2K23 is by far the better game. Like it is not even close. And I assume they knew how bad the game was as there was no public demos, limited review copy exposure and a review embargo until release.

Pity hoped this would be good.  But in the end, it really did nothing that WWE or FPW did not do better.

After going back and playing some Def Jam Vendetta, I can certainly see more of the AKI influence.

Def Jam was the closest we got to a 'modern' No Mercy, so it makes sense they would draw inspiration. Namely Def Jam plays a lot faster than No Mercy and has a combo system. On top of that, Def Jam's momentum system is based around hitting as many different moves as possible. The HUD is constantly being filled with pop-ups straight out of a Tony Hawk game that tell you the name of the move and the points bonus. It's not too dissimilar from Fight Forever where the HUD tells you about body damage and which abilities are kicking in through out.

There are still a few differences that makes Fight Forever feel looser. Namely momentum seems more like a general guide in Fight Forever, whereas in Def Jam it really dictates the way you play. In Def Jam you really have to fight for openings, and patiently turn the tide. You also have that risk and reward of simple tap grapples or A+B grapples. One will damage but will give your opponent momentum, while the other has a risk of getting rewarded but will give you an advantage if you pull it off.

The controls aren't great. I'm not sure if it's different on other versions, but not being able to move with the D-Pad is pretty disappointing especially for an AKI game. Again, I'd love to see the game add some sliders.

I still don't think Fight Forever is THAT bad. It's just not a $90 game and should have stayed a budget release. However that's a THQ decision and I'm sure it's better to shoot for the stars and get those early sign-ups. It's not like this is a game that's going to live or die by it's online community. If it had community creations, and all sorts of online options like E-Feds then it would be in their best interest to make it as available as possible so you can get more casuals into the game.

CAW should have been a bread and butter component of the game. By the time I played it that ship had sailed so my expectations were set accordingly, but still, if you were making a No Mercy clone, being able to customise the roster and build whatever roster you wanted should have been a much bigger priority than their Yakuza-lite Season Mode.

With all the complaints about IGN giving it a 6 sounds like they were generous.

Admittedly it does amuse that NATH45 our resident AEW hater gave them a chance only to be able to play for the length of a Jade Cargill match.

5 or 6 sounds about right.

Jul 3, 2023 5:02:42 GMT System said:

With all the complaints about IGN giving it a 6 sounds like they were generous.

Admittedly it does amuse that NATH45 our resident AEW hater gave them a chance only to be able to play for the length of a Jade Cargill match.

I love AEW these days. I look forward to it every week.

Plus I couldn't even play it for the length of a Jade Cargill match. PS4 was welcomed by " unexpected errors " too many times to count.

I like to tinker in wrestling games - particularly with CAWs. Fight Forever gave me peanuts to work with. And it crashed then too.

I've bought and played so many alternatives to the WWE games over the last 20 odd years and there isn't a federation on earth since the demise of the Nintendo 64 to produce a half decent game. I even committed to WCW Thunder on PS1 at one point over Smackdown 1/2... just to play an alternative.

I haven't played a WWE game since 2k19 and, 2k23 has been really good so far. I'm playing through the universe mode with a CAW and loving it. And you can argue that 2k23 is just as " arcady " as any.

2k23 is leagues beyond AEW for sure. Made the absolutely right call to swap. AEW will likely be $15 on the clearance rack in the near future anyway.

WWE games not been arcadey for a long time. They are just not as methodical as say No Mercy or Fire Pro. In a way the WWE games better capture AEW than the AEW does in the matches are much faster paced.

People love to shit on WWE games, but they made dozens of them now and they got the core parts down pact.  Not worth buying yearly but worth getting every few years the way the football games were.

I don't want to sound like 'that guy' but I did tell everyone this game was going to suck.

It could have been good, but release showed there was little playtesting and it was shipped in a beta state.

Big question I have is why the fuck did that take so long and cost so much?

