Sometimes, games
are just not very good.
And, as much as we
love our jobs here at
OXM, when we have to
play through and rate
a bad game, the life
of a games reviewer isn’t always a box
of chocolates. Sometimes it’s more like
a big bag of wieners. Occasionally, it’s
even downright difficult.
This month, I’ve been quite literally
wrestling with the latest instalment in
2K’s annual WWE game and I now feel
like I’ve been through a Hell In A Cell bout
with Braun Strowman. You’ll have seen all
the social media posts mocking its day
one glitches, where all manner of horrors
have resulted from the creation suite,
while wrestlers form dopplegangers and
opponents scrabble around disturbingly
like something from Hereditary. And while
I didn’t personally experience too much
of this myself – perhaps Xbox was more
stable than other platforms – at times it
felt more like I was playing a particularly
out-there level of Control than a trusted
simulation of sports entertainment.
Crunch time
So the internet, bless it, loves a polemic.
Things have to be either amazing or
disastrous, and people love to trash
stuff because humans are dirt; mean-
spirited haterz by nature. Yes, I just wrote
‘haterz’. Feel free to hate me for it. Here
at the home of quality games journalism,
OXM, with full respect to my esteemed
colleagues at GamesRadar (which I like to
call the ‘quality internet’), we have a duty
to really try and give games a decent
chance to be good before we dish out
the low scores. On a personal level, I’ve
always really enjoyed WWE games and
have reviewed a number of them for a
number of different outlets in the past
decade. I’m so au fait with the highs and
the lows and the gawd it’s just exactly
the same as last year’s of the series,
that I really wanted this one – the first
While reviewing WWE2K20 was certainly
an experience, let’s not immediately
consign it to the bin. First, let’s consider
why a game might be buggy. For
starters, WWE is a yearly franchise,
which means more than most games,
the ‘crunch’ must have been on for 2K’s
Visual Concepts team because it simply
wouldn’t be an option to bump the game
back to spring, like everyone else.State of delay
We’re seeing quite a few games bumped
from their slated release dates of late,
like Doom Eternal, and Vampire: The
Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. The latter
because the makers wanted to ‘ensure
its quality’ and specifically don’t want to
repeat the mistakes of the first game,
which was released in a poor state.
Uncynically, it’s surely a good thing when
a publisher holds back a game it doesn’t
feel is ready for release. Sensibly, it’s in
the publisher’s interests, because if it
sends out a product that’s imperfect, no
amount of patching, however quickly it’s
done, will help people unsee the graphical
ring-side horrors or floating zombies. I still
love State Of Decay 2, but though it got
patched, everyone rubbished that game
from the start because of near-game-
breaking glitches. No doubt it dirtied
everyone’s judgement of what is actually
today one of the best Xbox One exclusives
you can play.
WWE2K20 is definitely broken at
launch, and no one should be satisfied
with poor quality and bugs in a game
they’ve paid good money for. But at the
time of going to press a patch is in the
works that should hopefully mean the
game deserves another chance. Just
remember, the internet is a cruel place
populated by evil beings, ever-vigilant
for someone to trip up so they can laugh
and use far too many exclamation marks
in a YouTube video description. Let’s all
try to dig a little deeper, shall we? QFollow us on Twitter @OXM.without Yuke’s at the helm – to be good.
Especially given its premise of giving the
women’s game a bigger spotlight. You
can read my considered thoughts on
the game elsewhere this issue, but let
me just park this paragraph in the bay
marked ‘get to the point, Editor’.OPINION INSIDER
Chris implores the ‘haterz’ to put down their pitchforks
The Editor
Chris Burke is...
“On the internet,
things have to be
either amazing or
disastrous”
More Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 019