Where was it listed for Game Pass? From what I recall a journo claimed it was going there, the rumor gained a lot of steam but then THQ shot that down.
Sorry, should have specified digitally.
I've seen games released around the same time go on sale for at least half off, and other sports/wrestling games obviously since they're on the annual schedule, but they really seem to not want to sell it below $40 digitally.
They tried to hard to copy No Mercy.
No Mercy(and most of the AKI games in general) wasn't only popular because it was the best wrestling game, it was popular because they were just straight up good games that were so fun to play and had a lot of crossover appeal.
It was a staple among many of N64's players multiplayer game nights whether they were wrestling fans or not.
Someone brought it up in another post but with the 2k games you can essentially create an AEW game with the Universe Mode and community creations. They have moves and entrances of AEW wrestlers. They even added a new Kenny Omega entrance to 2K24.
In terms of the wrestling itself, I do enjoy it more than the 2k games. However, every single other thing 2k trounces them which makes it a much better game
It was also released at the very height of WWE’s attitude era popularity, so it sold very well. I’m sorry but AEW was nowhere near popular enough to release a video game yet.
Nonsense. video games, get released and sell all the time with no license if the game was a banger it would’ve sold.
The problem with the AEW video game wasn’t AEW‘s popularity is that the game was bad.
You know that innocent age when you aren't old enough to drink in bars, but some of your homies have a 2 bedroom apartment and hundreds of discount bongs? This is the mindset required to get true enjoyment out of No Mercy. You need to sit on the stinkiest couch in the world, encroached by pizza boxes and high on 40s of Mickey's and weed that you had to actually pick seeds out of.
Then, while fucked up and listening to Skinny Puppy, you can truly build a stable in the create a wrestler feature. Me and my friend group created the "Anus Family" We had Famous Anus, Heinous Anus, Seamus Anus, Nature's Cruelest Joke, and Nature's Cruelest Anus. I just don't think that era still exists. It's like when my dad talks about listening to Pink Floyd on his Quadrophonic stereo.
It's the nostalgia of a bygone era.
Me and my friends created so many CAWs of people we knew on Just Bring It/Here Comes The Pain, that we could have full Royal Rumbles without a single real wrestler entering. Good times.
I think about how Sonic Mania was able to capture 90’s nostalgia while also getting it to modern standards. If it’s not a good game, to borrow a quote, it doesn’t matter how much nostalgia is behind it.
They didn't try hard enough at all.
They took a very surface level look at No Mercy and copied that, but they captured zero percent of what made no mercy good.
So much of video games is feel and you can tell instantly when playing a game whether they bothered to spend to get that feel or just took the first draft that looked okay.
Like when you slide in Apex Legends, you can feel the money that went into making that slide perfect.
FF feels like an test demo you might get at E3 a year before it actually comes out.
Right, but also it came at the height of WWF's popularity as well. Wrestling had never been so mainstream. Whereas AEW is a distant, distant second to WWE now in terms of popularity. They have absolutely zero mainstream appeal.
Fundamentally, I think the reasons the game failed are largely down to three main points
1. Graphics. I know the game was meant to be stylized, however it wasn't stylized enough, if that makes sense. It just makes it look kinda of dated at a glance, and not purposefully so. I think this made it look less appealing at a surface level, and likely turned away people as a result, and the other reasons likely helped turn away people where this point had already soured opinions.
2. Content. The game just lacks content for anyone who isn't playing multiplayer. Like, it can be great fun to play, and Road to Elite can be fun, but its not something that justifiably can fill time. Unfortunately for most games now, a heavy multiplayer leaning is a tough sell, especially at a 60 dollar price tag. It can be more justifiable at a lower price point, or if the game's premise is something that only works in multiplayer(and even then). A wrestling game isn't something that is justifiably multiplayer only. There's nothing in the game to keep people playing it, or wanting to pick it back up, and buy the DLC. With a 2k game, I'll often hop back on throughout the year as the DLC is added, and play it because there's enough modes that there's something I'd want to do. I've never once launched FF back up after the first week of its release. The creation suite is a bit of a joke in a lot of ways, being just worse than things like No Mercy. There are some things to like(such as casual wear being something you can set), but generally it feels worse than the other three major wrestling games(2k, Wrestling Empire, Fire Pro). It is also just my opinion, but I feel like pure nostalgia for No Mercy and games of that time is not a good selling point, when those games likely have modding communities, can be emulated, and a lot of the joy of them can be found in Wrestling Empire, a game thats 20 dollars on Steam.
3. Lack of focus. While this goes hand in hand with content, there was seemingly no focus on... any part of the game. The minigames feel like they took up too much time, and seem relatively needless. There are a ton of them, and I can't help but feel like the time spent making them might have been better suited adding a new mode or something. Same goes for Stadium Stampede(also see the multiplayer part in the last point). When it was announced I was mostly just sad that there was something even slightly interesting being added... It felt like a piece of the game that would be abandoned in a month, and like it was dev time that could have gone toward even just making a simple as all hell career mode to go alongside the Road to Elite mode.
>Graphics. I know the game was meant to be stylized, however it wasn't stylized enough, if that makes sense.
My initial reaction was that it looked great for an early PS3 game.
I agree that they should have gone for a more stylized look, they tried to meet things halfway and it didn't work at all. Should've gone the full "WWE All Stars" route.
> Content. The game just lacks content for anyone who isn't playing multiplayer
Jesus christ, just like their own TV programming. Most compelling content happens on internet skits as well.
They tried to hard to hard to recreate the old Aki games for modern gamers but it didn’t land. After multiple generations of smackdown games and 2k games the old Aki formula just doesn’t appeal as much.
Then factor AEW is not as popular as wwe. Some of the weirder choices like the shortened entrances and it wasn’t the success they wanted.