Jul 3, 2023 5:17:32 GMT c said:

People love to shit on WWE games, but they made dozens of them now and they got the core parts down pact.  Not worth buying yearly but worth getting every few years the way the football games were.

This was the mistake I was making year after year. From KYR to HCTP there was a notable leap forward then the same every few years with the RvS games - but year on year, the games were largely a roster update.

Often times I'd revert back to HCTP as it had suck a deep roster and the never ending, stat collecting universe mode or whatever it was called was so good.

I remember putting in an older title in the PS3 and it was only after 30 minutes when I couldn't see my CAW did I realise I was playing the previous game. Thats how much these games looked alike.

'13 had the Attitude Era gimmick that was amazing.

There must be nearly 20 WWE titles floating around my shed, including Warzone, all the PS2 and 3 games and everything up until 2k19.

Plus with all the options in the WWE games, you can build " WWF '98 " for example and play an Attitude Era universe, or a New Generation game if you're tired of the current stuff.

Jul 3, 2023 5:25:38 GMT c said:

It could have been good, but release showed there was little playtesting and it was shipped in a beta state.

Big question I have is why the fuck did that take so long and cost so much?

Can I remind you that this is a company that saw CM Punk beat up The Young Bucks and Ace Steel bite Kenny Omega as he was trying to steal his dog.

Why do you think it took this long and cost so much?

The same company (Yukes) that made the vast majority of yearly WWE games until 2019 made Fight Forever. This was like their 20th wrestling game. Should not have taken this long, cost so much to come out so bad. Like 80% plus of the games this company made in the last 30 years have been wrestling games, there kind of is no excuse for this. Fuck, this company even owned a majority share in NJPW at one time.

Curious if Yukes now tells Tony our deal is done fuck off.  As this was I think the worst game they ever released.  If they do not, could be now working on this game another year or so fixing bugs and shit.  

Kenny Omega is to Yukes what Homer Simpson is to his brother Herb.

If Yukes have made 30 wrestling games, where does Kenny and The Wonder Boy get off telling them to forget everything they know to build this abomination.

Jul 3, 2023 5:25:38 GMT c said:

It could have been good, but release showed there was little playtesting and it was shipped in a beta state.

Big question I have is why the fuck did that take so long and cost so much?

It is really strange since most of the reviewers got early access keep going on how great it was. I wonder if this another instance of Tony giving early access but getting people to sign NDAs about some aspects of the games.

Jul 3, 2023 8:05:39 GMT NATH45 said:

Kenny Omega is to Yukes what Homer Simpson is to his brother Herb.

If Yukes have made 30 wrestling games, where does Kenny and The Wonder Boy get off telling them to forget everything they know to build this abomination.

Omega was thinking I need to get this game sent out in June so I can focus on FFXVI.

Jul 3, 2023 15:53:22 GMT X-zero said:

Jul 3, 2023 5:25:38 GMT c said:

It could have been good, but release showed there was little playtesting and it was shipped in a beta state.

Big question I have is why the fuck did that take so long and cost so much?

It is really strange since most of the reviewers got early access keep going on how great it was. I wonder if this another instance of Tony giving early access but getting people to sign NDAs about some aspects of the games.

Standard video game practice really.  You give early access to games like this to people who will act excited and review high.  If they criticize the game you blacklist them from getting review copies in the future.  Before Gamergate went utterly toxic that was what it was about.

Jul 3, 2023 15:53:22 GMT X-zero said:

Jul 3, 2023 5:25:38 GMT c said:

It could have been good, but release showed there was little playtesting and it was shipped in a beta state.

Big question I have is why the fuck did that take so long and cost so much?

It is really strange since most of the reviewers got early access keep going on how great it was. I wonder if this another instance of Tony giving early access but getting people to sign NDAs about some aspects of the games.

Money talks.

But if someone from AEW showed me this game ( as it is today ) 12 months ago, I'd probably see a game with a lot of potential and feel quite positively about it, albeit I'd assume it wasn't finished.

