Parents' Guide to WWE 2K23

This sports entertainment franchise is back even bigger, bolder, and, yes, even a bit more commercialized. WWE 2K23 takes nearly everything that was good in last year's entry and puts in some extra workouts to beef it all up for this year's release. The roster is deeper than ever, and this time around most of the "current" superstars are still actually with the company. This year's Showcase mode focuses squarely on WWE 2K23's cover star, John Cena. The documentary-style story highlights Cena's 20+ year career, but in a twist on the regular formula, you don't play as Mr. "Never Give Up" -- instead, you aim to take the icon down as some of his biggest opponents in some of his greatest matches. The MyGM mode adds a few new general managers to its roster as well, giving players some extra options when it comes to who they want to run their shows and what bonuses they can use to their advantage. You can also pit your fantasy brand against up to three friends' managerial skills in local multiplayer, a bump-up from the 1v1 play from last year's entry. The MyFaction mode comes back for another year, and with it, a new competitive feature allowing players to take their team's collected superstars online for the first time. And if all of that isn't enough, you can always just do a swan dive off the top turnbuckle into the game's massive customization features, creating the wrestler, the arena, and even the pay-per-view event of your dreams.

While having all that expanded content is nice, any WWE fan worth their salt will point out that all the hype in the world doesn't make up for in-ring performance. So how does WWE 2K23 play? On the whole, the gameplay is main event quality. When WWE 2K22 released, it completely overhauled the series' game mechanics. With WWE 2K23, those mechanics have been tweaked and refined. Moves are a bit more fluid to chain together, there's a bigger focus on timing, and there's more realistic behavior from wrestlers. You're not likely to see a super heavyweight gracefully flying from the top rope or a cruiserweight powerlifting someone four times their size. Outside of the main gameplay is where WWE 2K23 takes a few hard bumps. As much fun as the Showcase and MyRise modes can be, they're made equally frustrating when matches come with mandatory objectives. It's more than a little annoying to win a hard fought match by pinfall, but still lose because you come up just shy on one objective. These same sorts of objectives comes up in MyGM mode as well, requiring players to fulfill odd and often nonsensical tasks that are far from "best for business." Finally, while it's nice to be able to take your MyFaction teams online to test their mettle against others', it also makes the in-game purchase of card packs almost a necessity. Sure, you might luck out with a few good cards in free packs or as rewards for gameplay, but it's infuriating to keep running into opponents that have dropped a lot of cash to bulk up their teams. It's not quite a pay-to-win situation, but it walks right up to the line. And considering all the other extras there are to buy for WWE 2K23, be it Season Passes, character bundles, MyFaction packs, etc., it's easy to lose sight of the content that's already packed into the game and instead feel like you're missing out on all the things that aren't.