Have seen a couple of gameplay videos now, so I thought I'd offer my impressions thus far, and see what you guy's are.
- The grapple ''rock paper scissors'' mini-game does indeed happen every time you grapple with your opponent until your opponent is in yellow damage. So much for people screaming 'it's only the first move, chillout!'. Using almost exclusively strikes in the beginning of the match looks stupid.
- Multiple times the standing "toe kicks" aren't connecting at all, and the animation for them with the arms swinging looks stupid when it doesn't connect. It's the same with punches and uppercuts, they only look good when they connect, otherwise the animation is too over-the-top, and looks completely unrealistic to have such a 'forceful' hit not even faze the opponent. - Cena's diving axe handle off the apron to the floor looked pretty good though.
- While the actual rock paper scissors (triangle to grab your opponent in a side headlock, square for a wrist lock and circle for a waist lock) part of it doesn't seem too bad, the whole 'twirl R3/RS to find the 'sweet spot'' part looks completely asinine. It goes-on for far too long, and can even be cancelled-out if both players are good at timing/reversing. Completely stupid gameplay mechanic.
- Why is it that you don't appear to be able to do running grapples? Many times I saw Cesaro run up to his opponent and then hit a standing grapple (Michinoku Driver), or Randy Orton ran up to his opponent, and instead Irish Whipped him into the ring. Are you not allowed to use running grapples until your opponent is in yellow?
- Raising off the matt to one knee stance looks OK, and it's nice to see punches and kicks actually register a selling animation in this stance and when your opponent is laying on the ground. Although the baseball bat and chair shots look like they don't register half the time, like they always have.
- Cesaro looked stupid falling to his knees after delivering a suplex, only to pop back up right away, hit another suplex and do the same thing again. This is why I've always turned Stamina off, it simply becomes annoying to watch, fast.
- Not able to do a Ref Bump? Cena's closeline didn't connect at all, the ref slide away from him slightly.
- What was the weird slow-down on Cena's lou thez press to Randy Orton as he jumped and rode him to the matt?
On the subject of the grapple changes, my issue is how it affects moves. I don't want to have less move slots per moveset. But if I understand it correctly we 'will' be getting less move slots, because the grapple stances are gone so they won't be there to give us access to four moves each etc. That might be alright for THQ/2K upto 2K14, where the in-game real wrestlers always get moves repeated in their half-assed movesets, but it's not alright for those that like to make original caws or try to make authentic movesets for real wrestlers. Less move slots means compromises somewhere.
It just seems as though many here are willing to take sacrifices and make compromises here and there, and make excuses, simply because the game looks good. Last year the reason people accepted bad stuff was 'because it's 2K's first game, they'll patch everything you'll see', but when it released with glitches and the Create-An-Arena logo resize restriction wasn't fixed the message suddenly changed to 'the game was mostly done by THQ, next year will be the ''real'' first game from 2K, you[ll see'. We've gone from 'it's only a write-up, wait'. to 'it's only offscreen footage of an early build, wait and see'. Before release it'll be 'it's not released yet, wait and see'. If, like THQ, the game releases and we all get some heinous bugs, glitches or restrictions it'll turn into 'wait for the patch and see', and later, 'maybe they'll fix it next game'.
Relating back to the grapple changes, I don't like the mini-game thing as a concept. If we could use all of our 'hard grapples' without an initial lock-up stance at the beginning of the match, and also had the use of the mini-game for 'quick grapples', you wouldn't hear a peep out of me. The same way a couple of games back we could use quick grapples on the analouge stick, and also had access to hard grapples by holding R1, and we could use both types at the beginning of the match. It is the restriction in which we are now restricted from using the full breadth of our moveset because someone at 2K believes this is how a match should start and progress at it goes on that annoys me. I have no problem with the individual wrestler AI things I'm hearing about, that seems like a genuine improvement and not a change for the sake of change, which actually ends-up restricting us. Do you see the point I'm making?
So what do I class as a genuine improvement, or something that is actually new instead of change for the sake of change? I'd be a lot happier, if instead of farting around with a stupid grapple mini-game, they had come out and said '8 people in the ring at once', '4v4 Survivor Series Match' and 'WarGames Match' are now possible, or that managers interacted properly. Or that they'd fixed the freezing in Universe and Create A Story. Stuff that actually matters.
