AEW: Fight Forever Review (PS5) | Push Square

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It’s been close to three years since All Elite Wrestling’s first video game was officially announced. Many performers within the company itself have long extolled the virtues of 90’s wrestling video game royalty – and in particular, WWF No Mercy – even going so far as to position AEW: Fight Forever as something of a homage. But with the game finally superkicking its way onto store shelves, is the grappling sim everything fans had been promised?

Firstly, we have to talk about the wrestlers themselves. Outside of their instantly recognisable outfits, they’re strange, stunted action figures with weird, exaggerated features. This approach isn’t inherently a negative thing given the game’s clear inspiration, but any subjective appreciation has to end at the performer's face. Instead of sticking with the cartoonish stylisation across the board, a real scan of the roster’s visages has been slapped haphazardly onto the models with varying degrees of success, and it comes off as rather cheap. CM Punk, for example, appears to have his facial hair partially bifurcated by his mouth, whereas Sammy Guevara bears a passing resemblance to a fan who might have once shared a lift with Sammy Guevara.

AEW: Fight Forever was never going to be able to hold a candle to the presentation of its big-budget contemporary WWE 2K23, and it wouldn’t be fair to compare the two. However, there were several occasions where we couldn’t quite believe how rough the wrestlers looked; ironically bearing more than a passing resemblance to the custom creations from 2K’s grappling powerhouse than anything close to the source material.

Fortunately, the moves look great, with an arcade-like fluidness to the animations that’s been missing from the wrestling game