“Best Of…” Video Games Of 2015

III. WWE 2K16 (2015)
WWE UNIVERSE! Don’t you dare be sour! CLAP, for this year’s WWE Games installment and feel the POWAHHHHHH! Last year’s game didn’t spark the emotions of those wanting to see the promise of the new graphics and new company taking tasking fall on its face like it. However this year is a different story as a truck load of new tweaks have been made. 2K Sports acquired the rights to the WWE 2K series a few years ago and have been on heavy watch by fans ever since. Some believe the series was better before 2K touched the series and some believe it has made a turn for the better. The complete overhaul in major of the game making this version one of the best to date will give any WWE fan their money’s worth.  Some of the new systems don’t work particularly well, especially when it comes to being pinned. If you’ve taken a decent amount of damage, you’re a lot weaker and more susceptible to losing, obviously. Unfortunately, whether you’ve still managed to dominate your opponent in the process, all your hard work will be pointless because you were unable to kick out by pressing the right button in time. Even if you’ve taken a few suplexes, it’s enough to make you lose.

Perhaps the greatest overhaul in this year’s offering is the reversal system. You can’t reverse every move like before; instead you have a yellow bar on your HUD that indicates how many times you can press the reverse button. You still need to time it right, but when that bar has depleted, you won’t be able to stop your opponent’s assault. If you use it too much to stop a punch or kick, you’ll be completely helpless and exposed and at the complete mercy of your rival. WWE 2K16 boasts the largest roster ever, and you almost feel overwhelmed by the choice of who to wrestle with. You have the majority of current WWE superstars to choose from, including the Divas division and NXT. The Creation Suite is back to its best. The opportunity to create Divas, championships, arenas and shows are back, along with a whole host of new improvements to all the other features. Before you embark on the vastly enriched MyCareer, you can spend hours making sure that the created wrestler you’ll be playing as is as close to perfect as you want them. Which in MyCareer, there’s a lot of improvements that make this mode so much better than before. You now actually embark on a career as opposed to a single year in your superstar’s life; a whopping 15 years means that you have the chance to really make something of yourself. In the early years, you’ll make your way up the NXT ranks before heading into Raw and Smackdown, and as you do so, you’ll be able to increase your skills and improve your abilities. These goals give the improved mode added grandeur. There are tons of features that have been added which make this year’s offering a lot better. The Authority has been added to either mess up or aid your plans and the post-match interviews help to create an authentic experience, even if they are a little repetitive.

The Showcase mode has the nostalgic appeal for those who loved the “Texas Rattlesnake” Stone Cold Steve Austin. It reminds you of the legacy of Stone Cold and how significant he was in the birth of the Attitude era. Like previous showcases, you complete in-match criteria to progress to the next match and earn a ton of new arenas, outfits and content to play with. This could quite possibly be the best 2K Showcase to date and that’s the bottom line, cause Stone Cold (or I) said so! WWE Universe is back with minor improvements that build on the already fantastic mode. You can create up to seven matches and include rivalries that have more features than last year’s. You can also assign superstars to multiple shows, meaning you can pop up on Raw, Smackdown and NXT if you want.

Taken as a whole, WWE 2K16 is so much better than the previous entry and is a significant step in the right direction for the future of the series. Fundamentally, wrestling has never been this realistic and the excitement to be had with WWE 2K16 can’t be rivaled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8c3iH70p0

(Continue to page 3: IV. Fallout)