Last year's WWE 2K14 continued the franchise's usual trend of incremental improvements while offering up one of the best rosters in gaming. 2K15 doesn't feature a retrospective of either the Attitude or WrestleMania eras, but instead chooses to take a look at two of WWE's biggest feuds throughout its 50 year history. The 2K Showcase will be featured in every version of the game, while the all-new MyCareer mode will be exclusive to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions. WWE's developmental brand NXT makes its formal debut since becoming a staple at Full Sail University, and the usual lineup of modes and features will remain intact.

Since it's a cross-gen feature, we'll look at 2K Showcase first. The past two WWE games have featured heavy video packages, playing off of history and allowing you to replay them. Now, you'll have what is essentially the same thing, but with a more thorough exploration of feuds. From what the leaked achievement listing shows, it appears that you'll have at least a few major matches in both the Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels and John Cena vs. CM Punk rivalries to complete, with objectives to achieve for each bout. In theory, this is very much like WWE '13's Attitude-era mode in which you could relive history and have specific objectives at particular points in the contest to move on and fulfill all requirements.

This mode moves you through the modern-day WWE system. This means you'll start at the Performance Center, get trained by Bill DeMott, then move on to NXT. So far, this seems like a glorified training mode as you'll learn how to do grapples, finishers and the like under the guise of teaching a new wrestler learn the ropes. Conquering the NXT roster of Bo Dallas, Corey Graves, Sami Zayn, and the current champion Adrian Neville gets you noticed by HHH.

Now, it's your time to shine on WWE's big stage. Much like past SmackDown series games, you'll have branching paths depending on the decisions you make -- so choosing an alliance with one person may impact your relationship with someone else, and you could make the wrong enemies by having a particular ally. This seems to be the most RPG-esque version of a career mode so far, and should be a welcome change of pace from the samey single-player campaigns of the past few WWE games.

The audio of WWE games has been stagnant for a while, with commentary coming across a tad too sterile. The outdated announcement teams don't help matters, as JBL has been a part of the time for two years now. While he's still not in this game, Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole have recorded five times more commentary for this game than any other. The game's soundtrack is also being pushed hard since John Cena apparently picked all of the music.

The presentation is also set up to be more TV-like, with additional camera angles. A making of video has shown a lot of new moves being recorded for the final product, and with guys like Cesaro doing their own move animations, things should look and feel more authentic than they have in the past. Transitional animations look far more realistic than before, and the increased polygon count for character models has really paid off.

With a mix of NXT wrestlers and the main WWE roster, WWE 2K15 has a rock-solid lineup of top-level names along with top names from the past like RVD, Sting, and Hulk Hogan. Some acts are making their video game debut this year, including Bray Wyatt and his Wyatt Family, Curtis Axel, Xavier Woods (who is a huge gamer), and the NXT roster. Thanks to the unique cutoff window for the game, people who are no longer in WWE like CM Punk and Alberto Del Rio are on the roster as well.

The WWE Network-exclusive panel on the game's roster revealed that the title would be coming to PC, but nothing has been mentioned since then. Hopefully, it's at least on part with the other versions as the possibilities of this game's creation suite alongside mods are unreal. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions are due October 28 throughout North America, and October 31 internationally. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions were set to come out then, but were delayed until November 18 for North America, and November 21 internationally.