Category: Lists

Every Chapter in Celeste Ranked

2021 UPDATE: Since I’ve got nothing better to do, I’ve decided to start streaming over on twitch.tv/strongstylesmark. At 2PM GMT Tuesdays & Thursdays I’ll be trying out indie games I’ve never played before, and at 6PM GMT on Saturdays, I’ll be playing games I love. I’ll be starting Saturday 16th January, so please come over and give me a follow to be notified when I go live!

I’ve spent a lot of this year getting around to games from the past number of years that passed me by when they originally came out and although I played it for a bit when it first released, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I properly sunk my teeth into Celeste. What I discovered was a masterclass in level design and movement mechanics in games, the likes of which I haven’t seen on this quality since N++.

So, I thought what better way to celebrate everything that’s great about Celeste than ranking each chapter and analysing what makes each one tick. This does mean that one chapter is going to have to be last, but I want to make it clear that I think every chapter is masterfully designed, it’s just some rely on gimmicks and features that don’t enthuse me as much as others. Also, I’ll only be taking into account the A and B sides of each level, because I’m not nearly good enough to tackle the C sides yet and also Chapter 9 isn’t being included because I can’t even put a dent in that thing.

And with that, let’s start.

8 – Chapter 3: Celestial Resort

Cycles, cycles, so many cycles.

What puts this level firmly in last is the gimmick because I really find the nature of the Dust Bunnies to be incredibly frustrating. The overall visual design of the level is great and I feel a heavy atmosphere when playing through this level more so than most other levels in the game, but the platforming challenges relied so heavily on setting off at the right time so your jumps and dashes meet up with the cycles that it often became frustrating to find the right time to begin.

That said, it does work from time to time and I think the gimmick as a whole works a lot better in the B-side, where the whole point is that it’s impenetrably difficult when you first encounter it. When the level gives up on the idea that it’s supposed to be a fair challenge and just throws everything it has it ends up working a hell of a lot better, perhaps because I went into the B-side with a very different mindset compared to that of the A-side.

As I said in the intro, this is by no means a bad level but it’s certainly the one that gives me the most negative emotions whenever I revisit it.

7 – Chapter 1: Forsaken City

This almost feels a little unfair, because, for the first proper level in the game, this is the perfect design. The reason I’m dropping it so low is simply that once you’ve got good enough to complete the later levels, this becomes way too easy and pretty boring to replay.

All the other levels have some degree of replayability, even once you’ve completed the game and have far superior skill to what you did when you first started the game, but this is the one level that doesn’t feel fun to replay at all. It’s absolutely necessary though, since if the game threw some of the seemingly impossible scenarios at you straight away most players wouldn’t push forward with the game at all, but it’s at the cost of replayability. Even the B-side, although much more difficult, is still fairly easy when compared to all the other B-side levels in the game.

What I love about Forsaken City though, is the aesthetic of the place. The visuals of this city that are only half-finished and has been left to be reclaimed by nature has an eerie beauty and when paired with the simple music & ambient sound effects, it creates a level that can be quite threatening in its beauty, which is much what I imagine a half-built & abandoned city would feel like in real life.

6 – Chapter 4: Goldern Ridge

FUCKING WIND!

So this is another level where the gimmick is something I’m not particularly a fan of, the difference here though is that the gimmick doesn’t run through the whole level, only the latter half of it. Not to mention as much as I have my annoyances with the wind it’s actually a very clever idea in terms of making a challenging puzzle platformer; at least with the way it’s implemented here.

The reason I’m not particularly fond of it is mostly down to personal taste because of some reason I find this to be one of the most frustrating mechanics in the game. I think the reason for that is because over the course of the game up until this point I’d built up an understand and feel for how Madaline moved, the run speed, jump height and such like so for simple jumps I could rely on instinct to know when was the right moment to jump, dash etc, but the wind changes that.

When there are winds blowing against Madaline her movements no longer correspond with what I’ve got in my head, meaning I have to re-learn everything again to be able to platform accurately. Like I said, it’s a very clever way to implement a challenge into the game, but I struggled for quite a while to go against these instincts that I’d built up and it made for a rather frustrating time while playing through the latter half of this chapter.

5 – Chapter 8: Core

Chapter 8 is extremely different from any other chapter in the game, which is in some ways to its benefit and its other ways not so much.

First, the things I liked. Changing the rules on when Madaline’s boost could recharge for this chapter added a brilliant new layer to everything and allowed the level designers to have much greater control over where you would be able to have your boosts, putting a lot more importance on where they should be used. I also thought the switching between hot and cold was a great gimmick for the level, that allowed for two very different styles of platforming in the same level, sometimes even in the same room and the micing of those two styles is where a large portion of the challenge for the level comes in.

When it comes to the difficulty of this level, I’m of two minds because Chapter 8 is a significant leap in difficulty from Chapter 7. On the one hand, I wasn’t a fan of going from the slight steps up in challenge that the game had presented me with until now to this massive leap I experience and it felt a little unfair. However, given that you need at least 4 crystal hearts to get into this level at all (which involves either solving vague puzzles or completing the B-sides) it means that you’ve got to have a decent level of skill by this point anyway, so if it is an issue, it’s not a very big one.

What I don’t like about Core mostly comes down to the details of the rooms themselves. While the extra limits on boosts create a good challenge, it did get incredibly frustrating at times and there were a couple of rooms that I found I mostly lucked my way through, especially the one room that’s full of the bumpers, which seems like complete random chance if you survive or not. Of course, you could easily chalk down those complaints to me being crap at the game, which isn’t entirely untrue, but these aren’t problems I’d had with any other chapter before this one.

4 – Chapter 2: Old Site

This suffers from several of the same problems as Chapter 1 did, but what makes me like this one so much more is how much fun this level’s gimmick is to mess around with.

There’s something about the way the dream blocks work that makes them so much fun to continuously boost through and the puzzles involving them are easily the most enjoyable to platform through. Here, the relative ease of the chapter seems more to it benefits than its detriment because of how satisfying and fun it can be to platform through, not to mention the B-side for this level is definitely my favourite in the game…apart from the last screen which is the worst.

On top of that, you’ve got the chase section with Badaline and I always love it when platformers put the pressure on you to pull off tricky platforming very quickly, it’s why that bit in Mirror’s Edge with the people chasing you through a wide-open space is the best part of the game. That section, in particular, gives you so much to think about as you’re dashing through the dream blocks trying to get away because while going quick you also have to account for timing of where Badaline’s going to be, not to mention having to work out how to get through the room at all very quickly.

I can’t rank this too highly because of the lower difficulty level, but it has a lot going for it so that I still enjoy going back and giving it a replay.

3 – Chapter 5: Mirror Temple

This chapter is quite unique when it comes to its design. All the other levels are fairly linear, with one room going right into the next, with hidden rooms and secret paths only leading to collectables, however, chapter 5 takes a slightly different approach.

Instead, the main portion of the level is quite sprawling, with several large rooms featuring as the centrepiece to a level full of side rooms each providing their own challenges to get both collectables and keys necessary to progress. This often gave a little breathing room between each of the challenges and overall made for a level that I had a lot more fun exploring because it wasn’t difficult challenge after difficult challenge; not to say that style of level isn’t great of course, but the differences in this level make it a breath of fresh air.

Following that segment, there are the segments where you have to outmanoeuvre the Seekers in what are some pretty fun challenges and very satisfying when you time your jumps correctly to send you flying to your goal. This is of course followed by carrying Theo through the exit to the temple which is once again, a challenge that no other level has anything similar to and it results in quite a challenging segment when it starts to throw everything at you at once.

This level hits on a lot of unique ideas that no other level has to the point where it feels fundamentally different to everything else in the game. It makes for a bit of an oddity of a level, but one that I have quite a fondness for whenever I go back and play it.

2 – Chapter 6: Reflection

The story of Celeste is something I haven’t really touched on up until this point because for the most part, it’s a very small part of the game, however, this chapter is where all of the conflict comes to a head and it makes for a fantastic level to play.

Right at the start, there’s the absolute gut-punch of being shot right back down to the bottom of the mountain, after spending 5 chapters clawing your way up to that point and you have to deal with that annoyance as you claw yourself out of that pit for the first section of the level. The mechanics in this part of the level are fairly minimal and not all that difficult which is fine because it’s not what the main focus of the level, although I do like the feathers, which add a lot to other levels after being introduced here.

The focus of this level, however – and the reason I’ve placed it this high – is the “fight” with Badaline. Mechanically it’s a masterwork, the layout of the rooms give you so many opportunities and chances to make ground and Badline’s attacks are balanced in the perfect way to make it just the right level of challenge, I always have so much fun when I’m playing through it. Outside of the mechanics of the game, however, there’s so much emotional significance to it. If you weren’t aware, Celeste’s story is about living with mental health problems, specifically anxiety and depression, and that side of Madaline’s personality that she’s been trying to bury for so long is exactly what Badaline represents.

This chapter is when Madaline tries to get rid of her for good, thinking she’s doing the right thing and helping them both out, only for Badaline to completely freak. It forces Madaline to understand that fear Badaline feels after Madaline has spent her entire life ignoring her or trying to get rid of her and she’s so hurt that she refuses to listen when Madaline realises she was wrong. The “boss fight” isn’t much of a right, in reality, it’s simply you quite literally trying to reach Badaline as she tries to stop you getting close and that’s just a brilliant metaphor for how coming to grips with your own mental health problems can feel.

