WWE 2K25 Review: Acknowledge Greatness (and problems)

WWE 2K25 is easily the best wrestling game you can buy right now, but the focus on in-app purchases and some lingering gameplay issues persist.

Score: 3.5/5

	Buy WWE 2K25!	Buy On Amazon

Ethical disclaimer: This review is based off code supplied to me by the publisher. As always, that gets them a review, nothing more, no editorial oversight or anything of that sort. Again, I know regular readers will know this already, but I feel ethical disclosure should be upfront and transparent. Now, on with the chair shots to the head review.

I’ve been playing wrestling video games since before I was actually a professional wrestling fan; while I can blame the latter obsession on a man I shall call “Big Al” (Hi Al!), that didn’t really kick in until the late 1990s, while I’d been playing grappling games since at least 1985’s Mat Mania/Exciting Hour and Melbourne House’s Rock ‘N Wrestle.

Australian made, but trust me, the box looks better than the game. A LOT better.

My history is long, and it’s a genre where I have my definite favourite titles, as well as regret at buying more than a few stinkers. Yes, WCW Thunder, I’m looking at you.

The reality in 2025, however, is that I’m now an old man and there’s really only one game in town – and that game is WWE’s 2K25.

Mighty Molly & The Hurricane vs Cactus Jack: A match for the ages.

AEW had an interesting try of it with Fight Forever, but it’s not like that series is seeing any new content while Visual Concepts have been rolling out annual WWE game updates for a number of years now.

Of course, that does bring with it the curse of sports games in the modern era, because you can fall into the trap of having a game engine that you only tinker with, leaving little for everyday gamers and only differences that the real fanatics will spot year on year if you exclude roster changes.

It’s best not to mess with Haku. Ask anyone.

The core of any good wrestling game is how well it recreates the admittedly over-the-top antics of professional wrestling, and here WWE 2K25 only really tweaks around the edges of what WWE 2K24 did. There are some new (or refreshed) gameplay tweaks in play here, like the chain wrestling mechanic that can start off some matches, but by and large if you’ve played any of the post-WWE 2K20 games, you’ll be on broadly familiar ground.

Once the ring fills up, the chaos starts.

One interesting tweak here is that you can now have full intergender matches, and not of the typical WWE “switch partners on tag” level. If you want Rhea Ripley to hit Logan Paul fifty to a hundred times in the head with a chair – and let’s face it, that’s the best use of Paul in the game without a doubt, because otherwise I’ll just keep on pretending he doesn’t exist – then you totally can do so, though you can’t use intergender matches to change titles to any particular wrestler at will, which feels a touch limiting.

Visual Concepts have added a few new areas to grapple in, including the Raw Underground set, which changes the game up to be more like a classic fighting game title, because you win by depleting your foe’s energy bar and then hitting one last finisher or signature mode.

Just like Raw Underground, it’s more spectacle than interesting concept, though I will admit the animation of wrestlers hitting the corner post sideways does have a lot of visual impact.

Backstage areas now include the WWE warehouse replete with some quite classic props, but the actual fighting there ends up feeling a little on the clunky side, especially as the game picks and chooses what you can climb, pick up or fight with.

Akira Tozawa: He’s a badass, apparently.

There are of course a host of match stipulation types, but again the quality and fun factor varies. WWE 2K25 is very much a game that works best against human opponents – it’s ideal couch-with-your-mates fodder – but if I’m going to zero on in on one detail I wish they’d worked on, it would be the Hell in a Cell match.

It’s an absolute staple of WWE, but for years now it’s been really poorly represented in WWE games. The cage looks fine, but the terribly limited and clunky way you move around outside the ring limits the fluidity of what’s meant to be a dangerous match type into just a few key canned animations.

It can’t be a hardware limitation in this day and age given that you can fight all the way through the WWE archives without issue; it’s a design choice and one that makes the HIAC match my least favourite match type. You do get Wargames which kind of mitigates this problem, but at the same time if you can get Wargames right, why can’t you get HIAC right too?

You certainly can’t accuse WWE 2K25 of lacking in content, that’s for sure. Outside the primary play mode – which has a huge array of match types to choose from, including new backstage arenas and the frankly woeful concept that was RAW Underground to fight in – there’s also tweaks to the MyGM management mode, an all-new My Rise story mode for created wrestlers, MyFaction for those that like digital card collecting, and Showcase mode, which this year focuses in on the presence of the Bloodline, though this isnt’ an all-Roman-Reigns-all-the-time-fest like you might think it could be.

Showcase is a surprisingly deep dive into WWE history, and like prior showcases, that means you’re mostly playing through some classic moments in WWE/WWF history, along with a few fun “what if” style matches that pit the likes of the Wild Samoans against the Dudley Boys.

I liked – and maybe I was alone here – the way that previous years meshed in real world video into gameplay in a near seamless way to create the illusion of historical accuracy, and while you couldn’t do that with the fantasy matches without some really weird CGI or editing tricks, Visual Concepts hasn’t done that at all.

