AEW Fight Forever
Let me begin by saying this was the hardest review I've ever written so far, not because I couldn't find the words to talk about AEW Fight Forever. A special huge thanks to the guys at THQ Nordic, AEW Games, Yuke's, and whoever else made it possible for us to review this game early. I had this game for about a week and it took me a while to do as much within the game as I could. So it's not like I don't have my thoughts and opinions on Fight Forever.
On the contrary, I have far too much to say about what I will consider my second favorite video game of 2023. I'd say it's tied with Street Fighter 6. When the time comes to talk about that, I gladly will. It's like a kid in a candy store except this kid is pushing three decades with all of their favorite assortments ready for the taking. The best thing about AEW Fight Forever? In its base state, there's a lot to do with very few limited by "microtransactions" "battle passes" or "Ultimate Teams." This was a wrestling game developed by a team of legendary developers, watched over by wrestlers who are gamers themselves, for gamers who are wrestling fans.
Usually, most players begin the main mode about a few minutes into a game. For me, it took me about fifteen hours before I began the Road To Elite mode in AEW Fight Forever. For context, Road To Elite is this game's version of a "Season Mode." The first fifteen hours were spent exploring everything that I possibly could in a wrestling game. Any wrestling game worth its weight in gold is determined by how extensive its "Creation" modes are. The many hours I spent creating "Flow Beat" as a wrestler and fine-tuning her move set (With the moves I've had available at my disposal) was enough to assure me that I was in good hands.
Since the 1990s, there have been two developers so iconic among wrestling fans, if a gaming dictionary ever existed and one were to look up "Wrestling Royalty," AKI and Yuke's would both be on top. As Yuke's is AEW Fight Forever's developer, let's begin with them first. While Yuke's have made games in other genres including Earth Defense Force and the obscure racing title Edit Racing, wrestling is one of the major genres these guys are cherished for.
The last wrestling game Yuke's developed was WWE 2K19, ending their eighteen-year relationship that started to with WWF SmackDown! released in 2000. This would also be my first foray into wrestling video games as I was an eight-year-old kid who had just seen someone get ura nage'd through a table on TV. If you know what an ura nage is, you are also a wrestling fan and are on the same wavelength as to why I can't use the actual name.
But it wasn't about whooping "candy asses" and calling people "jabronis" for me. What enamored me was seeing that same trash-talking charismatic man boasting on the mic on live TV, now in the video game as I was making my own matches and creating my own storylines in my head. Sure the SmackDown! games didn't age well looking back, with a sequel releasing mere months after the first game. However, Shut Your Mouth and Here Comes The Pain remains two of my favorite video games of all time as a teenager. Having that freedom to book insane matches like Trish Stratus vs The Undertaker (When the women wrestlers could pick up three-hundred-pound wrestlers light as a feather. More on this later because this would soon come back to haunt me.)
When AEW Fight Forever was announced by Kenny Omega himself, he promised not only would Yuke's come back in full force, but another iconic name tied to wrestling games would also join the team. Hideyuki Iwashita, better known as GETA, directed WWF No Mercy and Def Jam Vendetta under the-then titled AKI Corporation. Def Jam Fight For NY would be the last documented relevant game he had worked on although he would take a producing role over a directing one. Fans of FFNY should take note that it doesn't play like the brawler, but it has more roots in the Vendetta and No Mercy camp.
With the creative geniuses behind many wrestling fans' favorite titles, including AKI and Yuke's, AEW Fight Forever was shaping up to be a love letter to everything that made that era great. Before I would experience the iconic nostalgia for myself, I had to get out of the menu screen. See, I'm one of those wrestling game fans who love to create characters, from their appearance to their move set and their entrance. Fight Forever allowed me to create a wrestler and gave me hundreds of moves to work with. My character, Flow Beat A.K.A Rave, had a little piece of everything covered.
Running strikes, grapples, turnbuckle, Irish Whip maneuvers, ground and pounds, aerial grabs, the works. My purpose when creating Flow in AEW Fight Forever was primarily for the Road To Elite mode. This is Fight Forever's "Season" mode that takes a player through a "year" of AEW. If the year was a weird combination of the years 2020 and 2021, this would be the "year" that Fight Forever gives the player. That's because Road To Elite is not a hundred percent original, rather it serves as an anthology of AEW from 2019 up until a year ago.