The whole concept of it was an absolute genius stroke of game design and it’s still just as fun and challenging as every other stage in the game to boot.

1 – Chapter 7: The Summit

I dunno what it is, but something about the opening card to that level alongside the music fills me with more determination than I’ve ever felt in my life.

This chapter is the culmination of all the trials and tribulations you’ve been through in your journey to climb the mountain, the highs and lows, all of them pay off in this level as you start from the very bottom and go all the way to the top to complete your quest. Going into this level I was so pumped to finally finish it and the way the music started me off it honestly made me feel like nothing could stop me and I had so much fun on this final ascent.

We caught a glimpse of it at the end of chapter 6, but here we see the two boosts used to their full potential as the genius level design pours into every room of the level, creating some incredibly challenging, but very rewarding puzzles. By this point in the game, you will have developed quite a large array of skills and this level makes sure to put it all to the test.

This chapter quite literally takes through all of the previous stages with brand new rooms containing each of the level’s gimmicks and it’s such a joy to return to each level, only now with the difficulty cranked up a notch. This feels like a true final exam for the game because you have to actually recall every skill you’ve used throughout the game in order to get through each of the previous stages, only for it to throw a whole bunch of new stuff at you.

The final segment where you climb the very peak of the mountain is easily what secured this level as first place in my mind. First off there are the flags, as I mentioned before I already felt determined coming into this level, but having the numbered flags as you reach the top was a stroke of genius to push those feelings into overdrive. I’d completed the exact same mental transformation that Madaline went through in the story, my attitude was no longer “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this” it was now, “I can do this and I WILL do this” and I didn’t even notice that until after the fact, but it was such a beautiful moment.

On top off that there’s the fact that the platforming challenges in that final segment are easily the best in the game, I ran through some of them first try on luck and instinct alone, while others had me ramming my head into them over and over again (flag 9 to 8, you know what you did). When I finished most other chapters in the games I felt a sense of relief, but when I finished summit I stood triumphant, I had fought this mountain head-on and I came out the victor, it felt like a true achievement…then I played the B-sides…and then the C-sides…and then Chapter 9…I can never win.

And that’s my list! Thank you very much for reading this, please let me know what your favourite chapters of Celeste were either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back the same time next week where I will be ranking every championship currently in WWE!

Games I’m Looking Forward to In Q4 of 2019

As we move into the 4th quarter of the year, the season comes around where we get all of the big releases in the space of about a week, which is either very exciting or very inconvenient depending on your perspective. Unfortunately, this year’s line up seems a little more underwhelming, with many of the big AAA releases like Watchdogs Legion and Cyberpunk 2077 opting to go with a spring 2020 release date instead.

That said, there a still a bunch of potentially great games still to come as we look to end of 2019 and I thought it’d be a nice idea to highlight the host of games that are set to release before the year is out, to help remind people to not look ahead to next spring too soon.

8th October – Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince

Developer: Frozenbyte
Publisher: Modus Games
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows, Linux

I haven’t had much of a chance to talk about the Trine series in this blog yet, but it’s one of the few series I think could be fairly described as ‘underrated’ in the eyes of the general gaming populous.

If I had to describe the Trine games in a single word, that word would be “vibrant”. The fairytale-style seeps into every pour of the game, making it ooze this charm that I just can’t look away from. The colour pallet is absolutely beautiful, with vibrant blues, greens and purples creating this incredibly serene atmosphere, although it’s not afraid to effectively use reds, oranges and even browns effectively when it wants to change that atmosphere.

The puzzle-platforming mechanics are a little basic, but that’s overshadowed by the surprisingly fun nature of the combat. It’s not a million miles a minute like much 2D sidescrolling combat, but instead, everything in the world interacts with each other in unexpected ways to create some hilarious outcomes when you spawn a box in a space where it looks like you shouldn’t be able to.

Trine 3 took the series into the realm of 3D and while it wasn’t as fun as the first two games in the franchise, it still captured that sense of charm that drew me into the series in the first place. Form what we’ve seen so far Trine 4 seems to have mostly gone back to the 2D style of game and it’s looked to have expanded its puzzle-platforming mechanics to open up a load of new opportunities for fun to be had, so if you’re a fan of the genre, or even just uniquely pretty games, this will be one for you.

11th October – Tracks: The Train Set Game

Developer: Whoop Group
Publisher: Excalibur Publishing
Platforms: Windows

So here’s a game specifically made for me and people like me.

The concept of the game is very simple: You remember the wooden Brio train sets that you’d have loads of as a kid if you liked trains? And you remember how you always wanted to build massive crazy tracks but never could? Well, this game lets you do exactly that to your heart’s content.

I played this in Early Access early last year and it’s amazing. This game will let you build any track you could possibly imagine with all the different types of pieces that used to be available (and a couple that weren’t). You can build these track on a blank canvas, or you can use a living room or bedroom to weave your tracks through.

I haven’t played it in a while as I want to be surprised by the new stuff that’s been added at launch, but when I last played there was a whole host of scenery that you could add all around the tracks, so you could build a little town for your train to go around. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! The pièce de résistance is the fact that you can actually get in the train and drive your train around the tracks you’ve made…I KNOW RIGHT?!

I’m well aware many of you are reading this thinking I’m weird, but the three people who had the same childhood I did are over the moon right now.

22nd October – WWE 2K20

Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: 2K Games
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows

For many years I was the kind of person that never understood why people bought a new sports game every year when they all seemed exactly the same from the perspective of an outside observer. However, having been a WWE fan for a good number of years now and buying the new game every single year, I totally understand the appeal.

Of course, I didn’t see the point in buying a new FIFA every year, I don’t like football. I do however like wrestling and as someone who plays the WWE games for at least 150 hours every year (usually more), the value is absolutely there for me to put down $60 every time a new one comes out.

That said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned about this year’s game.

For those who are unaware, for the 6 WWE games released under the 2K umbrella so far, Yukes has been a part of the development team and this year they weren’t, leaving Visual Concepts to develop the game on their own and that fact combined with how marketing has been behaving in the build-up to launch has me concerned. By this time last year, we had a full roster reveal and multiple press events where tonnes of gameplay was shown, but right now we’ve got absolutely none of that.

Don’t get me wrong as long as the game isn’t totally broken I’ll still buy it because I’m a sucker for the series and I don’t care who knows it, but I’m definitely going to wait for reviews to be sure until I put my money down on it.

25th October – The Outer Worlds

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Private Division
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows

So far the games I’ve talked about are ones that I’m confident that I’m going to enjoy, either because they’re part of a franchise I love, or I’ve already played some of it prior to launch. The Outer Worlds, however, is slightly different because I really want to play it, but I’m not yet sure if I’ll enjoy it.

While I’m sure I’ll get lectures from people about this statement, but the game looks to be fairly similar to Fallout in terms of its main mechanics. This is to be expected as Obsidian’s biggest release before now was Fallout: New Vegas, so stick with what you know, so it’s a game I really want to try, but it’s not guaranteed to be a hit with me. I feel this way because of my relationship with Fallout 4 (the only one in the franchise I’ve played (I KNOW, shut up)) because when I played it at launch I didn’t enjoy it at all and over a number of years I would try over and over again to get into this and it wasn’t until early this summer that I finally cracked it and started enjoying it.

My hopes with this one is that it’s like Fallout, but not TOO much like Fallout, the gameplay that’s been shown up until now looks solid, but I always find it hard to gauge whether the feel of a game fits me by watching someone else playing it, so I’ll be very interested to see what I think of this one when it releases.

5th November – Planet Zoo

Developer: Frontier Developments
Publisher: Frontier Developments
Platforms: Windows

A few years ago Frontier Developments did something magical, they went to the farthest corners the Earth, searched through miles and miles of terrain until they found the withered and dying body of the theme park building genre and somehow breathed more life into it than it had ever had before. Planet Coaster is quite simply the best theme park building game ever made (no, that isn’t up for debate) and Planet Zoo looks to do exactly the same thing to the Zoo Tycoon genre that Planet Coaster was to theme park builders.

Of course, the focus is in a slightly different place with Planet Zoo as it’s all well and good making a zoo look pretty (which I absolutely will), but none of it matters if all of your animals are underfed. This game promises to put the focus in the caring and welfare of the animals you hold in your zoo, with some in depth-looking systems that mean you’ll have to adhere to all of the top-level standards that real zoos have to. Not that it’s going to stop me from throwing two of every animal into one pen and seeing who survives but that’s on me, not the game.

If the recent beta release that people have been able to get their hands on is any indication, Planet Zoo will live up to the hype that stands before it and I believe it will be a game that is just as beloved as Planet Coaster.

8th November – Death Stranding

Developer: Kojima Productions
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platforms: Playstation 4

I just want to know what it actually is.

I think I got the rough gist of what the “basic” premise is from the explanation we received at Gamescom earlier this year, but I’m still not entirely clear. It’s also really not obvious what the gameplay is like since so far we’ve seen our protagonist have several conversations, fall off a cliff and…mark his territory.

As such, I honestly can’t speculate on whether or not I think I’ll enjoy this. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say I’ll think it’s fairly mediocre, but what do I know? This could be the greatest game ever made, it could be utter trash, I don’t think anyone anywhere in the world has any idea, including Hideo Kojima.

I’m anticipating this release more to see what the reaction is from the general gaming populous when it finally comes out, not so much to play it myself. It’s definitely a game I’m keeping an eye on, but I’m going to be waiting for the reviews to come out before I consider buying it for myself.

