Create your own fun.
After making its re-debut last year on Steam, the Fire Pro Wrestling series makes its triumphant return to consoles after 11 years with Fire Pro Wrestling World. The newest entry in the series crashes forward on PS4 with a huge new addition, licensed content from one of the hottest promotions in the world today, New Japan Pro Wrestling. With a full visual-novel style story mode, plenty of licensed wrestlers and of course one of the most incredible create-a-wrestler communities on the planet, Fire Pro Wrestling World fills the hole left by the lackadaisical effort of the recent WWE 2k games by giving players a game that looks and feels like the genuine article.
Veterans of the series will immediately feel perfectly comfortable here. The graphics are the same isometric retro style the franchise is known for with a bit of spit and polish for this generation. The match types you’ve come to expect are all here, from Barbed Wire and Landmine Deathmatches to MMA-style octagon battles. The gameplay between the ropes is the same solid timing-based grappling that the series is known for and wrestler AI is good at making the matches feel “big-time”. So, what’s new?
MSRP: $49.99
Platforms: PS4 (reviewed), PC
The NJPW license is the biggest addition to a series that has long been built on made up grapplers that just sort of “look” like your favorites. To have a Fire Pro Wrestling game with actual licensed content is huge and also makes this game the de-facto New Japan Pro Wrestling game. The game features 39 New Japan wrestlers, from current IWGP Champ Kenny Omega and his fiercest rival Kazuchika Okada to veteran legends like Minoru Suzuki and Yugi Nagata. The game also features that classic NJPW blue mat (complete with Fire Pro Wrestling logo) and even legendary NJPW referee Hiroyuki “Red Shoes” Unno. All of this goes a long way toward making FPWW feel like a legitimate NJPW game and not just some shoehorned content.
While the addition of real licensed wrestlers is great, what really puts the use of the license over the top is the visual novel style story mode “Fighting Road”. In this mode players begin as a hopeful trainee in the NJPW Dojo and work their way up the card in the promotions traditional style. Along the way they’ll interact with legends and peers in NJPW and they’ll have some dialogue options to choose from as well. I found Fighting Road to be a fun trek, although I wish there were some more variety as the mode went on.
If you’re a veteran of the series, you can probably stop reading now. The game is a great Fire Pro Wrestling game and is a worthy addition to your collection. You’ll love the additional content and will appreciate the subtle ways the series has grown over the years. Clearly though Spike is counting on the NJPW content as well as the American release on PS4 to add new players to the series who may be disillusioned with the current wrestling game landscape and are looking for something different. So, if you’re one of those players, what can you expect?
Gameplay revolves heavily around timing and positioning. Strikes will only land if they are the appropriate distance from the opponent and lined up correctly. This can be frustrating for new players at first as it isn’t very forgiving but players will appreciate the skill necessary to land strikes once they get the hang of it. Grappling is initiated by walking into the opponent. The two will do a dramatic collar and elbow tie up and there is a very small window of time when players need to press the attack button to pull off a move. I highly recommend doing the tutorial in the game until this timing feels like second nature or players will struggle to produce quality matches (and probably get incredibly frustrated in the process).
Among the biggest departures for most wrestling fans (aside from the graphic style) is the fact that FPW is a series that admits that Pro Wrestling isn’t exactly on the level as an athletic competition. The game lives on the knowledge that wrestling is a cooperative sport with planned finishes where the competitors in the match are each trying to make themselves, and their opponent, look good to the crowd in the audience and at home. FPW World leans into this reality heavily and assigns a Match Score to every match completed. The score is a percentage and to get close to 100% players will need to have a back and forth battle with plenty of close pinfalls, signature and finishing maneuvers, “high spot” style impact moves, and crowd appreciation.
Fire Pro takes what Pro Wrestling is at its heart and designs gameplay around it, which is incredibly refreshing compared to the 2K games that seem to still treat the sport as a “shoot”. There is a specific button command in Fire Pro Wrestling World to allow opponents to win the grapple when they lock up so that they can make the matches more dramatic. Because of this emphasis players are encouraged to make the matches look as realistic as possible versus just finding a move they can cheese and hitting it over and over again. This is also a point of focus in the Fighting Road story mode.
The game takes this method of gameplay to its online portion as well. There are two different types of online modes, Cement mode and Pro Wrestling mode. Cement mode is the normal online competitive multiplayer mode one would expect in a game of this type. Players join into a match and do everything in their power to win. This mode tracks wins/losses/draws and ignores match quality.
The Pro Wrestling online mode is my favorite and a breath of fresh air in the genre. In this mode the focus is not on who wins or loses, but how good of a match you can put on. Wins and losses are not tracked in this mode, only average match quality. Cooperation with the opponent to make the match appealing to the virtual audience is the only thing that matters. It’s a lot of fun and, if players get in with the right person, can be very rewarding. Unfortunately, it doesn’t currently seem like everyone has got the message on the purpose of the modes but hopefully that will be corrected with time and word of mouth. As it stands the online is solid, although I did experience some lag on occasion which is killer in a game like this.
Perhaps the deepest and most engaging piece of the Fire Pro Wrestling experience is the edit mode. As a series that came up with no licenses whatsoever the early games thrived based on their edit tools and World is no exception. The create-a-wrestler tools here are great and the move list ensures players will be able to create a doppelganger of their favorite international superstar with some time and attention. My favorite part of the edit mode is the ability to adjust CPU logic which allows players to make sure that their created grappler will actually behave like their real-life counterpart between the ropes. This customization meant that I could literally have a great time in Fire Pro just watching two computer-controlled wrestlers go at it. In addition to creating world champions players can also create the belts they hold, the rings they battle in, and even the zebra in pinstripes that will tell them when they need to break a hold.
Fire Pro has always featured a very active and impressive creation community. World adds a method to access these creations if you, like me, struggle to make your own. The method is a bit clunky but functional. Players can access FPW.net straight from the game, which will launch a PS4 internet browser window. From here they can browse creations and “subscribe” to the ones they want. The game will load the subscribed content on every boot so that they always get the most up to date version of the creation. Thankfully since the web browser on the PS4 is weak at best, you can access this content from any web-capable device by going to https://firepro-w.com
Fire Pro Wrestling world has so much to offer that I cannot recommend it enough. From top to bottom the game is a tremendous love letter to the sport and to its fans. Veteran players will find plenty of new content here to justify a purchase and new fans who are willing to commit to the play style the franchise demands will find a wrestling experience deeper than they can get anywhere else. With a host of additional content on the way in the form of DLC and endless combinations of matches through the incredible edit tool this game should be at the top of the purchase list for all wrestling fans.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
