AEW: Fight Forever Review

AEW's first foray into the world of video games with AEW: Fight Forever is a bold attempt to recapture the magic of the classic arcade-style WWE games of old, but will it struggle to meet the lofty expectations that wrestling fans and gamers have placed on the title?

AEW: Fight Forever was announced back in 2020 at the AEW Games 1.0 Special Event where it was revealed that the former developer of the WWE series, YUKE'S, would be developing the title. Having departed the WWE 2K series following the release of WWE 2K19 in 2018, there were high expectations for what the developer could do away from WWE. Not only that but Kenny Omega revealed the legendary game developer Hideyuki "Geta" Iwashita, known for directing WWF No Mercy and WCW/nWo Revenge, would be directing the series. Not only was YUKE'S at the helm but it was also being published by THQ Nordic - the spiritual successor to THQ - and so things were looking good for the game.

AEW: Fight Forever tries to stand out from the wrestling game pack by embracing the arcade-style of gameplay that many of us grew up with, while the WWE series has etched closer and closer to simulation and perfectly capturing the TV experience in game form. Instead of photo-realistic graphics, Fight Forever has chosen an art style that allows it to be a little more timeless, with a more cartoony and "animated" style that appears like a blend of 2011's WWE All Stars and WWE 2K Battlegrounds, albeit slightly more realistic than those games. While some online have criticised the look of the title as rather dated by comparing it to PS3 games or even mobile titles, when it is in motion and playing on a PS5 using a 4K TV, it does actually look good and you get used to the unique visual style very quickly. Certain character models stand out compared to others, CM Punk's face looks a little iffy at times on the character selection screen, while Adam Cole and Sting both look fantastic, particularly the latter.

Speaking of the characters, though, AEW: Fight Forever hosts a very strange roster. With 53 wrestlers in the game at launch (not including the day one DLC of FTR and Matt Hardy) there are some surprising picks and some surprising omissions. Included in the game are the majority of AEW’s main event scene including Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, Hangman Page, CM Punk, MJF, Bryan Danielson, and Jon Moxley, but many of them feature out-of-date attires and entrance themes.

Below the main event scene is where the game really makes some strange choices for its roster. While it features names like Christian Cage, Miro, Malakai Black and Jeff Hardy, it lacks The Acclaimed, The Jericho Appreciation Society, Samoa Joe, and Matt Hardy (who is only available to those who pre-order the game despite debuting in 2020 while Jeff Hardy, who debuted last year, makes the cut). The women’s roster is fairly impressive considering the male roster's omissions, headlined by Jade Cargill, Ruby Soho and Britt Baker D.M.D. There are 14 women to choose from but it does lack the star power that Toni Storm, Saraya or Jamie Hayter would bring. There is some depth to the roster but you'll very quickly run out of unique matches or characters to play as after a little while.

The gameplay is where the game really shines. As previously mentioned, AEW: Fight Forever was trying to capture the spirit of the classic Nintendo 64 THQ wrestling titles with its gameplay and in-ring action and it has done so. Matches are fast-paced, over-the-top and, most importantly, fun. You control your wrestler via fairly easy pick-up and play controls - a high attack or punch is Square/X, Triangle/Y is a low attack or kick, and X/A is grapple. You can modify each attack for a strong attack by holding down each corresponding button, allowing you to really expand the damage and repertoire of moves that you deliver to your opponent.

The hardest thing to master, though, is the reversals. R1/RB is your strike block button and L1/LB is your grapple block button. While it's a decent system it rarely works in practice and you never know if you've managed to actually escape the move or not. Even the tutorial doesn't give you any indication of what constitutes good timing on your reversals.

For the most part, it's fairly easy for someone to pick up and play, which is what YUKE'S and AEW were aiming for, especially compared to the WWE games which feature in-depth controls that often are overwhelming for new players.

The game works on a momentum system. As you deliver moves and strikes to your opponent, a gauge will fill up which allows you to hit your signature move. Each wrestler can have up to five signatures, such as Kenny Omega having a litany of V-Triggers or Snap Dragon Suplexes, and you can hit them as many times as you want while the gauge is full. Playing a match between Omega and CM Punk (for no reason whatsoever) I was able to hit multiple V-Triggers with Punk reacting differently to each one until finally he went down to one knee and I was able to lock in a Snap Dragon to take him down to the mat.