Out of boredom, as well as just killing time until Friday, so I can get Fight Forever, I decided to use my WWE 2K19 game, to do an Elite Grand Prix, similar to the G1 Climax.

Block A Participants

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}Adam Page
Bryan Danielson
Chris Jericho
Christian Cage
CM Punk
Darby Allin
Eddie Kingston
Lance Archer
Malakai Black
MJF
Orange Cassidy
Sammy Guevara

Block B Participants

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}Adam Cole
Andrade El Idolo
Brian Cage
Brodie Lee
Cody Rhodes
Jeff Hardy
Jon Moxley
Kenny Omega
Miro
PAC
Ricky Starks
Wardlow

Is Cody Rhodes the first active competitor to appear in both a WWE and a rival game in the same year?

Or did someone do that in WCW?

Jericho.

Jul 5, 2023 4:18:08 GMT NATH45 said:

Is Cody Rhodes the first active competitor to appear in both a WWE and a rival game in the same year?

Or did someone do that in WCW?

Warzone was so out of date that by the time it came out it still had Bret Hart and Bulldog on it's active roster. A few months later, both would appear in WCW/nWo Revenge.

Then there's Jericho who appeared in Thunder and Mayhem before being quickly squeezed into Wrestlemania 2000. Jericho's inclusion was so last minute, a lot of his profile is incomplete and he's placed alongside the Brood, The Hardy Boyz etc. as lower mid-carders.

Fight Forever is adding a free download for a new Battle Royale mode called Stadium Stampede.

30 wrestlers, one stadium, and you fight until there's only one winner.

Jul 6, 2023 16:15:44 GMT CM Punk'd said:

Fight Forever is adding a free download for a new Battle Royale mode called Stadium Stampede.

30 wrestlers, one stadium, and you fight until there's only one winner.

I don’t see how it works. It looks fun. But it’s basically wrestling Fortnite. But it’s still just part of the $60 game. I don’t see how you get enough active players to make it sustainable without making it free for everyone.

They should have just made " All Elite Smash Brothers " instead and given everyone superpowers.

Not buying this game until they update their limited CAW section. Graphics aren't a deal breaker for me, the gameplay sounds fun... But for the love of god, if you're whole selling point is basically "a wrestling game for nostalgic marks made by nostalgic marks" then don't give us TNA Impact levels of customization.

"bUt iT's aN aRcAdE ThRoWbAcK" Fuck off, even WCW did better than this with their games pre-Russo.

AEW are blue balls promotionally personified.

Honestly, I would remove the "until." Want a hardcore game got Fire Pro. Want a modern game got WWE. This really does not do much to justify owning it. Most hardcore wrestling streamers on twitch could not even get through a week of playing it.

What's so " hardcore " about Fire Pro?

I get it, if you love 16-bit era gameplay and graphics?

I played through a number of SNES era FP games on emulation years ago, while I was binging anything wrestling related for console and I can't find a reason why anyone would care about the Fire Pro series - from system to system, gen to gen it's still that old WCW SuperBrawl type game.

Fire Pro has the best AI of any Pro Wrestling game and it's easy to program wrestlers to behave like their real life counter-parts. The level of customisation is second to none as well and you can have a roster of thousands.

What version of Fire Pro was that I had bought of the PSN on my PS3 back in the day? Damn I miss that game, such an amazing roster.

Jul 16, 2023 11:19:48 GMT Neo Zeed said:

What version of Fire Pro was that I had bought of the PSN on my PS3 back in the day? Damn I miss that game, such an amazing roster.

Returns, the last PS2 release.

I love the soundtrack on it, it blows World out of the water in that department.

That game had the most accurate and awesome video game representation of one of my all time favorite combat sports/wrestling figures ever: Mirko Cro Cop. There is a certain satisfaction of kicking people in the face with Cro Cop on that game they were able to get that just right, in 2D no less. Cro Cop in that Fire Pro game is up there with Tecmo Bo Jackson, Vick in Madden 04 echelon of video game dudes.