WWE 2K22: My journey with MyFaction mode

WWE 2K22’s new single-player mode MyFaction mode has some interesting dynamics but is it good enough to stand on its own. Here’s my journey through it.

Imagine MyFaction like it is a hybrid between an Android app game and a WWE 2K22 game. It has a simple wrestling mechanic, but a very layered management system. Players are given five male wrestler cards, five female wrestler cards, a manager, and some decor as their starter deck. They need to pick four men and women wrestlers to be part of their faction. From there, you name your faction and grind through matches.

I started The Bad Guys, a very lame stable that would be the great idea of Vince Russo. AJ Styles was my ring leader and he recruited Koffi Kingston, Xavier Woods, and Elias. I got this set of cards because I chose the Raw pack of cards as opposed to the Smackdown or NXT brand. Stephanie McMahon was our manager, which had no bearing on our story, but it gave us a level-up perk. My whole team started off in the mid-70s to high 60s for wrestling power, which meant I was going to need to grind through tons of events to build them up.

The Bad Guys started in the NXT Proving Grounds tower, which has several chapters consisting of seven matches. The point of each match is not to just win against your opponent, but to score challenge points. A challenge could be to land ten light attacks, dive on your opponent three times, or hit a finisher. When I complete all my challenges and win the match then I would receive MP. In most of the matches on normal mode, I could easily get all the MP and more to move on. On hard and legendary mode you had to gain significantly more MP, but the rewards were greater. Each successful win granted you either one, two, or three tokens.

Here’s where the game gets very micro-transactiony. MP points could be used to purchase new packs of wrestlers to recruit into your faction. The packs contain random wrestlers with different levels of power. A single pack would have bronze, silver, or gold-level wrestlers. With my accrued tokens, I could purchase rarer packs: jade, ruby, sapphire, platinum. I was able to nab Cameron Grimes and Chad Gable for 15 tokens.

But let’s not forget the easy road. I can open my real-world wallet up and purchase all the points and tokens my heart desires. Nothing brings me greater joy than having to pay more to win a game that costs $60.

The matches still had the fresh new gameplay that WWE 2K22 promised, except I had to make sure that I was completing my challenges. The great thing about MyFaction is that they gutted all the entrance themes so the game loads a lot faster. If you don’t like load times, I do not recommend getting this game for PS4 or Xbox One.

I am four hours into WWE 2K22 and I realize that the game is showing its quirks. Clothing has a habit of clipping through the skin and the auto-aim system is not as reactive as I had hoped. When I want AJ to knock out a tag opponent so I can get an uninterrupted pin, he sometimes sticks his head between the ropes for no reason. That is the problem that plagues most realistic wrestling games, so many buttons do so many things depending on where you are standing.

Winning the matches was a breeze and it made me feel good. It took me one hour and change to beat seven matches. Why so long? Here is the Achilles’ heel in wrestling games that feature tag teams or multiple wrestlers in the ring. Every tag match has your opponents interrupting your pin attempt. The opponent’s AI is like clockwork. my work around was to do a fake pin to lure out my opponent’s partner and then attack the interrupting opponent and do a real pin. Matches that could have been won in five minutes turned into fifteen-minute matches because of interrupting tag partners. My tag partners would try to interfere with the interferers, but they were always so slow and clueless. Sometimes they would run into the ref.

The longest match was the last one. It was an 8-man tag battle. For twenty minutes AJ, Elias, Xavier, and Koffi were hitting multiple finishers, piledrivers, submissions, and signature moves on Finn Balor and Pete Dunne, but their tag partners kept breaking up the pin. When I finally was able to get the three count, I was horrified to learn that it was an elimination match. This match took up the better part of an hour. I can’t imagine Dave Meltzer awarding five stars to a 60 minute WWE match where AJ Styles hits fifteen finishers on Johnny Gargano because he can’t get a clean pin.

If you like grinding, daily challenges, updated tournaments, and random prizes that can be controlled with actual money then MyFaction is what you are looking for. I was hoping for a MyStable mode, where I could form my own NWO and disrupt the business.