Topic: AEW Fight Forever

@Tasuki
There are many journalists that love either overpraising things or downright trashing things. Nuance left the building a long time ago. Makes them feel like a “true critic”, under the mistaken belief that being overly critical = intelligent.

Best thing to do in these cases is note the reviewers who gave the game a score at least 20 points under what you feel it should be, and never listen to anything they say ever again.

Unfortunately, I’ve already been through that process with other games, and have gotten to a point I don’t trust the opinions of any reviewers, save for two. SwitchUp for Switch releases, and SkillUp for everything else. That doesn’t mean other reviewers won’t occasionally put something out I agree with, but they don’t do it consistently, so you never really know when you can trust them and when you can’t. There are some reviewers that assess fairly but simply don’t align with my tastes. For me to trust an opinion, I need consistency and to consistently align with my own assessment. And rating a game this good as poorly as they did, just reinforces my belief that I made the right decision in sticking to SwitchUp and SkillUp.

And SwitchUp scored it 67% (on Switch), which is almost dead on with my 7/10 assessment. This confirms they can be trusted, to me.

I completely agree. That's how I treat video game reviews. There's lots of games that have got mixed reviews or lots of middling scores that I really enjoy. To be honest, it only seems to be in the video games market that people treat anything less than universal 8/10+ scores as pariahs. Back in the 90s, particularly when lots of magazines were doing scores out of 100, it did feel like the score started at 70 and anything less than that was crap, but it's really not the case now (if it ever was). It's weird, because some people still have that mindset.

So that's what tends to annoy me more than the actual reviews themselves. It's the people who treat the reviews as gospel and who act like any game that isn't getting consistent 8/10s as a minimum is "bad" who are annoying.

Even just the other day I saw some some video games page on Facebook post about Fight Forever stating "it has got nearly universal negative reviews" and they posted an infographic containing 17 review scores ranging from 5/10 to 8/10. All I did was comment that their graphic contradicts their statement, because there was only a couple of negative reviews and I'd call it mixed to positive, and they started arguing with me. They tried claiming that "anything less than 7 is awful" and "why the hell would anyone play games that are less than 8 or 9/10?" They were being deadly serious... 😂

Anyways, moving on...

I finished Road to the Elite this morning and unlocked Paul White. I'd give the story mode around 6 or 7/10. The positives are that I love the utterly bizarre and strange tone that is consistent throughout the thing. All the side activities are weird and wonderful, full of Easter Eggs and cool moments. It feels almost Yakuza or Deadly Premonition like in tone. I like that there are 12 stories in total and that you only see 4 of them in each attempt. It's good for replay value. However, overall, it lacks the depth that superior story modes like No Mercy, Shut Your Mouth and Here Comes the Pain had. It would have been nice if each story could branch out a little more in and in more meaningful ways. Some choices are actually illusionary choices I have heard and don't change the story. It would also be nice if there were more stories.

My first attempt had very minor scope stories. Some were pretty fun, others were just kind of there. I wasn't even put in heavyweight championship story or anything (I guess you trigger that if you win the Casino Battle Royal at the beginning though). I just felt the final story kinda fell flat considering it's the final arc in the story mode.

The good thing though is the match gameplay is really fun. So even with the storylines I didn't enjoy so much, I had some epic matches. I don't know if the game was ramping up the difficulty at the end, but some of the last few matches were tough!

Have you guys seen the chain wrestling by the way? It's sometimes hard to trigger, but it feels so satisfying when you do. It looks so good.

Really can't put the game down. Aside from the Technical issues, it's exactly what I've been wanting.

@Reprise I do know what storyline you get in RttE depend on what matches you win and what you lose, to add replay. Not only that but what you do during downtime also triggers different routes.

@Tasuki Yeah, but aren't the choices quite superficial and change very little? Like, in one of my stories I could select different wrestlers to approach and it would affect who I would wrestle in a match, but I get the impression the story remains the same regardless. And I heard in the Inner Circle story even if you refuse to join you still end up joining anyways.

