Category: Review

WWE Extreme Rules 2018: Every Match Ranked

(Originally Posted July 2018)

Well, that’ll teach me to ever be optimistic about a WWE show again…

So Extreme Rules has been and gone, and while there was some stuff to like, there was a whole bunch of stuff to hate as well, so let’s just get straight to it and rank every match from Extreme Rules 2018 from worst to best.

12 – Dolph Ziggler(c) def. Seth Rollins
(Intercontinental Championship)
(30 Minute Iron Man)

Screw everything about this match.

I’m writing this section straight after the match finished, because I want to capture the emotion I’m feeling right now. I was so excited when I saw that this was going to be the main event, I thought it was a sure-fire match of the year contender and we’d all be in for a treat. But that was simply an exercise in proving just how wrong it’s possible for a man to be.

First of all, if you were in that crowd, fuck you. You didn’t even give the match a chance before crapping all over it, you found your one joke that you all thought was hilarious (and I promise you, you were the only ones) and just drilled it into the ground not even paying attention to the match; AND THEN you have the audacity to be upset when it ends in a draw, so fuck you.

Then the match itself, which was pure disappointment from start to finish. Seth pulling out two falls less than ten minutes in made no sense when we’ve seen both men go through far worse beatings. I thought Drew running in and beating down Seth would add quite a good story element for the match if it had any bearing on the match long-term, which it didn’t. Sure, it allowed Ziggler to equalise, but I really don’t see how the last 20 minutes of the match would’ve been any different if we had gone into it 0-0 instead of 3-3.

Instead, after the first ten minutes, in which six out of the eight falls in this match took place, the two men proceeded to put on a back and forth match that was….fine I guess? It wasn’t terrible but it’s utter shit compared to what we’ve already seen these two do over the past month.

Then of course. the match ends in a draw and Kurt Angle comes out simply to get a hometown pop and restart the thing, only for it to end again two seconds later, when Ziggler pins Rollins thanks to Drew popping up again, and I honestly couldn’t be more furious and disappointed right now.

I’m writing this last paragraph the next day, and looking back I feel that, while it wasn’t a terrible match, the combination of the crowd, lazy storytelling and ok, but not great, action all combined to make a rather horrible watching experience, so I stand by my decision to place it last.

11 – Carmella(c) def. Asuka
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

Ok, so I ranked Rollins vs Ziggler last because it was the one I least enjoyed watching, but if I were ranking these matches purely on the wrestling, this would be last.

I was very tempted to just put a picture of James Ellsworth as the header for this section, because that’s all that really mattered in this match. Less than 30 seconds in he was getting involved by just throwing stuff down to Carmella; which seems like a fatal flaw of the whole Shark Cage concept, why not just put the cage at the top of the ramp instead of directly above the ring?

The two women would then put on the most basic of matches, before we got to all that Vince McMahon really cared about seeing in this match it seems. So yes, in a move that – to quote Corey Graves – “Even Stevie Wonder saw coming” Ellsworth was able to escape from the shark cage, except in true Ellsworth fashion, he fucks it up and leaves himself hanging upside-down from the cage. At which point Asuka smiles with glee and starts batting him about like a pinata, but this distraction allowed Carmella to regain her bearings and, say it with me now, score another dirty win over Asuka.

Remember when Asuka first debuted and we were worried they were going to treat her as just another woman? Then they gave us false hope with the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania, and since then she’s been nothing but another cog in the machine; and while Carmella’s heelish wins are getting her good heat and serving her well, it’s starting to wear thin, and I really hope we can get this over with soon.

10 – Finn Balor def. Baron Corbin

Apparently Finn Balor was the first ever Universal Champion.

Well, that’s all commentary seemed to want to talk about anyway, probably because it’s a darn slight more interesting than whatever Balor’s stuck doing nowadays. This match was perfectly passable, I found myself getting into it a bit in the middle, but that illusion was soon shattered thanks to the finish; where we all got to tick another box off our bingo cards as Balor rolled Corbin up for a *cough* “surprise” win.

Not really much else to say, I’ve no doubt Corbin will get his win back on Raw tonight anyway.

9 – The B-Team def. Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt(c)
(Raw Tag Team Championships)

So, The Authors of Pain are winning those titles VERY soon.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved this surprise win, but if you think the B-Team are anything other than transitional champions, you’re in for a rude awakening.

After WWE failed to capitalize on the popularity of things like The Fashion Police and Rusev Day, we were all pretty certain the B-Team was going to be another one of those stories; but once in a while, if the wind’s blowing in the right direction, WWE go for it. However, I can’t say I’m fully behind this one, because while it created a great moment, I think it might do more harm than good in the long run.

