Since the deaths of World Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling in 2001, the wrestling landscape witnessed promotions proclaiming to be an “alternative” looking to “start a revolution” come & go while the worldwide leader of sports entertainment continued to dominate the market both in real life and digitally as WWE video games cornered the market. While wrestling games like “Fire Pro Wrestling World” and “RetroMania Wrestling” found niche spots in the virtual wrestling world, no game seemed to have a better possibility of really shaking up the genre than the one under the All Elite Wrestling umbrella – the first wrestling company in nearly twenty years to gain a fan base strong enough to warrant talks of becoming the de facto number two pro wrestling promotion in North America; if not the world.
So when AEW’s “Fight Forever” was announced with the development team Yukes at the helm alongside the creative mind responsible for crafting some of the most celebrated wrestling games ever on the Nintendo 64, it seemed like AEW had everything needed to produce a bona fide classic. Unfortunately for the developers and gamers awaiting “Fight Forever’s” release, development woes, distribution issues, and even a lawsuit delayed the game’s release. Three years after the initial announcement and over four after AEW held its inaugural event, “Fight Forever” arrived on both eighth & ninth generation consoles alongside PC.
Being the wrestling fan & gamer that I am, I pre-ordered the “Elite Edition” to not only get the season pass & DLC, but also to play the game a day early with the hope I could get the felling of my teenage years playing “WWF No Mercy” with an elite cast of wrestlers.
Did I Complete “AEW Fight Forever”?
“AEW Fight Forever” keeps things mostly simple as possible including its list of achievements & trophies. The “Exhibition” option allows gamers the chance to play against the computer, with other players locally, or simply watch the AI fight each other in a variety of matches including Exploding Barbed Wire Death Matches, Fatal Four Way collisions, and even a battle royal rooted in gambling. Online options for multiplayer action complements the major single player mode in “Road to Elite” – the season mode featuring branching narratives in a playthrough that usually lasts between two and three hours.
The game obviously wants players to take part in everything and play every character with wrestlers not having stats to make sure every wrestler can beat every grappler in the right hands (that includes created wrestlers at their more unfinished state). After twelve or so hours, I finished my first run of “Road to Elite” (ten playthroughs of “Road to Elite” is necessary for trophy/achievement completion), took on some players online, defeated CPU opponents on the hardest difficulty (“Elite”), won some minigames, and spent a bunch of in-game money to unlock things including AEW legend Cody Rhodes. There are still trophies to unlock, but it shouldn’t take much effort; just time specifically thanks to those ten playthroughs of “Road to Elite”.
What Makes “AEW Fight Forever” Unique?
Promoted as the spiritual successor of the WCW and WWF N64 games from twenty-plus years ago, “Fight Forever” actually feels like a blend of those aforementioned classics and the recent WWE 2K games developed by Yukes with the latter being seen mostly in the animations of certain moves, reversals, and creation items. The core gameplay mechanics definitely harken back to the 64-bit era with players using strikes and grapples in varying ways specifically by either tapping or holding down the respective button to pull off either a regular or strong strike or grapple.
In the case of controllers, the bumper buttons act as reversal tools with the left bumper stopping an opponent from performing a grapple and the right bumper preventing those strikes from landing against the player’s wrestler. Depending on the timing of performing reversals, players may turn an intended collar & elbow tie up against their opponent, retaliate with a strike of their own, or even trap an incoming kick to perform a maneuver like a patella-obliterating dragon screw leg whip. While the options to pull off reversals in various forms is very beneficial, there are times when collision detection and the game’s general technical shortcomings make it more difficult to execute an intended reversal like it was in “WWF No Mercy”.
There are some noticeable differences between “Fight Forever’s” predecessors and this experience including how “Signature” and “Special” maneuvers work. The success of a wrestler in “Fight Forever” is rooted in gaining “Momentum”. Above every wrestler’s name on the in-game HUD is the “Momentum” bar that increases as a person is successful with their attacks and lowers upon taking damage. When the “Momentum” bar reaches its maximum, the option of using a wrestler’s “Signature” move becomes available. Unlike the old games, using a “Signature” doesn’t reset the “Momentum” bar. As long as the player can keep the action going in their favor, they can continuously perform “Signatures”.
“Specials” or finishing moves only can be activated by performing a successful taunt while the “Signature” is available. If the player doesn’t hit their “Special” fast, it can be lost as the “Momentum” bar resets after a period of time just like the N64 days. Some wrestlers can execute their finishers from a variety of angles like the top rope or countering a diving attack by catching them in midair. There are, of course, different attacks to fit into the times that weren’t used during the “Attitude Era” – this also applies to the generous amount of weapons available.
