It’s been a rough couple of years for the WWE 2K series, with the switch port of WWE 2K18 being a nearly unplayable mess and the buggy disaster (on all platforms) that was WWE 2K20, which has led to the mainline series taking a much needed year off. In its place is WWE 2K Battlegrounds, a cartoony and arcadey take on professional wrestling where wrestlers can jump 50 feet in the air, swing opponents like rag dolls, toss them into the waiting jaws of alligators, and so on. On paper, that sounds like an exciting departure from the simulation-focused main series in favor of something more akin to 2011’s underappreciated WWE All Stars… but there’s virtually nothing beyond the flashy animations. It may be easy to pick up and play, but it lacks any sort of depth to either its combat or its roster of 70 wrestlers, a large majority of which are locked behind a microtransaction-infested barrier.