Hey everyone, earlier this month I got to try out a demo of WWE2K16 at gamestop expo, and I wanted to share my thoughts with others who might be on the fence about the game, so with that in mind lets get to it.
In the demo I played there were five playable characters; Kevin Owens, Kalisto, Cesaro, Seth Rollins, and Daniel Bryan (Who I picked to play as)
the game visually looks the same as last year's, there may have been a slight uptick with certain spots during wrestler entrances. I accidentally skipped over the Breakout pre-match attack option, but when I asked someone about it they seemed to like it, especially when they saw Cesaro's hoddie get knocked off his head.
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MINOR SPOILER ALERT* I had a huge mark out moment when during the opening lock up, my opponent backed in to the ropes and the ref forced a break.
*END SPOILER*The chain wrestling is unchanged from last year, so is the stamina meter, if you liked it or not last year they're back again this year. But the game did bring a big change with the new reversal system. As it's been mentioned elsewhere, this year's game overhauls the reversal system with a set amount of reversals which recharge over time. This makes the game feel more methodical, you don't want to burn thru your reversals too quickly because the meter is somewhat slow to recharge, especially when you're playing as a character with fewer reversal slots (Having played as DB I had a full five reversal to work with, so while I was mindful, I really didn't have too much of a problem with it) This year more than ever who you pick will be a huge influence on the match.
Breaking point submissions are gone, instead holding down the grapple button will let you work a rest hold, which allows you to regain stamina while draining some of your opponent's. In the match I played in it didn't really become a factor, but for those who are more high spot happy it might become so.
submissions have been changed, if you played UFC 3 it's the exact same system.
The CPU hasn't changed and will still wait for you to attack, at times it feel like the reversal over haul along with the stamina bar was done in order to more or less mask this problem, it does help a little as you'll be a bit more deliberate with your action, but for long time series players like myself we can't help but notice this long standing issue is still present.
Overall the game has a few interesting upgrades, but if you didn't like how matches worked last year, I doubt you'll really be blown away this year. However I can see this being a better game when playing the multi-player due to how everything in the match works together to make you strategize more.
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Side note* I felt the matches in last years game were solid, where I was really let down with 2K15 was the My Career mode, and parts of the show case mode. While I do look forward to 2K16 I'll hold off telling people to buy it until I see more about this years single player offerings. I don't like how the Steve Austin show case has us playing matches we've already played in the past three WWE2K games as well as legends of wrestlemaina.Bonus: Me meeting Dean AmbroseBonus: Me Meet Seth Rolins