Was still on the fence about the AEW game, but a lot of information is slowly leaking out from people who have got to view the demo.
Some points of interest:
- Limb damage and selling limb damage is in.
- Demo viewers were really impressed with the chain wrestling exchanges.
- Can augment moves by moving one of the analogue sticks in different direction to perform a different variation of the move. Also you might be able to reposition a wrestler in the ring once you have them in a lifted position.
- Lots of blood in as well as intergender matches and exploding ring death matches.
- Create a wrestler and create a venue in, but will be more streamlined, simple versions of the creation suites compared to the WWE2K games and there will be online community creations.
- More dynamic rope and barricade interaction, some said even moreso than the 2K games.
- Can set off pyro effects and change camera angles anytime during a wrestler entrance by pushing buttons on the controller.
- Meltzer's Five Star match rating system in the game.
- Completely cross platform complete with messaging system, friends list and create a lobby.
- Someone mentioned Jake the Snake Roberts and Owen Hart may be unlockable wrestlers and Cody Rhodes and Brody Lee will still be in the final game. EDIT: Owen Hart confirmed to be in.
- Interesting to me, AEW will not be an annual release like the 2K series, but rather the devs plan to implement new content into the base game over time. I'm a big fan of that as with each 2K installment you're rebuilding everything from the beginning.
- Left trigger on the controller used to block grapple attempts and right trigger on controller used to block strikes.
- Looks like it will have wrestler win/loss tracking.
- Training mode, Challenge mode, Career mode and a shop mode for unlockables all mentioned.
- Double Championship matches confirmed. I'm assuming that's being able to put two titles on the line in a championship match.
- Can turn off game play assist effects, camera shake and player HUD's (THANK YOU) and referee.
- Appears to be an option toggle for the exploding ring death match explosion which is default set to 'BIG'.
- Can apparently retake control over your wrestler during post match celebrations, presumably to continue a beat down.
- Multiple specials per wrestler. Special system very similar to the AKI games.
- Orange Cassidy can slip into his 'sloth' style wrestling.
- Weight Detection for super heavy wrestlers.
So the game isn't as sim styled as I would generally prefer, but at the same time it looks like it could still be really fun and I will need something to help fill the void as UPW isn't supposed to release until holiday season of 2024. It's also the first wrestling game my brothers have even shown interest in playing since the original AKI days and crossplatform is even better since I'm on PS5 and they only have Switch's and PC's.
Simplified creation suites also mean I can probably crank out CAWs prolifically like I did during the AKI era which will be a nice change from spending hours on them in Fire Pro and the few 2K games I've played. Still no word on how many CAW slots.
So pre-order stays.
