Upfront, I bought this game for universe mode, and am reviewing it only on that....its the way I like to play my wrestling games. And universe mode is utter garbage. The basics are good, but they cut too many corners. For starters rivalries randomly vanish if you edit ANYTHING on any superstar at any time, you absolutely can not edit money in the bank or royal rumble match participants at all if you want the win to count. (Ive seen workarounds on line....but it seems to be a matter of luck which of those works for you, and most of them involve not actually playing the match). Now I suppose if you dont mind a universe with no Money in the Bank briefcase, or editing the person who you had win the Rumble into the WM main event, you can get around these problems. Also some rivalries never seem to end, ive seen them go up to 4 months so far with the same rivalry, which would be fine, except the PPV matches are ALWAYS normal matches, there are no gimmick matches so feud's ending always seems uber bland.



Furthermore, unlike earlier versions of the game, I have yet to have Universe Mode actually put two stars together into a tag team....which is a shame cause some of my favorite paring over the years came from these random teams Id have never thought of. Finally many of the cut scenes make no sense, for example in single with both having manager matches, sometimes after just a couple of seconds a cut scene will trigger with one manager getting ejected from the match for no apparent reason....or after the other manager actually was the one that interfered. This assumes cut scenes trigger at all, as it seems most of the time the game has already decided who "should" win the match and if they dont....no cut scene plays. This same problem can be seen in the after match storyline summaries... for example after a near flawless victory the person you just beat up may be declared the #1 contender to your title cause of a "strong showing" or after a match you win after interference the summary will say the feud continues because the interference cost you your match.



Also in universe mode, who ever the first two people in a stable/group are MUST be a tag team. Now on its face this isnt really a huge problem except that that also locks them into a specific place in the group entrance. So for example, in order for everyone to be in the correct place in the New Day entrance, Xavier and Kofi MUST be the tag champs, not Big E.



This becomes especially obnoxious because in expedition/arcade mode (which they call "play" mode), which has its own set of belts but doesnt track any history of fueds (so basically generic random matches) you can make anyone you want tag team champs so you can put the belts on Kofi and Big E (and thats the default when the game first ships) despite big E being in the number 3 slot in the stable. So this basically means 2k either went out of their way to make this a specific problem in universe mode, or care so little about universe mode (which I think is the major selling point for many people) that they didnt bother to apply the fix they used in play mode to universe mode....and still havnt after repeated patches.



Lastly, one of the DLC packs actually breaks universe mode...undoes all your changes and makes it impossible to save new data. Now supposedly this was fixed in a patch to be fair, assuming of course you patch the game prior to downloading that DLC pack (future stars)...otherwise I believe even now, your SOL.



The only reason this game gets two stars from me, is the selection of characters is HUGE, and I've edited my universe to not have MITB, and tend to ignore the post rivalry text and create my own reasons in my mind for why the fueds move on....however this basically translates to me playing "Play" mode with the convince of having the game keep a title history for me without having to write it down my self.



And yes I have tried the 2k showcase and MyCareer and found them totally lacking as well, 2k seems more a QTE version of watching the WWE network and MyCareer seems to be basically a slimmed down slightly less functional version of universe mode, with slightly more storyline focusing on a single created character......who also can not be used in any other mode for reasons defying understanding. But since I didnt buy the game intending to get any use out of those modes, I'm not letting them affect my review.....though it is worth noting if you dont buy the accelerator DLC you will have to go through showcase to unlock a lot of characters, arenas, and attires usable in universe mode.