15th November: Pokemon Sword/Shield

Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo & The Pokemon Company
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

If I need to explain this one to you then you’re obviously not paying enough attention.

In short: I like Pokemon…a lot.

I tend to judge Pokemon games on their own scale where I compare them to each other because for me they exist above other franchises. A Pokemon game can be full of obvious flaws an annoyances, but I’ll still enjoy it because it’s Pokemon and honestly, I like it that way, I like being happy.

Unfortunately, it’s very hard to tell where each game will fit on that scale before playing it. Case in point: Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, I honestly didn’t think I’d enjoy those games all that much, it didn’t look to me like they added much to the Alola region and they’d be quickly forgotten, but boy was I wrong about that and they are easily among my favourites in the franchise.

So far out of everything I’ve seen, I like most of it. I know the fact that the national dex won’t be in the game is a sticking point for many people, but I personally don’t mind too much as long as the game we get is good fun. The whole camping set up looks like it’ll have a lot more depth than Amie and Refresh did before it and I’m gonna dedicate my life to finding all the curry recipes if it kills me.

Out of the new Pokemon that have been revealed so far, I like the look of all but one and I’m overjoyed that we’re not only getting more regional variant but brand new evolutions for old Pokemon too; any game that gives Farfetch’d an evolution is good by me.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know what games you’re looking forward to the most either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back on Saturday as my coverage for WWE’s Hell in a Cell begins!

More of My Favourite Music From Video Games

Last year I talked about some of the pieces of music in video games that I enjoyed the most for one reason or another. The problem with doing something like that is I spent the next year coming up with music I forgot or wished I could’ve put on that list, it took all my brainpower but eventually, I came up with an ingenious solution. Write a second list.

Last time I didn’t include any tracks that featured a singer because it could often lead to confusion between the Soundtrack and the Score of the game which are two different things. This time I’m disregarding that rule and songs with lyrics are allowed, the only condition is that the song has to have been produced specifically for the game it was featured in, otherwise any song EA used for a game in the mid-2000s would be on the list.

Apart from that, the same rule as last time applies, which is just one track per franchise for obvious reasons and this isn’t really a ranked list because what I prefer in music shifts depending on my mood and such like. Also, there’ll be no tracks from Octopath Traveler on this list as I did a whole separate list on just that topic. So now all that’s out of the way, let’s listen to some tunes.

The Moonlighter – Moonlighter

Listen Here

Moonlighter is very much a game of two sides, which is exactly what makes it so compelling. You can have plenty of fun diving into the dungeons and collecting all of the loot you could ever want, but you can have just as much fun with your day job selling all of that precious loot in your shop.

Similarly, there are two distinct layers to this track that plays as you tend to your shop and serve your customers all day. There are the quiet and peaceful tones of the Marimba that comes in and out of the track nailing the peace of running a shop in a small town, it puts me in such a good mood as I wander around my shop, watching how people are reacting to my prices and serving customers.

Then there’s the guitar that comes in which further conveys this sense of happiness, but also brings in a small sense of excitement that comes from the nature of obtaining all of these valuable items that everyone buys for…well I’m not entirely sure what they’re used for, but the point still stands.

This is the track that best encapsulates the feeling I get from playing Moonlighter, that sense of adventure and contentedness in both sides of the game.

Tetris Theme – Tetris

Listen Here

No explanation required. You know you like this one. Even if you don’t like it, you still like it a bit.

Jump Up, Super Star! – Super Mario Odyssey

Listen Here

There are very few games that can bring the same sense of joy out of me that I get from playing Super Mario Odyssey and this song is the perfect representation of that feeling. It’s loud and proud and absolutely brimming with personality and charm, which is exactly what Odyssey is all about.

The festival sequence in which this plays is easily one of the most fun parts of the game and once I had the option I found myself playing it frequently during several other sections of the game too. In SMO there is nearly a thousand unique challenges to complete and every single one of them was an absolute blast to collect thanks to the sheer joy that this song is absolutely brimming with.

Not only that, but it brings a sense of adventure to the world as well, not so much in the melody but in the lyrics. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the lyrical style of swingin’ jazz songs, but it worked for me here because of exactly the emotions that the game and the melody of the song bring to me. Nintendo has always been great at understanding the fact that games should be fun above all else and this song clearly communicates that philosophy in every beat.

Honor For All – Dishonored

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From a song that’s all about having a great time, to very much the opposite.

The world of Dishonored is a horrible place, it’s worn down, grey, corrupted and riddled with disease, arguably the game’s biggest strength is showing you every nasty corner of Dunwall as you seek to destroy at least part of what makes it so horrible. I honestly didn’t think it would be possible to distil that feeling into a song and have it be pleasant to listen to, but I just can’t help but adore this credits song for Dishonoured.

The way the bass and the drums come together with the violin create a simple but incredibly powerful tune that fits in fantastically with the rest of the soundtrack, capturing what has over the course of the game become the sound of Dunwall. It sinks to such grimey depths in places but still keeps the melody sounding smooth only to rise up into some really beautiful sounding peaks, showing the progression of how you can affect the city depending on your choices throughout the game.

What I think takes this from a good song to a brilliant one though is the lyrics. I don’t know much about the production of the song, but it feels to me like Jon & Daniel Licht had a perfect understanding of how the game’s story worked and exactly what points it was trying to get at because they come out so powerfully in these lyrics. Lines like “We live for today, but we die for the next” and “The darkness, it rises, as the sun glows” captures the feeling of the world so brilliantly and it shows an unmatched understanding of Dishonored was all about.

The Amaranth – Towerfall Ascension

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When talking about SMO I talked about the music amplifying the game’s sense of fun, well for my money, they don’t come any more fun than Towerfall Ascension.

This track is loud, bombastic and doesn’t slow down for anyone or anything and it only adds to the experience of the game. When playing on this map in the multiplayer versus, it created such an epic sense of scale to the battle, that kept the match moving at all times. I found matches on that particular map to move a lot faster and be a lot more fun because of that music adding so much to the experience.

Even in the singleplayer, it adds so much, these are your first steps into the Dark World and immediately upon hearing this music begin you know that this place isn’t going to mess around. Its melody reminds me subtly of the Pirates of the Carribean theme in some ways, which appropriate for the ghost ship setting, the way the pace speeds up and slows down at a moments notice very much mimics the idea of a stormy sea as you do battle.

Towerfall Ascension is an incredibly fun game as it is and a track like this serves only to enhance that feeling.

Still Alive – Mirror’s Edge

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No, it’s not that other video game song called “Still Alive”, it’s the one that’s actually good.

Baiting Portal fanboys aside this song is absolutely beautiful. What you see in Mirror’s Edge as you run around the city is a pristine city with with the sun shining brightly down on it at all times and this song does a brilliant job of capturing the feeling of standing in that city with its melody, while capturing the strong contrast of the corruption and tyranny weaved into the city’s culture with its lyrics.

Talking about how the city’s changed along with Faith herself, lamenting how everyone’s being silenced, as the city remains almost lifeless; the place is for intents and purposes, a veritable utopia, but the people pay a heavy price for that life which most probably don’t even know about. She’s fought against everything the city stands for, for so long; pretty much all her life as we later learn in the sequel. Yet, after all, she’s been through and everything she’s lost, all she has to say to this city, is that she’s still alive.

Even without all this meaning, the melody would still make it a joy to listen to, but the lyrics are what gives this song so much power and emotion.

Confronting Myself – Celeste

Listen Here

I really struggled to decide which track to pick from Celeste and let me tell you “Reach for the Summit” was a very close second here, but in the end, this felt like the right choice.

Celeste isn’t a very story-heavy game, but what little there is goes quite deep and if you ask me the emotional peak of the story was in Chapter 6 – Reflection, during the “fight” with Badaline, which is where this song plays. This is the closest Celeste comes to a boss fight and that’s very important. You meet plenty of characters along your journey, some of which Madaline is at odds with, but the only person she ever actively has to fight is that part of herself.

I could ramble on for hours about how good Celeste is at capturing that sense of living with anxiety and how brilliant of a personification Badaline was for that, but we’re here to talk about the music.

Everything about this track screams with inner conflict to me. There’s chaos in the background of the track at all times, with the percussion and lower-pitched synth melody, it doesn’t let up at all. This whole sequence in the game is about Madaline trying to reach this part of herself, to make them whole again while Badaline is desperately trying to push her away and reject it and that feeling comes across so well in the main melody of the track.

The main synth is so similar to the sound effects used for Madaline’s voice throughout the game, to the point where it sounds to me like it’s Madaline herself who’s singing over the chaos in this track, almost screaming at certain points trying to get through to Badaline that they need to become whole again.

The end of Chapter 6 is where everything comes together for Madaline before she makes her final ascent, but before she can get to that point she has to go through this existential struggle with this living part of her psyche and this track is so perfect for bringing all the emotions Madaline would be feeling in that moment right to the forefront, creating one hell of an emotional climax for the game.

Pursuit ~ Cornered – Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Listen Here

While the Ace Attorney games do have a level of depth that most in the genre don’t, they are still at their core, graphic novels. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely love investigating the crime scene and finding the contradictions in court and it’s what makes the game so special, but the crux of the game is its story, which generally advances regardless of the player. What this means is that you have to create a very specific atmosphere to make the constant stream of twists and turns that feature in an Ace Attorney case feel special, that’s where the music comes in.

