a week ago i was diagnosed with a terminal illness and the doctors have given me a year at best. i'm so glad i was able to play this before i go. i don't know how many people will see this; but i recommend to you to play this game if you do see it. gameplay, atmosphere, graphics. everything is masterfully crafted. if you read it, thank you and good bye.

I could write an essay about WWE 2K24 as someone who has played these games pretty consistently for about 25 years because there's lots to love but plenty to hate as well, however put simply the game has lots of small improvements and tons to offer in general to wrestling fans, but even then that's a push and that's only because you get used to how broken these games are after some years and the frustration eventually becomes almost part of the expected experience

most importantly though, core gameplay elements are just straight up broken it feels like or at best no effort was really put into it, those being -

• maybe most heinous of all for a wrestling game is the unbelievably inconsistent reversal system, it's hard to explain unless you play a lot of the game (and others to compare) but I'm partially convinced it just stops allowing you to reverse moves (excluding moments of obvious debuffs) to make the game appear more difficult because they can't program decent AI to deliver a real challenge
  
  
• which leads me to my next main gripe which has existed for like 15 years at this point, these games are just too easy even on Legend difficulty 90% of the time - you can adjust the advanced difficulty sliders all you want but you are essentially just making the AI reverse more moves which just isn't fun, the AI should be getting more aggressive and logical with it's approach not cheap illusions of difficulty and don't get me started on multi-man matches this year they always usually turn into handicap matches at points (usually 2 AI) against you for some reason unless you create a lot of space
  
  
• the most consistently annoying thing is the pin system, it requires no skill after a certain point in a match and just comes down to luck which would be fine after a super finisher 20 mins into a match but not an arm stomp - that type of thing not only ruins an otherwise a great match but makes you feel like you've just wasted your time
  
  losing in these games isn't an issue for most of us because we're trying to usually just put on the most fun match we can, but when those said matches are ruined it gets so tiresome
  
  
• The community creations loads like molasses so if you plan on setting up a CAW roster you may set aside literally an entire day to load pages, deal with server crashes and other bs - this is something I'm still questioning whether I'll fully get around to doing this year

other notes:

showcase mode is unfathomably boring, universe mode is still criminally unloved, myRise seems mediocre at best and myFaction is an insult

all that being said I'm sure I'll still keep playing it because as a wrestling fan it's the only real choice I have until WWE hires a studio that actually cares about how their product translates to a video game, plus every now and then you do get some absolute bangers while playing where everything feels like it does just work - which maybe makes it all so much more frustrating because you can see what could be so great

look up all the good stuff this game has to offer because it's certainly there and I love lots of it but I can't honestly recommend the game unless you are invested into wrestling and understand the crap you have to deal with when playing a 2K WWE game

edit/FYI: I recently discovered in the gameplay balance settings there is actually an advanced slider tab for the pin minigame that I had never seen before, this improves the situation a little however nonetheless it shouldn't be down to the player to fine tune these settings in most cases

you can beat up Steve Austin and survive