Growing up, I used to be a huge fan of wrestling. I grew up watching WCW Nitro and WWE Raw try to one-up each other each week, and at one point, I even wanted to be a professional wrestler. However, my interest waned over the years as the only televised product became stale and full of internal politics that I didn’t care for. It took the advent of All Elite Wrestling to make me a fan again. I’m not such a fan that I would pay for cable just to watch their flagship show each week (I can catch the highlights on YouTube), but the company, on the whole, is way more authentic and special than it’s competition. I actually care about the characters because they’re giving it their all in the ring because they don’t have a jerk breathing down their neck.
On November 10th, All Elite Wrestling will make an announcement regarding their first foray into video games, and fans are rightfully excited. The company put up a YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook account under the AEW Games moniker and will undoubtedly be making large strides in the medium. There could be plenty to look forward to. That being said, there are some things that we the fans want to see in an AEW video game, and here are our top 5.
AEW will hold a special games event on Tuesday, November 10th, at 6/5c time.
1. Intuitive Controls
The Smackdown vs Raw games back in the day was great because you could just instantly pick them up and start playing them without much of a learning curb. That changed later on in the series when analog stick move controls started to be introduced. I found myself not being able to figure out how to control my character and pull off moves, and that’s not good for a game that’s supposed to be fun! When I play a wrestling video game, I want mindless fun. I don’t want to worry about how to do things. I hope that they keep things simple.
2. Good Character Models And Animations
AEW wrestlers are personalities, not weird-looking polygon manikins. While I’m not expecting the best graphics in the world, I do want to see some effort put into the character models and animations. From what I’ve seen, the latest 2K WWE games really goofed on this. I’m tired of seeing wrestling games where the wrestlers walk awkwardly around the ring while always facing each other like some sort of robot wars battle. I want things to look and move at least halfway realistically.
Here’s hoping we see some more realistic wrestling action.
3. Customization
A huge part of the fun of previous wrestling games has been the character customization options. While I’m too underweight to be a real wrestler, I could always make my character in a video game and play out storylines as them. It’s also fun to make the goofiest looking character possible, give them the goofiest name possible, and laugh all the way through the career mode. I hope that AEW Champion Sir Dumbledork is a possibility.
4. Special Matches
Sometimes you just need to settle things inside the confines of a steel cage or put someone through a table or… you get the idea. Sometimes special matches are a refreshing pace amid the normal matches. AEW has had some pretty unique special matches over the past year, and I don’t think that they should let that go to waste in their video games.
Animations and physics in past wrestling games have been laughably bad.
5. More Than Just A Mobile Game
Finally, I would like to see an actual full-fledged video game. While I have no doubt that there will eventually be AEW mobile games since it is a huge market, I don’t want to be disappointed when it comes to getting my hopes up for a home console experience. AEW fans deserve an alternative to WWE games, especially after how bad 2K has been dropping the ball on their WWE 2K series. Let’s hope for something special.