The music in the Ace Attorney games is fantastic at setting the mood for any given scene and the designer’s knowledge of exactly what is the right time to change tracks, cut to silence or bring the music back in is what brings such strong emotion to every line in these games and this track, in particular, is one of the most powerful. Often in the Ace Attorney games a court session can become an exhausting uphill battle, it almost always feels like you’re on the back foot and the whole world’s against you when it comes to proving your client innocent and it’s all that build-up of emotion that makes the moment when this music hits so powerful.

This music hits when it comes down to the last-ditch attempt, it’s do or die and by God, you’ve done. This is the indication that after all your arguing and desperate attempts to clutch victory from the jaws of defeat, you’ve finally turned the tide. After all, you went through to get to a point where you have the advantage this music makes it so satisfying to lay your claims and watch as the prosecution falls to pieces as you effortlessly brush aside all of their baseless accusations.

In those moments nothing makes it sweeter than the feeling of pure vindication as you state you irrefutable claims while this intense and triumphant track plays at your back the entire time.

Weight of the World – NieR: Automata

Listen Here (English Version)
Listen Here (Japanese Version)

As I’ve said previously, NieR: Automata is a game that continues to weigh heavily on my mind, even this far out from finishing it and over time all of those feelings of uncertainty and introspection that the game instilled in me, is exactly what this song has become representative of to me.

The entire track has such a sense of melancholy to the whole thing and yet the lyrics have such a weird way fo being simultaneously depressive and triumphant. Thay idea of standing up and fighting for what you believe in, no matter how impossible victory comes through so powerfully and creates that mix of feelings because, at the end of the day, it’s what I came away from NieR: Automata feeling.

As far as I’m concerned, NieR: Automata’s story is unmatched and this song is the perfect encapsulation of all the emotions that I feel across the game. I’m not even sure how to describe the emotions that NieR: Automata instilled in me, but somehow this song captures them beautifully. This is also a case where I would recommend listening to both the English & Japanese versions as they both bring such different emotions, especially in the final chorus.

In the English version, the singer gives it all her power, bellowing the lyrics to the point where I can imagine her standing on top of a rooftop in the ruined city, singing out at loud as she can to the world, regardless if anyone’s listening. Then on the Japanese version, it’s much the opposite, the singer audibly brakes down and is singing the final chorus through tears which makes it just as powerful in a different way. In a way, they’re the representations of that depressive and triumphant nature of the song I referenced.

NieR: Automata has an almost infinite number of layers to its story and the meanings behind it and very similarly this song has just as many layers to its lyrics and melodies that it’s something I truly never get tired of hearing.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, I’d love to hear which tracks from games means so much to you either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure you come back here this time next week for a rundown of my favourite video packages in WWE history!

My Favourite Game For Every Year I’ve Lived

As of 3:45AM this morning, I am a 20-year-old. I know most of you probably just groaned at how young that is and I’m sorry…sort of.

Regardless, I thought I’d do something a little interesting today and look back through every year that I have been alive on this Earth and talk about what my favourite game from that year was and why. Of course, a lot of these games I didn’t play in the year they came out because I wasn’t that clever of a 2-month-old, but I’ve looked through as many lists as I can of games that came out in each year and picked my favourite from my current day perspective.

So let’s take a look through the years and see what greets us.

1999 – Rollercoaster Tycoon

I’ve had quite the on-again, off-again relationships with theme park builders. There have been games like RCT 3 that sparked my love for the franchise, then shit like RCT 4 & World completely tore that love down with some horrible systems until being happily revived a number of years ago thanks to Planet Coaster’s released, but the one game that’s always been undeniably great is the original Rollercoaster Tycoon.

For one thing, it was an incredibly impressive achievement in programming. The game was written in x86 assembly language, which is about as close to the base level of programming that you can get without directly inputting 1s and 0s. What that meant is that the game could be filled with ludicrous amounts of detail in almost every nook and cranny of the game. You could have thousands of guest wandering around the park all with their own thoughts and decisions to make about what they enjoyed and what they didn’t about the park, combining this with the bright visual design made for a game that felt so very alive and far beyond its time.

2000 – The Sims

What’s interesting about The Sims is how the fact that it was designed as a totally different game ended being to its benefit. For those that are unaware, The Sims started life as an architecture simulator, with the focus being around modern home design, The Sims themselves were just background decoration to make the game feel more alive, but as development progressed it became clear that actually there was a lot more fun to be had out of managing their lives.

What this meant is that both sides of the game were given such an immense level of care and attention poured into them that it created a style of game that has genuinely never been able to be replicated, there are no “Simslike” games, just The Sims and that’s because the perfect storm that brought this game into being could never realistically happen again.

2001 – Sonic Adventure 2

It’s fairly common knowledge that 3D Sonic games are far inferior to their 2D counterparts, but for my money, this was the best version of the 3D Sonic the Hedgehog formula.

It was a game that understood what was fun about Sonic games and focused in heavily on them, in combination with the fact that the development had largely learnt their lessons from the failings of the original. While the Knuckles/Rouge stages got a bit repetitive, the other two types of stages created a fast-paced and joyous adventure, with a plot that was at the very least competently written, which is more than can be said for most other Sonic games.

Ultimately there’s a reason that many Sonic fans are still clamouring for another entry in the Sonic Adventure series and that’s because this game understood what Sonic should feel like in 3D and left a lasting impression on those that played it.

2002 – The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

When I fell in love with Skyrim not long after it’s release, it was only natural that I look back through the franchise to see if there was anything worthwhile. I wasn’t overly enthralled by Oblivion, but eventually, I decided to give Morrowind a whirl and it thoroughly captured my attention.

It’s a very different game to Skyrim, but that just made it all the more intriguing because I hadn’t (and still haven’t) played an RPG quite like it. It’s a lot more hands-off than most RPGs I’ve played and that honestly meant that I became more involved in the world as a result out of necessity. Those ideas the game introduced me to, such as not being given a quest marker for everything and being left alone to solve things on my own are mentalities that I’ve since taken into RPGs since then and I absolutely love it now when a game takes a step back and says “go on, work it out”.

While there are plenty of areas that I think modern game design has completely eclipsed it in, this game fundamentally changed the way I play open-world games, which is no small feat.

2003 – Beyond Good & Evil

It’s not very often that the culture of the location where the development studio is housed comes across so heavily in a game that isn’t about that culture, but it’s what gives Beyond Good & Evil so much of its unique charm, which is exactly what makes this game so special.

Everything from the visual design to the writing is oozing with this wonderful sense of charm that makes the game an absolute joy to experience as well as play. The game didn’t really innovate anything groundbreaking when it came to gameplay mechanics, but instead took in features from several other game genres and applied them to make a very unique feeling game that could easily be described as both an action-adventure and RPG game.

With a sequel on the horizon, it’s great to take a look back at its roots and realise that there hasn’t been anything quite like this game since it’s release and there probably never will be.

2004 – N

Although later entries into the franchise would expand greatly upon this formula, it’s hard to deny that the original N was a mainstay of free internet gaming for a very long time.

There had been other games before this that ramped up the difficulty of the platforming genre to levels such as this, but it had never been done this cleanly and intelligently. Most times before this when platformers were this difficult, it’s because they were arcade machines, designed to eat away at all of your spare change, but this was an entirely free game. It was clear from the moment you booted it up that this game was made by people with an extensive understanding of what makes a good platformer and they were able to apply that knowledge to create the best kind of difficult platforming game.

The single screened nature, the simplistic but effective hazards and extremely satisfying movement boiled down one of the old genres in gaming history to its absolute essence and created a game based solely focused around that and could easily act as an archetype for the rest of the genre.

2005 – Black & White 2

Most of the games I’ve mentioned so far are accepted by the general gaming community as great games, this, however, this is a game for me.

Black & White 2 didn’t do anything special or groundbreaking and there’s nothing in it that hadn’t already been done in other games. However, what it did do, is manage to include everything I love about the real-time strategy genre and ball it all up in a single experience. Generally, I’ve always preferred turn-based to real-time when it comes to strategies, but this game feels like it was specifically tailored to my tastes in the genre.

I get so much joy out of building my cities in this game because it’s such a simplistic yet joyous system. I find it so much fun to plot out every inch of my city, placing a sea of foundations and watching my villagers slowly build up the city. You throw on top of that the catharsis in seeing a giant army storm your city, only to be completely wiped out when you drop a massive rock on them and allowing me to train a 10 storey tall cow to play with my people and hip thrust enemy catapults to death.

I don’t expect anyone else to like Black & White 2 anywhere near as much as me, but I’m quite happy to sit in the corner and play on my own with this wonderous toy built specifically for me.

2006 – Hitman: Blood Money

One of the things that has always made the Hitman franchise so much fun is it’s total lack of fear when it comes to going out there where it comes to its ideas for level design. There are plenty of games based around going in and assassinating targets, but it’s the level design that makes Hitman stand head and shoulders above the rest and Blood Money is far and away when that was at it’s best.

It had no hesitation at all when it came to creating some crazy themes for levels and designing them to perfection. Every corner brings in such interesting visuals and absolute genius understands of how it would work to play. The game will take you to such weird places as the Heaven and Hell club and Las Vegas casinos, which makes a level on a fairly ordinary suburb stand out amongst the crowd, despite having a fairly mundane setting.