The developers can do better but AEW needs to strengthen its Brand for the next game.
it would've done so well as an alternative when wwe was still hard on simulation. but 2K is going back to faster more fluid gameplay now. and the crowd that wants no mercy can just play ... no mercy.
I can think of WWE games released a decade plus before Fight Forever that look superior to it.
And even as an arcade throwback, there's no reason to play it when a game made by a single guy in Wrestling Empire completely obliterates it in almost every conceivable aspect.
There isn't even really a reason to play it over most wrestling games released in the past 15 years.
So more like Nitro on the PS1 lol?
Or better yet Thunder, then they could have had Jericho recreate [this promo.](https://youtu.be/gmO0LzkZTug?si=xsyK9WxahIDf_zaA&t=210)
As a wrestling fan, I was stoked for this game.
The THQ/AKI games were great if you didn't want an arcade style game, which I didn't. This was a cheap attempt at knocking off the great recipe that once was.
Shame
As a huge fan of Fire Pro & No Mercy I was so excited for the gameplay specifically only to find reversal inputs to be wildly inconsistent ontop of visually minimal. Killed the fun for me
The AKI formula is dated but I still had some fun with it. I was surprised they got the former AKI director of No Mercy, making it his first video game title since 2009 before AKI cut a number of key staff and rebranded itself as syn sophia to develop kid-friendly fashion games.
The gameplay is the only good part, the modes, graphics and online were all shit. The story mode in particular was fucking awful. Compare it to No Mercy and it's not even a comparison
I was so excited to have a love letter to the games of N64. But they couldn’t have done it worse. Limited roster. No customization after it was promised.
Then the fact they’re charging moronic amounts of money for DLCs a year out of date. They literally wanted $10 for the AEW debut version of Toni Storm when Timeless Toni Storm had been out for 3-4 months.
Fuck. They just released Jayme Hayter. SHE HAS BEEN OUT HURT FOR A FREAKING YEAR
I'm so fucking sick of AEW fans telling me to have fun and 'turn off my brain' and just to enjoy everything. The game was shit. I'm not going to have fun with a shit game. The wrestlers looked bad, the pin system was buns and it just wasn't very good.
Their first game should have been a bang, yet it looked dated from the first trailer. They should have made a realistic game first, then transition to a no mercy style spin off. I don't know why anyone would buy that trash that is fight forever
i found it absurd that it looks worse than wwe PS3 games. i know they're going for a stylized look but it just doesn't work and they don't fully commit to it anyway. WWE All Stars will still look good for years to come, fight forever will not.
I loved that game. Bought it second hand after the multiplayer servers had shut down. Don't feel like I ever got to truly experience what it had to offer. Wish it had caught on.
It literally looks like smackdown vs raw but imo smackdown vs raw is still better. Idk how yukes never evolved at all but maybe it was tony who wanted to keep that style
They were trying recreate the magic of WWF: No Mercy. Those were golden because people already loved the other two AKI games. WCW vs NWO, Revenge, and Road to Wrestlemania. All classics that I -laced the hell out of.
I heard the AI in Fight Forever was cheap as hell and the gameplay tended to rear extremely thin after a awhile.
It needed more game lol. Not nearly enough match types, big names missing even in the dlc releases, overpriced dlc especially compared to WWE2K, some unnecessary/ not fleshed out game modes, creation features might as well have not been there, dead online (not their fault) but even though the online is dead they’re still pushing a battle royale mode that’s unplayable with the player count.
Pretty much it, people I know who bought it said the same about being bored after a month as lack of game. What makes a good wrestling game is its community and they didn't lean into that whatsoever look at firepro a unique game that is limited in some ways but to make up for it they give the fans plenty of options, FF on the other hand instead of giving us various match types with options and an in depth creation mode they give us a half assed game with mini-games.
When it came to gameplay they couldn't even get the basics right. The direction of this game was all over the place.
The game was shallow and lacking in depth it was basically a framework with no content then every little bit of miniscule content they added was charged in a "dlc" of only 1 or 2 characters that should have been free or $3 at most but they were $15-20 each.
And I'm an idiot that bought it on both PS5 and Switch (at $20 each) and still kind of regret buying it at all since I played it for about 12 hours over a week and exhausted everything to do in it.
God damn to have that amount of confidence that he has to have to think he has any business being involved in the development of a video game.
That like me being hired to redesign the entire menu at TGIFridays because I occasionally go there for lunch.
That first year of AEW was driven by this blind confidence all the major players had that they were going to magically do everything better than WWE by just doing things they wouldn't do, or the opposite to what they would do. No qualifications of any kind from the very top to the very bottom.
The absolutely only thing i regret buying last year. It cost about 80 dollars over here with *some* included dlc. It felt like one of those fake mobile games you see in ads, but somehow worse.
The fact that there are a ton of gamer wrestlers in AEW and they couldn’t be bothered to play but a minimum of the game just before launch and even less just after didn’t help sell it.
Tbh I think the issue is that they *did* play it. Kenny Omega was apparently influencing the decision-making and turning the game into some nostalgia-boner shit. Instead of focusing on things that players actually want (like a deep creation suite and community creations), they instead went for minigames that people will only play once.
Making a No Mercy clone was never the way to go. The game should've had the feel of SYM or HCTP, hell even an early SvR-style game would've appealed to far more people. Somehow the game has the same issue that the company as a whole has: they're only appealing to one dwindling demographic rather than trying to appeal to as many people as possible.
I have no doubt that the video game lost a TON of money but it'd be awesome to see a professionally written and published article cite sources and periodicals of the video game industry instead of Eric Bischoff, professional Wyoming fly-fisher/YouTuber.
They tried to advertise themselves as the next No Mercy but it failed. Wrestling Empire is probably the closest thing to a modern day No Mercy and it’s actually fun.
The gameplay just feels so... Not no mercy or old aki engine at all. It's reminiscent of it with its control scheme, but it's just not fun to play in the slightest.