Easily, one of the “Fight Forever’s” biggest gameplay shortcomings comes from the 8-bit era with button mashing stopping a pin or submission. While the act of button mashing is fine depending on the player (obviously, some gamers physically can’t properly perform a button-mashing sequence and an alternative control option is always beneficial), the presentation is lacking. The on-screen prompt to button mash is static and doesn’t show if the player is hitting the right buttons or if they are close to successful in preventing a pin or submission. Getting hit with about five moves and then a “Special” before being pinned and not having a clue if they were about to kick out is ridiculous in 2023.
Though there are quite a few moves for the fifty-plus wrestlers to individualize them from one another and weapons galore, the actual match stipulation variety is lacking tremendously. Singles, tag team, Triple Threat, Fatal Four Way matches are available with no option of having elimination rules or even a Tornado Tag. Beyond “Lights Out”, “Falls Count Anywhere”, and “Ladder Match”, one-on-one bouts are pretty much in the same vein of games from multiple generations ago. The biggest draw in terms of singles match stipulations is the “Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match” where wrestlers toss each other into various sharp, explosive objects while a countdown timer to the big explosion ticks down. Unfortunately, players can’t change when the timed explosion is scheduled to happen like in the “Fire Pro” games that have a similar match stipulation.
AEW’s version of the “Royal Rumble” match in the “Casino Battle Royal” is very much old school in nature from a gameplay perspective with wrestlers getting tossed out after they’ve taken quite a bit of damage with no minigame when they’re on the ropes like in the WWE games; though being hit with, say, Malakai Black’s roundhouse kick will send an opponent careening into elimination. Tag Team bouts use an interesting mechanic after tags are made where the illegal wrestlers can enter for a set amount of seconds before the game automatically forces them out of the ring. It’s during these moments before the ejection that tag teams can perform double team maneuvers by using duo grapples.
Sadly, there is no visible ways to marginally customize any match like making a bout Two Out of Three Falls or one where there are no rope breaks. Even in the battle royals of “WWF Wrestlemania 2000” players could make it that pins and submissions would cause eliminations rather than just over-the-top-rope exits. Even worse is the fact in “Road to Elite”, there are match options like Four Way Falls Count Anywhere that can’t be done in “Exhibition”. And with only four wrestlers being allowed in a ring at a time, trios matches are impossible – a match type that has become a staple of AEW programming.
The other action-oriented, offline mode is “Minigames”. These pocket-sized experiences leave something to be desired – ranging from rather interesting like the trivia and baseball games to the absurd such as throwing bombs into the ring to destroy barrels for the highest score. While an interesting diversion, nothing about “Minigames” outside of gamers who don’t want to play a wrestling game finding something to do in a wrestling game feels like this was a good use of resources that could’ve been used for the other modes including the creation suite and “Road to Elite”.
There is the ability to play any match type online with “Ranked”, “Casual” and “Private” options with the latter made for friends who want to test the game’s limits of wackiness without being interrupted. Online stability is hit and miss. Some matches will feel close to flawless with little to no lag. Other bouts turn into jittery collisions where reversals become nearly impossible and, especially in tag matches, graphical glitches cause wrestlers to get stuck in the environment including the ring. Matchmaking is also unpredictable even in “Ranked” with player availability in regards to the match type someone is searching for being the basis of who a player gets matched up with like taking on someone with a 40-22 record in your first online match.
The biggest single-player mode is “Road to Elite”. After an impressive video package showcasing youthful pictures and footage of AEW wrestlers on their journey to elite status, players are given the option of using either an actual AEW talent or a created wrestler to take part in a four-month-long journey where wins and losses actually matter and will dictate (without much explanation) the branching path the wrestler will take heading toward each major AEW pay-per-view. One of the mode’s most interesting aspects is how a player can choose what their wrestler does in the four “turns” leading up to that week’s event (be it AEW’s weekly program “Dynamite” or a mega-pay-per-view).
The options of working out to gain skill points (be careful as low energy workouts could cause injury that replaces “Workout” with “Hospital” for recovery), spend time going out to make money and/or improve the wrestler’s morale, take part in “Minigames”, or simply restore energy by eating at the local diner. Random encounters will occur during these weeks including getting challenged to a match for AEW “Rampage” after sightseeing with CM Punk. Of course, the player can just skip all the extras and just wrestle at the show for that week.
This randomness bleeds into the overall narratives that play out from month to month. One month, the player’s wrestler will find themselves in an odd couple tag team that, depending on how well they do, may or may not win the Tag Team title by the month’s end; only for the game to force a backstabbing moment to end the tag team with no explanation about what happened to their championship status. There’s an illusion of choice initially that goes out the figurative window beyond winning and losing until the very end of any story.