Anyways I am going to run through it a few times, try to get all 12 stories and try a few different choices, so I'll post some more thoughts on it once I have done that.

@Reprise I am not to sure because I am still doing my first playthrough, I will be able to tell after another playthrough.

I feel like I'm getting what I expected, an AKI Corp wrastler with a good-but-not-great custom create-a-wrastler. After a few hours of career mode I already have skills and passives maxed. Normal difficulty opponents are pushovers, even in handicap matches. My custom Bull Nakano / XPac monster-heel-waaaaah character hair slams, super kicks, and choke slams all the things.

If it wasn't for the constant frame stuttering I'd say this is a 7/10 game, but it's a 6/10 for me.

So, yesterday I introduced some friends and family to Fight Forever and it was a blast, it was like we were playing the old N64 wrestling games. A few of my friends don't play games to much anymore, but they were able to pick up and play the game and enjoy the time with it. We did a few Casino Battle Royal matches and a few Tag matches as well and had a blast. Definitely was like old times again. To top off a the night we ended up switching over to GoldenEye for a bit of that!!

That's funny as heck. Glad they're putting stuff in soon.

@NintendoByNature I am not big into BRs. I didn't like Fortnite, don't like CoD Warzone, didn't like PUBG, but a few I did. The SMBs one and Pac-Man were fun so I definitely will check out Stadium Stampede for sure.

Wrastlin' fans / not-game-journos give their thoughts.

So the latest patch merc'd my career character. I would go to use one of my days for training, eating, or activities and it would...just hang on the career menu. That's...not awesome. Meh, whatever. I like the game enough to not be perturbed. Deleted the old old character and started a new one.

It seems the update has smoothed over some of the stuttering.

It's still present, but it isn't nearly as jarring as it was previously.

I haven't played in about 3 days. I finished my career then started a new one with sting. Only did a couple of matches but I'll fire it up tonight and see what the stuttering is like.

Pimp it, CM Punk. Let me run down to my local Toys'R'Us right now....oh wait.

How about my local KB Toys....erm....no.

Circuit City? No....

Kmart? No.... (only 3 locations left in the US)

Just played for a good hour with my little guy so I didn't get to check my career. However, stuttering still there and as common as before. Still enjoying the game either way though.

I got my first 7 star match the other day, which was really awesome. It was a ladder match for the AEW title between Hangman Page and CM Punk. I got it before I even got my first 6 star match 😂 (but got a 6 star match later in the same evening)

The game is still super fun to me. I am loving exploring the different wrestlers' movesets and abilities. Kenny Omega is currently my favourite guy to play with.

The RTE mode is still a fun romp. I have beaten it twice now, each time with entirely different stories for each of the 4 main months. I have unlocked Brodie and Paul White. I am going through it a third time with Kenny at the moment, then I want to do it with a female wrestler to get the women's storylines.

I hope they add a lot of content over the next year, as the game is a ton of fun and the fundamental match gameplay is fantastic. It just needs a bit more content to keep people playing.

That Stadium Stampede match looks wild though. I'll definitely give that a go.

Oh one final thing. I recommend playing on hard or elite. Normal is too easy.

Can anyone help?!

I've had the game for a week now for the Switch and love it to bits.

However, I have tried, and tried, and tried to get an online game going with someone, anyone, from anywhere in the world, and it has not ONCE been able to find me an opponent! I'm connected to the internet, my WiFi is working etc etc. I've also tried challenging every part of the world that it lets you change it to.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? Has anyone else had this issue?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

I think a lot of people gave up on the online Unfortunately. It was full of cheaters, spammers and rage quiters from what I heard.

@Reprise

Thank you.

So there's really little to no hope of ever having an online game?

I just tried again just now a few times and with no luck.

I'm not really a big online player at all, but it would've been nice to have the odd game here and there against someone else