Much like professional wrestlers in general, I am a complete glutton for punishment. What I am referring to of course is the fact that I haven’t missed an annual instalment of the WWE video game franchise since the Smackdown vs. Raw era. Sadly, this means that I played a lot of last year’s much maligned WWE 2K20. The critical and fan reception to this game was so bad that we got no 2K21, and instead we’ve gotten the much more cartoonish, arcade style brawler in 2K Battlegrounds.

The game is presented as an over the top brawler that celebrates the wide array of WWE Superstars we’ve seen over the past forty years. A simplistic arcade experience, it feels like a peace offering sent out to fans to apologise for the mess that was 2K20, though unfortunately, 2K Battlegrounds is honestly no better.

The first glaring problem is that all Superstars are lumped into five different categories that determine their move set. These classes include Powerhouse, High-Flyer, Technician, Brawler and All-Rounder. Every wrestler from a specific category all has the same move set. This means that Triple H has the exact same moves as Andre the Giant, the only difference being their finishing move. While this game is supposed to be simple and fun, it is a bit odd seeing Andre the Giant pulling of vertical suplexes while The Rock is delivering corkscrew neckbreakers. Outside of choosing your favourite WWE Superstar, there’s no reason to try out different characters within the same class.

The gameplay is very simplistic in nature and easy enough to pick up and play. Moves are performed with either the press of a button or the flick of the right control stick. Reversals are performed by pressing the button indicated on screen when a move is initiated against you. The variety of moves for each wrestler class is sorely lacking, so there is absolutely no chance that Dave Meltzer will give any of the matches a 6-Star Tokyo Dome rating. Unfortunately, the animations for reversals do not transition smoothly from the move being reversed. While a vertical suplex can be reversed into a backstabber rather smoothly, the game transitions from the middle of the suplex straight into both wrestlers falling to the mat with no transition in between, it is more jarring than a Triple H vs Scott Steiner match.

Adding to the game’s woes, players need to complete the campaign in order to make any of the classes interesting. Playing through the campaign unlocks power ups that players can use mid-match to gain an advantage over their opponent. The powerups do a variety of things such as making it harder to pin your character, strengthening your offense and allowing your character to punch and kick through their opponents blocking attempts. It does keep things a bit fresh and injects a bit of strategy into the game, but not enough to make it a game worth coming back to, especially with the sheer length of the campaign.

The campaign itself is over one hundred matches long, making it take quite a long time to unlock all the power ups to use. It is told through comic strips starring the likes of Paul Heyman, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Kevin Owens. The comics are well-drawn, though the dialogue feels untrue to the characters used to deliver it. Seeing Stone Cold being agreeable to help Paul Heyman find some new over the top superstars to join his new Battleground league just doesn’t fit his Don’t Trust Anybody persona.

Even after the campaign is complete, all that is there to greet the players is a seemingly never-ending grind fest to unlock all the characters. The game comes with roughly 20 characters readily unlocked, and in order to unlock more, it requires in-game currency. Superstars are locked in toy packaging and are rated from Common up to Legendary. Legendary Superstars require much more in-game currency to unlock than the common ones. Just to unlock one common Superstar requires roughly 3 to 4 completed matches, and if your console is offline, the game inexplicably refuses to give you your rewards.

Of course, if you want everyone unlocked from the beginning, there is no option to purchase an accelerator such as previous games, but you are encouraged to jump onto the online store and purchase the in-game currency for real money. If you want everyone unlocked, expect to pay roughly $75 AUD. It just feels wrong when previous games had a completely different microtransaction model.

WWE 2K Battlegrounds isn’t all as bad as a Kennel from Hell match. The over the top style given to the overall package gives the game a more Super Smash Bros feel. The art style feels accessible to even the most casual of fans, and the over the top moves sets the tone for the game really well. The interactive arenas also enhance the matches a lot, and there are some good ideas in the implementation here. There are also a huge variety of match types to choose from, including cage matches, gauntlet matches, King of the Battleground (Ring), and of course the Royal Rumble. Most of the matches work how you would expect, with the cage match being the exception. In order to win cage matches, you need to collect as much cash as you can from the cage walls, and once enough cash is earned you can escape the cage. It’s weird but it works.

WWE 2K Battlegrounds could have been a great game, and as a multiplayer game at parties, does achieve what it sets out to do. The horrible microtransaction system that’s worse than most mobile games really needs to be looked and fixed. If the game had a more fleshed out wrestling system, it could have been one of the best WWE games in history. Unfortunately, the janky animations, lack of attention given to individual wrestlers and the length of time it takes to unlock everything really ruin what was at times a really fun experience. As it stands, WWE 2K Battlegrounds is about as good as an Undertaker match in Saudi Arabia.