“Road to Elite” plays a major role in how someone crafts their created wrestlers as well. “Fight Forever’s” bare-bone wrestler creation system lacks facial sliders with face templates ranging in the single digits similar to the N64 games while the actual attires make the creation options in “WWF No Mercy” look like something from “WWE 2K” (actual AEW wrestler’s hair and attires can’t be used like in the old games). The want to recreate wrestlers not in “Fight Forever” is practically impossible thanks to the limitations. Another big limitation to the game’s creation system is an inability to give a created wrestler “Skills” outside of playing “Road to Elite”. “Passive Skills” including gaining a boost of momentum for kicking out of a pin or becoming more powerful when beaten to the point blood is coming out are bought with “Skill Points” gained during “Road to Elite”.
There are also “Action Skills” like the ability to do springboard maneuvers and using an opponent’s finisher against them. “Stat Skills” focus on making it easier to gain momentum, have more than one finisher and “Signature”, and the strength of those “Special” maneuvers. Once again, none of these “Skills” can be added to a created character during the initial creation process with the player having to take their potential beastly grappler through “Road to Elite” to fully improve their abilities and stats. Sadly, the game only offers one “Road to Elite” save at a time; so players will have to grind out a season with their created wrestler one-by-one instead of being able to jump around and even see different avenues to complete certain stories without the use of a whiteboard.
The other creation option is “Create an Arena”. And, just like creating wrestlers, “Create an Arena” lacks a certain level of freedom of a “WWE 2K” game and is closer in presentation to “Fire Pro’s” version (which isn’t that bad). Unfortunately, there is no “Community Creations” for players to download created wrestlers & arenas crafted by designers and it, potentially, may never come with players having to share formulas for gamers to recreate their creations.
When it comes to non-“Road to Elite” action, gamers will attain cash that can be used to buy some wrestlers, outfits, and creation extras like moves, poses, and taunts. Another way to get money is with the completion of “Challenges” that range from “Daily”, “Weekly”, and “Normal” with the latter never changing and is the more grind-heavy compared to its “Daily” and “Weekly” counterparts. With a limited number of unlockables and the generous amount of money given, players will most likely unlock everything very easily.
Technically, “Fight Forever” is a mixed bag. Certain character models like Jon Moxley, Britt Baker, and Darby Allin look fantastic, while others including Nick Jackson of The Young Bucks seem bloated facially or are completely outdated in their appearances like Wardlow & Beretta having long hair where in real life they haven’t for over half-a-year. While there haven’t been any hard crashes or game-breaking bugs, frame rate drops can occur even during the ridiculously short, though unskippable entrances. Apparently, these frame rate drops and hiccups happen a lot more frequently on the Nintendo Switch version.
There is a pretty robust soundtrack, but no commentary during matches which actually works perfectly fine with the players focusing on the action instead of hearing the same repetitive lines from a crazed Excalibur (plus, there’s no way they could’ve recorded all of Taz isms). Graphical glitches may occur at any time especially when trying to grapple. And then there’s the odd body damage notifications where, say, performing a suplex will hurt an opponent’s head instead of doing body damage. Difficulty is also an issue. After a day, beating the CPU on “Elite” or the hardest difficulty is quite easy even with the AI getting better at reversals, being more aggressive, and getting out of pin falls almost impossibly.
“AEW Fight Forever” has a lot going for it including a pretty stacked roster for a first game, some interesting options for single and online players, and, most importantly, a really fun combat system. But the underwhelming creation tools and match stipulations coupled by a “Road to Elite” mode that feels less rewarding the more a player completes a season hurts the overall enjoyment. Like many other games stuck in development for far too long, “Fight Forever” struggles to live up to the hype while, hopefully, having the chance to improve upon its shortcomings with DLC and updates as promised.
Should You Play “AEW Fight Forever”?
It depends on what type of wrestling gamer you are. For gamers who were around during the heyday of eight to 64-bit wrestling games this is likely a grand times thanks to a fun battle system with some interesting match stipulations and the option of playing with others online. Creation enthusiasts or those who love to pour hours into the wild season/career mode like “Road to Elite” won’t think much of “Fight Forever” as it is right now.
“Diamond in the rough” is the best way to describe “Fight Forever” in its current form – this means that paying full price as of this time may not be beneficial. If extra wrestler creation options, match stipulation modifiers, and general adaptability changes like fixing the button-mashing presentation are implemented, “Fight Forever” becomes a must-buy for any wrestling fan who happens to be a gamer. But, as of now (a week after the release), “Fight Forever” is still a young lion growing into its own instead of an elite competitor able to hang with the likes of Chris Jericho, Jade Cargill, and everyone’s favorite, Pepsi Phil.
