It was long-rumored that WWE 2K21 would be cancelled due to the coronavirus and that 2K Games would replace it with an arcade-style game for home consoles or possibly mobile devices. Well, after officially announcing the cancellation of WWE 2K21, 2K Games followed up with the announcement for WWE 2K Battlegrounds, and fans aren’t happy at all.
WWE 2K Battlegrounds is currently in development at Saber Interactive, and is scheduled to launch this fall.
The game looks like they took some of the models from the WWE 2K franchise and then put them through a super-deformed filter and scaled back on some of the poly-count. They simplified the lighting and used a lot of barely optimized animations.
You can tell this is a rushed, thrown-together project just based on the teaser trailer, which you can check out below.
To compensate for the lack of features, they decided to spruce up the moves with flaming uppercuts, over the top slams, and powered-up finishers.
It’s very similar to the old wrestling arcade games like Midway’s WWF Wrestlemania, Saturday Night Slam Masters or THQ’s WWE All Stars.
The game doesn’t look very good at all. As I mentioned, it looks like they took the models from an older WWE 2K game and then deformed them, added some special effects to some of the moves, and added some environmental hazards.
I can’t imagine this game selling well at all, especially given how it’s being absolutely flogged on YouTube and social media.
A lot of people point out that the game looks like Saber Interactive’s NBA Playgrounds, which had a troubled release when it initially came out.
It’s true that he style of WWE 2K Battlegrounds is very similar to NBA Playgrounds.
— R.Dream (@WWERDream1) April 27, 2020
This seems appropriate pic.twitter.com/belXjsbbSd
— Vance Kauffman (@VanceKauffman) April 27, 2020
— RJ_Hero (@RobbieNoBelts) April 27, 2020
— World Of Bliss ☠️ (@WorldOfBliss3K) April 27, 2020
You know what would be really crazy? If Saber Interactive actually designed all the assets from the ground-up. That would be fairly embarrassing.
Anyway, they didn’t list what platforms the game would be available for but only mentioned that it would release in the fall. I can’t imagine this game getting any less backlash than WWE 2K20, but we’ll see.
