Weird moments like a new superstar threatening Stone Cold with his search history or The Miz lamenting losing all his money to an email scam are plenty in this story mode and stop it from being a slog, as well as the crudely drawn comic strips being quite funny to look at. The campaign is presented in a comic book style, and while it’s not exactly engaging, it is pretty enjoyable for how bizarre it is.
The main single-player mode in Battlegrounds is the campaign mode, which puts you in the shoes of seven ‘Punch Out’ level stereotypes as you try out for WWE’s new ‘Battlegrounds’ brand hosted by Paul Heyman and Stone Cold Steve Austin. These modes are all playable online with friends. Granted, the game is missing out on some vital matches like TLC, Hell in a Cell or Last Man Standing. WWE’s signature gimmick matches also make an appearance, like cage matches, the Royal Rumble and Gauntlet matches. Some characters get a unique move or two thrown in there, but this change makes the game almost feel like you have five characters to choose from with some specific wrestler skins to use with each move set.īattlegrounds offers up a handful of game modes from your standard singles, tag, triple threat, etc. However, in Battlegrounds a character’s class doesn’t just decide their normal moves it decides every move, barring one signature/finisher. Battlegrounds once again uses this class system, upping the number to five this time (All Rounder, Powerhouse, Brawler, Technician and High Flyer). Each character fit into one of four fighting styles – which dictates their normal strikes and grapples – as well as having four unique signature moves, unique taunts and a finisher. While it wasn’t incredibly deep or anything, All Stars did more to make characters feel unique. Gameplay wise, Battlegrounds feels like a bit of a step back from All Stars. While these are fun, I do wish they had done more with the concept. Each ‘Battleground’ is ultimately a wrestling ring with one gimmick, from a giant gator you can throw your opponent at to a set of bagpipes you can play poorly to damage your opponent. However, they never go far enough with this concept to justify the entire game revolving around it. The titular Battlegrounds – in theory – are arenas with crazy stipulations and hazards to make the game feel more akin to something like Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. In WWE Battlegrounds, the whole concept revolves around the arenas. In WWE All Stars – despite its over the top nature – you were mainly confined to standard wrestling rings, with no bells and whistles. Battlegrounds strays away from the simulation focus of the core WWE 2K series, instead aiming to provide a more arcade-like experience akin to games like WWE All Stars and Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game.īattlegrounds feels very much like a spiritual successor to WWE All Stars, taking the over-the-top arcade feeling with its exaggerated character models and animations and extending that style to the arenas you fight in. WWE 2K Battlegrounds is the latest release in the WWE 2K franchise this time being developed by Saber Interactive, developers of the NBA 2K Playgrounds games. This led to the cancellation of WWE 2K21 in April 2020, and 2K Battlegrounds was announced shortly after.
The quality of 2K20 was so poor that #FixWWE2K20 was one of the top trends on Twitter within 24 hours of the game’s launch, culminating in Sony offering refunds to customers who bought the game on PlayStation platforms.
WWE 2K20 launched in an unfinished state, filled to the brim with glitches and bugs (including a Y2K style bug that rendered the game unplayable at the beginning of the year) as well as graphical downgrades from the previous year’s game. After mixed reception to every WWE game released under the 2K banner, the ship finally seemed to be headed in the right direction with WWE 2K19 – only for the ship to do a sharp U-turn and hit an iceberg with 2K20. The story behind WWE 2K Battlegrounds really starts with last year’s WWE 2K20.