The Overwhelmingly Deep WWE 2K24 Can’t Escape Vince McMahon’s Shadow

It’s no surprise that WWE 2K24 ships with two separate story modes, one for men and one for women, as it’s been a decade since WWE started to take women’s wrestling seriously. Unfortunately MyRise Unleashed, the women’s story, shows the same kind of condescension towards non-WWE wrestling that the company itself has always defaulted to; you play the owner and star of an independent promotion who has remained loyal to the indies and refused to work for WWE in the past, but finally decides to accept an offer to join the company in a storyline openly built upon the wariness independent wrestling fans have for WWE. There’s an early scene set in WWE’s Performance Center, a training facility they run in Florida, where your character defends an untrained college athlete from being talked down to by stereotypical “mean girls” who have years of experience in the indies. Even though your player character is depicted as a major star in the indies worried about leaving that world behind, this scene portrays independent wrestlers as petty, arrogant, and poorly behaved, which tracks with WWE’s (hopefully retired) belief that indie wrestlers need to “unlearn” what they know about wrestling and learn how to work WWE’s style. It’s a curious choice, given how many of WWE’s current stars came up through independent and international promotions, and one that might leave a bad taste in the mouth of many wrestling fans. It also doesn’t help that the voice-acting is uniformly poor, with stilted and cartoonish dialogue. It’s wonderful that a story custom-tailored towards women wrestlers exists, and MyRise Unleashed isn’t a total flop, but it’s definitely a chore to get through.

I’ve spent less time with the other story, MyRise Undisputed. Its concept is that Roman Reigns, who has held WWE’s top title for years now, leaves wrestling undefeated, relinquishing his title and turning full-time to Hollywood (which, given Reigns’ non-performance in Hobbs & Shaw, his only Hollywood role so far, basically turns this into a fantasy story). Your character becomes one of many wrestlers scrambling to win the vacated championship and create a career brighter and more successful than Reigns’. Again, I haven’t gotten that deep into it, but if you’re tired of Reigns’ seemingly endless domination of the real-life WWE, don’t expect to get any relief from that in 2K24.

Showcase of the Immortals packs a nostalgic punch that the storyline modes lack, but it also has some of the same problems I’ve had with earlier WWE 2K Showcase matches. The transition from the game to the video clips is smooth and directly connects what we’re doing in-game to wrestling history, but having to perform specific actions at specific times in order to recreate the original match can be very frustrating. The choice of historic matches starts off well, hitting the major highlights of the first 30 WrestleManias, but some of the event’s greatest matches are missing due to wrestlers involved actively working for competitors like AEW. Weirdly enough, Brock Lesnar is playable in two matches in Showcase of the Immortals, despite being otherwise removed from the game after he was seemingly alluded to (but not named) in the sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon. The video footage can also be extremely distracting, as recognizable WWE legends like Mean Gene Okerlund and Earl and Dave Hebner have their faces blurred out, so as not to pay royalties to them or their estates. (McMahon himself has his face blurred out at one point, despite appearing normally elsewhere in the game.) As always, my ability to tolerate the frustrating requirements of a Showcase match varies based on how much I care about the wrestlers involved or the real match being recreated, and on that front Showcase starts with its absolute high point, the Randy Savage vs. Ricky Steamboat match from WrestleMania III. Kudos, though, for choosing the right cinematic match from 2020’s Wrestlemania 36; the Firefly Fun House match has always been much smarter and more entertaining than the overpraised Boneyard match.

After sifting through all the various modes, the best things about WWE 2K24 are the most basic: the roster and the matches. In addition to dozens of current stars from WWE and NXT, including such greats as Cody Rhodes, Gunther (aka WALTER), AJ Styles, and Shinsuke Nakamura, 2K24 is also full of legends from the past. If you ever wanted to pit peak Dusty Rhodes against Dominik Mysterio, now’s your chance. As somebody who’s never been able to lose the muscle memory of the old AKI Nintendo 64 wrestling games, I’m not entirely in love with the wrestling action here; tapping a face button to reverse a move when an on-screen prompt appears just doesn’t come second-nature to me the way hitting a shoulder button does, and 2K24’s pinning mechanic can’t match the brute simplicity of mashing the hell out of buttons. But it’s a strong system that often makes matches feel like the real deal, with the build, flow, and back-and-forth momentum of a well-structured wrestling match. The carry mechanic, where a wrestler can carry another around in one of four different holds and deliver a variety of different moves, is a genuine revelation, and something that every wrestling game should emulate from here on out. 2K24 is strong at the nuts-and-bolts of a pro wrestling videogame, and that’s why I could see myself playing it long after I finish writing this, if it wasn’t for the issue of Vince McMahon.

If you have the time and desire to dive deep into its almost endless possibilities, WWE 2K24 could very well be the greatest wrestling game you’ve ever played. If you’re a ride-or-die WWE fan, you’ll no doubt love how it captures the uniquely oppressive atmosphere of a WWE show. Like WWE’s programming, though, it leaves me feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. A middle ground between WWE 2K24’s gargantuan package and the unfathomably barebones AEW Fight Forever would be my ideal wrestling game: something with the Nintendo 64-style action of Fight Forever, but with a story mode and create-a-character tools closer to what 2K24 offers. And since WWE 2K24’s creation suite actually lets you create characters that look and wrestle like real stars, and lets you share them online, unlike Fight Forever, it won’t be hard to get AEW’s roster playable in 2K24, anyway. There are obviously a lot of good reasons not to support somebody like Vince McMahon, who was the executive chairman of WWE’s parent company TKO and on the board of directors as recently as six weeks ago, and remains a major shareholder in the company, meaning he will materially profit from the success of WWE 2K24 even though he’s resigned from the company. He might be gone, but WWE is still effectively the company he built and ruled over for 40 plus years, and its current leadership all worked closely with him. If that doesn’t concern you, and you like wrestling games, you’ll almost definitely enjoy this one. If that does concern you, though, don’t feel bad about sitting this one out. It’s a totally valid response to the despicable actions committed by the man who still defines WWE, even in his absence. 

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and anything else that gets in his way. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.