit for myself, but Jinks tells me that during an Ambulance match, you can actually drag your opponent backstage, go all the way back to the parking garage area, and finish the match with the ambulance located there instead of the one at ringside.
“This is a big environment,” he says. “What is there to do, though? So I think that’s what was lacking in previous years, was like, yeah, we added elevation and yeah, last year we added that spotlight that you can fall into and the sparks fly when you throw someone into it … And so there’s a level of discovery that we want you to have, like throwing someone into the glass, so the glass breaks now.”
This was, however, the one area of the demo where I experienced a bug. In a four-way match, after my Superstar and one AI-controlled opponent had been knocked out cold, I was left with just an AI-controlled Bayley and Dakota Kai left standing, and whenever they tried to run at each other, they kept stutter-stepping repeatedly in perfect sync. Another tester I spoke with said he found a section of wall backstage that, when an opponent is Irish whipped into it, the Superstar just disappeared into the wall and never came out again. It seems like the backstage may need a little more polish before launch, but fortunately, I didn’t hear of or experience any bugs in any of the demo’s other modes.
The Showcase Of The Immortals
Of course, with WrestleMania 40 set for April 6, this year’s WWE 2K game will feature a40 Years of WrestleMania Showcase mode, as opposed to a Showcase Mode in which you play a series of iconic matches as or against one specific Superstar (like in2K22’s Rey Mysterio Showcase or 2K23’s John Cena Showcase, respectively). The three Showcase matches on offer at the preview event were Rick Rude vs. The Ultimate Warrior from WrestleMania 5, and Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte Flair and Cody Rhodes vs. Roman Reigns, both from Wrestlemania 39.
Although Rhodes is this year’s cover star for the Standard Edition, with Ripley and Bianca Belair sharing the Deluxe Edition cover, this year’s showcase matches open on a narration from Corey Graves, in which he lays out the rivalry that led up to each iconic match, and Graves continues to narrate throughout key points in each match. “Yeah, it’s kind of a history lesson, and you’re going through like, ‘Oh, man!’ just popping into old VHS tapes or DVDs and, like, watching your favorite matches, but it’s playable,” Jinks added for flavor.
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If you’ve played previous Showcase modes, you’ll know what to expect, with Visual Concepts' own Slingshot Tech seamlessly transitioning between live footage from those classic matches to gameplay and back again, but with matches spanning four decades of history — Jinks tells me they aimed for four of the best WrestleMania matches from each era, and he hopes to release the full list soon — there’s a lot that goes into making each one look just right. From my experience, and all three of the ones playable in the demo had a different ambiance, and the action movie-like orchestral underscoring made the stakes seem even higher than usual.
“I think that’s one of the hardest things that we have to do every single year, because most games can get away with … if they’re watching a basketball game or a football game or, say it’s like an original IP, like no one’s really associating that to what they saw in real life, or it’s something they might have saw on a Sunday or whatever, and then play the game and not really make that connection,” he says. “Where with us, it’s like, no. We’re transitioning straight from live-action video in two frames right into gameplay. So the lighting has to look correct. The Superstars have to look correct … All the participants have to look like they did in that clip you just saw two seconds ago, right? So, it keeps us on our toes, and it also allows us to invent new technology … to attempt to chase that ultimate goal, which is realism, which is our staple.”
Looking Like A Real Champion
Of course, with that commitment to realism, making the Superstars themselves look right is paramount. While I’ve been a little skeeved by the uncanny valley effect in the faces from the TV and online ads for WWE 2K24, I’m pleased to report that the ones in the actual demo actually look like a step up from what I’ve become accustomed to in 2K23, and Jinks tells me that’s because of scanning technology that’s been “drastically” improving over the course of the 10 years or so that they’ve been scanning in the Superstars, as well as it being an aspect that they’re always trying to improve.
Those effects run the gamut from adjusting shaders to make blood effects look right both on top of and under the skin or chipping away at the face paint of performers like The Ultimate Warrior as he takes damage over the course of a match, as well as things like making hair physics move realistically and showing Superstars sweat more as matches drag on.
“We look at real life,” Jinks notes. “We look at what happens in WWE. People bruise. Like someone’s getting hit, you want to see bruising on their chest or on their face or their eye, right? Those are the things that you expect to see, and it keeps us honest in the things that we try to chase every single year.”
Two New Ways To Make Your Mark
While it wasn’t featured in the demo, two new MyRISE modes will be available in WWE 2K24, letting you inset yourself or an original character of your own design into a unique WWE storyline. Like last year’s edition, we can expect different storylines for male and female Superstars, titled Undisputed and Unleashed, respectively. “To me, it’s the best story modes that we’ve created,” Jinks tells me, featuring voiceover work from some of WWE’s top talent, including Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, Becky Lynch, Rhea Ripley, and Bianca Belair. “And seeing some of the, I’m serious, crazy things that you can do in this year’s story mode is just unparalleled to anything we’ve ever done.”