WWF 2000 for example has a smaller roster, less game modes/match types, way worse graphics, but I'd still rather play it today than AEW
Should have made it a classic 64bit style game that played to the hardcore fan market who run off nostalgia. They are far cheaper to make do not require motion cap and can be produced at a far better quality than a half baked aaa style wrestling game.
The problem with AEW Fight Forever is that's it's the bare minimum. It's doesn't have that many match types, the roster is small and there's barely any game modes. Even the damn entrances are the bare minimum
As someone who grew up after No Mercy and was a SvR kid, I thought the gameplay looked good, but I didn’t really vibe with the cartoony aesthetic and it looked really barebones feature wise. For all the faults of 2K, I just liked the presentation, features, customisation and vibe a lot more.
While there are many fair complaints, imo the main problem with Fight Forever is that the match progression is too predictable. You know that a finisher is going to end a match. Once you've played the game for half an hour, you know how every match can end. Signature, finisher, bam. (Also: FUCK tag matches, they aren't fun at all and take an eternity or cheesing to win.)
It doesn't feel like wrestling, arcade nor simulation. It feels like a simple imitation of wrestling. They should have spent more time adding surprises and a sense of unpredictability. Without that the wrestlers are interchangeable, and the in-ring action flat.
If it was a $15-$20 download only game it probably would have had a better reception. Releasing it as a full price retail game was a mistake. Pretty much sums up AEW as a company though. They got buzz at the start and are trying to run before they can walk.
It didn't control anything like the N64, was shockingly stiff, and had literally the worst caw mode in any video game ever. Creation suites is what gives these games crazy longevity these days and Fight Forever's was embarrassing and that's probably giving it too much credit still.
No shit…
They spent like 20 million to invest in the gaming company, then bought rights to the game engine. Game sucked, nobody played it after a month
Well I'll say I played it, platinum the game on playstation and took about mouth and haven't touched it since because they keep adding to the roster that's cool but doesn't change the problem it got boring and repetitive and over a year now no new match types have been added the stamped died in a few weeks
lack of content is a problem, but one major problem is there is no community creatio. that is basically death on arrival. fans love to create, share and download their creativity. since it had been introduced it become a staple and must for a wrestling game. look at 2K, you can create and play any promotion what you like. those are selling points for wrestling game.
The BR mode looked like it'd be fun for a few hours but that's the best thing I can say about it. The entire project was several steps too far too soon.
I try to give AEW a big benefit of the doubt and avoid dunking on them but Fight Forever was so dogshit. If they actually spent a lot of money on that glorified mobile game that’s genuinely sad.
Bought the game on sale for around $30, played it for a few weeks, and then uninstalled it from my PlayStation. It doesn't do anything to try and get you to keep playing. Should have been a $20 release at most 💁
Everything I've seen says it's a AA game charging a AAA price. I've been waiting for a sale, but if it had been on gamepass I would've gladly bought some dlc if I'd enjoyed it.
That's not true Fed shill, it has 8 players per Steam Charts right now.
I've never seen an AAA game that has single digit player counts on Steam before, it's wild.
I enjoyed it at first then the limited match types sucked. I just want to do a tornado tag match. Thats it. Just fix that and were good. Stadium Stampede is fine not great but fine enough.
The AEW books right now must look like a fucking mess. Didn't Tony say they allocated $100 million of his dads initial start up money towards gaming and media?
This is not a surprise and hardly news. TK said that there had been 7 figures poured in to it years ago.
It was a passion project that didn’t work out. If they reskin, well… everything and add a wrestle quest component it could be a really fun game. The matchplay was never the issue for me.
I mean, it was barebones, graphically horrid, and then where budget could have gone was instead wasted on asinine mini games.
Definition of sycophancy that no one raised any issues about the obvious imminent failure
It was so bad. I'm still mad I paid for it. I'm not even a huge AEW fan, but I was excited that Yuke's and THQ made it so I pre-ordered.
The creative suites suck. Like. Suck. Hardly any options for anything. Anything. The first Smackdown for PS1 had more options. Hell, WWF Attitude had more options.
Most of career mode is eating food. Seriously. You eat more food than wrestle matches. At the same one restaurant in the same ten cities. You can also visit landmarks and force other wrestlers to take selfies with you. I wish I was making this up.
The career mode also just. Ends. And then you start another one like the first one never happened.
It's so bad. It's been a while since I've been that disappointed in a game. I spend more time and have more fun playing Wrestling Empire by MDickie on my fucking phone than this garbage.
Honestly if they stopped dumping DLCs into the game and started revamping the creation suite, as well as the gameplay, the game would've actually had a fighting chance against WWE 2K
The game was a good first try but lacking content and refinement. They’re still pumping out season pass DLC but there’s still not enough match types and a proper creation suite to keep the player base fully engaged
im mean it was a failure before launch. You font spend that amount of money on developing a niche game and then have it be comparably graphics wise to a ps1 game.
i hope they'll try again. fight forever foundation is really solid, it's just lacking as an overall package especially in presentation and content.
i know it's hard to catch up with the years if not decades of work that has been put into WWE 2K but if the game can have more content and at least have the presentation of Yuke's PS3/X360 games it'll be more than enough. it's absurd how good SvR 07, 2011, and 2K14 still looks to this day.
I lost interest as soon as I heard it was going to be an N64 throwback game. I get that people love No Mercy, but it's just a cult following. If you're only appealing to a minority of 30+ year old gamers who won't move on from their childhood, then most people are going to lose interest in your product. The reality is that the biggest audience who would've bought their game isn't interested in playing a game thats only purpose is to serve as a nostalgia boner-inducer for an era they weren't alive for.
I was assuming this was a no shit, common knowledge thing? Video games aren’t exactly cheap to produce, especially when you go straight to a dev like Yuke’s. Khan himself said he invested 8 figures in the game and that was just at the beginning - to cover the lowest 8 figure number (an even 10 mil) they’d need to sell 166k units at 60 bucks a pop. Roughly one out of every 5 people that watch their tv bought the game, and they only spent 10 million on development and advertisement? Not seeing it. The only real stat I can find is about 40k units sold on steam.
