The Wrestling Thread

[Raging Justice]

I like Maxine, and I'll be the first to admit that wrestling fans can be assholes and idiots. We see it on an almost weekly basis, the fucking what chants make me want to punch WWE fans in the face, but that's the business. Do stand up comics turn into little cry babies when a crowd doesn't like them? No. They keep going, they learn, they improve, and eventually they're selling out shows and making a room full of people crack up. The business of public entertainment is not for thin skinned babies. Previous generations dealt with FAR worse treatment from crowds than ANYTHING we see today and they just dealt with it because they weren't pu**ies.

This is what I mean about Gen Zers and millenials being so pathetic now. The world is going to be in a dire state when these generations are the only ones living on it because they are:

[Raging Justice]

Has Rhea forgotten that they work in a business where half of the roster is paid to piss off crowds?

[Raging Justice]

Rhea would have hated working in ECW.

[Raging Justice]

Did Tony Kahn just work Meltzer and Alvarez in order to turn Hangman heel?

[Reprise]

Swerve posted this on Twitter

[Reprise]

Just seen the new trailer for 2K24's two new story modes. It's like the more cinematic they try to be and the more closely they try to emulate a real wrestling tv experience, the more cringey, goofy and lame they get.

The gist of the men's storyline seems to be that Roman relinquishes his belt, because... 'reasons'. Then he helps you win the belt and the proceeds to goad you by telling you he's the 'landlord', you're 'the tenant' and that you're only where you are, because of him. And then shocker, eventually he returns to take back what is his and you have to beat him to 'finish your story'.

I really miss what wrestling video games used to be like. They used to be so adventurous and really seemed to put tons of effort into making the games fun, rather than just trying to appeal to WWE/wrestling nerds by emulating the product. The old WWE games had amazing season modes that would go on endlessly (although later ones did cut it down to a few years) with random branching paths and hundreds of different storylines. Want to form a tag-team? Cool, go for it and you can enter a tag-team storyline? Want to join a faction? Cool, go for it and you can enter a 3 month long storyline where you form a large heel faction where you try to take everyone else down. Don't want to join a faction? Cool, become a lone wolf who acts to take down a large heel faction. In theory, you could place yourself any place on the card, go for any belt you desire and experience any storylines that come with those feuds and belts. Not to mention that in Shut Your Mouth and Here Comes the Pain you could be drafted between Raw and Smackdown for different feuds and stories.

The old games kept on expanding on what they were building too, adding crazier and crazier match types and more elaborate backstage areas with tons of different ways to interact with those areas.

Then the story modes just got more and more linear and they got people to voice lines and it's just really lame. And as far as modes and match types go, all they do is add stuff in that they took out a few years beforehand and then people praise them for it, even when they're mediocre shells of their former modes from back in the day. Take the backstage areas that returned about 5 years ago. They're boring and no where near as good as the ones that were even in Smackdown 2 on the freaking PS1.

Anyways, that's my rant for the day.

WWE games suck now.

The AEW game actually has fun gameplay, but still sucks because of their lack of communication, lack of transparency, their ludicrously overpriced DLC, inability to address fans' issues and the general lack of content

Those nostalgia bait indie wrestling games, like Retromania and whatever that No Mercy rip off Kickstarter game is called, probably suck too.

Fire Pro World is great, but it's the same as any other Fire Pro game I have been playing for like two decades.

Someone make a genuinely amazing wrestling game already, please.

[prfsnl_gmr]

What are the best modern wrestling games? The last really good one I’m aware of is Smackdown vs. Raw from 2007. Are any of the ones on more modern consoles good?

[Reprise]

What are the best modern wrestling games? The last really good one I’m aware of is Smackdown vs. Raw from 2007. Are any of the ones on more modern consoles good?

That one right there lol. That's the last "good" modern wrestling game, but I guess I can't really call it modern anymore.

WWE '13 was quite fun. It had a very fun Attitude Era mode that went over some of the biggest moments that happened during that period. It unfortunately concentrated more on the earlier period (arguably stuff that was pre-Attitude era) and ended fairly abruptly, because a lot of the big guys from 2000-2001 weren't available to be in the game.