AEW Fight Forever's gameplay is almost an accurate one-to-one representation of WWF No Mercy...is what I would say if I had experience with the title. Fortunately, I had help in covering this game and they addressed that the gameplay is indeed very familiar yet with a new coat of paint. We also tested the online connection during the few times we did co-op and it worked flawlessly as we were within "close" distance from each other (within the same state).
The best way to compare AEW Fight Forever to older wrestling games is like playing Tekken 8 after playing Tekken for years. You don't unlearn it, but it's not the same game. Grapples, punches, and kicks can all be modified with a directional input as well as holding the button for a stronger attack. There are two buttons to guard grapples and strikes, with a counter made possible by pressing either button at the right time for the right attack.
Performing well, not getting hit, taunting, and varying your wrestler's move will increase their momentum until they are able to use their Signature move. Pressing the d-pad will let the wrestler use their default signature and tilting the right analog stick will enter Blazin--I mean, Special mode. While in Special mode you can use your Blazin' Move---Your SPECIAL move. If you played Def Jam Vendetta it's the same thing and usually, it's enough to pin your opponent. To my knowledge, the player cannot win via knockout, but they can also win via submission if a wrestler is specialized in holds.
Road To Elite begins with the "Double or Nothing" announcement, including Chris Jericho declaring he was "All In" with "All Elite," kicking off one of the largest rising organizations in professional wrestling. Depending on whether the player starts the game as one of the men or ladies, the beginning of the "Road To Elite" mode will differ significantly. Since Flow is a lady, her beginnings were chasing after the AEW Women's Championship, in which she was crowned the inaugural champion. Unfortunately, the moment she wins her first title defense, she has to somehow stand in for Matt Hardy in a singles match? I don't know either.
Intergender matches are nothing new but they aren't explored much in video games. The women have their campaign and the men have theirs. There's usually no overlap but in AEW Fight Forever, as soon as I bailed out Matt, I was scouted by MJF to join Inner Circle. Soon, I somehow became involved with him, Chris Jericho, Sammy Gueverra, and no Santana & Ortiz. I guess in this regard I was the Haitian version of L.A.X., but not only was I a one-woman army, I don't even think they go by that tag team name anymore. Anyways, it was at this point I realized Road To Elite wasn't what I expected. After the first PPV, it was off to the races and I would find out how crazy the rabbit hole went.
Flow Beat in the AEW world is a quirky joshi super fan, probably from playing Rumble Roses. Likewise, most of her move list takes several moves from various famous puroresu and joshi wrestlers. Most if not all the moves listed in the game go by different names, but there are enough moves, entrances, and taunts to inconspicuously create the player's "dream wrestler." It's been kind of an unwritten rule that moves themselves aren't copyrighted but the likeliness attached to them is. This leads to some interesting additions that make sense if fans look at it from a wrestling standpoint.
Seeing moves by "El Generico," AJ Styles, Ric Flair, Finn Balor, Shinsuke Nakamura, Iyo Sky, and others may seem weird outside of a WWE 2K title at first. All of the wrestlers I mentioned have had a history in Japan as well as in the independent circuit before they found success in WWE and AEW. Even NJPW wrestlers including Tanahashi, Naito, and Maki Itoh all have their moves, with the latter having her entrance and theme song in the game. Yuke's has always been fans of wrestling even when they developed games that didn't have any official licenses. Rumble Roses as mentioned earlier is an example of this.
Each character was an original yet larger-than-like representation of various existing wrestlers. Even wrestlers who had unfortunately passed away, like Hana Kimura, have most of their moves intact, leaving players able to make "tribute" characters or inspirational characters much in the same vein as Konami's dormant wrestling series that Yuke's should definitely bring back. Regardless, I was surprised at the number of moves in the game, especially with all of them being hand-animated instead of relying on motion capture.
The Road to Elite mode is split between the four main AEW PPVs beginning with All Out, Full Gear, Revolution, and finally the big PPV, Double or Nothing. Programs are split between weeks, which are then split into days known as "turns." The player gets a limited number of turns each week which is used for training to build stat points, eating to maintain energy, and finally social activities. The social activities increase a player's motivation, which increases the "momentum" gain each match as well as how beneficial each workout session is. Energy influences how successful training is. The higher the energy, the less of a chance for injury. Getting injured removes the player's ability to work out as well as enter a match while injured, hampering their ability until they check into the Hospital.