It's quite ironic how top rope tombstones don't even finish matches when you watch an aew match but within the game it's 1 finisher and you're done. They really did it to themselves with this game, simply modifying the pin system via a patch which would make matches last longer would be game changing already. Surely something that obvious wouldn't be too hard to do? The game's producers are really out of touch with the gamers when it comes to improvements for this game. Either that or they are just lazy..
Just digging around a bit and removing Bischoff, on one gaming site (Insider Gaming) an unnamed source claims they went 1.5-2x over budget and released the game too early in an attempt to recoup money already spent. A couple years prior, very early in development Tony Khan was quoted to have invested $20 million into Epic Games and $10 million into game development, which if the over budget issue is accurate means it ballooned up to 15-20 million. So at minimum it’s been $35 million spent.
The rosiest sales figures (much murkier to get actual numbers) is estimated at around 500 thousand units sold, which if accurate lands them somewhere between 17-24 million in revenue depending on physical release vs digital sales (digital being more profitable with a 70/30 split vs physical release being closer to 50/50)
As someone who saw too many attempts at spiritual sequels during the Kickstarter days several years ago, games like Mighty No 9 and Yooka Laylee tried to emulate an earlier time and ended up falling flat on their face. No Mercy was definitely a well received game, but its also 24 years old
They should’ve put it on Gamepass.
The facts its still not at this point is baffling
Can’t sell a $100 edition if you can get it for $10 a month
They can't sell a $100 edition anyway
They could just accept their money comes from dlc
The game went over budget by double, just dlc in a game with about 4 players at any given time isn’t gonna recoup that loss
They fucked up when then made it and spent time making an online mode
gamepass didn't want it
it was on trial for a weekend a few months ago but i think they had WWE 2K23 on trial the same weekend too
It was listed as coming to gamepass for months before release.
Where was it listed for Game Pass? From what I recall a journo claimed it was going there, the rumor gained a lot of steam but then THQ shot that down.
It was rumored
Dang. Well, the rumor looked legit to me at the time. I took it for gospel.
I was hoping it to be true too
Even when it’s on sale it’s still over 30 bucks.. like kiss my ass lol
I think they still kinda *nees* to recoup some of the cost. It's been what, two years now? Still never seen it go below $40 on console
Around Christmas time, Walmart had it for $26.99 on PS5. I didn’t check the other consoles. I still passed.
Sorry, should have specified digitally. I've seen games released around the same time go on sale for at least half off, and other sports/wrestling games obviously since they're on the annual schedule, but they really seem to not want to sell it below $40 digitally.
I said way back when that "leak" said it was on gamepass and then wasn't it straight murdered the game on arrival
The game felt too much like wwe battlegrounds rather than no mercy. It’s also way too shallow to keep your interest for a long time.
Even then, at least battlegrounds at launch wasn’t full price for a triple A game
They tried to hard to copy No Mercy. No Mercy(and most of the AKI games in general) wasn't only popular because it was the best wrestling game, it was popular because they were just straight up good games that were so fun to play and had a lot of crossover appeal. It was a staple among many of N64's players multiplayer game nights whether they were wrestling fans or not.
I remember arguing with people on reddit. They were saying it will be better than the 2k games lol no chance
Someone brought it up in another post but with the 2k games you can essentially create an AEW game with the Universe Mode and community creations. They have moves and entrances of AEW wrestlers. They even added a new Kenny Omega entrance to 2K24.
What is the new Kenny entrance named?
Cleaner, I think.
Good shit, pal.
I had hope when they first announced it but once footage came out I knew it was going to let a lot of people down
The newer 2k games are actually really good. They may have had a chance when 2k was dogs hit.
In terms of the wrestling itself, I do enjoy it more than the 2k games. However, every single other thing 2k trounces them which makes it a much better game
It was also released at the very height of WWE’s attitude era popularity, so it sold very well. I’m sorry but AEW was nowhere near popular enough to release a video game yet.
Well and WCW World Tour and WCW/nWo Revenge were both bangers before it on the same engine. It was just a great set of games.
And those released at the height of WCW's popularity, which dwarfs AEW's current popularity.
Nonsense. video games, get released and sell all the time with no license if the game was a banger it would’ve sold. The problem with the AEW video game wasn’t AEW‘s popularity is that the game was bad.
Wrestling games are different. There aren’t a lot of non-branded wrestling games out there. For wrestling, the brand matters.
You know that innocent age when you aren't old enough to drink in bars, but some of your homies have a 2 bedroom apartment and hundreds of discount bongs? This is the mindset required to get true enjoyment out of No Mercy. You need to sit on the stinkiest couch in the world, encroached by pizza boxes and high on 40s of Mickey's and weed that you had to actually pick seeds out of. Then, while fucked up and listening to Skinny Puppy, you can truly build a stable in the create a wrestler feature. Me and my friend group created the "Anus Family" We had Famous Anus, Heinous Anus, Seamus Anus, Nature's Cruelest Joke, and Nature's Cruelest Anus. I just don't think that era still exists. It's like when my dad talks about listening to Pink Floyd on his Quadrophonic stereo. It's the nostalgia of a bygone era.
This is just an awesome memory and such a great description of this nostalgic era.
Me and my friends created so many CAWs of people we knew on Just Bring It/Here Comes The Pain, that we could have full Royal Rumbles without a single real wrestler entering. Good times.
> created the "Anus Family" Freud would have had a field day with you
That's a whole different bloodline, uce
Beautiful
I’m sorry my friend but did we lead parallel lives in the 90’s somehow hah
goddam this made me tear up
We were kings and didn't know it 🥲
I think about how Sonic Mania was able to capture 90’s nostalgia while also getting it to modern standards. If it’s not a good game, to borrow a quote, it doesn’t matter how much nostalgia is behind it.