In addition to that, it’s a game that properly understood the Hitman formula and nailed the puzzle-solving element of working how what’s the best way to assassinate targets, while still leaving plenty of the quirky fun there for players to enjoy.

2007 – Portal

A game has to be something special to remain at the forefront of the gaming consciousness for so damn long.

Back when Valve was a video game company that still made video games, it seemed like they would never be able to make lightning strike twice after the overwhelming success of Half-Life 2 and I doubt Valve even expected Portal to be such a success given how they tacked it onto the Orange Box as a side attraction to Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, however no-one should ever underestimate the pure genius of Kim Swift and those that worked with her at Valve.

Truly a puzzle game like no other, Portal took all of the lessons of level design that we’d learnt over the years and decided to apply them to a puzzle game about using rips in reality to gets from one side of the room to the other. Once the puzzle mechanics and pure design elements were nailed down to a T, all of that iconic Valve charm was injected in to make one of the cleanest games ever.

Portal has become one of the cornerstones of “nerd culture” online, but behind all of it is a game that truly broke ground in the puzzle genre and provided the audience with something it would genuinely never forget.

2008 – Pokemon Platinum

The best Pokemon game. Also my first Pokemon game.

As anyone who’s ever interacted with me in real life will tell you, it’s almost impossible to imagine me without Pokemon in my life, when it comes to gaming franchises there is simply none I like as much. T-Shirts, over 100 figurines, posters, artwork, a pendant I wear almost daily and even the header image for this very blog. All of it is thanks to this game.

Pokemon is part of what got me through some tough times, always serving to cheer me up when I was feeling crappy, but also just as important during the highs, being responsible for some of my happiest gaming moments. It was the ideas and the formula that this game introduced me to that ingrained in me the beginnings of an unbreakable adoration for the franchise that burns all the brighter to this day.

2009 – Minecraft

Ok, so I’m cheating a bit here and going with the Alpha release, not the 2011 official release, but my birthday, my list, my rules.

What really is there to say about Minecraft? You know what it is, you don’t need me to tell you. Regardless of its cultural significance, or it’s the ability to make ALL THE MONEY, it means a lot to me personally. When I found Minecraft was when I started to form many of my online habits that I keep to this day. It was the first time I got into Youtube as my main platform of video entertainment (yes, even more than TV) and it was also the first time I got involved with an online community.

No matter what friends I had or what kind of things they liked, it was very easy to set a mini server up and play Minecraft together. It’s far and away my most played game of all time and honestly to try and explain what makes it so great would be to do it a disservice. Quite honestly, I think the fact that ten years down the line, it’s still just as – if not more – popular as ever tells you all you need to know.

2010 – Sid Meier’s Civilization V

As mentioned earlier, turn-based strategies are my favourite kind of strategy game and I’ve not had more fun with one than I’ve had with Civ 5.

I’m well aware that plenty of people have problems with Civilization, but it’s just the right balance of complexity and user-friendly so that it’s not super basic and boring if you play it frequently, but is also not too difficult to learn if you’re someone who liked TBS games. I’ve spent countless hours playing Civ games with various people, weaving great tapestries of war and peace.

I have very fond memories of winning games by playing both of my opponents against each other at every opportunity and double-crossing both of them at the last second and just as vivid memories of being betrayed countless times leaving me in total ruin. The length of games means you get fully invested in everything you’re doing and it can create some extremely memorable moments as you play through all of history.

2011 – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I tried to generally keep this list to one game per franchise, but there was no way I could avoid talking about Skyrim, which took everything I love about RPGs and rolled it into one.

There are plenty of valid complaints out there with Bethesda’s melee combat system, but I find it incredibly enjoyable and it allows for great variety when it comes to play styles. Second, only to Minecraft in terms of playtime, I’ve done the same quests and dungeons countless times in Skyrim and I honestly never get tired of it because of the sheer number of ways I can play through everything.

Every place you went to in Skyrim felt like a part of a living, breathing world and the more I learnt about what was going on, the more I wanted to get involved and make a difference. The visual design is also something unmatched in the genre as far as I’m concerned, Skyrim has such a beautiful sense of culture to it no matter where you look and not real-world culture either, it’s own culture that the game itself has cultivated through its world design.

Last year’s announcement of The Elder Scrolls VI is honestly the most excited I’ve been about something in quite a while and that’s entirely thanks to how much Skyrim dragged me into its world and desperately made me want more.

2012 – FTL: Faster Than Light

There are certain games that you just can’t put away, no matter how much you try to separate yourself from it you constantly come back for more and cannot ever really get it out of your head, FTL is one of those games.

The idea of a longer roguelike is something that’s not often explored, but FTL proved exactly why that idea can work. With each playthrough lasting roughly an hour, it allowed you to form a bond with your crew and truely power up your ship as you dashed across the galaxy blowing up everything that stood in your way and occasionally helping someone out. More importantly, it made the final boss damn near impossible, proving that you need true mastery of all the game’s systems in order to defeat it, so much so that in the 7 years I’ve been playing this game I’ve only beat it (without cheating) once.

Even when I finally beat it though, I still had that desire to come back because no two playthroughs of the game ever look the same. With 28 different ships and hundreds of different weapons, augments, drones and even crew species, you’re never going to be able to “solve” FTL which is exactly what makes it so hard to put away and what makes it the best the roguelike genre has to offer.

2013 – Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Boats, boats, boats, I really like boats.

I’ve generally always been a fan of the Assassin’s Creed formula, I get quite a lot out of sneaking around with more streamlined stealth system and the ability to climb just about anything made for great fun and extremely compelling gameplay. What AC4 does is ask the question “What if we did that, but pirates?” and that was a very good question to ask indeed.

AC4 has all the regular hallmarks of an Assassin’s Creed game, but those mostly took a back seat to the boat-based combat which was absolutely fantastic. The number of weapons at your disposal meant there were plenty of different ways to tackle any situation and you had to be very careful going into almost any encounter. Once you were in the heat of battle though, it was an absolute blast. I had so much fun circling around the Man O’Wars unloading cannon fire into them before quickly moving out of range of their cannons, before turning my attention to the frigate that’s just decided to get involved and dropping some explosive barrels behind me to get the pesky tiny boat off of my tail.

AC4 nailed the feel of being in charge of a ship and having to deal with everything at once, making for an extremely fast-pace and adrenaline fuel experience that is yet to be matched in the genre.

2014 – Towerfall Ascension

Once again, cheating a little bit here since Towerfall technically released in 2013, but it was only on the Ouya and yes, I forgot that existed too. So I’m going with the 2014 release of the game on the consoles people actually owned.

I’ve always been of the view that games should focus primarily on being fun before anything else and there isn’t a single game in existence that provides me with as much fun as Towerfall. I played Towerfall with friends on an almost daily basis last year and it honestly never got old, because rounds will never ever go the same way. You can have down to the wire epic fights that are super tense and it’s joyous, but you can also do a series on incredibly stupid movements and die instantly and that’s just as hilarious.

The singleplayer is also brilliantly designed, Matt Thornson and his team seem to have a perfect understand of how to make a game difficult, but keep it fair and that’s entirely clear in Towerfall’s singleplayer because every level will slowly build on your knowledge of the game until you get to a point where you can tear through them no problem at all.

Towerfall is a game that I honestly think I will never get tired of and will introduce to all of my friends at any opportunity because there’s so much fun to be had.

2015 – Rocket League

Very much not a game I expected to enjoy when I first heard about it, but there’s something about the chaos of Rocket League that drew me in and kept me there for quite a long time.

As I mentioned, it’s the chaos that took the game above the level of a regular “quirky sport” game. It filled the casual game feel that I love where you can have equal amounts of fun by playing totally casually and just messing about and playing seriously and trying to pull off skilful manoeuvres and understand how to actually make the ball go in the direction you intended it to.

Football is very much a sport that I just don’t get but when playing Rocket League I found myself easily getting lost in the moment and slipping into the role of a yelling football hooligan, beating my own drum and rubbing I in my opponent’s face, even though it was almost definitely luck that I scored. Once again it was a game that seeped into that pure joy of sitting on a sofa with friends and having a blast playing an easy to learn game that gets such joy out of me.

2016 – XCOM 2

While Civilization creates great feels of ruling empires and controlling armies, you can’t form the kind of bonds that you do with your soldiers in the XCOM games.

For one thing, as far as I’m concerned no game does turn-based strategy better. XCOM presents you with so many different abilities and playstyles that all mesh so seamlessly with each other that it doesn’t take much effort to get into a mindset where you can evaluate everything at your disposal and come up with a clear and coherent strategy for how you’re going to play out every turn. No strategy game has forced me to develop a unique way of assessing situations and devising plans before or since XCOM, which is was elevates it above standard TBS gameplay.

What makes the experience of playing XCOM so special though, is the level of customization and personality you’re able to give your soldiers. Thanks to a couple of additions from mods (which the dev team made very easily accessible on PC) I was able to give all fo my soldiers unique looks and in my mind that gave them personalities. I become attached to all of my soldiers in XCOM and it ends up massively raising the stakes because if you lose a soldier, that can be devastating to both the mission and your game as a whole.

You come away from XCOM with genuine war stories about that time where a last-ditch attempt, 5% chance shot hit and saved everyone from certain death, or situations that when the opposite way and that’s the kind of extension beyond the game that very few other games can provide me with.

2017 – NieR: Automata

I honestly don’t even know where to begin with NieR: Automata.

