When it launched in 2019, All Elite Wrestling emerged as an alternative to the mainstream of Professional Wrestling – a genre of sports entertainment that had mostly run without substantial competition in the US for decades. Its upcoming game, AEW Fight Forever, largely finds itself in the same position. It’s an arcadey and old school alternative to the more realistic and simulation focused WWE 2K series, and on that front, it succeeds at what it sets out to do. Based on about two hours of playtime with a pre-release build, Fight Forever is the kind of simple pick-up-and-play fun that wrestling games used to be, even if it is a bit rough around the edges.
I got to play Fight Forever at Gamescom last year as well, which you can read all about here. My thoughts largely haven’t changed since then, even though I’ve gotten to play with a bunch more wrestlers, more match types, on a more polished build. What impressed me this time around though were all of the small touches that really make each individual wrestler come to life. One of the issues that inevitably affects all wrestling games is that many of the wrestlers feel very samey, largely because they all pull moves from the same humongous pool of maneuvers. But Fight Forever has a number of really nice small touches that go a long way into making the characters feel unique.
Fight Forever has a number of really nice small touches that go a long way into making the characters feel unique.
As an example, most characters are able to perform a quick evade by double tapping the left stick in a direction. However, MJF can not do this. Instead, when you double tap to evade0, he goes down on his knees and starts to beg for his life, which you can then quickly cancel into an attack to try and catch your opponent off guard. It’s very MJF-like, and I got a real kick out of it every time I managed to land an attack with it.
Orange Cassidy on the other hand, is well known and beloved for putting his hands in his pockets during matches, which is something you can actually do in the game. By clicking in the right stick, he’ll go into a ‘hands-in-pockets’ stance, which changes up some of his moves, allowing him to even do his classic toe-tap combo into a super kick. Touches like these really go a long way into making Fight Forever into a game that hardcore fans will truly get a lot out of.
I also got to briefly check out the single player story mode, Road to the Elite, which is a mode that feels, like the rest of the game for that matter, directly inspired by WWF No Mercy. You select a wrestler at the start and begin their journey to AEW, beginning with a phone call from Tony Khan with an offer to appear at the very first AEW Pay-Per-View, Double or Nothing. There are some great live action video packages that help tell the story of the formation of AEW, and they’re complemented nicely by some in-game cutscenes that further your own personal story along as well.
The exciting thing about Road to the Elite is that the story will branch based on whether you win or lose.
But the real exciting thing about Road to the Elite is that the story will branch based on whether you win or lose, which I love for several reasons. For one, it obviously adds replay value, as I’m always going to be curious about what would’ve happened if I won or lost a particular match, and have incentive to play it again for a different story branch. But also it just feels right for a wrestling game. Not every wrestler is Goldberg or Jade Cargill and just runs roughshod through the competition, and I think there could be interesting stories told from the perspective of a wrestler who loses big matches.
Of course, this is just supposing, and I didn’t get far enough into the single player mode to really comment on the quality of the story, but I loved how the story mode worked in No Mercy, and my impressions of Road to the Elite are that it seems very much like a spiritual successor to that mode.
In between matches you can also choose how to spend your time to upgrade your character. Working out expends energy but grants you skill points, with harder workouts requiring more energy and coming with a higher risk of injury; you could do a press conference to boost your energy and momentum; you could play a minigame to try and win money and skill points, you could eat food; or you could go sightseeing.
Time will tell how well those systems come together in the full game, but at the very least, it’s clear that there is some meat on the bones of Fight Forever’s single player mode. We won’t have to wait much longer for AEW’s long awaited video game debut, as Fight Forever is set to release on June 29 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox, PC, and Switch.
Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit
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