WWE '14 had a fun 30 Years of Wrestlemania mode that had more than double the amount of matches 2K24's 40 Years of Wrestlemania mode is going to have

2K15-2K23 aren't worth playing in my opinion, but that's me. I don't like the 2K games.

AEW Fight Forever has much better gameplay, is more fun to play and a some really cool stuff, like barbed wire death match and lights out matches with lots of crazy weapons and cool interactive elements. Some wrestlers have their gimmicks, like MJF being able to do some of his heel persona tricks and Orange Cassidy being able to do moves with his hands in his pockets. However, the game doesn't really have a whole lot of content... at all. The story mode is average. It's fun the first play through, with some quite quirky almost Japanese/Yakuza/Like a Dragon inspired segments, but I got bored during my second go, despite getting different storylines. It also doesn't take long to unlock most stuff in the game.

This is why I did my rant to be honest. There aren't any really good modern wrestling games.

Edit: I should add, if you did want to play one of the 2K games, they are generally small iterative annual updates each year. 2K24 will probably be the best one to play, as - other than 2K20 which is the exception to the rule - they just build and improve upon the games each year. Otherwise, try 2K23.

[Raging Justice]

Games in general have gotten really soulless these days. They are either too corporate, with season passes, micro transactions, multiplayer/online/party game bullshit, games "as a service", broken, lazy games that need day 1 patches, etc, etc., or they are pumping out the same shit over and over again. Generic open world gameplay, endless games with "Souls-like" combat and parry systems (the new fad in action games), or indie studios who keep pumping out rogue-like garbage like some factory just has them on an endless assembly line, It's Double Dragon, but a rogue-like. It's a metroidvania, with rogue-like elements. It's a rhythm game...with rogue-like elements. Pretty soon we'll have rogue-like wrestling games, where you lose a match and have to start season/story mode all over again from scratch

Both wrestling games and fighting games are trash today because the focus is always on competitive play and online multiplayer. They don't CARE about the single player stuff. Single player is just a foundation for endless DLC.

Anyway, that's enough of my usual bitching and moaning about the state of gaming today.

I gotta say, that while WWE mostly sucks now, I really like Drew McIntyre's character. Aside from the endless roasting of CM Punk (which he did again on Raw), I like that Drew isn't the stereotypical pro wrestling heel that we see over and over and over and over and over again. Drew is like that cool movie villain who doesn't actually think he's the villain. He's trying to save and help everyone and he often speaks the absolute truth. It's very cool. Drew is still a baby face in his own mind. Even his beef with Jey Uso is valid even though Uso is a face. Drew and Hangman right now are both great because their actions make sense.

On that note, Meltzer had reported that Hangman was legit injured. Then when Meltzer got called out on his bullshit, him and Alvarez reported that Hangman was faking an injury because he needed time off for personal reasons. So then Kahn announced that Hangman would address his status for the pay per view on Dynamite. Hangman came out with crutches, started going into a very emotional speech about how disappointed he was that he wouldn't be able to wrestle at the pay per view. He then stood by and watched as Joe and Swerve came out and did promos, before attacking Swerve from behind with his crutch. This was great, and I think he's officially heel now, but we'll see. In fact, all of the Elite are heel right now unless Omega comes back as a face.

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about Tony/Hangman working Meltzer/Alvarez. It's kind of awesome and hilarious.

[Reprise]

"Soulless". That is the word I was looking for. Fight Forever has soul, but unfortunately failed to hit the mark and fell short. The WWE 2K games are soulless. It's not entirely the developer's fault, as WWE keep them on a way tighter leash than they used to.

The WWE games used to be way 'out there' and they would put crazy stuff in their games. In some of the old Smackdown games you can climb up onto a helecopter and dive off, you can climb up the 'Smackdown fist' and jump off. There's a WWE game on the Gamecube where you can throw random civilians and construction workers off of large scaffolding.

Back then it was about making wrestling games fun, not what rating each individual wrestler has and how accurate their 30 minute long entrances are.

The Hangman, Swerve, Joe dynamic is really interesting to be honest. And them working Dave and Bryan is hilarious. This is a classic example of how fans and the so-called wrestling journalists need to just let a story play out and stop speculating.

I haven't seen Dynamite yet. Just how 'heel' Hangman becomes will probably be revealed in the match.