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Posted in: AEW, Games, Review, THQ Nordic, Video Games, Yuke's | Tagged: AEW Fight Forever, all elite wrestling
AEW: Fight Forever Review – The Wrestling Game We Wanted For Years
We sat down and played AEW: Fight Forever, the wrestling game we wish people had been making for years. Here's our review!
When AEW was first announced in 2019, the company revealed they would be working on a video game that would eventually become AEW: Fight Forever. Since then, it has been a long road to get here, including people leaving the company, a pandemic, development delays, lawsuits, and a few other distractions that normally wouldn't get much attention for most video games in development. But because wrestling fans have been anticipating this one for so long, especially knowing that wrestler and video game enthusiast Kenny Omega had a hand in it, every delay got blown out of proportion. But now, four years later, the game has finally seen the light of day thanks to THQ Nordic and Yuke's Co. We were given a copy of the game ahead of launch, so we put on one of our six-dozen Young Bucks shirts, slammed or head into a table to bleed like Jon Moxley, and tried the game out for our own review.
Gameplay and Modes
So right off the bat, if you ever played the N64 games from AKI and the original THQ, then this will be familiar territory in many ways as they get you right into the game in several different modes that look, play, and feel like WWF No Mercy or WCW/nWo: Revenge. Which is exactly what they were aiming for. If you're looking for a game that resembles any of the modern WWE 2K titles, you're in for a Rude Awakening, as this game looks, feels, plays, sounds, and acts almost entirely different from those titles. The game offers you the standard arcade Exhibition setup for 1-4 players to fight the CPU or each other from the roster of wrestlers in the game, as well as a story mode called Road To The Elite, the ability to fight online, create a custom wrestler, a set of challenges, and an in-game shop to purchase additional items with the currency you earn from wins and activities in the game.
From AEW Dynamite Into Your Console
The match options run the gambit of stuff you've seen on AEW television, as you have 1v1, tag team, 3 and 4-way matches, the Casino Battle Royale, ladder matches, the Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match (which looks a lot better in the end than it did on TV), as well as a training mode and minigames. The controls are pretty simplistic in AEW: Fight Forever, and while there is a learning curve to figuring them out, once you do, you'll basically be able to dominate or make quick comebacks when you need to. They're not perfect, sometimes an input doesn't go through, or it feels like you're mashing buttons to no effect, but for the most part, it's a pretty awesome system. Especially when you're just playing with friends and are looking to bash each other with chairs. Our major gripes with it are when dealing with things like being staggered, which feels like a 30-second cooldown just to move again, or kicking out of pinfalls, or the weird combo system to get something from a ladder match.
Becoming All Elite
The story mode in AEW: Fight Forever is fun as hell. It takes the other career modes you find in other sports games and just makes fun of it to a degree while also serving a purpose. At the start of each TV taping or PPV event, you have a series of activities you can do to prepare for the day. This includes sightseeing, working out at the gym, getting some local food, doing press conferences, and more. All of these work toward your mental and physical health, the energy you'll have going into a match, and how prepared you are for what's to come. Sometimes different visits unlock more stories and new options to make money in the game, as you get paid well for victories, especially championship wins. The story itself is a mock version of the history of AEW, as you relive key moments in the company's history, but told through your POV as if you just joined the company when it first started. You'll have interactions with different wrestlers, fight in various matches, win titles, and strive to become one of the elites in All Elite Wrestling.
Creating Your Own Wrestler & Trivial Pursuits
The custom wrestler system in the game is fun, but it needs some work. You can create basically any kind of wrestler you want, whatever gender and ethnicity you want, with an array of clothing options to choose from to make your gear. You can also pick the music you want from a jukebox full of AEW classics and some original tunes, as well as pick what the video background looks like and the pyro they give you. You also can go through a library of moves to make your wrestler play how you want; however, the menu could use some retooling with categories and button options, and it can be a slog to scroll through the list available. The minigames section is probably the weirdest addition to the mix, but it's fun. Hitting a baseball with a Kendo stick for their version of a home run derby is cool. However, stray away from doing the trivia. Unless you're an AEW expert, the CPU will usually beat you every time. You have a better chance of beating the game on hard mode unless you know every factoid there is from the past four years.
The Shortcomings of AEW: Fight Forever
It's not all sunshine and roses in AEW: Fight Forever. The game is not perfect, and we do have some gripes. For example, the roster is too small. There are just over 50 wrestlers in here, and you probably think that's plenty until you realize AEW as a company, as of when we're writing this, has nearly 200 men and women signed as talent (and we're not even counting all the Ring of Honor talent in that total). Most of those wrestlers' music is in the jukebox, so why aren't they here? Probably because the company is going to sell them off as content packs or a season pass. The championship belts look like all belts do in wrestling games: flat as cardboard and photoshopped. Why can't ANYONE get championship belts right in wrestling games?
The audio from the commentary team in the menus is fine, but it's completely unnecessary in the main game. There are times when you're stuck in a situation where you're forced to lose a match, like when I fought against Pac and the other two members of Death Triangle came to interfere. They stayed in the ring, did not get the CPU disqualified, and did not go outside after I punished them enough to bleed. I got ganged up on and lost by default. That's not fun! And finally, one of the benefits of having a create-a-wrestler (CAW) system is the ability to make wrestlers from other companies, as people do in WWE 2K and Fire Pro Wrestling. We'll never see Kazuchika Okada in a WWE ring, but I can make him in CAW. That's a bit harder in this game with the limited options, but that's fixable with a patch or an update.
A Wrestling Game For Wrestling Fans
Overall, AEW: Fight Forever is pretty solid and fun to play. A lot of people are going to gripe about it not being as immersive as sports titles they're used to these days, like NBA 2K or Madden NFL. But it's not supposed to be! It's literally designed to be a quick, fun, easy-to-learn professional wrestling game, featuring people you see on TV every week beating the crap out of each other. One of the biggest gripes I've had about WWE games over the past 15 years or so is that they're either too expansive or too complicated for an average gamer who just likes wrestling to get into. You have to spend hours in tutorials and more in losing matches to grasp what to do. This game simplifies all that and takes you back to an era when this kind of game was just hours of fun nonsense. The roster needs a boost, and there are some elements that could use a patch or a polish, but that can all be cleared up in an update or two. This is the wrestling game I've waited since 2001 to own, and it's well worth the time to check it out.
AEW: Fight Forever
9.5/10
AEW: Fight Forever is the wrestling video game we wanted for over 20 years and no one wanted to make until now. Everything about it screams N64 nostalgia, but is modern enough and easy enough to learn that anyone can grasp it. Also, hey! Brand new wrestling company to play with, so all new faces to have dream matches with, along with your own creations!
Credits
Developer
Yuke's Co.
Publisher
THQ Nordic
Release Date
June 29, 2023
Reviewed On
Xbox
Also Available On
PC, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch
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