All Elite Wrestling Games (Yukes-Developed Console Game, AEW Elite General Manager & AEW Casino: Double or Nothing)

All Elite Wrestling premiered three new console and mobile games late last night:



The first game they announced is very reminiscent of WWE SmackDown!: Here Comes The Pain, and directed by the director WWF No Mercy. That's some genealogy. Secondly is a General Manager simulator for mobile phones, and thirdly is a gambling game. 

There'll surely be more to say as things progress, especially with that console game, which is still early into it's development. But for now, is anybody else excited to see how these pan out? I love wrestling games, but I absolutely hate what 2K have been doing these last eight years. I'm ready for something - anything! - different.

I'm keen as like you I used too like wrestling games then they became muh and haven't played one for years

It's definitely cool they have the WWF No Mercy director on board but I tried to look him up to find out what other games he had done since then and I just couldn't find anything at all and that's a wee bit worrying tbh. I've said this elsewhere on here but I'll repeat it again, if they approach making it as a fighting game first then they will be on the right track to a very good wrestling game.

Interested in how this turns out. I resubscribed to the Network recently and have enjoyed getting back into some wrestling (although haven't watched AEW in months) but you guys are right, 2K have really ruined the WWE games by making them "simmy". As good as No Mercy is, I prefer the PS2 games as they managed to get that blend of arcade/sim just right. Not sure about the graphical style of this though.

Which PS2 games are those that you preferred? I'd honestly be happy with anything that was reminiscent of Shut Your Mouth, or Here Comes The Pain, or SD Vs. Raw 2006. They're all fairly different games, married by having a really fun game engine in their own right. I can see the AEW game being more like Def Jam Vendetta than anything else though.

Yeah the first three. Just Bring It was basically the third PS1 game which were great fun with plenty to do. Shut Your Mouth is my favourite and Here Comes the Pain is superb too, but that was when it started to get "simmy", so Rey Mysterio couldn't lift up Big Show, and things like that. I also lost interest in WWE after that so didn't play the subsequent PS2 games, but did pick up Smackdown vs Raw 2011 on PS2 as it still used the old engine and really enjoyed that.

I was always a big fan of WWF SmackDown! 2: Know Your Role but that might be down to time and place as a few friends liked wrestling that 4-Player often happened on PS1 which most had compared to a N64.

Smackdown 2 was pretty good. The original Smackdown game feels a bit like a concept game in comparison, but those load times during the season mode were pretty dire.

What I really liked about Smackdown 1 through to Shut Your Mouth was how easy it was to add your create a characters to the WWE season modes.

I skipped the third Smackdown game, but I did get Shut Your Mouth close to release and it's a truly great wrestling game. I loved the story mode, which had a variety of storylines based on which wrestler you picked (including stuff for your created folk).

There was also a really odd "open-world" like mechanic where you could walk around back stage and chat to other wrestlers, or walk into Vinny Mac's office and demand a title shot.

I really miss that fusion of curated plotlines and silly arcade action. If the AEW game can recapture that, then it'll be well worth the price.

I still can't quite believe how awful the 2k games are.

I'm hoping they nail the online for this as well as I think it'd be a great laugh to have a wrestling game for those GNamer multiplayer sessions.

Shut Your Mouth was my favourite as well. Just a quality time all around - I think I was a bit too young to experience No Mercy, so it was the PS2 era of wrestling games that were my ticket. But aye, not much to say as of yet - here's hoping we get an actually decent big budget wrestling game considering the shambolic state of the 2K games as of late.