For decades, wrestling games have been dominated by several members of the WWE franchise. Since Smackdown! vs. Raw to WWE 2K. And the same thing has happened in the real world of wrestling. Other smaller companies like NJPW or TNA have tried their luck at Fire Pro Wrestling World and TNA Impact! or could only reach a handful of fans. However, a new competitor has emerged in recent years, AEW, whose first game has just seen the light of day: AEW: Fight Forever. I love All Elite Wrestling and it’s the wrestling company I follow the most; Unfortunately, this isn’t a game you want to play forever.
Yuke’s development team is laying some excellent foundations that deviate a bit from the ultra-realism that most sports games aspire to these days. Instead, they’ve opted to return to this WWF-No-Mercy-style arcade sensation for Nintendo 64, which is something they’ve been looking for, according to Kenny Omega himself, one of the people behind the video game they’ve been looking for. The foundations are solid, but it’s a shame that anything built on top of that is some kind of shaky misstep. Because the game has issues ranging from some minor ones to major ones that affect the gaming experience.
I’ll start with what I like, which is, which comes as no surprise to almost anyone, the arcade style of the game. It’s a lot of fun when everything works in the ring. One button to hit, one to kick, one to hit, and one to grab, with a few tweaks for the different buttons. It’s so easy that even a beginner won’t have any trouble at first. Press LB and RB on Xbox or L1 and R1 on Playstation to parry grabs or punches. If you press the left button, you avoid grabbing. If what comes to you is a punch, you will eat it. To avoid this you have to press the right button to deflect both punches and kicks. It’s not very difficult to understand, although it can take a little time to get the timing right. The game borrows a pulse meter from other titles. When you hit your opponent, it fills up; If he hits you, it empties. When it’s completely filled, you can perform your signature hit. Landing the final punch requires a little provocation, although it takes some work. I don’t understand why they chose this way to try the pinfall since it consists of constantly pressing buttons without there being any indicator to tell you how many times to press. The referee can shout “1, 2, 3 … ring!”. I keep my fingers glued to the controller and have no idea if I got close to the goal or not.
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And it’s not the only problem the game has in the ring. It seems that the computer-controlled characters don’t understand how to step over someone who is on the ground. Imagine you are playing a game with three characters. One of them was knocked out and the remaining CPC character most likely wants to direct his bloodthirst at you, who is looking at the ceiling on the other side of the defeated character on the floor. Well, you can’t, because the half-corpse in the middle of the ring has become an invisible wall that you can’t cross. There are also vision problems, and it sometimes appears that two drunks are hitting each other in the dark of the night. If we add a few bugs in the graphics to all this, we are left with a rather unattractive mix.
Where do I continue with my disappointment? I think I will now continue with the choice of fighters. Although the selection is quite large, I’m missing some of the best. The FTR pair was later confirmed for a DLC. The presence of Claudio Castagnoli, formerly known as Cesaro, is conspicuous by his absence. The celebrated cannot shake hands. Big champions like Toni Storm and Hook aren’t there either. Yes, there is Cody Rhodes, although he left the company more than a year ago.
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Will Road to the Elite, the game’s story mode, be able to reverse the negative trend? Yes and no. It is possible to put yourself in the shoes of a real or a personalized player. For my part, I created my Svenne Vikingsson in a rather skimpy character designer and put her in some available Swedish flag shorts. And where is he from? Well, Sweden certainly not, as it’s not one of the nationalities to vote for. Yes, you can put your character in pants and a hat with the Swedish flag, but these cannot represent Sweden. Great. First, your character will compete against each other in Casino Battle Royale. What I like about the story is that you can take different directions depending on whether you win or lose the battles. This is divided into four chapters leading up to a PPV event. Each chapter is divided into four weeks as the story progresses, with the fourth week always being dedicated to the same PPV. Depending on how successful (or unsuccessful) you are, each chapter can be about one of three different stories: 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A… and so on.
In addition, you can do four different activities each week. Work out at the gym to earn skill points, visit your current location to recharge your batteries, eat at a local restaurant for even more energy, hold a press conference, play mini-games, and more. Also, you can use it to unlock secret conversations with other characters. This means that this is a game that can be played multiple times as the story mode isn’t even that long and can even be played in an afternoon. Don’t expect a Nobel Prize in Literature, either, but it’s entertaining. Yes, I have to say that at this point in the game I have a serious flaw: it doesn’t allow me to advance to the final week. When I click “Go to PPV” the game hangs and forces me to do a hard reboot.
The graphics and the sound are also nothing special. It doesn’t seem bad to me that they chose to give the characters a less realistic aspect, which is clear from the start. A few characters seem odd though, with Chris Jericho being as wide as a stable door. The sound is ok at times. For example, there are no commentators during the fights, only background music. While some might not like it, it feels good to me because it’s more of an arcade style game.
What is nonsense is the story mode voice acting. Good old Jim Ross never sounded so motivated in his life. His synchronization is so bad that you want to laugh because he didn’t cry. That’s not to say the sounds in the ring aren’t bad at all, though, from fists to anything else that can happen there. There are several options within the ring when it comes to the types of fights. There are the classic 1v1 and team games, but also the Casino Battle Royale and the Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match. The latter is so gory that even WWE games have to look the other way.
I have mixed feelings about AEW: Fight Forever. It’s a very entertaining game and offers top-notch arcade-style wrestling as long as everything works in the ring, which doesn’t mean that there isn’t something without content at times. The best description I can give is based on the fight between Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega in the Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match that I mentioned earlier: the base is super interesting and very special, but at the end of the day it’s still a torch instead of a big explosion. While all that needs to be said, torches can also be entertaining.
