WWE 2K22 is incredibly different compared to not only the disappointing WWE 2K20 but also to the series as a whole. The extra year that the developers spent on the latest WWE 2K game really shows in the graphics, the stability, and, most importantly, the gameplay. Mechanically, WWE 2K22 might just be the best in the series, though there are plenty of changes that longtime fans will need to take some time to adjust to.
It seems as though 2K Games took a ton of inspiration from games outside of the sports simulation genre when crafting the new title’s gameplay rework. Players can now perform fairly simple combos that require pressing the attack buttons in a specific order. Rather than using the reversal mechanic to escape a combo, players must use something called a breaker. If that concept sounds somewhat familiar, that’s because the idea was inspired by an iconic fighting game series.
Created by Rare, Killer Instinct is a series of fighting games best known for having some wild combo strings that are immensely exciting to pull off. In Killer Instinct, players can escape a combo by inputting their character’s combo breaker. The mechanic has changed a bit throughout different games, but WWE 2K22‘s version is most similar to Killer Instinct‘s 2013 reboot, where players had to use the breaker that matched the strength of their opponent’s attack.
In WWE 2K22, breakers can be performed by matching whatever the current move is in the combo, though players only get one shot to do so. While there is a bit of luck in guessing what combo the opponent is doing, every wrestler has the same set of inputs for their combos. The animations for the moves vary from wrestler to wrestler, but the actual series of buttons pressed will be from the same list that every other character uses.
WWE 2K22‘s breaker system using Killer Instinct as an inspiration is great to see, especially since 2K did a wonderful job transitioning the system over. The single-button breakers are just as easy to remember as the already-existing reversal mechanic. Plus, wrestlers sharing the same inputs for their combos means that, with enough experience, players could likely predict the combo that their opponent is inputting. The huge variety of move animations keeps the actual combos varied, too.
Killer Instinct is known for its fairly intense gameplay speed, especially once players start going for Ultra Combos. The action in WWE 2K22 has been tweaked to be much faster than in previous games, so it makes sense for 2K to take a page out of one of the fastest fighting game franchises out there. Breaking a combo in 2K22 can be a huge shift in a match’s momentum, sometimes more so than a reversal. Of course, the trade-off is that breakers are far trickier to pull off.
The complexity of a fighting game mechanic could have been an issue for the more casual experience that the WWE 2K series offers, but the developers really made it work. Keeping the same combo inputs for every character but letting the actual attacks change is a great way to make learning said strings easy without losing the variety of the game’s roster. Players don’t really want to have to learn a specific character when there are hundreds of iconic wrestlers available.
This simplification does mean that fighting game fans will likely find WWE 2K22‘s adaptation of breakers far more limiting. While there’s certainly room for more strategic gameplay in 2K22, the WWE 2K games aren’t exactly going to become competitive fighters on the same level as Killer Instinct. They don’t need to be, since the fighting game influence is there to give the game’s wrestling the impact and speed that it needed right when the series was at its lowest.
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