Visual Concepts on WWE 2K24's fierce innovations
Perhaps unfairly, we come to expect that sports games come back year after year with little to show for it. Of course, some franchises cobble together a release for a yearly turnaround, but even for gamers from the outside, it’s easy to point at the entire sporting world as an amorphous blob of repetition, even though their gaming habits might not stand at the height of originality either.
Some outliers are unfortunately dragged into this presumption, and one of them is perhaps the grandest reflection of showmanship in the world. Wrestlemania has come to life in video games for decades, with modern WWE titles often feeling as though they're trapped under the expectations set by No Mercy, Smackdown Vs Raw, and others.
There is a lot for these games to prove, and WWE 2K23 made huge strides towards this, flipping the script on its Showcase mode by taking players on a trip through icon wrestler John Cena’s iconic losses, rather than his soaring wins. It was a bold step towards refreshed attitudes, and as the new day dawns, it’s clear that 2K isn’t done with breaching expectations just yet. 2K24 is finally here, and though gamers think they know what to expect, they truly haven’t seen anything yet.
