The facial animations and voice are absolutely fantastic for the main character.
AJ Kirsch from WWE's Tough Enough reality series lends his voice talent and motion capture to the main character and truly brings your created character to life.
My Career features full voice acting for your created wrestler and other characters that interact with him. Once again, you create a (male) wrestler to play from the start of this mode. My Career mode hits all the right pressure points on me in 2K19.
One of the most fun parts about Showcase is the wrestler of choice - it's cool to see the tale of an underdog rather than one of the many big time wrestlers in WWE. You can simply defeat a wrestler and pin the enemy wrestler, or you can try for several optional tasks that appear during each match. This mode has several interviews with the superstar that all lead up to playable iconic wrestling events. In Showcase, we get to play as the underdog wrestler Daniel Bryan as he tells his tale of success through his years with WWE. The main single player modes this year are Showcase (The Return of Daniel Bryan), My Career, 2K Towers and WWE Universe. Fall Out Boy's "Champion" song fits the game all too well. There is an equal focus on rap and rock music this year. This is more of a personal preference, but the soundtrack of licensed music for 2K19 is much more appealing than last year. 2K19's main menu has a nice white background (that is easy on the eyes) along with tabs to cycle through that each display randomizing wrestlers with a sort of particle effect coming off of one side of them. It's strange to be so positive on menu design, but WWE 2K18 only had a boring list menu with a 3D image of two wrestlers in the background. When first turning on the game, I was already getting into it from the lovely menu design. Paybacks can be equipped to created characters and each superstar carries their own Paybacks. One payback allows you to reverse moves by simply holding a button, another gives you one extra finisher, one allows you to stand up instantly from a knockdown, etc. There is a new Payback move for all wrestlers that allows you to get extra attributes or additional help later in a match by pressing certain buttons. Thankfully the game still has sliders that allow you to adjust the timing for reversals, but it's still only available for certain modes (not for My Career). Reversals seem to have a bit more of a window of opportunity for pressing the reversal button to get the upper hand on your opponent, but their window is still overall tight. The gameplay to WWE 2K19 remains primarily the same as last year. 2K19 gives me the impression that there was more of a love for the sport put into the game and the game has far more interesting single player content. Thankfully, developers Yukes and Visual Concepts read through many of the poor reviews of 2K18 and addressed many of them in WWE 2K19. If you read my review of WWE 2K18 here on The Gamers' Temple, you'll know that I was greatly disappointed in the game from its lack of content and voice acting, but I felt that it had potential to be better. Extra Features: Local and Online Multiplayer (2-6), Local and Online Co-op, Leaderboards, Add-On Content