WWE 2K18

[apsham]

The VC that you have you can use on any character or venue of your choice, but if you are starting from 0 - yeah it's going to take a while to unlock everything. There are locked wrestlers, belts and venues and then if you're playing MyCareer mode you are paying VC to get abilities, increase your stats and get loot boxes (1,000 in and of themself I think they are) that unlock different moves, move sets, gear, etc for your created guy... which you then have to spend VC in order to actually use.

[Adam]

Bought it, got the Season Pass and the front says it includes the Kurt Angle pack too, happy days.

Probably not be able to play it much until after Christmas Day but will try and have a dip tomorrow evening.

[JasonM]

17 hours ago, Apsham said:

The VC that you have you can use on any character or venue of your choice, but if you are starting from 0 - yeah it's going to take a while to unlock everything. There are locked wrestlers, belts and venues and then if you're playing MyCareer mode you are paying VC to get abilities, increase your stats and get loot boxes (1,000 in and of themself I think they are) that unlock different moves, move sets, gear, etc for your created guy... which you then have to spend VC in order to actually use.

At least you're not paying VC to upgrade your attributes, iirc, just for the special abilities. And once you unlock stuff it stays unlocked, unlike in NBA 2k.

Basically in NBA 2K, every time you create a new character, everything is locked for that character and you need to go through the same grind to get anything from skill upgrades to haircuts to t-shirts and so on. Everything in NBA 2k is made to cost virtual currency, and it's much more punitive towards gamers than what WWE 2k18 pulls.

Not that WWE 2k18 is 'good' either, because it still makes their gamers suffer to enjoy themselves, but at least it's one step lower on the rung of pure grind hell.

[BuddyAwesome]

I actually stopped playing for a while because the career is too much. I want to enjoy it, but being expected to win against people 27 points better than me is getting ridiculous. 

[apsham]

I actually find playing against higher rated opponents easier sometimes because by the time I get my finisher, they're so deep in the red that it only takes one to put them away.

[Adam]

My initial thoughts are that this game is quite fun, and has definitely come on a lot since the last one I owned about 5-6 years ago.

Did a Royal Rumble that was entertaining, and a women's Battle Royal to test the 8-person frame rate and that was probably the most fun match I've had so far. I love that you can get eliminated quickly from these things now, I was Big E in the Rumble and lasted quite a long while. Was pretty damaged and Braun Strowman, who entered #2 and lasted over half the match, came charging at me and I thought I was done for, but I timed the reversal right and sent him flying over the ropes and out. Chad Gable ended up winning it even though I lucked on to Rollins at #23 after Big E went out but Luke Harper chucked me out in the final four.

The practice mode in the movesets section is a great help, I'm going to be using that a bit to get used to playing as certain guys. I won a 4-way elimination as Johnny Gargano (against Roddy Strong, Kassius Ohno and Killian Dain) but every time I did the Garga-No Escape they got out. I heard a lot of people say the submission system sucks but I think the idea of it is quite a realistic representation, but I did find it way too hard to actually keep the blue bar captured so might switch to button mashing for a while. I didn't know that a "Corner" set-up for his Superkick finisher meant actually standing in the corner so it was good to practice that stuff afterwards as I just had to beat guys with regular moves when the submission didn't work.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to set up a Universe Mode yet as I can't get any of my codes redeemed for the DLC + Accelorator without the update file which is taking forever due to my crappy router, but I did have a lot of fun playing it and only had very minimal glitches (Gargano floating in the air for ages when someone attacked Dain mid-move on me, and Alexa Bliss being announced as "making his way to the ring"). Got to say the graphics are not much good though, they feel as if they've gone backwards but maybe if I actually stuck 2k12 on my screen I'd notice the improvement.

Oh, when I was playing around with options and settings in Universe, one of them was "Undertaker's WrestleMania storyline" and "Royal Rumble winners storyline" or something. What do they do?

[Gabriel]

9 minutes ago, Adam said:

Oh, when I was playing around with options and settings in Universe, one of them was "Undertaker's WrestleMania storyline" and "Royal Rumble winners storyline" or something. What do they do?

The Taker one just makes sure that The Undertaker gets some kind of program with someone building up to Mania. It made more sense in there when the Streak was intact.

The Rumble Winner storyline essentially just ensures that the winner of the Royal Rumble automatically winds up in the main event of WrestleMania for a World Title. I'm not sure if it works well or not though, or if it can take into account separate brands. I've seen people mention their Rumble winners end up fighting for both major titles when they have a brand split, so I'm inclined to recommend turning off those options.

[Baddar]

My fiancee is the best! She got me the season pass, so I just had a great match as Alesteir Black vs. Elias. Looking forward to playing as some legends and downloading a lot more freely now.

[VerbalPuke]

4 hours ago, Baddar said:

My fiancee is the best! She got me the season pass, so I just had a great match as Alesteir Black vs. Elias. Looking forward to playing as some legends and downloading a lot more freely now.

That’s funny, my first match with Black was vs. Elias also. Black is so much fun to use.

[The Buscher]

Wish they'd hurry up and release the Hardys DLC seeing as PC got them via hacking two weeks ago.

[VerbalPuke]

I started doing matches in my legends Universe. Did a match with the Rock vs. Papa Shango. Rock wins, Godfather does a run-in after the match to attack The Rock (didn’t go well for Godfather). 

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

1 minute ago, Christmas said:

I started doing matches in my legends Universe. Did a match with the Rock vs. Papa Shango. Rock wins, Godfather does a run-in after the match to attack The Rock (didn’t go well for Godfather). 

In an alternate universe, the 1998 Royal Rumble had Papa Shango, Kama Mustafa and The Godfather. 

[Bobfoc]

Charles Wright spread himself too far there.

[apsham]

Three Faces Of Wright

[VerbalPuke]

He had an amazing career for being such a marginal talent.

[=BK=]

So, Season Pass gets all the extra wrestlers besides Angle, Retro Cena, Batista and RVD?

[Owen]

10 minutes ago, =BK= said:

So, Season Pass gets all the extra wrestlers besides Angle, Retro Cena, Batista and RVD?

It does indeed! The final DLC pack has not yet been released, but they're still included, obviously.

[=BK=]

Man, none of the Rosemary CAWs on YouTube look all that good compared to the super realistic CAWs of other people I'm seeing.

[Kyle]

Digital Deluxe edition which includes all the DLC including the Cena Nuff pack is on sale for 43.99 on Xbox currently, picked that up just on the basis that I will play it next week when I have jack shit to do.  

[=BK=]

It's on sale on PSN too so that's my Christmas issue solved.