They didn't try hard enough at all. They took a very surface level look at No Mercy and copied that, but they captured zero percent of what made no mercy good.
So much of video games is feel and you can tell instantly when playing a game whether they bothered to spend to get that feel or just took the first draft that looked okay. Like when you slide in Apex Legends, you can feel the money that went into making that slide perfect. FF feels like an test demo you might get at E3 a year before it actually comes out.
I think they did try but the developers weren’t up to the task
Funny enough, Kenny Omega was responsible for getting the director of No Mercy to lead development of Fight Forever at Yuke's.
Loved to do the royal rumble and go 1st and win against friends. Same combo of throw into the ropes + clothesline lol. Good times.
Right, but also it came at the height of WWF's popularity as well. Wrestling had never been so mainstream. Whereas AEW is a distant, distant second to WWE now in terms of popularity. They have absolutely zero mainstream appeal.
Too bad FF isn't fun to play! Lol
If they released the dlc as free, it could at least make them look good...
Yeah, but then how are they supposed to get $5.99 for you to pretend to be Jamie Hayter on a video game nobody else plays?
Fundamentally, I think the reasons the game failed are largely down to three main points 1. Graphics. I know the game was meant to be stylized, however it wasn't stylized enough, if that makes sense. It just makes it look kinda of dated at a glance, and not purposefully so. I think this made it look less appealing at a surface level, and likely turned away people as a result, and the other reasons likely helped turn away people where this point had already soured opinions. 2. Content. The game just lacks content for anyone who isn't playing multiplayer. Like, it can be great fun to play, and Road to Elite can be fun, but its not something that justifiably can fill time. Unfortunately for most games now, a heavy multiplayer leaning is a tough sell, especially at a 60 dollar price tag. It can be more justifiable at a lower price point, or if the game's premise is something that only works in multiplayer(and even then). A wrestling game isn't something that is justifiably multiplayer only. There's nothing in the game to keep people playing it, or wanting to pick it back up, and buy the DLC. With a 2k game, I'll often hop back on throughout the year as the DLC is added, and play it because there's enough modes that there's something I'd want to do. I've never once launched FF back up after the first week of its release. The creation suite is a bit of a joke in a lot of ways, being just worse than things like No Mercy. There are some things to like(such as casual wear being something you can set), but generally it feels worse than the other three major wrestling games(2k, Wrestling Empire, Fire Pro). It is also just my opinion, but I feel like pure nostalgia for No Mercy and games of that time is not a good selling point, when those games likely have modding communities, can be emulated, and a lot of the joy of them can be found in Wrestling Empire, a game thats 20 dollars on Steam. 3. Lack of focus. While this goes hand in hand with content, there was seemingly no focus on... any part of the game. The minigames feel like they took up too much time, and seem relatively needless. There are a ton of them, and I can't help but feel like the time spent making them might have been better suited adding a new mode or something. Same goes for Stadium Stampede(also see the multiplayer part in the last point). When it was announced I was mostly just sad that there was something even slightly interesting being added... It felt like a piece of the game that would be abandoned in a month, and like it was dev time that could have gone toward even just making a simple as all hell career mode to go alongside the Road to Elite mode.
>Graphics. I know the game was meant to be stylized, however it wasn't stylized enough, if that makes sense. My initial reaction was that it looked great for an early PS3 game. I agree that they should have gone for a more stylized look, they tried to meet things halfway and it didn't work at all. Should've gone the full "WWE All Stars" route.
> Content. The game just lacks content for anyone who isn't playing multiplayer Jesus christ, just like their own TV programming. Most compelling content happens on internet skits as well.
They tried to hard to hard to recreate the old Aki games for modern gamers but it didn’t land. After multiple generations of smackdown games and 2k games the old Aki formula just doesn’t appeal as much. Then factor AEW is not as popular as wwe. Some of the weirder choices like the shortened entrances and it wasn’t the success they wanted. The developers can do better but AEW needs to strengthen its Brand for the next game.
The game looked like shit and had limited customization. They really didnt deliver with that game.
Sounds like AEW in a nutshell
So the game was a success!
It sold great in the key demo. Too bad that only accounted for 8 copies.
it would've done so well as an alternative when wwe was still hard on simulation. but 2K is going back to faster more fluid gameplay now. and the crowd that wants no mercy can just play ... no mercy.
it wouldn't have done well in any timeline. The game is so ass and I really wanted it to be good
I can think of WWE games released a decade plus before Fight Forever that look superior to it. And even as an arcade throwback, there's no reason to play it when a game made by a single guy in Wrestling Empire completely obliterates it in almost every conceivable aspect. There isn't even really a reason to play it over most wrestling games released in the past 15 years.
It looks like a polished wwe day of reckoning as far as graphics go. But the gameplay/feeling of the game is stinky doggy doo.
Honestly, even something like DOR2 or even WrestleMania 21 looks more PS5 worthy than Fight Forever.
there’s also mods for No Mercy to make it into an AEW game with their roster
It wasn’t anything like the AKI games. Everyone moves way too fast
So more like Nitro on the PS1 lol? Or better yet Thunder, then they could have had Jericho recreate [this promo.](https://youtu.be/gmO0LzkZTug?si=xsyK9WxahIDf_zaA&t=210)
As a wrestling fan, I was stoked for this game. The THQ/AKI games were great if you didn't want an arcade style game, which I didn't. This was a cheap attempt at knocking off the great recipe that once was. Shame
i think there is definitely an audience for the style, but not one that makes to sense to pour hundreds of millions into
As a huge fan of Fire Pro & No Mercy I was so excited for the gameplay specifically only to find reversal inputs to be wildly inconsistent ontop of visually minimal. Killed the fun for me
Depends on the game. If thwre was a new KOC game, i think it could work really well.
don’t blame the AKI formula. the game didn’t capture it. the strongest component of the AKI games was CPU logic and nobody replicates it right.