I’ve never before had a game that weighs on my mind so much a week after finishing it. That was what I found with NieR: Automata, is that I just couldn’t put it away in my mind, partly because it was easily one of the best hack and slash experiences I’ve ever played but also because of the story is told and the number of layers that there were to everything it touched upon.

There’s no way I could ever do the story justice in as few words as I’m going to use here, but what this game presented to me, is something that’s really stuck with me since finishing it and I’m not even entirely sure what that something is. It’s not only the content of the story but the method in which it chooses to tell it, almost from the very beginning, all of the pieces of the puzzle are there for you, but the game is so clever at obscuring how they fit together until it’s ready to show you that every revelation seems like such a big hit; not to mention, it takes some balls in the modern era to make a game that you have to complete twice to get to the second half of the game.

I’ve had so much time to process NieR: Automata now, I’ve watched a bunch of video essays and the like on its themes and story and I just still can’t remove it from my mind and that is truly the mark of a special game.

2018 – Octopath Traveler

Let’s face it, what really is left for me to say about this game.

I’ve done a full review, talked about my favourite music and each of the characters so comprehensively by this point that I honestly don’t think there’s anything new for me to say about why I love Octopath Traveler so damn much.

It took a deep and fun turn-based combat system and placed in a world completely full to the brim with life. The visuals, the sounds the characters and their stories, everything in the game was focused on making the game pull you all the way into what it had to offer. I’ve played through it two complete times now and both times were just as fun as each other despite both being around 70 hours long.

Octopath Traveler has such a clean mix of every element of a game and does all of them to such a high level of quality that I just find it impossible to stop talking about it.

2019 (so far) – Descenders

That’s the way to go about it Ryan, make a list talking about all the games you’ve loved through the years and end it on one that’s not even remotely similar to any of them. Good going.

There’s never been a game before that since discovering it, I’ve played almost every single day I’ve been able to for at least half an hour; I even have to take a couple of weeks away from Minecraft every once in a while, but not Descenders. Ever since I discovered it on early access in February 2018, I just can’t put it down.

The way it treats movement is so damn smooth and damn near flawless that I totally forgive some of it’s rougher edges. As I stated in my review late last week, the smoothness and flow create a sense of pure enjoyment that no other game can give me. Plenty of games have tried their hand as extreme biking and they all have their appeals, but none nailed that feeling of satisfying movement quite like Descenders, which is why it’s currently my favourite game to release this year.

And that’s the list! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, let me know your thoughts either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Make sure to come back here this Saturday for the next entry in my Doctor Who Reviews!

Every Wrestlemania of the 2010s Ranked

The end of the decade brings great opportunities to us all. It’s a time to reflect on who we used to be, and who we want to become, and to take a long hard look at how we’ve changed over the past ten years.

It’s a great opportunity for people to rank things that happened in that decade online.

Perhaps no other sports industry changes quicker or more often than the pro-wrestling industry. In 2010, there was no serious competition for WWE in sight, women’s wrestling was still considered a joke and WWE weren’t involved in shady political dealings with a problematic country.

Perhaps the best way to gauge the situation WWE was in during any given year is that year’s Wrestlemania. It’s the culmination of all the biggest and best storylines of the year that preceded it and for the most part, people’s opinion of a Wrestlemania is very similar to people’s opinion of WWE as a whole during that time frame. So with that in mind, I’ve gone back and rewatched every Wrestlemania from this decade (I know) and I’ve compiled them into these scientific rankings, let’s take a look at them, shall we?

10 – Wrestlemania 27 (2011)

Best Match: The Undertaker vs Triple H (No Holds Barred)
Worst Match: Michael Cole vs Jerry Lawler

While in 2019 the thought of The Miz as world champion and main eventing Wrestlemania might sound quite appealing to many people (myself included), in 2011 it was a very different story. Miz was yet to find a promo and in-ring style that really clicked with the audience as either a face or heel, and many people weren’t enthused by his WWE Championship run in the slightest, meaning his main event match with John Cena really felt underwhelming for the main event of the biggest show of the year.

People’s low expectations for the match would not only be met, but somehow underwhelmed when a bog-standard match between Cena and Miz ended in a Double Countout of all things. Oh, but we’re not done. The match was quickly restarted by that year’s host The Rock, so we could at least get a satisfying finish, but in the immortal words of that one Dean Ambrose gif: Nope. The match would have a dirty finish a second time when The Rock came down and hit the Rock Bottom on John Cena, allowing The Miz to retain and setting up the main event for next years Wrestlemania.

The undercard was also wildly crap for the most part with Nexus rejects The Corre being squashed in under two minutes and “Snooki”, whoever the fuck that is, going over Dolph Ziggler and LayCool. That wasn’t the worst of it though, because we had to sit through 20 pissing minutes of Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler rolling around in the ring. The match only lasted 13 minutes, but everything surrounding it made it so much worse. For one thing, it’s a match between a non-wrestler and a former wrestler who is FAR past his prime. Then add to that a number of minutes at the start being dedicated to trying to get Cole in the ring and a screwjob finish where The Anonymous Raw General Manager reversed the decision, giving Cole the win. No amount of Stunners from special guest referee Stone Cold could save this one.

Admittedly it wasn’t all bad, Edge vs Alberto Del Rio and Randy Orton vs CM Punk were fun matches to watch and Triple H vs The Undertaker was a balls to the walls epic clash between two men who wanted to destroy each other. It told a great story and had marvellous action, but it just isn’t enough to save this show from the absolute donkey turds that surround it. When you’re using the main event of your biggest show of the year simply as set up for next year’s show, you know you’ve done something horribly wrong.

9 – Wrestlemania 32 (2016)

Best Match: Charlotte Flair vs Becky Lynch vs Sasha Banks (Women’s Championship)
Worst Match: Brock Lesnar vs Dean Ambrose (Street Fight)

Oh, Roman Reigns…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

By all rights, 32 should’ve been a lot better show than it ended up being, almost every match on the show had potential to be great and several of the undercard matches were very entertaining but unfortunately, the biggest matches really let this showdown.

First up we had a returning Shane McMahon facing The Undertaker inside Hell in a Cell, which is a sentence that still sounds mental even 3 years after the fact. The story going into it was also so weird, with Shane making a shock return to the company after a 6-year absence just to vaguely threaten his dad about a lockbox that we’ve never heard about again. Shane demanded control of Raw or else he would open said lockbox, so Vince responded by saying he could have it if he beat The Undertaker in a Hell in a Cell match at Wrestlemania… Now, admittedly I’m not an expert on the subject, but I’m pretty certain that’s not how being blackmailed works.

What Vince did is like if you had a gun to someone’s head demanding they pay you £100,000 and they responded by saying you could have the money, but only if you won the Grand National first. The match itself sucked outside of Shane jumping off of the Cell and even weirder, Vince came out the next night and handed Shane control of Raw despite the fact he lost, so it was all a pointless exercise.

Next up, there’s Dean Ambrose vs Brock Lesnar in a Street Fight, which sounds brilliant and in the build-up to the match, it absolutely was. Dean would get in Brock’s face and wouldn’t care that a muscle covered God was staring back at him and multiple hardcore legends like Mick Foley and Terry Funk showed up to give Dean their signature weapons to use the match. According to Dean himself, he has planned out tonnes of cool spots and loads of great ideas to make the match what all the fans were hoping for, but a lazy Brock Lesnar ended up shooting them all down, making for a match that was quite simply boring.

It wasn’t all bad though, the opening ladder match was a great iteration of the multi-man ladder match formula and had a genuinely surprising, yet heartwarming winner in Zack Ryder; Chris Jericho and AJ Styles put on a damn good match even if the wrong man won and Baron Corbin made his mark by winning the ARMBAR and has arguably done better for himself than any of the other winners have since winning their trophy.

Not to mention the women’s revolution in WWE made one of it’s biggest steps forward by abolishing the awful looking Divas Championship and replaced it with the much more dignified Women’s Championship which remains to this day. Flair, Banks and Lynch would continue to make their mark by putting on the best match of the show competing for the new title as well in what would just be a taste in all the fantastic women’s wrestling we would get to see in the coming years.

Finally, though, we come to the main event. I’ve been a defender of Roman Reigns for a long time, I think he’s a good wrestler who can put on exceptional matches when given the right story and opponent, but this was awful. We can debate whether or not Reigns or Ambrose should’ve been the one to face Triple H all day, but the fact of the matter is that the match we got was a half-hour long snoozefest that plodded to an inevitable and boring conclusion.

Much like 27, there were plenty of good to great matches that took place on this show, but unfortunately, it was the biggest matches that were the biggest failures, and that has a big impact on the show overall.

8 – Wrestlemania 29 (2013)

Best Match: The Undertaker vs CM Punk
Worst Match: Mark Henry vs Ryback

Luckily, 27 & 32 are the only two shows on this list that I can honestly say I hate, though don’t expect that to mean I’m done complaining.

Mania 29 holds a special place in my heart, as it was actually the first wrestling show I watched the whole way through, with The Undertaker vs CM Punk being the first match I ever saw (not counting video games), and while I probably do hold it in higher regard than many others for that reason, it’s by no means perfect.

This show contained several boring matches, with a world title match between Alberto Del Rio and Jack Swagger having all of its momentum killed by people who viewed the angle as racist not understanding how wrestling tells it’s stories. Pile on top of that a match between Mark Henry and Ryback that made me feel no emotions at all the whole way through until the ending which made Ryback look like a total chump. Then to top it all off you’ve got a rematch of last year’s main event in Rock vs Cena which was far inferior to their match the previous year thanks to The Rock getting injured part of the way through.