Instead, while you do still have cut scenes in matches, they’re entirely rendered in the game’s engine, which is fundamentally dull to my eye. It’s also a touch annoying that they haven’t licenced some of the classic commentary for the real world matches; while some of them do have ridiculous setups where there wouldn’t be commentary, having Michael Cole and Corey Graves call, say, Yokozuna vs Hulk Hogan just sounds wrong to me, because it is.

MyRise presents a decently well structured single story mode, but it’s one with branching paths depending on some dialogue choices, which does give it some depth and replayability, though some of the dialogue — especially if you opt for a wrestler from “a different promotion” are on the cringe-worthy side.

MyRise mode is good single player fun.

I’ve never particularly gotten on with the MyFaction mode, which is your basic digital card game collectathon/in-app purchase play, mostly because I’ve always viewed it as a way to try to get even more money out of gamers for the same game, albeit time limited once the new version comes out.

Digital Card Games… sure are a thing, I guess. I’ve never gotten on with them.

Clearly it works, because it’s back, but for the console versions of the game – including the PS5 version I reviewed – there’s an even more blatant cash grab at hand. That’s the Island, Visual Concepts’ take on what a WWE MMO might look like.

The basic conceit here is that you’re fighting to impress Roman Reigns with a created wrestler against everyone else’s created wrestler.

Conceptually, that’s fine, but the implementation is both kind of bare bones, with a lot of text explanations and slightly dull running around between matches, while also being astonishingly greedy. As an example, your created wrestler starts out with quite low in-game stats, no surprise there. So what if you wanted to max out your created wrestler’s stats?

It’ll run something in the region of 160,000 of the game’s virtual currency to do so.

You can earn currency for winning matches, but you’re earning somewhere around 150 to 200 VC per match. That’s going to be 800 to 1,000 matches to play per created wrestler if you don’t want to spend real money to do so.

So how much does that in-game VC cost? At the time of writing, a pack of 187,500 VC for the PS5 version as tested would run you $82.45, which is only about $15 less than a disc copy of the game at retail at launch.

For the Australians of a certain vintage, there’s a line from The Castle that applies here, I feel.

Did I mention that dressing your Island wrestler would cost more on top of that?

The Island aside, WWE 2K25 is a good update and it’s one that can provide plenty of fun for wrestling game fans. The in-game creation utility gives it near infinite scope for creativity, or if you’re feeling lazy, simply downloading the work of others to bolster your roster.

All I need to do is licence a classic 70’s Goodies hit and my wrestling career can begin!

It took me all of about ten seconds to find most of the AEW roster for example – and some of them are very well done – as well as classic wrestlers, pop culture figures and politicians alike.

Over the years, the wrestling games I’ve returned to are the ones that I can still have fun with. Can you have fun with WWE 2K25? Absolutely, and especially if you’re an online or social gamer playing against other real people.

It truly is one of the best examples of a game genre best played with a few mates sitting on a sofa with snacks, merrily (but virtually) thumping each other with chairs or flying off turnbuckles at each other. Just stay away from The Island, OK?

	Buy WWE 2K25!	Buy On Amazon

Grand Theft Auto V - Xbox Series X

(11)

$24.00 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Metaphor: ReFantazio - Xbox Series X

(4)

$77.00 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

$92.47 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed - Xbox Series X

$39.00 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Let's Sing 2025 - Xbox Series X

(1)

$34.00 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Mini Projector - 2025 Upgraded Portable Projector with WiFi 6 & Bluetooth 5.2, 4k Projector with Native 1080P & 4K Support, with HDMI/USB/PS5/Smartphone/Laptop Compatibility

(11)

$102.99 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

FNTCASE for iPhone 16e Phone Case: iPhone 16E 2025 Magnetic Matte Military Grade Drop Protection Phone Cover | Slim Anti-Slip Durable Shockproof Cases(Black)

(3492)

$11.04 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

9.3’’ Portable Wireless CarPlay & Android Auto Screen for Car - with 4K Dash Cam 1080p Backup Camera,Bluetooth,GPS Navigation,Voice Control

(24)

$155.99 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Silkland 4K HDMI Cable 2M, High Speed HDMI 2.0 Cables [Gold Plated, Nylon Braided] HDMI ARC Cord, HDR 4K@60Hz, 2160/1080P, 18Gbps, 3D HDCP 2.2 Compatible for Xbox PS5 Fire/Roku TV Soundbar Blu-ray

(11307)

$8.99 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

USB C Fast Charger, 100W Portable Charging Station Hub Block, 6 Port GaN Wall Charger Power Strip Adapter Plug Cube Brick for iPad iPhone 16 15 14 13 12 Pro Max Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel, Motorola

(299)

$25.49 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Nokia 3210 4G DS Scuba Blue

(4)

$87.00 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Samsung Galaxy A55 5G, Android Smartphone, 8GB RAM, 128GB Storage, 50MP Camera, Long Battery Life, Awesome Navy

(90)

$577.99 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Apple iPhone 13 (128GB) - Pink (Renewed)

(5)

$539.00 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Moto g05 4/64GB - Forest Green

$177.00 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Google Pixel 8a 5G 8GB/128GB Obsidian

(491)

$649.99 (as of April 18, 2025 10:57 GMT +10:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)