PorchBandit

As this is a PC review I should star with the port. Honestly I didn't play long enough to really find many optimization, performance or crash issues, but I will say the Keyboard setup for this game seemed incredibly lazy. Though the gameplay and controls made no logical sense anyway the keyboard scheme made it even worse and I couldn't find a keymapping option anywhere in game. As I remember, two frequently used keys were in weird obscure positions on opposite ends seemingly because that was a key often used by other games despite not being anywhere near the same category. LET PEOPLE MAP THEIR OWN KEYS. Without controller I found the game absolutely **** just borderline. I ran out the refund timer on this game due to all of the creation options. That's always been one of my favorite parts of these Games especially with GM and more so with Universe in recent games. Creating an entire fictional roster with it's own show and arenas. I suppose I should give them credit for that much at least. It was at least as good or better than 19 in terms of customization and creation, or at the very least Good enough to distract me from what really matters even if my favored aspect is good enough. Where this game really failed for me was the new gameplay and controls. It's extremely annoying to get a game in a franchise even if I skipped 22 and 20 (for obvious reasons, 20 was reportedly so bad and battlegrounds, which i got extra in a $20 humble bundle, so cheap and lazy I tried to give a free digital copy back so I couldn't justify 22 for even a second ) for me to have to RELEARN a significantly different control scheme, especially when it's attached to a significantly different playstyle. 23 plays much more like your basic street fighter or MK clone and adds a 3rd dimension. A move that feels like trend chasing or a wrestling game trying to compete with non-wrestling games, Why? who knows. 2K doesn't, so why should I. Counters are just as hard as 19 with more MK garbage tacked on, more buttons for sweaty e-sports kids to franticly mash. Combos, that could and should look natural as in the real deal don't because...yeah Street Fighter. Oh and all the cheesy, exploity crap seemed present too, character locking, move spamming. All of the bad bits of a more classical 2d fighter in wwe? wtf? why? the controls and gameplay of 19 were not perfect but were certainly serviceable for the type of game it was. As soon as you started doing ladder matches or anything that wasn't a basic 1v1 the controls and gameplay got even worse with more spammy random buttons franticly smashed because the devs have even worse ADHD than I do. How to grab the Briefcase or whatever in ladder matches was even less clear and seemingly more random than half the other mechanics and as for the match types I didn't try...I'll just assume climbing the cell require you to tap RB up exactly three time activate your block so the cage doesn't hit you in the face then move each limb individually with RBLBRTLT and it still won't work half the time. Comically exaggerated nonsense, that is still in fact nonsense that exists to some capacity, aside, The entire direction for what WWE games will be going forward doesn't make sense and seems to appeal to people that would rather be playing TEKKEN, Street Fighter, Soulcalibur, Mortal Kombat etc. anyway (so literally every single games critic). I'm not saying improvement isn't welcome but it felt like they weakened their position of best in their own niche to be the worst in a different **** they could capitalize on an E-sports phase that's already been dying out? maybe? Either way the new Gameplay in this iteration made it unplayable for me because I hate the fighter games it seems to wanna emulate. I know plenty of people were fine with it, but the steam analytics and amount of sales they had to put this game on speak for themselves. They messed up, and probably won't go back because they'd piss off the people who wouldn't have had reason to complain if they hadn't changed it at all. And here I am asking simply, with all the balance sliders that still exist in the game, Why can't I have a simple options toggle to revert to something much more similar to 19 during offline play? It seems possible on this engine and NHL added oldschool controls and gameplay YEARS ago. I'm stuck hating a 3D reproduction of MK with less interesting characters and slower gameplay with the game I wanna play being totally unsupported and free of any of the things I would have been praising about 23 if I didn't hate the very fundamental part of this game such as improvement to universe Card sizes and variety of promos, the GM mode etc. It's a WWE simulator not a fighting game but they don't recognize that. It gets a three merely because of the improvements to things I WOULD have enjoyed if I had any desire to play and subsequently relearn yet another wrestling game. Buy Wrestling Empire instead.

If 2K23 is an 82, then 19 deserves a rescoring. It's by no means groundbreaking and the lack of additions of things that were lost in these games years and years ago when the development changed hands is certainly a pitfall. Universe was good in concept but needed tweaking, variety and customization that 19 just doesn't provide. It lacks a few significant features compared to the aforementioned more modern and at this time current WWE game such as GM mode. But maintains a semi-familiar control scheme and gameplay style that kept it true to the series as well as keeping to WWE's (more specifically their games franchise) title as leader in a niche market. I mention controls and gameplay because it's the very core of what is wrong with 23. Though on base settings the counters can be horribly difficult at times it also has no shortage of sliders to fine tune the experience so you don't feel the obvious trend chase to turn 2k19 into Dark Souls. The counters really seemed imprecise, clumsy, sometimes never showing prompt, Timing was very difficult to attune oneself to with the sheer amount of different moves and each one having the counter at different times during the animation. In at least one case, I had a wrestler with a lower overall rating counter special and finisher at least 3 times each in a single match with barely any stamina or "HP" left. Though in real life it would have made a great spectacle of a match to watch Not Ideal, especially for a game where I wanted to Vince McMahon my entire Universe and control every aspect, and Easy difficulty is still ridiculously unforgiving. (yes I know I don't play on high difficulty especially in wrestling games, but ones ability to play a difficult game shouldn't alienate them from a product they've already purchased, and why I stand by my opinions that Dark Souls is horribly overrated purely because people think hard = good, which is only ever true when two consenting adults are naked together, I further assert that that opinion is entirely objective) Luckily 2K at least had the foresight to offer players an INSANE amount of difficulty and match setting sliders from momentum rate (the resource used for finishers etc.), though this may feel a bit lazy, adding balance sliders rather than balancing the game, it's nice to be able to use them. As far as I remember you could get very granular adjusting how often the AI will counter strikes, diving moves, grapples and even specials/finishers.

