AEW Fight Forever review: All Elite Wrestling's first game is a smashing success

AEW Fight Forever is finally here and is All Elite Wrestling’s first video game. As a fan who watches the product every week, I was excited to get hands-on with this game. Given it’s the company’s debuting video game, there are, of course, some minor bumps and missteps. But overall, Fight Forever does the one thing it should do - it’s fun. It’s clear the developers were fans of the product and understood what makes All Elite Wrestling so exciting to watch.

Fans can finally do more than just watch All Elite Wrestling - now you can play in AEW Fight Forever. Whether you want to make your own character, like I did, or dive in as your favorite professional wrestler, it’s got something for everybody.

AEW Fight Forever goes in a fresh direction

AEW Fight Forever is the first professional wrestling game from All Elite Wrestling and features many of the most popular stars in Tony Khan’s company. Of course, as this is a wrestling game, and these things take a lengthy amount of time to create, there are several wrestlers who are out of date.

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The Blackpool Combat Club, for example, doesn’t have Wheeler Yuta or Claudio Castignoli. Plenty of changes happen between the launch of a wrestling game and when it began development - so that’s not a negative in my book.

However, instead of taking the real-life approach, we’ve got a more arcade-style game in AEW Fight Forever, which is exactly what I wanted. It will remind people a lot of the classic wrestling games, like No Mercy, only modern and easier to get into.

The gameplay is simple to understand, but there’s plenty of depth for competitive online play. Another important change is the wrestlers themselves. In most wrestling games, the characters are given a rating to determine what stats they have.

It can be incredibly frustrating for a custom character to fight many of these high-rated wrestlers because their stats just aren’t close. While each wrestler in AEW Fight Forever has skills and stats of a sort, there isn’t a visible rating system. Your custom wrestlers can stand up to the other AEW roster members without feeling like they’ll surely lose every match.

While AEW Fight Forever doesn’t have a ton of modes, it has plenty of match types, a solid roster to choose from, and a decent character creation suite. It's also playable on every modern system, allowing everyone can get in on the action.

AEW Fight Forever’s combat system is easy to understand

AEW Fight Forever has a combat system that pretty much anyone can get into. The primary focus is the Momentum System.

As you lay in strikes and grapples, you build Momentum. Once you have enough, you’ll get “Momentum - Special” above the bar. This allows you to hit your Signature Move or perform a taunt to enter your Special/Finisher state. You have a limited time for both, though.

You can perform the Signature, then do the taunt for your finisher as well. Regarding the basics, you have two Strike buttons - punch and kick and a grapple button. You also have dash on the face buttons as well.

On your triggers, you can parry/counter, get in and out of the ring, and more. You can even enter a mini-game for chain wrestling, where you and your opponent try to outmaneuver the other by pressing the correct buttons. This means the defender has to guess your next strike.

Even if you’re getting beaten down, you can come back and build momentum again, but powerful attacks will cause body damage. The more body damage you sustain, the harder it is for you to get up. If I had to nitpick about anything in the combat, getting out of a pin is frustrating.

Mashing all buttons is the worst way to kick out of a pin in any game. There’s no clear visible way to see on the screen if you’re close to kicking out at all. That’s my only real complaint about combat.

You can turn on easy countering, and there’s plenty of bloodshed that can be turned off if you prefer. I love the matches in AEW Fight Forever. It’s fun and filled with ridiculous action. I feel like there’s potential for high-skill gameplay in online matches.

AEW Fight Forever’s Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match is better than the real thing

Okay, controversial opinion - I loved the Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match. The justification of “Kenny Omega sucks at bomb building” worked for me on a fan level.

All matches in AEW Fight Forever feel fun, but I especially wanted to highlight this particular match. It’s not a half-hour match like the real thing. In fact, when the match starts, you have about 90 seconds before the actual explosion triggers. Whoever is closer to the ropes takes more damage when it happens.

There are way more sparks and explosions in this match type. This makes sense since it’s a video game. It’s so much easier to make Sammy Guevara explode repeatedly in the ring ropes since he’s not the real person.

The only way it could have been better was if there were a few weapons in the ring. Or maybe just a barbed-wire bat - my favorite weapon in the game. The only match that really caused me frustration was the Casino Battle Royale, only because it is how the story mode started.

Try as I might, I always drew the same number. I can’t tell if it was by design or if I just have remarkably bad luck. That leads me to my favorite part of AEW Fight Forever, though - the story.

AEW Fight Forever’s “Road to Elite” is the real winner of the match-up

Most of my time in AEW Fight Forever was spent in the story mode - that’s my favorite part of any wrestling game. In Road to Elite, players either pick an established AEW wrestler or make their own. Either way, you play through an alternate telling of the first year of All Elite Wrestling.

It’s interspersed with cutscenes featuring real moments in AEW’s first year, so a lot of it was nostalgic to me. I’ve been watching All Elite Wrestling since the very beginning. These cutscenes weren't new to me but were like fond memories.

Each chapter of the story is divided into blocks. Each block is devoted to a specific PPV - Revolution, Full Gear, et cetera. Players can take part in several events while they wait for the weekly AEW Dynamite show - training, going out to eat, sightseeing, participating in mini-games, and more.

There are also random events that can happen. Other wrestlers can spot you out and take a selfie with you. You also learn little things about what certain parts of America are known for when it comes to cuisine.

Death Triangle took their challenge very seriously (Image via THQ Nordic)

Your choices also appear to matter in this mode. For example, I was invited to join Death Triangle, but I needed to have a match on AEW Rampage. I completely forgot, and instead of joining the group, I feuded with them for a month or so.

While yes, you can play as an established talent, the real fun is playing your own created wrestler. You can build up stats and unlock new talents as you play these custom characters in AEW Fight Forever.

However, one thing I learned is that even if you beat this mode on a character and go back in again, they reset back to the default CAW settings.

I was sort of hoping to be able to play through as that character with the stats I unlocked, but that’s not the case. That’s not the worst thing, as it just makes me want to create more characters and try for different story experiences.

The visuals and music of AEW Fight Forever are incredible

I love the over-the-top character designs in AEW Fight Forever. The characters all look incredible, though I do feel like in cutscenes, Matt Jackson looks weirdly tanned - perhaps too tan.

Each character looks like the real wrestler, only exaggerated without being ridiculous. I love seeing the character entrances and how each wrestler looks while they trade shots in the ring. The animations are smooth, and the designs are nice.

Admittedly, there could be more create-a-wrestler options. This is the first game from AEW, though. That’s something that could definitely stand to be improved in the next game or perhaps through future updates or DLC.

There is also an amazing wealth of music tracks in AEW Fight Forever. From 8-bit renditions to PPV and wrestler themes, there’s plenty of good music. You can also customize the jukebox.

Even if you just want to make the jukebox only play Maxwell Jacob Friedman's theme repeatedly, you can do that.

In Conclusion

There’s so much to love about AEW Fight Forever. It’s fun, challenging, and has a wide roster of wrestlers to play as. You can customize your own teams - great because there are only four by default. You can create your own wrestling ring/arena, as I did in my preview time with the game.

I do hope to find even more choices and decisions in the Road to Elite because I only had time to go through the mode once and start a second playthrough. Hopping into matches is fun, but I hope more game modes are added in the future outside of the story mode.

AEW Fight Forever will be fun for wrestling fans looking for something fresh and new. It’s a brilliant game, and it’s clear that the people making it love AEW as much as the regular fans do. All Elite Wrestling's first video game is a smash hit, and it's worth picking up after it releases on June 29, 2023.