Thankfully, that’s all the negativity out of the way because I liked pretty much everything else on the show. The Shield’s Wrestlemania debut match was admittedly nothing special but it was a huge moment for the trio and began to properly establish them as the giant of a faction they would soon become. The tag team goodness would keep rolling thanks to Team Hell No defending their titles against Dolph Ziggler and Big E Langston in a fun match, and while I know it wouldn’t amount to anything, Fandango’s shocking win over Chris Jericho was an excellent move for the time.

You then had two big marque matches which for the most part delivered. Triple H vs Brock Lesnar is admittedly nowhere near the best match either man has had, but I thought it was a really fun one to watch, where the pace was slow enough to feel impactful, without being so slow as to be boring. Then you had The Undertaker vs CM Punk, which as I mentioned was the first match I ever saw, but even without that nostalgia, it’s still an absolutely brilliant contest that stands head and shoulders above any other match on the show.

Overall, Wrestlemania 29 has a lot of good, but given that there’s only really one match that I’d classify as truly great and a handful of matches that were downright crap, it falls a few more spots than my nostalgic heart would like it to.

7 – Wrestlemania 33 (2017)

Best Match: Seth Rollins vs Triple H (Unsanctioned)
Worst Match: Bray Wyatt vs Randy Orton (WWE Championship)

At the time, I thought I liked this show a lot more, but looking back on it now it had a fair whack of stuff that really doesn’t hold up.

Thankfully, there weren’t many matches at Mania 33 that were outright bad. The only two matches I’d really give that distinction to are the Smackdown Women’s Championship 6 Way, which was unfortunately given the pre-main event death slot and there was really nothing memorable about it. The biggest failure of the show, however, was in it’s WWE Championship match between Orton and Wyatt, where the hell and face roles were arguably the wrong way round, the only memorable thing that happened was Wyatt projecting images of bugs onto the canvas and arguably the wrong man won.

That said, there were also only a couple of matches I’d say were actually good. Lesnar vs Goldberg was an adrenaline-fueled car crash of a match that was far better than it had any right to be; Styles vs Shane McMahon was the most surprisingly good match I’ve seen in a long time with a lot of really fun action in it, and Rollins vs Triple H was pretty much everything I hoped for from that match and more.

The main problem of the show comes from all the other matches on the show, which were perfectly fine, but nothing all that special or memorable. The Tag Team Ladder Match had some memorable moments and the Hardy’s return was great, but I honestly can’t say the match as a whole was any good; similarly the Women’s 4 Way had some good stuff to it, but nothing worth howling about and the hottest match going into the show in Owens vs Jericho just didn’t come together in a satisfying way. Even the main event – though emotional the post-match stuff was – really wasn’t brilliant thanks to Undertaker’s age and Roman’s relative inexperience (only compared to Taker of course).

As a whole, 33 had a lot less stuff that was downright bad than 29, but still, when I think back to this show, all I really think of is a disappointment that some of the most anticipated matches left me with.

6 – Wrestlemania 28 (2012)

Best Match: The Undertaker vs Triple H (Hell in a Cell)
Worst Match: Kane vs Randy Orton

28 is one of those shows that’s generally only remembered for one match, but there’s actually a decent amount of stuff on this show to like.

You had Punk vs Jericho which is an underrated match if you ask me and really deserves more attention, these two clicked so well in the ring and it probably should’ve been the main event. Also, there was the actual main event of Rock vs Cena 1, which, although it wasn’t up to the standards of a truly great match, was certainly a lot better than I think most people remember it being, and far outshines the match they would have a year later.

Then, of course, you have The Undertaker vs Triple H in the “End of an Era” match. Even though the tagline ended up meaning nothing, it’s still one of the best in-ring stories I’ve ever seen told in WWE. All the moving parts of Taker’s streak, Shawn Michaels as the referee and Triple H’s desperation to prove he can beat The Undertaker came together so beautifully in this match to create some of the most memorable moments in Wrestlemania history and perhaps the most exciting kick out I’ve ever seen, when Taker kicked out of a combo Sweet Chin Music and Pedigree.

The main problem that this show suffers from is being filled with a whole lot of mediocrity. Two great matches and one pretty good one aren’t going to save a card where the entire first hour is just plain boring, with an 18 second match that annoyed everyone, a 10 minute match that was even worse and then a whole bunch of short matches that ultimately meant nothing, and that includes the Intercontinental Championship match.

Pretty much the only reason it sits above 33, is because 28’s best matches were better than 33’s best matches, everything outside of that is just a sea of snoozefests on both shows.

5 – Wrestlemania 35 (2019)

Best Match: Daniel Bryan vs Kofi Kingston (WWE Championship)
Worst Match: Triple H vs Batista (No Holds Barred)

The most recent Wrestlemania on this list, 35 definitely gets some bonus points for how feel-good it was throughout the whole show.

I don’t know if someone slipped something into Vince’s drink or what, but this show was filled with loads of fun, crowd-pleasing moments from start to finish. We kicked off with Seth Rollins slaying Brock Lesnar in about 3 minutes in one hell of an exciting moment, then there was a really exciting 4 Way Tag title match won by The Usos in exciting fashion, followed quickly by The IIconics picking up the Women’s Tag Team titles in what was admittedly meant to be a heel win, but felt great thanks to their innate charm.

The good times kept on rolling, when Kofi Kingston overcame Daniel Bryan in the best match, and most emotional moment of the show, with a 20+ minute pure wrestling match between the best wrestler in the world and the biggest babyface in WWE that will most certainly be in the conversation when December rolls around and we discuss Match of the Year. There were then a couple of less high-key feel-good wins, like Roman Reigns winning his first singles PPV match since recovering from Leukaemia, and The Demon Balor winning back his IC title from Lashley.

Then, of course, there was the first-ever women’s match in the main event of Wrestlemania, with Ronda Rousey, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch showing their stuff in a match that admittedly, didn’t live up to expectations, but I still thought was great regardless; and of course Becky Lynch came away with the victory, ending the show holding both Women’s titles aloft.

My main problem with this show is everything that took place after the WWE Championship match (which was about halfway through the show) because every match that wasn’t the main event was either boring or crap. Joe vs Mysterio was a shocking moment, but I can’t help but feel it would’ve been more entertaining if they’d had a proper match; Reigns vs Drew – though the victory for Reigns was a nice moment – the match was so boring to watch, Drew just worked a slow pace where he “wore Reigns down” for like ten minutes before Roman mounted his comeback.

While I’ve defended the choice in Corbin beating Angle, and I maintain it was the right decision, the match was really nothing worth watching. Corbin can put on decent matches when he’s with a good opponent, but Angle’s age and wear and tear on his body meant he just wasn’t up to the task on this one. Then you have Triple H vs Batista which was so damn boring (and the longest match on the show) that I actually went and cleaned the hobs on my oven partway through.

Ultimately, Mania 35 will be remembered for its great emotional moments more than it will its boring ones, and perhaps if I did this list in another 10 years I’d rank it higher, but since it’s still so fresh in all of our minds, I can’t ignore the bad stuff.

4 – Wrestlemania 34 (2018)

Best Match: Kurt Angle & Ronda Rousey vs Triple H & Stephanie McMahon
Worst Match: Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns (Universal Championship)

Although immediately after the show I had a much more negative opinion of 34 than I did 35, with the power of hindsight, I’ve realised there was actually a lot to like on this show, even if some of the bigger moments were crap.

Throughout the show, there were plenty of great matches, the opening triple threat for the Intercontinental Championship was one of the best openers I’ve seen for a Wrestlemania with plenty of fast-paced action to get us all hyped up, then there was Charlotte vs Asuka, which had its faults, but despite it not getting enough time and arguably the wrong woman winning, it was still a great marquee singles match that helped grow the already very prestigious women’s division in WWE even more.

The good times didn’t stop there either, Ronda Rousey’s debut match absolutely blew everyone away with how great it was, with the pace keeping quick the whole time, some brief intergender spots, which we don’t see very often and Kurt Angle wrestled a match where his age wasn’t immediately obvious. One of the most unique storylines in recent memory concluded as The Undertaker finally appeared and dispatched John Cena in less than 3 minutes, a 10-Year-old won the Raw Tag Team Championships in a move that really divides opinion, but I thought it was great, the in-ring return of Daniel Bryan and Styles & Nakamura put on a fantastic match for the WWE Championship, even if it didn’t live up to the (arguably unreachable) expectations fans had for it.

That said, scattered throughout were some pretty big low-lights, which is probably what’s responsible for most fans looking back on this show negatively. The 4 way for the US title wasn’t a bad match by stretch, but it certainly wasn’t all that entertaining, especially not compared to the IC title match that preceded it, The Bludgeon Brothers, unfortunately, dragged down what could’ve been a really exciting match against The Usos and The New Day with their slow and hard-hitting offence that unfortunately rules most of this very short match.

Alexa Bliss vs Nia Jax wasn’t anything especially awful but it certainly failed to capture anyone’s attention for very long. Jax & Alexa both have great in-ring moments (Alexa especially), but I’ve never felt these two really clicked in the ring and it was painfully obvious in this match. Then there was the main event, which was just a prime snoozefest, the action was slow and boring, pretty much the opposite of their great match from three years earlier and things just never really picked up. The longer it went on, the more ridiculous it got, with Reigns kicking out of a stupid number of F5’s which was quite simply laughable in how over the top it was, and it ended with a giant middle finger in Brock retaining, presumably just so WWE could coax him into signing a new contract.