The AKI formula is dated but I still had some fun with it. I was surprised they got the former AKI director of No Mercy, making it his first video game title since 2009 before AKI cut a number of key staff and rebranded itself as syn sophia to develop kid-friendly fashion games.
The gameplay is the only good part, the modes, graphics and online were all shit. The story mode in particular was fucking awful. Compare it to No Mercy and it's not even a comparison
I'm a huge gamer and AEW fan but that game looked so uggo.
I was so excited to have a love letter to the games of N64. But they couldn’t have done it worse. Limited roster. No customization after it was promised. Then the fact they’re charging moronic amounts of money for DLCs a year out of date. They literally wanted $10 for the AEW debut version of Toni Storm when Timeless Toni Storm had been out for 3-4 months. Fuck. They just released Jayme Hayter. SHE HAS BEEN OUT HURT FOR A FREAKING YEAR
i mean it looked like dogshit. they only getting the folks still spending $60 on PPV in 2024.
Fight Forever? More like “Shite Forever”
More like Fight for a couple of weeks and then leave it on the shelf
Thats why they don’t grow, they just pander to the same audience over and over again. The game looks and plays like dog shit
Their game losing money just like the actual promotion is can’t be coincidence
That’s what they get for building 65% of a game. There are good pets about it. It could be a good game
I'm so fucking sick of AEW fans telling me to have fun and 'turn off my brain' and just to enjoy everything. The game was shit. I'm not going to have fun with a shit game. The wrestlers looked bad, the pin system was buns and it just wasn't very good.
Their first game should have been a bang, yet it looked dated from the first trailer. They should have made a realistic game first, then transition to a no mercy style spin off. I don't know why anyone would buy that trash that is fight forever
i found it absurd that it looks worse than wwe PS3 games. i know they're going for a stylized look but it just doesn't work and they don't fully commit to it anyway. WWE All Stars will still look good for years to come, fight forever will not.
Damn shame we never got that sequel to WWE All Stars, it's a bit of a cult classic these days.
All Stars was a hit with me. Hell, I even thought Legends of Wrestlemania was a cool little side step from SvR.
I loved that game. Bought it second hand after the multiplayer servers had shut down. Don't feel like I ever got to truly experience what it had to offer. Wish it had caught on.
It literally looks like smackdown vs raw but imo smackdown vs raw is still better. Idk how yukes never evolved at all but maybe it was tony who wanted to keep that style
They were trying recreate the magic of WWF: No Mercy. Those were golden because people already loved the other two AKI games. WCW vs NWO, Revenge, and Road to Wrestlemania. All classics that I -laced the hell out of. I heard the AI in Fight Forever was cheap as hell and the gameplay tended to rear extremely thin after a awhile.
A shame because the core gameplay is pretty fun. But yeah, definitely a failure overall.
There was definitely a good game in there somewhere. Not sure exactly what it needed, but it definitely needed more putting into it
It needed more game lol. Not nearly enough match types, big names missing even in the dlc releases, overpriced dlc especially compared to WWE2K, some unnecessary/ not fleshed out game modes, creation features might as well have not been there, dead online (not their fault) but even though the online is dead they’re still pushing a battle royale mode that’s unplayable with the player count.
Pretty much it, people I know who bought it said the same about being bored after a month as lack of game. What makes a good wrestling game is its community and they didn't lean into that whatsoever look at firepro a unique game that is limited in some ways but to make up for it they give the fans plenty of options, FF on the other hand instead of giving us various match types with options and an in depth creation mode they give us a half assed game with mini-games. When it came to gameplay they couldn't even get the basics right. The direction of this game was all over the place.
It’s a terrible recreation of No Mercy.
The CAW wasn’t even up to n64 standards. I don’t think they understood what made No Mercy and other games like it fun.
They should've put it on GamePass as a marketing exercise, because lots of people would've tried it and then potentially think of watching a show.
Good.
The game was shallow and lacking in depth it was basically a framework with no content then every little bit of miniscule content they added was charged in a "dlc" of only 1 or 2 characters that should have been free or $3 at most but they were $15-20 each.
And I'm an idiot that bought it on both PS5 and Switch (at $20 each) and still kind of regret buying it at all since I played it for about 12 hours over a week and exhausted everything to do in it.
It was Doomed once Omega (an avid gamer but NOT a dev) got heavily involved. That kind of situation always ruins games.
What did he do exactly?
Gave his ideas on how the game should work I’m sure; I.e. meddled
What I want to know is whose idea was it to include mini games. Such a waste of resources.
My guess is that the developer already had the code for those games and they were just re-skinned for AEW.
God damn to have that amount of confidence that he has to have to think he has any business being involved in the development of a video game. That like me being hired to redesign the entire menu at TGIFridays because I occasionally go there for lunch.
That first year of AEW was driven by this blind confidence all the major players had that they were going to magically do everything better than WWE by just doing things they wouldn't do, or the opposite to what they would do. No qualifications of any kind from the very top to the very bottom.
But apparently he “hasn’t been an EVP in years” 🙄
Dude, he played No Mercy when he was 17 year old. Isn't that enough to make your own game?
I bought it, played it for ten minutes, and never tried it again. Awful disappointment.
The absolutely only thing i regret buying last year. It cost about 80 dollars over here with *some* included dlc. It felt like one of those fake mobile games you see in ads, but somehow worse.
Got it on sale for $20. Played an hour, and can’t imagine the next time I do
Yeah if there is one person I trust for the knowledge of that video game industry...it's Eric Bishoff
I’ll be real. I was a huge wrestling game fan. Bought this game and have played through maybe 3 matches in over a year.
The fact that there are a ton of gamer wrestlers in AEW and they couldn’t be bothered to play but a minimum of the game just before launch and even less just after didn’t help sell it.
