Right off the bat, the entire time the game was being developed, it was credited that it would play like the old N64 wrestling games (WCW vs NWO Revenge, WWF Wrestlemania 2000, and WWF No Mercy) and that was what brought me into wanting to play it. Did it succeed? Well...es and no, but mostly yes.
I honestly would say the gameplay is much closer to something like Def Jam Vendetta mixed with the base controls of the WWE 2K games before they got overly complicated, which to say the gameplay actually feel pretty good, mostly. I'll definitely take these controls over anything WWE has been doing to their games over the years.
Aside from just the controls, the gameplay has the different types of matches, most you'd expect out of a wrestling game and a few that are odd, but arcade-ish which kinda describes the game as a whole.
The selling point to me besides the controls was the Road to Elite which is the career mode. This allows you to use any of the wrestlers and go through a career mode or use your own created wrestler (male or female) and go through the story and build up your stats and title collection. The create-a-wrestler is actually pretty decent. It's not very robust, but it does the job enough to not overwhelm newcomers and still give a smooth experience.
At first when the game was being shown off, I thought the graphics were ugly, but seems it got polished and looks good to me, it's somewhere between wrestler toys and close to realistic, if that makes any sense. I really like the design of the characters, although to be fair I don't know but maybe 10% to 20% of the roster, but for what was shown they looked good.
I gotta say, the music shocked me...after years of hear EA and 2K choices of songs in WWE and boxing and other sports games, I feel like AEW chose some really amazing music.
Now this game does have it's flaws, but it's like everything good has a "but" to it.
- The controls are good as I said, but I felt they tried to hard to make EVERY button do something, when some actions could have been condensed like Irish Whip and Run could have just been the same button like every other Wrestling-ish game did.
- It has plenty of match types, but I think road to elite does a poor job of explaining stipulations or even showing you the match type after you got into it.
- Road to Elite has abysmal writing...some characters talk like their real counter parts do, but some of them have awful writing, that or if they REALLY talk like that...ugh... also my own character's dialogue was awfully written.
- As much fun as I had with it for the time I had played, I kinda felt the game needed more to it.
For AEW's first attempt at a game, I think they did a very good job for what they were going for. If what I read is true and this is just a test run to an ongoing set of games or ideas they wanna do, then they got my support, just as long as they take what they did here and improve on it, the next game could be promising, but like the company itself, it's a bit of a diamond in the rough.
I honestly would say the gameplay is much closer to something like Def Jam Vendetta mixed with the base controls of the WWE 2K games before they got overly complicated, which to say the gameplay actually feel pretty good, mostly. I'll definitely take these controls over anything WWE has been doing to their games over the years.
Aside from just the controls, the gameplay has the different types of matches, most you'd expect out of a wrestling game and a few that are odd, but arcade-ish which kinda describes the game as a whole.
The selling point to me besides the controls was the Road to Elite which is the career mode. This allows you to use any of the wrestlers and go through a career mode or use your own created wrestler (male or female) and go through the story and build up your stats and title collection. The create-a-wrestler is actually pretty decent. It's not very robust, but it does the job enough to not overwhelm newcomers and still give a smooth experience.
At first when the game was being shown off, I thought the graphics were ugly, but seems it got polished and looks good to me, it's somewhere between wrestler toys and close to realistic, if that makes any sense. I really like the design of the characters, although to be fair I don't know but maybe 10% to 20% of the roster, but for what was shown they looked good.
I gotta say, the music shocked me...after years of hear EA and 2K choices of songs in WWE and boxing and other sports games, I feel like AEW chose some really amazing music.
Now this game does have it's flaws, but it's like everything good has a "but" to it.
- The controls are good as I said, but I felt they tried to hard to make EVERY button do something, when some actions could have been condensed like Irish Whip and Run could have just been the same button like every other Wrestling-ish game did.
- It has plenty of match types, but I think road to elite does a poor job of explaining stipulations or even showing you the match type after you got into it.
- Road to Elite has abysmal writing...some characters talk like their real counter parts do, but some of them have awful writing, that or if they REALLY talk like that...ugh... also my own character's dialogue was awfully written.
- As much fun as I had with it for the time I had played, I kinda felt the game needed more to it.
For AEW's first attempt at a game, I think they did a very good job for what they were going for. If what I read is true and this is just a test run to an ongoing set of games or ideas they wanna do, then they got my support, just as long as they take what they did here and improve on it, the next game could be promising, but like the company itself, it's a bit of a diamond in the rough.