- The grapple ''rock paper scissors'' mini-game does indeed happen every time you grapple with your opponent until your opponent is in yellow damage. So much for people screaming 'it's only the first move, chillout!'. Using almost exclusively strikes in the beginning of the match looks stupid.
- Multiple times the standing "toe kicks" aren't connecting at all, and the animation for them with the arms swinging looks stupid when it doesn't connect. It's the same with punches and uppercuts, they only look good when they connect, otherwise the animation is too over-the-top, and looks completely unrealistic to have such a 'forceful' hit not even faze the opponent. - Cena's diving axe handle off the apron to the floor looked pretty good though.
- While the actual rock paper scissors (triangle to grab your opponent in a side headlock, square for a wrist lock and circle for a waist lock) part of it doesn't seem too bad, the whole 'twirl R3/RS to find the 'sweet spot'' part looks completely asinine. It goes-on for far too long, and can even be cancelled-out if both players are good at timing/reversing. Completely stupid gameplay mechanic.
- Why is it that you don't appear to be able to do running grapples? Many times I saw Cesaro run up to his opponent and then hit a standing grapple (Michinoku Driver), or Randy Orton ran up to his opponent, and instead Irish Whipped him into the ring. Are you not allowed to use running grapples until your opponent is in yellow?
- Raising off the matt to one knee stance looks OK, and it's nice to see punches and kicks actually register a selling animation in this stance and when your opponent is laying on the ground. Although the baseball bat and chair shots look like they don't register half the time, like they always have.
- Cesaro looked stupid falling to his knees after delivering a suplex, only to pop back up right away, hit another suplex and do the same thing again. This is why I've always turned Stamina off, it simply becomes annoying to watch, fast.
- Not able to do a Ref Bump? Cena's closeline didn't connect at all, the ref slide away from him slightly.
- What was the weird slow-down on Cena's lou thez press to Randy Orton as he jumped and rode him to the matt?
On the subject of the grapple changes, my issue is how it affects moves. I don't want to have less move slots per moveset. But if I understand it correctly we 'will' be getting less move slots, because the grapple stances are gone so they won't be there to give us access to four moves each etc. That might be alright for THQ/2K upto 2K14, where the in-game real wrestlers always get moves repeated in their half-assed movesets, but it's not alright for those that like to make original caws or try to make authentic movesets for real wrestlers. Less move slots means compromises somewhere.
It just seems as though many here are willing to take sacrifices and make compromises here and there, and make excuses, simply because the game looks good. Last year the reason people accepted bad stuff was 'because it's 2K's first game, they'll patch everything you'll see', but when it released with glitches and the Create-An-Arena logo resize restriction wasn't fixed the message suddenly changed to 'the game was mostly done by THQ, next year will be the ''real'' first game from 2K, you[ll see'. We've gone from 'it's only a write-up, wait'. to 'it's only offscreen footage of an early build, wait and see'. Before release it'll be 'it's not released yet, wait and see'. If, like THQ, the game releases and we all get some heinous bugs, glitches or restrictions it'll turn into 'wait for the patch and see', and later, 'maybe they'll fix it next game'.
Relating back to the grapple changes, I don't like the mini-game thing as a concept. If we could use all of our 'hard grapples' without an initial lock-up stance at the beginning of the match, and also had the use of the mini-game for 'quick grapples', you wouldn't hear a peep out of me. The same way a couple of games back we could use quick grapples on the analouge stick, and also had access to hard grapples by holding R1, and we could use both types at the beginning of the match. It is the restriction in which we are now restricted from using the full breadth of our moveset because someone at 2K believes this is how a match should start and progress at it goes on that annoys me. I have no problem with the individual wrestler AI things I'm hearing about, that seems like a genuine improvement and not a change for the sake of change, which actually ends-up restricting us. Do you see the point I'm making?
So what do I class as a genuine improvement, or something that is actually new instead of change for the sake of change? I'd be a lot happier, if instead of farting around with a stupid grapple mini-game, they had come out and said '8 people in the ring at once', '4v4 Survivor Series Match' and 'WarGames Match' are now possible, or that managers interacted properly. Or that they'd fixed the freezing in Universe and Create A Story. Stuff that actually matters.