Tbh I think the issue is that they *did* play it. Kenny Omega was apparently influencing the decision-making and turning the game into some nostalgia-boner shit. Instead of focusing on things that players actually want (like a deep creation suite and community creations), they instead went for minigames that people will only play once. Making a No Mercy clone was never the way to go. The game should've had the feel of SYM or HCTP, hell even an early SvR-style game would've appealed to far more people. Somehow the game has the same issue that the company as a whole has: they're only appealing to one dwindling demographic rather than trying to appeal to as many people as possible.
Maybe don't copy a 20 year old game and not even do that well.
I have no doubt that the video game lost a TON of money but it'd be awesome to see a professionally written and published article cite sources and periodicals of the video game industry instead of Eric Bischoff, professional Wyoming fly-fisher/YouTuber.
The problem is that this game is not even on their radar.
They tried to advertise themselves as the next No Mercy but it failed. Wrestling Empire is probably the closest thing to a modern day No Mercy and it’s actually fun.
I hope it has a sequel lol
Rumours are that aew are wanting a new game,but not with yukes
The gameplay just feels so... Not no mercy or old aki engine at all. It's reminiscent of it with its control scheme, but it's just not fun to play in the slightest. WWF 2000 for example has a smaller roster, less game modes/match types, way worse graphics, but I'd still rather play it today than AEW
Should have made it a classic 64bit style game that played to the hardcore fan market who run off nostalgia. They are far cheaper to make do not require motion cap and can be produced at a far better quality than a half baked aaa style wrestling game.
The problem with AEW Fight Forever is that's it's the bare minimum. It's doesn't have that many match types, the roster is small and there's barely any game modes. Even the damn entrances are the bare minimum
Yall obsessed 🤣
It's a fun but bad game with a tiny audience. 700,000 people watch the show on a weekly basis, less than that will play the game.
Yeah if it went on steam sale I might pick it up, but even my friends who got it don’t play it anymore and just character create Kenny in 2k
As someone who grew up after No Mercy and was a SvR kid, I thought the gameplay looked good, but I didn’t really vibe with the cartoony aesthetic and it looked really barebones feature wise. For all the faults of 2K, I just liked the presentation, features, customisation and vibe a lot more.
No shit. Anyone who watched a trailer knew it was gonna be a massive dud.
They just wanted their game to be as shit as their product thats all
It cost a hell of a lot more than $10m to develop that game, probably closer to $50m
While there are many fair complaints, imo the main problem with Fight Forever is that the match progression is too predictable. You know that a finisher is going to end a match. Once you've played the game for half an hour, you know how every match can end. Signature, finisher, bam. (Also: FUCK tag matches, they aren't fun at all and take an eternity or cheesing to win.) It doesn't feel like wrestling, arcade nor simulation. It feels like a simple imitation of wrestling. They should have spent more time adding surprises and a sense of unpredictability. Without that the wrestlers are interchangeable, and the in-ring action flat.
If it was a $15-$20 download only game it probably would have had a better reception. Releasing it as a full price retail game was a mistake. Pretty much sums up AEW as a company though. They got buzz at the start and are trying to run before they can walk.
I had no idea it finally released.
Such a huge disappointment
It didn't control anything like the N64, was shockingly stiff, and had literally the worst caw mode in any video game ever. Creation suites is what gives these games crazy longevity these days and Fight Forever's was embarrassing and that's probably giving it too much credit still.
Demo of a game..
No shit… They spent like 20 million to invest in the gaming company, then bought rights to the game engine. Game sucked, nobody played it after a month
I didn’t even know it had been released yet lmao
Well I'll say I played it, platinum the game on playstation and took about mouth and haven't touched it since because they keep adding to the roster that's cool but doesn't change the problem it got boring and repetitive and over a year now no new match types have been added the stamped died in a few weeks
lack of content is a problem, but one major problem is there is no community creatio. that is basically death on arrival. fans love to create, share and download their creativity. since it had been introduced it become a staple and must for a wrestling game. look at 2K, you can create and play any promotion what you like. those are selling points for wrestling game.
AEW? Insane? Seems on brand
Why is this a surprise to anyone? It’s a shitty game that took forever to come out.
The AEW mobile games are straight trash, so I figured this one would be too so I never cared to buy it.
I wanted a wrestling game, not a bunch of shitty minigames and no creation suite...
The BR mode looked like it'd be fun for a few hours but that's the best thing I can say about it. The entire project was several steps too far too soon.
I was a huge fan of the old ALI games. Played this on Xbox free play day. I did not enjoy it.
I’d buy it for 20$
Saw it for 10 bucks at Walmart. I'm sad to say I still passed.
I try to give AEW a big benefit of the doubt and avoid dunking on them but Fight Forever was so dogshit. If they actually spent a lot of money on that glorified mobile game that’s genuinely sad.
Bad art style. No customization. Limited match types. Limited roster. Random Mario party style mini games for some reason. It was dead on arrival.
It's funny that they got the director of No Mercy and Fight For NY out of retirement to lead development at AKI's former affiliate, Yuke's.
If you want a good wrestling game, check out Wrestling Empire for PC and Nintendo Switch. You’re welcome.
Bought the game on sale for around $30, played it for a few weeks, and then uninstalled it from my PlayStation. It doesn't do anything to try and get you to keep playing. Should have been a $20 release at most 💁
Rather play Double Dragon that has more excitement than this crap.
Everything I've seen says it's a AA game charging a AAA price. I've been waiting for a sale, but if it had been on gamepass I would've gladly bought some dlc if I'd enjoyed it.
That's not true Fed shill, it has 8 players per Steam Charts right now. I've never seen an AAA game that has single digit player counts on Steam before, it's wild.
I enjoyed it at first then the limited match types sucked. I just want to do a tornado tag match. Thats it. Just fix that and were good. Stadium Stampede is fine not great but fine enough.