If you look at this Mania trying to find things to be upset about, you aren’t going to be short of things to find, but on balance, I think this show as a whole was actually a pretty enjoyable one.

3 – Wrestlemania 26 (2010)

Best Match: The Undertaker vs Shawn Michaels
Worst Match: Bret Hart vs Mr McMahon

Ther earliest Wrestlemania on this list, and looking at the card it really does feel worlds away from where we are now.

This is one of those Wrestlemanias that only has one or two really great matches on it, but it also only has one or two bad matches as well, so overall it gets a pretty good wrap and running through the card, I tend to agree with that sentiment.

The only matches I’d actually classify as bad are the 10 Diva tag team match that only went 3 minutes and was won by the heels, but sadly this kind of match just comes with the time period, and the way too long Street Fight between the then 62-year-old Vince Mcmahon and 50-year-old Bret Hart, who wasn’t allowed to take a bump. It was ten boring minutes of the various members of the Hart family beating up a 62-year-old bastard that served no purpose whatsoever other than to give the lamest of payoffs to the Montreal Screwjob, which over a decade ago by this point.

Everything else on the show, however, is ok-amazing, you’ve got the last Money in the Bank ladder match to take place at a Wrestlemania, and while this wasn’t the best incarnation of the match, a multi-man ladder match is never boring to watch. There was also the triple threat match between all three members of legacy, which Orton probably shouldn’t have won, but it told a good story and was a solid watch, then there was Triple H vs Sheamus which was way better than it had any right to be, with brutal-looking offence and what felt like genuine animosity between the two men.

Rey Mysterio vs CM Punk was as good a match as that sounds, with some great story stuff in there too, as Punk was still in his “straight edge saviour” phase during this show. Chris Jericho vs Edge was also as good as you’d think that match would be and was actually quite surprising with its result as Jericho retained his world title. John Cena vs Batista was a match that didn’t quite live up to the rest of this show’s great matches but was a decent enough match.

Then, of course, there’s the main event of The Undertaker vs Shawn Michaels, with Taker’s undefeated streak against HBK’s career in a perfect sequel to their match the year prior. I could gush for hours about this match because it was just brilliant, the back and forth action was superb, the high spots were memorable without being over the top and the character work was brilliant. Undertaker standing over Shawn, almost pleading with him to stay down, only for Shawn to slap Taker right across the face in defiance is a moment that still sends chills down my spine when I watch it. A perfect send-off for one of the greatest to ever step in the ring.

Much like 34, there’s plenty there if you’re the type of person who goes into it looking for the negatives, but I think that this is a show where all of the good stuff far outweighs any of the bad, and most of the lasting images from this show, are positive moments.

2 – Wrestlemania 31 (2015)

Best Match: Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns (vs Seth Rollins) (WWE Championship)
Worst Match: The Bella Twins vs AJ Lee & Paige

31 is one of those rare gems of a show, where I can honestly say I have nothing to complain about. I’ve always thought of this show as one of my all-time favourites, every match has something to like about it, the main event far exceeded expectations and ended in what is genuinely my favourite moment to ever happen in pro-wrestling, and upon watching it back for the first time in a while, I stand by those thoughts.

The opener is a chaotic ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship and everyone got a chance to shine in this one, people were flying all over the place and the ladder spots all felt so brutal and weren’t overdone or too gimmicky like we can often see in matches like this. It also got the show off to a great foot as Daniel Bryan won the title, even if he got reinjured and had to vacate it soon after. Following that match, Rollins put proof to the statement that he can have a brilliant match with anybody, putting on a very entertaining bout with Randy Orton, featuring the single greatest RKO to ever happen in the history of the universe.

Triple H vs Sting came up next and this match didn’t make a lick of sense, but man was it fun to watch. Triple H hadn’t slowed down too much by this point and Sting was still as good as he always was, pour on top of that DX vs nWo shenanigans (even if it made no sense for the nWo to side with Sting) and you’ve got your self a nostalgia-fest that you just can’t look away from. You could argue all night and day whether or not Triple H should’ve won (he shouldn’t have) but what’s important is that the match was great. There was AJ Lee & Paige vs The Bella Twins after this, which wasn’t anything special, but also wasn’t anything bad, just a bit short and forgettable.

After this, we got to see Rusev peak in WWE as he rode into Wrestlemania on a freaking tank and then lost to John Cena in unsurprising fashion. The match, however, was great and was one of the earliest glimpses of Cena becoming the guy who just put on great matches with everybody, not mention this title win for Cena started off the “US Open Challenge” era of the title which is arguably the best in its history. After that, we had our “Waste time so the sun can set” portion of the night, which featured The Rock and a debuting Ronda Rousey taking out Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, in a really cool moment that only seems better now knowing what would become of Ronda in WWE.

The Undertaker was up next facing Bray Wyatt in Taker’s first match since The Streak was shattered. The match was ok but suffered a little from Bray reportedly getting a minor ankle injury in rehearsals earlier that day, but it was still fun to watch these two characters interact in the ring. Finally, we came to the main event where I think it’s fair to say that expectations were quite low. Roman was coming off of his disaster of a Royal Rumble win and fan disdain for him was at an all-time high, meanwhile, Lesnar was getting a lot of heat for being an absentee champion (if only they knew…) so people weren’t going to be happy with either result here.

Then the match got underway and surprised everyone by being really good. It had a real sense of brutality that was missing from a lot of their later encounters, and you really got the feeling that these two men were out to destroy each other. All this was great, but it didn’t take away from the fact that the fans were set to boo both men out of the building if they won. Enter Seth Rollins. In what I honestly consider to be the greatest wrestling moment ever, both Reigns and Lesner were down and seemingly out following an F-5, when Seth Rollins’ music hit and the Money in the Bank contract holder came sprinting down the ramp. Little more than a minute later, Rollins stomped Reigns’ head into the canvas and won his first World Championship in what has rightly been labelled as the heist of the century.

Mania 31 is a show that just fills me with joy whenever I take the time to go back and watch, and while it’s not quite the best Wrestlemania of this decade, I think it is most certainly is my personal favourite.

1 – Wrestlemania 30 (2014)

Best Match: Daniel Bryan vs Triple H
Worst Match: Vickie Guerrero Invitational (Divas Championship)

Mania 30 is one of the best examples of how great modern WWE can be when they really nail a storyline, even if it was mostly by accident. This show only had 7 matches on the main show – the lowest since Wrestlemania 12 (1996) only had 6 matches – it’s somewhat of an oddity when compared to the rest of the Wrestlemania’s from this decade, which are known for being far too long for their own good; however I think the lower number of matches helped the show in the long run.

The only match on this show that I’d say was totally bad is the 14 woman match for the Diva’s Championship, which got the single biggest death slot in wrestling history, since it had to follow the ending of The Undertaker’s Wrestlemania winning streak. I couldn’t tell you anything about the match since it only lasted 6 minutes, and everyone watching was a bit pre-occupied with being devastated at the time, I imagine Natalya put a Double Sharpshooter on a couple of ladies and Michael Cole lost his mind over it and AJ Lee probably won in some heelish way.

Now onto the good, because there’s a lot to cover on this show. Even though the wrong man won, Cena vs Wyatt was a great match and helped grow Wyatt’s star power even in defeat; although a loss in a Last Man Standing match two months later would kinda mess things up. The Shield showed up to spend 3 minutes murdering some old dudes in what I maintain is one of the coolest Shield moments ever and Cesaro blew us all away by picking up The Big Show like he was nothing and dumping him to the outside in what was a great moment for the guy, even if nothing came of it in the end.

Then there’s one of two moments on this show that will go down in history as Brock Lesnar ended the 23 years & 21 matches long Wrestlemania undefeated streak of The Undertaker. This, for my money, is the single most shocking moment in wrestling history, in a way that makes it one of the weirdest and one of the best. It was so weird because it was something we genuinely never thought would happen, I remember at the time it filled me with such a strange series of emotions and all you had to do was look at social media when it happened and you could see there were people all over the stages of grief. Nothing in wrestling has ever gotten that kind of reaction before or since, it didn’t matter that the match preceding it sucked, in 50 years time no-one’s going to remember that, but for one shining moment, wrestling honestly felt like it was real and I’m not sure that feeling could ever be replicated.

Finally, we had the brilliant and uplifting conclusion to the story of Daniel Bryan. After watching him suffer for over 6 months, and finding out that he wasn’t even planned to be in the Wrestlemania main event until the fans forced WWE’s hand, this was the perfect payoff to all of it. It started off at the opening of the show, with one of the finest pure wrestling matches I’ve ever seen with Daniel Bryan vs Triple H, only to take us all the way to the main event where Bryan would overcome Randy Orton and Batista in one hell of an exciting match to claim the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. It’s the other moment from this show that will go down in history but for vastly different reasons.

Even if it wasn’t WWE’s original intentions, all that mattered is what we got in the end, and what we got is a euphoric ending to cap off one of the best all-round Wrestlemanias of all time and most certainly the best to take place in the past decade.

That’s all folks! Thank you very much for taking the time to read, please let me know what you think in the comments below, or on Twitter @10ryawoo!
Importantly, make sure to come back on Monday, where I’ll be doing something special for my birthday!