World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) has dominated the professional wrestling landscape for decades. A new group of guys decided to try and change that a few years ago by launching All Elite Wrestling (AEW).

While there have been mixed results, AEW injected fresh air into professional wrestling, and they hope to do that again with AEW: Fight Forever. Anyone who has played WWF WrestleMania 2000 or WWF No Mercy on the Nintendo 64 knows what to expect here. AEW chose to create an homage to those classics instead of going down the more realistic route that WWE games tend to take. This allows AEW: Fight Forever to be more goofy and over the top. However, it could be better in a few different areas, giving wrestling fans somewhat of a mixed bag.

Game Modes For Every Type of Player

AEW: Fight Forever has a plethora of content to keep wrestling fans engaged, at least for a little while. There are the standard exhibition matches, such as traditional 1-on-1 and tag team matches, to go along with the more AEW-specific bouts like the Casino Battle Royale or the Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match.

You also have online gameplay if you want to test your skills in the ring against other players worldwide. There are ranked matches that you can participate in that will be more on the competitive side. Then there are the casual matches where you can kick back a little more, and things aren’t quite as serious.

Create Your Own Wrestler and Ring

One particular aspect that wrestling fans have grown to love over the years is the ability to create your own content. While less robust than WWE games, AEW: Fight Forever does allow you to create your own wrestler, tag team, and arena. You will start with a blank canvas if you make your own wrestler. There will be a generic character model for you to name, decide whether the crowd will cheer you or boo you, choose how the ring announcer will say your name, and more. You then select your ring attire, what you will wear during your entrance to get noticed, your move-set, and more.

Wrestling fans will spend a lot of time in this mode trying to create their perfect wrestler, whether it is someone that slightly resembles them or something completely off the wall.

Once you have created your own wrestler, you can jump into the team creator and join up with whoever you want. If you want to make a team with you and your favorite wrestler in the game, you can do that. If there are two wrestlers you have always wanted to see team up on television but never have, you can do that here. You can work on tandem move sets and your entrance to sell the idea of this new team.

Once you have that all done, you can create your own arena, right down to picking the mat color, what will be on the ring apron, how the guardrails will look, how the lighting will work, and much more. You have a decent amount of options here to really make everything how you want it.

The Road to Elite

Then, of course, you have the “Road to Elite” mode, essentially this game’s career mode. This mode has a story attached to it as it starts at the beginning of the existence of AEW, and you have to work your way up to potentially being crowned the AEW World Champion. During your journey, they will also use footage so you can see how it happened on the show. In “Road to Elite,” you will be in a different town every week. You are responsible for juggling commitments such as eating, working out, and having your weekly match on AEW Dynamite. You will experience a full year of being in AEW here and everything that comes with it. You will develop friendships with other wrestlers as you go through different matches.

In contrast, others will become your rivals and try to take you out however they can. Sometimes, the odds are stacked against you, and you must find a way to win. During my playthrough, I had the chance to win the AEW World Championship with the route I went down, but I know there is a way for someone to win multiple titles in this mode. Having branching stories is a cool idea. It will have me go back to see what I missed during my previous playthrough.

AEW: Fight Forever Could Have Been So Much More

AEW: Fight Forever has all this content for wrestling fans, but it still feels lacking and unfinished. For example, the most popular tag team in the company, The Acclaimed, is nowhere to be found. They have been announced as downloadable characters in the future. Still, they should have been part of the roster from the beginning.

On the other hand, they have Cody Rhodes featured in the game. Cody was integral in getting AEW off the ground, so I respect his inclusion from that standpoint, but he hasn’t been with the company for a year and a half. When you don’t have the most popular team in the company in the game, but you have someone in there that hasn’t been in the company since early 2022, there is a problem there. They also didn’t include one of the matches that AEW is famous for, the Stadium Stampede.

From a gameplay perspective, AEW: Fight Forever is very reminiscent of those Nintendo 64 games, in both good and bad ways. If you have played those games, you should feel at home on the controls. Unfortunately, it also has some of the poor AI from back in those days. Tag team battles can be a struggle as you try to pin your opponent only to have his teammate run in and break up the count.

The problem is that your AI partner will sometimes stand there and watch it happen. Other times the collision detection boxes don’t work at all. There were instances where I would rush over to break up a pin attempt and throw a punch that should have stopped the count, but the collision detection was off, and the referee counted to three, ending the match. This happened multiple times, so I didn’t make a mistake during one match.

AEW: Fight Forever is a great first step. There is a solid foundation to build off of for their next game. Some shortcomings prevent the game from reaching its potential, but I hope they build on this formula. It would get a higher score if the game was more robust and didn’t have some of the gameplay quirks we had in the 90s. Still, for now, it is a fun experience for hardcore wrestling fans and a good alternative to the more realistic games from the competition.

Score: 7/10

Originally posted on Wealth of Geeks

Please Note: THQ Nordic provided us with a code for AEW: Fight Forever on Xbox Series X for review purposes.