WWE 2K Battlegrounds review

WWE 2K Battlegrounds is here.

I think I'm one of the few people who didn't hate WWE 2K20 at launch. I'm also one of the few people who has never had any issues with the bugs and glitches that plague the series. However, I certainly had my fair share of problems with it. So when 2K announced the series was going to take a year off, I applauded that decision.

In its place this year comes WWE 2K Battlegrounds, an arcade-style brawler (you'll hear that a lot while reading about this game) that takes that tag seriously. Turn the sound up on Battlegrounds, and it genuinely sounds like something you'd find in an arcade — back when there were arcades.

I look forward to all your comments about how there are still arcades.

If you're familiar with the NBA 2K Playgrounds games — and there's no shame in not — you'll kind of get the gist of what WWE 2K Battlegrounds was going for here. Earn points by winning matches, completing daily challenges, advancing in the game's Campaign Mode (or just straight-up buying them, really), and you can unlock new wrestlers and outfits.

Which brings me to what most of us have been wondering about since the announcement of Battlegrounds — microtransactions. The Long-Story-Short, TL;DR version of this is... yep. This game's got them, and for a title that costs real money to own, it's pretty damn annoying. But it's not horrible.

Battlegrounds is reasonable. Mostly.

Guys like Roman Reigns, Dolph Ziggler, and Bruan Strowman are available right out of the gate. But others... that's going to take a tad bit of time.

When it comes to unlocking content, there's nothing here that can't be obtained through playing the game itself. Whether it's earning points throughout gameplay or working your way through a campaign mode, you don't need to shell out hard-earned real-world cash to unlock, say, Triple H. Oh, also, yeah, you need to unlock Triple H. Of all the people, right?

In regards to actually playing Battlegrounds... well, it's actually pretty damn fun. The controls are pretty simple — as one would hope — and they flow pretty smoothly once you get the hang of it. It's clearly based on 2K's NBA Playgrounds series, so expect something along those lines... because that's what "based on" means, but I digress.

There are just as many cool little details in this game I can point out as bugs. It has a lot in common with WWE All Stars back in the PS3/Xbox 360 days. It really is NBA Jam but pro wrestling.

Is it worth the $39.99 they're asking you to pay? That's a little hard to say. If you have plenty of games on your plate already, or if your wrestling game tastes lean more towards the sim variety, steer clear.

But, if the price tag doesn't bother you and you're OK with working through the game's modes to get the extras without paying for them (we're not talking early Star Wars: Battlefront II here... it's all reasonable), and if you like punching the bejesus out of digital people as Becky Lynch, Battlegrounds might be worth a pick-up.