Once you have tired of hitting your signature moves, you can then taunt to earn your 'Special' finisher. Like signature moves, each wrestler can have up to five but you have a much smaller window to be able to hit it and your opponent (if playing one of the harder difficulties) will do whatever they can to reverse the move as it will likely end the match.

However, despite meeting the more arcade, fast-paced style of gameplay that they aimed for, the matches are over far too quickly. In the near 50 matches I have played in the game, only one match has gone past five minutes which was a Casino Battle Royale match (more on that later) and the majority of them are over within three minutes.

The game features nine match types at launch and includes singles matches, tag team matches, ladder matches, the Casino Battle Royale and the much-hyped Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch. I’ve spent a good bit of time in each mode and the more hardcore and arcadey you go with the match type, the more fun you’ll have with the game. Falls Count Anywhere, Lights Out and the Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch is the peak of what this game should be. Absolute carnage.

A Lights Out match is AEW’s version of WWE’s Extreme Rules Match and it is captured incredibly well in-game. During a playthrough with Hangman Page and Jon Moxley, like in real-life, Moxley was very quickly busted open via a barbed wire mop and kendo stick. YUKE'S has included a wealth of weapons for you to punish your opponent with including steel chairs, barbed wire bats and thumbtacks - a weapon rarely seen in wrestling video games. The match can quickly get brutal especially when delivering high-impact moves like the Paradigm Shift/Death Rider onto the tacks. AEW: Fight Forever doesn’t shy away from blood either as it fully embraces the extreme stakes of a Lights Out match, painting the canvas and the wrestlers in red.

The Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch is a fun novelty but I worry it will soon lose its appeal, the explosion always takes place after 120 seconds meaning the big novelty of the match is over fairly quickly. Then you spend the rest of the match bashing your opponent into the ropes as explosions erupt around the ring. It's fun but lacks replayability.

As expected, AEW: Fight Forever includes tag team wrestling but sadly with a pretty poor tag team roster that leaves potential matches hard to get excited about. At launch, the game only features four tag teams - The Lucha Brothers, The Young Bucks, Best Friends and The Inner Circle (the faction that split up in early 2022) - so you will quickly go through all potential matchups.

Despite this issue, the actual gameplay of tag matches is fun and chaotic enough that there is at least some replayability. The only major annoyance during tag team matches is that your opponent's partner, without fail, will break up the pin attempt every time meaning it is incredibly difficult to actually end a match. I am unsure if this is a bug or a design choice but it meant I had to attack an opponent's partner before quickly trying to pin the person in the ring.

The other major match is the Casino Battle Royale, AEW's signature Royal Rumble alternative. While the game does a good job in replicating the format of the match, it struggles to really capture the spirit of it. Hampered by the limit of only four wrestlers on-screen at one time, you quickly realise that you're just playing a rotating cast version of a Four-Way until you get down to the final 2. Eliminations are far too easy here as well. Rather than having a mini-game to eliminate your opponent, it is simply a case of hitting them enough times before they fall off the apron. Granted this does provide you with some cool spots such as hitting your opponent with a finisher like Malakai Black’s Black Mass, only for them to stumble towards the ropes and out of the ring. It just means that it is not only far too easy to get rid of opponents but also easy to botch and be thrown out early yourself. Once again, this is where the roster can be seen to be lacking. At the time of writing this review, you are unable to choose who is in the match outside of your chosen wrestler while the rest of the match is made up of the same competitors pretty much every time.

Beyond gameplay, Road to Elite is AEW: Fight Forever's career mode. You play as either a created wrestler or an already-established AEW star and go through one year in AEW. The mode is split into four blocks with four weeks of Dynamite or Rampage and the final week playing host to one of AEW's signature pay-per-views. The story begins at Double or Nothing 2019, AEW’s first event, with you being a featured star in the Casino Battle Royale match where the winner will receive a world title match at All Out. From there, the mode opens up and you have the option to go out and explore the city of Washington DC via either a press conference, sightseeing or a mini-game. Much of the interactions, however, follow a simple formula of your wrestler meets another wrestler. They talk for a bit. Your wrestler asks for a photo. End of interaction. It feels like a bit of a letdown from what they advertised and hyped up. Alongside these interactions, you can also work out and build up your energy by eating or boost your stats by working out if you create your own wrestler.