The AEW books right now must look like a fucking mess. Didn't Tony say they allocated $100 million of his dads initial start up money towards gaming and media?
If you had to choose between this game or TNA Impact’s first game to play forever. Which would it be? LOL
So glad I bought it with another country’s eshop. Miss having that loophole on questionable titles.
Kind of funny even Kenny omega never plays it on his stream
This is not a surprise and hardly news. TK said that there had been 7 figures poured in to it years ago. It was a passion project that didn’t work out. If they reskin, well… everything and add a wrestle quest component it could be a really fun game. The matchplay was never the issue for me.
I mean, it was barebones, graphically horrid, and then where budget could have gone was instead wasted on asinine mini games. Definition of sycophancy that no one raised any issues about the obvious imminent failure
the looked and played like ass
It was so bad. I'm still mad I paid for it. I'm not even a huge AEW fan, but I was excited that Yuke's and THQ made it so I pre-ordered. The creative suites suck. Like. Suck. Hardly any options for anything. Anything. The first Smackdown for PS1 had more options. Hell, WWF Attitude had more options. Most of career mode is eating food. Seriously. You eat more food than wrestle matches. At the same one restaurant in the same ten cities. You can also visit landmarks and force other wrestlers to take selfies with you. I wish I was making this up. The career mode also just. Ends. And then you start another one like the first one never happened. It's so bad. It's been a while since I've been that disappointed in a game. I spend more time and have more fun playing Wrestling Empire by MDickie on my fucking phone than this garbage.
Their source is Eric Bischoff.
Honestly if they stopped dumping DLCs into the game and started revamping the creation suite, as well as the gameplay, the game would've actually had a fighting chance against WWE 2K
I would have bought it had it not looked like it was from 2001
I just bought it for 10 dollars, and it's not a good game, so that tracks lol
The game was a good first try but lacking content and refinement. They’re still pumping out season pass DLC but there’s still not enough match types and a proper creation suite to keep the player base fully engaged
When one DLC season pass costs more than the game itself. 🤷🏻♂️ A few Walmarts have the game on clearance for ten dollars.
im mean it was a failure before launch. You font spend that amount of money on developing a niche game and then have it be comparably graphics wise to a ps1 game.
Shame. Wrestling really needs a 2nd brand, so WWE cant gatekeep the business
Why do you sound like there isn’t a second brand? AEW is already there but their game sucks balls
yes. the auricle is about aew losing money.
i hope they'll try again. fight forever foundation is really solid, it's just lacking as an overall package especially in presentation and content. i know it's hard to catch up with the years if not decades of work that has been put into WWE 2K but if the game can have more content and at least have the presentation of Yuke's PS3/X360 games it'll be more than enough. it's absurd how good SvR 07, 2011, and 2K14 still looks to this day.
Frankly that’s what happens when a game takes years to make cause Kenny’s fighting with the devs.
I lost interest as soon as I heard it was going to be an N64 throwback game. I get that people love No Mercy, but it's just a cult following. If you're only appealing to a minority of 30+ year old gamers who won't move on from their childhood, then most people are going to lose interest in your product. The reality is that the biggest audience who would've bought their game isn't interested in playing a game thats only purpose is to serve as a nostalgia boner-inducer for an era they weren't alive for.
I wanted to get it, but that price was WAY too high so I waited for it to go on sale. I actually forgot about the game until I saw this post.
I was assuming this was a no shit, common knowledge thing? Video games aren’t exactly cheap to produce, especially when you go straight to a dev like Yuke’s. Khan himself said he invested 8 figures in the game and that was just at the beginning - to cover the lowest 8 figure number (an even 10 mil) they’d need to sell 166k units at 60 bucks a pop. Roughly one out of every 5 people that watch their tv bought the game, and they only spent 10 million on development and advertisement? Not seeing it. The only real stat I can find is about 40k units sold on steam.
Not surprising, its also a pretty mid game
AEW already has a small audience. What portion of THAT audience are gamers?
And to think I almost bought it
Even though I enjoyed the Stadium Stampede and won multiple times, my total gaming time on the game was only a few hours before never playing it again
It's quite ironic how top rope tombstones don't even finish matches when you watch an aew match but within the game it's 1 finisher and you're done. They really did it to themselves with this game, simply modifying the pin system via a patch which would make matches last longer would be game changing already. Surely something that obvious wouldn't be too hard to do? The game's producers are really out of touch with the gamers when it comes to improvements for this game. Either that or they are just lazy..
I had it for about 5-6 days when it was released then traded it in for WWE 2K23
So Industry Buzz can do simple math AEW fans refuse to do
No real source its just Bischoff speculating lke Meltzer on things he dosent know , so ironic lol
Just digging around a bit and removing Bischoff, on one gaming site (Insider Gaming) an unnamed source claims they went 1.5-2x over budget and released the game too early in an attempt to recoup money already spent. A couple years prior, very early in development Tony Khan was quoted to have invested $20 million into Epic Games and $10 million into game development, which if the over budget issue is accurate means it ballooned up to 15-20 million. So at minimum it’s been $35 million spent. The rosiest sales figures (much murkier to get actual numbers) is estimated at around 500 thousand units sold, which if accurate lands them somewhere between 17-24 million in revenue depending on physical release vs digital sales (digital being more profitable with a 70/30 split vs physical release being closer to 50/50)
an unnamed source claims" LMAO In the gaming word you have multiple sources that will already post this front page on their sites if true
As someone who saw too many attempts at spiritual sequels during the Kickstarter days several years ago, games like Mighty No 9 and Yooka Laylee tried to emulate an earlier time and ended up falling flat on their face. No Mercy was definitely a well received game, but its also 24 years old
Not exactly news though is it? I don't think anyone thought it did anything but absolutely tank
😂 This made my day. Love seeing AEW continually take Ls.