Depending on a player's choices and how many matches they have won, the player will get placed in various storylines. While I'm unsure of the specific branching paths that equate to each storyline, it seems each major PPV has three, giving the player up to twelve main ones to go through. I joined Inner Circle at Full Gear, promptly attacked both Jericho and MJF and refused to join either of them. This placed me in an Exploding Barbed Wire Match program with Jon Moxley, even though I was beefing with Kenny Omega for most of the storyline.
Finally, we come to Double or Nothing. Now I didn't have a perfect record but I had way more wins than losses. I was placed in quite possibly the worst storyline in the game where my car broke down (so no training), I was fed lettuce like I was a rabbit (so no energy meaning still no training), and I had to attempt to defeat a pissed off Paul Wight in THREE MINUTES with the full intent to kill me. Now, to paint the picture, Flow is a woman. A strong woman who can pick up people like Luchasaurus with no problem.
Paul is not a Luchasaurus.
Even ATTEMPTING to pick this man up led to Flow pulling her back. Needless to say, I had most of my losses here and I didn't even get a proper "finale." No Casino Battle Royale for this girl. Flow was left to be embarrassed by PAC and Miro with no resolution. At least I ended Road To Elite with two belts!
I have showered this game with nothing but praise, clocking in at over two thousand words. Here is where my disappointment begins. Spending hours building Flow, going through Road To Elite, and being rewarded with my hard work by having a completed wrestler should be a great reward for anyone. She's me, she's my wrestler, and I want her to be the best she can be. Unfortunately, the only mode to improve your created wrestler is in Road To Elite. When you finish a year, you're graded and assessed accordingly, with the game warning you that if you complete the mode, you cannot improve your character further.
Basically, once you complete Elite mode, your created wrestler is also "completed," even if you didn't unlock everything you could in a single playthrough. If you're like me and figured "Hey I could just start another season and have my stats carry over from the previous one," then I'll spare you the disappointment. You can't. You'll have to start over from the very beginning stat-wise. I understand this is done so that future playthroughs aren't too easy but would it hurt to give players an option to improve their created wrestlers some more after you clear Road to Elite?
Using the in-game currency to improve your create-a-wrestler's stats may be a good alternative. I had already spent most of it on unlocking characters like Cody Rhodes and Referee Aubrey with a decent amount left over. I even discovered a cute Easter Egg involving the "Exploding Barbed Wire Match." If you beat Jon Moxley in the match at Revolution, you unlock the "Historical" sparks option for purchase at the shop menu. Those who know what "historical" means are already chuckling, but let's just say the actual match with Omega vs Moxley did not end how anyone planned it to. It's an inside joke that is still being talked about to this day so I'm happy to see that AEW are good sports about it.
The other silver lining is the future plans involving AEW Fight Forever's Season Pass, which will include wrestlers like Keith Lee, Dax Harwood, Cash Wheeler, and Matt Hardy along with other bonus content. Despite my complaints with the Create modes, there is a solid package to be had in AEW Fight Forever. The wrestling game genre has been stagnant for a long time due to everyone wanting to chase "realism." Even the controls in recent titles have been made to reflect this. Sometimes I just want to hit someone with an exploding bat while dressing up in a maid outfit and talking about my pet purple giraffe that no one understands.
If you've seen the images here, you understand how eccentric my darling Flow was and honestly, she was a bundle of joy to play in Road To Elite. I want to make more wrestlers, all unique and different. I want to make personas of said wrestlers as well. I don't want to be tied down and restricted to a mode in order to unlock capabilities for future custom wrestlers if I had already done a playthrough. At the very least make it so that the stats carry over across subsequent playthroughs. Maybe even a "Free" mode that's only accessible AFTER a complete cycle.
If the devs and publishers can just fine tune some other hilarious glitches that occur as well, including the AI getting stuck in place and causing me to lose tag team matches, then this will be a phenomn---I can say phenomenal right? AEW Fight Forever is an amazing game and a step in the right direction for wrestling fans who grew up choke slamming their friends off a building in a Falls Count Anywhere match. If this is the first step, then the future is looking bright.
AEW Fight Forever is available on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. This review was based on the PC/Steam version.