In Unleashed, your character starts out as co-promoter of an indie promotion who gets recruited by WWE (specifically, William Regal) to come to tryouts, but there is a lot of animosity from former Superstars who worked for your old promotion. Jinks says this storyline will also “tap into some supernatural stuff” and will include playing part of it as the 2K teams' own original character, Psycho Sally.
Meanwhile, in Undisputed, Roman Reigns is stepping away from WWE to try his luck in Hollywood, and your characters seeks to take advantage of the power vacuum by building a faction to rival The Bloodline and rise to the top of the WWE, despite Roman putting out a hit on you.
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A Meeting Of The Game Modes
All that is just scratching the surface of what’s in store for WWE 2K24. One major aspect Jinks wanted to play up (and that I’m particularly excited for) is the ability to take elements from one game mode and use them in another. For example, in WWE 2K24’s MyFaction mode, you could unlock cards that would let you play as a John Cena action figure or Alexa Bliss' Lilly doll, as well as snagging unique costumes for existing Superstars, but you were limited to using them in MyFaction.
To fix that problem, this year, they’re incorporating Persona Cards that you can use to take your hard-won or lucky finds into other game modes. And that’s not the only way Visual Concepts is blending its modes together either. After I geeked out over original character Chosen’s antics in 2K23, Jinks told me I’d be able to earn a special sort of currency to unlock the developers' OCs from multiple modes, like the enhancement talent in MyGM, and play them in different game modes than the ones they started in.
“It’s kind of like the Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come.” - WWE 2K24 Creative Director Lynell Jinks
“We want you to experience all of the things that we offer in this game, even though it might not be up your alley, but maybe once you get in there, you actually might like it,” he explains. “And with a ranked mode in MyFaction this year, if you’re the type of person that gets off on really trying to be the best in the world, you can! You can try to prove yourself and make sure that you’re number one on that list and maybe you can earn some rewards that you can spend elsewhere.”
That’s Not The End Of The Story
While the tagline for WWE 2K24 is “Finish Your Story,” that’s certainly not where the game’s story ends. The team has a lot of other improvements on the way, like an option in the “ultimate sandbox,” Universe Mode, that allows you to trigger whatever rivalry actions you want instead of what the game is leading you to, the way it did in 2K23. Also, after seeing Xavier Woods accidentally lose all his progress in the Creation Suite mid-stream by accidentally backing out of a character creation screen, Jinks says there will now be a quicksave function available at any time during character creation to keep our designs safe from user error.
After I humorously quipped that upon opening the ambulance, I expected to see R-Truth slide out on a gurney and smile at me from his blown hiding place, akin to something he was known for in his 24/7 Champion days, Jinks noted that the additions of all these match types are just a starting point for what makes wrestling great, and we should expect to see them (and existing match types) get even more details and surprises as time goes by.
“All of those enhancements to, or Easter Eggs, or little things like that that make it a little more wrestling-like are now on the table once we introduce, you know, features for the first time. It’s like, all right, let’s get the base functionality set now. After that thing’s there, now we can start entertaining them. Like, ‘Oh, man, what if there’s a surprise when you open up the casket or open up the ambulance’ or whatever, and I think those are the things that once we nail — ‘cause, you know, we would be wrong to entertain those things now and maybe miss out on fine-tuning or making sure that the experience as a whole is polished … There’s so much history with our roster and our Legends that people want to see us kind of embrace, and I think stuff like this gives us an opportunity to kind of leak that stuff in there … It’s kind of like the Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come.
“That’s the challenge with creating the game on a yearly cycle. It’s making people feel like they’re getting their money’s worth every single year. ‘Cause asking 60-plus dollars every single year from our users is a lot, right? And we want to make it feel more than just a roster update. It has to feel like it’s impactful; it feels fresh and different and new every single year.”
As someone who played WWE 2K23 enough to unlock every Superstar and Legend in its in-game store, after the limited demo, I already feel like there’s enough there to keep me coming back for this year’s iteration. It’s also worthy of note that if you preorder any edition of WWE 2K24, you’ll also be getting a copy of WWE 2K23, as well as a bunch of other extrasthat you can check out here. And while the full roster list for WWE 2K24 hasn’t been released yet, the demo version contains the following:
WWE 2K24 Current Superstars Roster (So Far)
WWE 2K24 Legends Roster (So Far)
Way more than just an annual roster update, WWE 2K24 chronicles the history of sports entertainment’s biggest even with its 40 Years of WrestleMania showcase, but it also shines in a massively improved GM mode and four brand new match types.DualShockers was provided with a review code for this game by the publisher.