Oddly enough, the game is not able to be reviewed for PC. This is strange and probably because Xbox and Playstation have stricter rules on selling/classifying products Early access. I will admit since I'm doing this for the console version I can't give it any more than a 5 because I did play it on console and it was incredibly janky and poorly ported especially with regards to the controls. If my review were for PC it would likely get a higher mark. And all my experiences I'll mention in the written section are mostly PC. It's a fun game. With a notable amount of jank. I'm pretty forgiving with that jank because it seems to be part of the charm but also because of what it tries to do. Some jank I dislike but much of it is just goofy fun in this game character models are gross but the modern versions zombies are pretty nice. The buildings and landscapes aren't the prettiest but the flexibility with building/digging/deconstruction makes it hard to truly make a breathtaking world. There are Some weird pathing issues and weird building restrictions but for the most part the game seems to function as intended. One complaint I've heard is how the devs seem to "fight the player base" adding enemy mechanics to defeat certain strategies. I don't know where I stand with that. On one hand it would be frustrated to have a ironclad defense just to have zombies dig under me though I commend the effort into keeping the players fresh and on their toes and I will say, as a whole they give you allot of options to customize difficulty outside of just easy, medium, hard. The game can be grindy and unforgiving but I had no issues when I tailored the difficulty to my liking. Auto generated maps are fun but definitely a source of allot of said jank. I don't hate this game by any stretch and have got my money's worth out of it. If you tend to have problems with less than gorgeous 4k games...probably don't buy. If you don't like horde mode games you can turn it off. Overall it's a fairly basic survival game experience but can be dull at points, especially if you turn off hordes completely. HOWEVER, I know on console the port just didn't feel very good. And actually felt frustrating to get used to. If your PC can handle it or you mean to get one soon I'd hold off. And Make sure you have friends to play with.

If your weren't aware, hipsters are alive and well in the gaming industry it seems and they love this game. Otherwise, this game is absolute garbage, with 0 to few redeeming qualities. The gameplay loop to start is an absolute slog. I don't mind the idea of starting with nothing but being half dead from the start in a game where you spend your first 80minutes unable to get to a decent looting spot is ridiculous. Even then the loot spawns are few and far between with no sense whatsoever. Nothing is within a 5KM of where it would logically be found in real life. To fix a car you'll travel the entire map to find any ammo for your one shot break-action shot gun you'll need to play for 10 days...240 hours. Visually the game can be pretty for moments at a time before you look at the poorly detailed houses or zombies. I'm aware the game came out a while ago, however the fact that most buildings are only about 50% modeled with interior at best and inaccessible for the other 50% makes the graphical quality stand out horrendously. Even the Xbox One could handle more than the game offered. On console it was a buggy mess and on PC it was just a mess...a lazy one. Before the game was called, allegedly, passable (for $60 Canadian) they were pumping out a $20 map that seemed just as lazy. It may not be as buggy as it was but the whole thing is still jank. Unmodded you'll have no fun whatsoever. There's maybe 8 guns and about that many spawn on the map at a time. You'll rarely encounter any one and if you do it'll be clunky and leave you frustrated by whatever BS the server decided to calculate. No game deserves the price it has remained that has relied so heavily on modders. Technically speaking it's not crazy as most modern set ups will handle it fine so optimization isn't much of an issue anymore. Not that there's many systems running to really stress your computer. Games that take half the storage space have twice the interconnected and complex systems. And the A.I. certainly won't cause issues on a systems level because there's detection (or not), yell, run head first at detected as far as zombies are concerned. I'm actually all for games that ask their player to "make their own fun" but you have to provide the players with mechanics, where DayZ only has ways to die (or not). There's a difference between telling players to make their own fun and giving them nothing to do and DayZ falls in the latter. I fail to think **** mechanic given to players to play around with...unless it's actively blocked by the game itself. Your to busy dying to explore, enjoy the hunting, raid other players, loot anything fun etc etc What it is as a whole, is a lazy and I mean LAZY, port of a decades old mod to cash in on, marketed only with hype, because nothing really shines and very little work was put into a game that took forever to release. It's empty, it's still often buggy, despite that it's way less buggy now and when not on console in my case. It's not even grindy because grind implies there's something to do. I really fail to see any of the redeeming qualities any reviewers mention. It is a walking simulator where the zombies are pylons and there's a useless hunger and thirst bar the game itself seems to forget it has. Luckily there's no spoilers here because...despite being told there's a ****'d never know because you're too busy dying to everything that isn't a zombie or enemy and very seldom another player. The games tries to flood you with mechanics that don't really function outside of themselves or interact with the others making it a mile wide millimeter deep kind of game. If this had been as high profile as Cyberpunk, Bohemia would be fanless and bankrupt, ONLY because DayZ wasn't as huge and because Bohemia does so much more with Arma are they even still around after this one. Congrats to Bohemia on buying so many bot accounts though. "Haters gonna hate" should be a banned phrase on metacritic cuz they're all bots