John Rosetto

Give this a try. Any fan of wrestling games and arcade style fighters will have fun with Fight Forever. This game is not intended to be a wrestling sim like WWE 2K23. Think NBA 2K vs NBA Jam. The Good: The game is easily learned but challenging to master. You can win by just picking up a controller but it will take some time to master the controls. Tapping A/X is one set of moves, holding A/X is a second set. The controls are exactly like the N64 WCW/WWF games. For people who like weapons, there are 40 from rideable skateboards and fire extinguishers that spray foam to barbed wire bats and thumbtacks. Insane match types like Lights Out (anything goes) and the exploding ring barbed wire match are here as well. The game also has a large roster that will continue to grow. Three DLC (Matt Hardy, FTR) are available at launch. And yes, you can have Cody Rhodes' Kingdom play as menu music. Road to Elite is a cool touch that gives the history of AEW and takes about 2 hours to complete. The Bad: The customization is nearly non-existent and options are limited. Editing existing wrestlers is limited to adding an AEW shirt. The match options are also limited (where is the tornado tag???). If you are a fan of entrances, Fight Forever will disappoint. You get about 10 seconds of thr entrance to set off your own pyro. There is also no announce team during the match (which could be good if you aren't a fan of Excalibur). Some wrestlers seem to be incredibly overpowered (Wardlow) and there are times where one move will put you down for 30 seconds or more. Overall AEW Fight Forever is a great starting point for AEW Games and will only improve through updates. Think of this as an arcade wrestling game and not a sim and you'll have a blast.

EA put zero effort into making 21 any different than 20. They actually managed to take a step back. The game is extremely glitchy. There will be moments where parts of a player (his nose for example) will stretch across the entire screen. The audio is poor and drops constantly. The announcers just make comments randomly it seems and constantly repeat themselves. And the fumbles....wow. The QB fumbles on nearly every sack. I had to nearly turn the fumble slider completely off to stop the AI QB from fumbling. The gameplay is identical and X Factors really don’t make too much of a difference. The new defensive line play is a decent change as it feels like you actually have to do something now to break a block. Face of the Franchise is the same cliche sports movie turned into a game. The nice feature about this though is getting to play a taste of NCAA football which desperately needs a comeback. And then there’s Franchise Mode. ZERO and I mean zero changes. It is the exact same menu driven Franchise mode that we’ve gotten for the last 5 seasons. It’s the same menu driven, boring, play a bunch of games, set hot dogs prices (if you chose the owner role) and repeat. There were no changes made. It is obvious from the second that Madden 21 boots that the game was designed to pick the pockets of Ultimate Team players. If you aren’t into Madden Ultimate Team, you might want to pass on this year. Just update your Madden 20 roster because that’s all this is: a $60 roster update.