Finally downloaded. Played it a bit. No lag or anything. Replays at the end of the match are broken. This is something I knew going in but I thought that it might have been patched. The wrestlers and the referee just lie down and there's some fire in the ring during replays. It's seriously bugged. Nobody play tested this thing.

Did a match between Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior. Warrior pretty much dominated but he didn't do many moves and he was doing moves that I don't think he did in real life. A LOT of mount punching, for example. And he swept the leg with a big punch a few times too. The match was like...five minutes. Not very interesting and way too short.

Compare this to Fire Pro Wrestling Returns where the average match lasts 30 minutes (albeit the clock runs at double speed...so 15 minutes in real time) and there's a build up. Match starts slow, do simple moves, then it gradually builds up to medium moves and then the big moves. Much more entertaining. And it's how wrestling used to be. I don't know anymore. From what I hear, WWE nowadays is just short squash matches in between long, stupid skits involving Muppets and whatnot so maybe this 2k15 game is an accurate reflection of today's product.

Then I just looked at some options. The create a wrestler first. Actually, a lot of options for the stats. Not as many as in Fire Pro but more than I expected.

Of course, the real question is "do the stats matter?" They very well may not. And all of the characters have about the same "overall" stat anyway. I think "overall" is the average". So some jobber like Jimmy Uso (who I've never heard of) will have like an 87 and Hogan has a 93. There's nobody below 85, I don't think, and nobody above 95. So...really, really stupid.

Compare this to Fire Pro where jobbers are jobbers and main event guys are main event guys. And this is reflected in the stats which is in turn reflected in their in-ring performance.

2k15 is probably like No Mercy anyway in the sense that the stats mean nothing. In No Mercy, you can give a guy all 1's and pit him against a guy with all 5's (the highest score) and it won't make any difference. The guy with the 1's will win as often as the guy with the 5's. It's a total coin toss. Everyone is equal.

For what it's worth, the stats in 2k15 are out of 100. In Fire Pro, it's out of 10. So...you get a bit more tweaking, I guess. At least theoretically, assuming that the stats do anything. And also bear in mind that all the characters have about the same stats anyway.

Then I looked at the titles. They have a lot of belts. Belts from all eras so the WWF belt from the 80s, 90s, Smoking Skull belt, whatever. Also have some belts from WCW and ECW including the NWO spraypainted belt. Also tag team and women's belts. So that's cool. I like that. A lot of belts.

But then you think, "There's only fifty characters in this game." So...there's like 20 belts for fifty characters. If you actually use all of these belts, half your guys can be champions. It's stupid.

Fire Pro had only eight belts. You were able to create them but only by mixing and matching the plates and belt shape and colours. And the belts were based on actual belts so...certain plates were meant to go with certain other plates and use a certain shape and certain colours. So not much creativity allowed. And the characters didn't bring the belt to the ring or do anything with them anyway. So...the belt section in Fire Pro is pretty disappointing.

I assume that in 2k15, the characters wear/hold the belt on their way to the ring. Maybe they can use it as a weapon too.

Then I went to Royal Rumble. You can only have six characters in the ring at any one time. This is pathetic.

Fire Pro: Six Men Scramble was the first Fire Pro game (and first wrestling game ever, probably) to allow six characters in the ring at the same time. Six Men Scramble was released in 1996.

Then I don't know...either Fire Pro G or Fire Pro D allowed eight characters in the ring at any given time. FPG was released in 1998 and FPD in 2001.

But here we are 2015 and only six characters in the ring at any given time. Of course 2k15 has much better graphics than any Fire Pro game. Fire Pro uses 2d sprites. 2k15 is fully 3d. But how much time has passed? The hardware won't allow more than six characters in the ring? I find this very hard to believe.

What else...they had a few different match types but I didn't check them out. Tables and chairs, iron man, last man standing, submission, probably a cage match. Actually, those aren't even that exciting.

In Fire Pro, you had hardcore matches with barbed wire shit in the ring corners, exploding cage match, a regular cage match (that didn't really work), a boxing/kickboxing-type match (which only sort of worked), BattleArts style matches, you could make Pride matches, UFC matches in the cage, all kinds of shit. You can make up your own matches with customiseable rules. Indeed, a submission match is easy to make in FPR. Just set the win condition to "submission only". That shouldn't count as its own match type.

So 2k15 is missing loads of stuff that you can get in FPR. FPR is missing stuff that's in 2k15 but...nothing that I particularly want. A working cage match would be cool, though.

Oh, and you also have to unlock a bunch of shit. Wrestlers, arenas, probably some other shit. There's a lot of arenas. I haven't checked them out. In Fire Pro, there's only like eight and they aren't hugely different from each other but this isn't important.

I mean, no question that 2k15 looks better than FPR. But FPR is just such a better game in every way that matters. So much deeper, more engaging, more accurate depictions of the wrestlers, way more interesting matches, more accurate matches, just loads better.

So yeah...2k15. There's the tiny roster, the stats that probably don't matter, the fact that everybody has about equal stats anyway, the short matches, only six people allowed in the ring at once. Fortunately, I didn't buy this piece of crap. It's a sad world we live in when a series like Fire Pro (which is universally praised as the greatest wrestling game series of all time) hasn't seen a release in over 10 years but total shit like the WWE 2k(whatever) series gets a release every year.

King of Colloseum was a great game. It was 3d and made by the people who made Fire Pro. The series could have continued in this vein. They proved that you could make a 3d game almost as deep and engeaging as the Fire Pro series. Had they kept at it, they could have made a game better than Fire Pro AND 3d (which is what the kids always complain about when it comes to Fire Pro). It's a shame that was discontinued at King of Colloseum 2.