My childhood, just like so many others, would not have been complete if not for hours spent with siblings and friends mimicking the finishing moves of our favorite wrestlers. The simple act of power bombing someone onto the couch cushion created many memories and broke even more pieces of furniture, but thankfully my mother bought us a PlayStation and gave us a new way of living out our wrestling fantasy. Wrestling video games have been around since 1989 and have been on a yearly release schedule (aside from a few years in the late 90s) ever since. As a lifelong fan of wrestling games and programming, AEW: Fight Forever misses the mark in many regards leaving me, my inner-child desire of wanting to be a professional wrestler, wanting more especially for the $60 price tag.
For those unfamiliar with AEW, it is All Elite Wrestling and is a weekly professional wrestling program on TBS. As a viewer, it is some of the most creative and entertaining storylines and wrestling you can see that is supported by a huge roster of extremely talented wrestlers. While the game does bolster a large roster of 52 wrestlers, it does not accurately portray the excitement of watching these individuals.
The personality within wrestling comes from the dialogue and the in-match commentating, which both are absent in this game. There are moments in “Road To Elite” where you interact with other wrestlers only for it to be text below rather than a voice-acted scene, which is a worse experience when trying to truly capture the tone of the story you are playing through. Even in-match, there is no commentating just generic fighting and ring sound effects covered by a loud audience, which is disappointing when you have one of the most legendary sports commentators of all time in Jim Ross on staff. The only time you hear any sort of voice-over is in quick tutorial pop-ups that explain various aspects of the game, but this is not enough for a game that desperately needs more personality.
Upon starting up my first match, I was brought to the character selection screens just to be met with a selection of 47 characters (five unlockable characters) and no “Overall” or “Skill Bars”, which threw me off because it has become an industry standard to include this especially because it helps to mimic real life. So I continued into the match thinking that maybe the game is going for the more arcade feel and just wants to focus on the chaos that comes from a match, but I was immediately shown that there is differences of the skill levels that is noticeable in the gameplay. After that match, I made it my mission to find some mention of the different skill levels between fighters and found that you can only access this information in two places…one is in the Career mode called “Road to Elite”, where you only see the character you are playing as and the other way is to go into Options > Wrestler Info > Select wrestler you want to see > Then head to Moves & Skills > Click Skill List. For viewers of the program, this is fine to have this hidden away as they are familiar with the different wrestlers, but I believe that this creates a confusing and potentially frustrating experience for potential new fans.
Now into the gameplay, it is not anything special. The striking and grappling is oversimplified and becomes repetitive especially when you are playing through “Road to Elite” where it is the same dumbed-down move list every match that offers little variation. The mechanic for countering moves needs work as it does not work most of the time, which is especially frustrating if you are playing with a character that does not recover as quickly as others. Finishers and the various signature moves and submission moves are all very fun and feel match-ending and important when you get them, but it does not save the gameplay for me personally.
Visually, this game looks like an arcade game which for me is not a bad thing, but not everyone will love it. All of the wrestlers look exactly like their real-life counterparts and have an accurate version of their entrances for the beginning of the matches, but I will say that I was sad to find the lack of variety in actual fight settings. In AEW, we have seen fights take place in many places outside of the ring and I would have loved to actually see something like the Stadium Stampede be playable in the game, but all we got was generic rings with the various pay-per-view themes slapped onto them.
There is customization options within the game as well that include creating a character as well as creating a ring, but the game seriously lacks in providing quality options to customize either. While creating my character, I felt like this was a last-second addition to the game as it gave generic options to create a wrestler that made it feel unfulfilling and less fun. The ring customization is just as bare-boned and lacks any exciting changes that can be made to the setting of your fights. For customization options for the ring, the player essentially picks what generic decal they would like to add to the ring and what AEW entrance they would like to have, but that is it for the most part.
In terms of match types, I think the game does a great job in giving the player some exciting options as you can go from a standard 1-on-1 match to a Battle Royal to an Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match. Even if you want to take a break, the game does provide some short and fun minigames to play like trivia, rhythm dancing, memory-based games, and a few others. The career mode “Road To Elite” is interesting in terms of storytelling because winning and losing and even some of the things you do between matches change the story completely, which does make this feel more like a simulation of a wrestler’s journey.
Overall, I cannot say that AEW: Fight Forever is worth the $60 price tag. If the game was $30, my perspective would be completely different as it has its moments of enjoyment, especially for fans of the wrestling world, but it is apparent that this game was made for fans and not for the bigger audience of gamers. AEW: Fight Forever lacks the personality and creativeness that the TV series is based on and does not have any redeeming gameplay mechanics to make up for it despite including some fun match ideas. Visually, it is a fun arcade-like style with little to write home about in terms of creative options. If you still would like to play the game for yourself and determine your own thoughts, AEW: Fight Forever releases June 29 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC. A code was provided by the publisher for review.
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