Should you win the Casino Battle Royale, you will challenge for the AEW World Title at All Out after four weeks of matches. The disappointment in the mode only continues, however, as even if you win the AEW World Championship, All Out will be the only time Road to Elite even references or shows your wrestler with the belt outside of the very last match in the mode. Not once did I have a storyline after winning the belt in which I had to defend the championship. Instead, I was stuck playing three remaining storylines, one leading into Full Gear against Death Triangle where I refused to join them, one leading into Revolution where my tag partner Bryan Danielson betrayed me and teamed with Thunder Rosa in a handicap match, and finally going into Double or Nothing against the real-life former AEW World Champions. Not once did I enter the ring with the belt or have any stakes where I could lose it, which made the whole title feel pointless. Following the end of the second Double or Nothing you play, the story just ends. You can't continue playing it with the same wrestler.

The events in Road to Elite do differ slightly depending on what happens during your playthrough but there is little reason to replay the mode as there is simply not enough there to capture your attention the first time round. It is shockingly short and I completed all of the content in under two hours. For what was touted as an “in-depth career mode”, it can only be seen as a bit of a letdown. Yes, I had fun playing it at times but it doesn't feel like the mode that many were hoping it would be. I can't see how this mode keeps players hooked past their second playthrough... if they get that far with it.

While mini-games do feature in Road to Elite, they are also playable outside of the mode. They are a fun novelty but I found myself bored of playing them very quickly. None of them stand out as particularly fun, nor do they give me a reason to turn the game on and play.

A big part of wrestling games is the creation mode. The ability to create yourself or your favourite wrestlers from other companies is a huge element of the longevity and replayability of the WWE 2K series. With AEW's slim roster and the fact they host the yearly Forbidden Door pay-per-view with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, one would expect that AEW: Fight Forever has a decent enough creation suite so players can open the forbidden door and create their favourite wrestlers not included. You’d be wrong, though, as the creation suite is seriously lacking and it will be a struggle to create anyone “real” in the game. This is partly because there is no way to upload logos or designs to the game so you are stuck with the already-designed tattoos and logos in Fight Forever.

While the creator tools for wrestlers is lacking, the moveset creator is where the creation suite shines. Filled to the brim with animations of moves, it is very straightforward to be able to create a moveset, or modify an existing one. YUKE'S has ported over many of their previously motion-captured manoeuvres from years past so there is a wide range on show, such as the F5’s animation from SmackDown: Here Comes The Pain, although the name of the move is named "Diverticulitis" as a reference to Brock Lesnar. While the entrances in the game leave much to be desired at only seven seconds long, the customisation options are sufficient with a wide range of entrance motions including upwards of 60+ “generic superstar” motions with many being inspired or exact copies of WWE superstars. Even if they don’t look the part they can at least act the part. YUKE'S has seemingly included nearly the entire audio library of AEW, including tracks for people who are not even in the game, so the music choices for entrances is not limited in the slightest - it even includes Cody Rhodes’ Kingdom which even WWE 2K23 doesn’t include in its creation suite.

AEW: Fight Forever's creation suite is something that I hope they expand on and build upon over time and that they will be able to include the tools that keep players playing long after they get bored of the in-ring action.

It's really hard to decide how I feel about AEW: Fight Forever. On the one hand, I really do love the arcade style that the gameplay has adopted and I find myself wanting to go home and play matches. When I do get home, though, I find myself quickly getting tired of the game, having exhausted everything the title has to offer me after only 13 hours. It's hard not to compare AEW: Fight Forever to WWE 2K23 but if you had to choose which title to buy right now, it’s a no-brainer that WWE 2K23 would be the obvious choice.

In the build-up to its launch, AEW’s Evil Uno has compared AEW: Fight Forever to No Man's Sky, a game that was released in 2016 with extremely high expectations that had been built up by years of hype and promises from its developer, but when it launched people realised that it was nothing more than an indie game that had too big a platform and promised too much. However, in the years since its release, No Man's Sky has turned it around and has become one of the most expansive and fun survival games on the market with numerous free expansions that add massive amounts of story content and gameplay overhauls. I think Evil Uno's comparison is shockingly accurate to AEW: Fight Forever, even if he was only meaning it for the latter aspect of the comparison. AEW: Fight Forever is a game that will likely fail to meet fan expectations, for the majority of the audience anyway, but it is one that hopefully will be built upon for years with DLC and free updates and perhaps then the expectations will be met. As of right now, though, AEW: Fight Forever is going to struggle to keep players invested long enough to experience those updates.

AEW: Fight Forever releases on Thursday, June 29. The game is available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Our review copy of AEW: Fight Forever was on PS5.