First off, think about how much this damages Matt and Bray. They could’ve been so unbelievably over with those titles, but instead they didn’t do anything for a couple of months and then lost them to a team whose name is a joke about how crap they are. Also I feel like AOP would benefit more from squashing a team who actually seemed like a threat, instead of two guys who we know don’t stand a chance anyway.

But all of that is a little way away, for now, let’s just enjoy the moment.

8 – Bobby Lashley def. Roman Reigns

You know what? This was a lot less crap than I was anticipating.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was by no means world-class and when it came to the result I still couldn’t care less, but I actually found myself quite into this one. It didn’t quite have the urgency I would’ve liked to see from these two, but from about the halfway mark, I found the match quite compelling.

In my predictions I was certain of a Roman Reigns win, but this match did a very good job of making me doubt that fact, before finally smashing it with Lashley pinning Reigns, with a Spear no less.

Once again though, I’m sad to say I can’t be pleased by this result, because this means we’re getting Lashley vs Lesnar at Summerslam, and unless Strowman gets involved, Lesnar is walking away with that title still over his shoulder.

7 – Andrade “Cien” Almas def. Sin Cara

Tranquilo.

I so hope they keep building Almas up like this, the man has all the makings to be one my favourite wrestlers ever, I just hope they don’t treat him like they did Bobby Roode. That said, this was certainly a great start. While I’d rather it wasn’t on the pre-show, it doesn’t matter too much in this instance. It was just a solid match with a couple of impressive spots, all designed to make Almas look good, so please keep this up WWE, and you’ll have another shining star on your hands.

6 – SAnitY def. The New Day
(Tables Match)

Given that this show ended up running 15 minutes short, this really should’ve been on the main card.

Regardless, this was a really fun match with a lot to love. I really hope this isn’t the last match we see between these two because I think they could work magic if given the right build and enough time.

Tables matches can often seem a bit boring thanks to how contrived it can be for wrestlers to have to set up tables and put them in specific places so you know what’s going to happen; but they were able to avoid that in this match. Having 6 men allowed things to be set up while others kept the flow going in the ring, and it meant that the match didn’t have to stop at any point, which gets around a big issue with these types of matches.

However the main focus of this match, is holy crap how much money is Killian Dain going to make in his career? Even if SAnitY as a faction falls flat on its face, Killian Dain is going to have a very successful career, a 300 pound man who moves like he’s 200 and can seemingly do just about anything.

5 – Alexa Bliss(c) def. Nia Jax
(Raw Women’s Championship)
(Extreme Rules)

Ok, so this match was pretty light on surprises, but overall, I had a pretty good time watching this match.

I’m not entirely sure why Natalya was there, pretty much just an excuse for Ronda to get involved because she just can’t take seeing her friend get beat up or something. That aside, the action here was fast and pretty fun to watch. I feel like they could’ve used the Extreme Rules stipulation a little bit better, instead of just as an excuse for everyone to get involved; not to mention that Nia just seemed to disappear once Ronda jumped into the mix.

All that said, I had fun watching this, and this seems like as good a set up as any for a triple threat feud at Summerslam between Nia, Ronda and Alexa.

4 – The Bludgeon Brothers(c) def. Team Hell No
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

I know Daniel Bryan is really good at the whole underdog thing, but WWE know that’s not all he can do right?

Either way this was still a great match, taking out Kane before the start of the match was a great idea, and although it did leave the door open for someone to replace him, I think having Bryan still try and go it alone was a good decision.

I don’t really need to explain just how good Bryan is at playing the plucky underdog role when facing two behemoths like the Bludgeon Brothers, because you all already know that; and this was certainly a great version of that formula. I think the match could’ve done with a couple of extra minutes at the end, maybe give Bryan one more spot where it looks like he was about to win before being destroyed just to get the drama to an extreme high; but even without that, this was still a great match.

3 – Kevin Owens def. Braun Strowman
(Steel Cage)

If you’ve been reading my articles on wrestling for a while now, you’ll know that some of my favourite matches from shows, are ones that take a simple story, and tell it effectively; and that’s exactly what this match did.

The story was simple, Strowman wants to destroy Owens, Owens wants to part of it, and the steel cage is there to ensure Owens can’t run away easily. I think that this was one of the few circumstances in which a Steel Cage was able to add to the story of the match, since it legitimately made sense that the point was to escape the cage, because that’s exactly what Owens wanted to do.

Aside from that, watching Strowman do what he does best is always a joy, and Owens played his role perfectly and did a very good job of staying true to his character. He acts cowardly and tries to flee at the first opportunity, but the moment he’s able to fluke an advantage, he just can’t help but flaunt it. When Owens knocked Strowman down the first time, it would’ve absolutely been easy for Owens to sprint out the door and win, but he just couldn’t help himself from trying to get the pin instead; then later when he gets the handcuffs, suddenly he switches from total coward, to a boasting asshole that can’t get enough of himself.

Naturally this costs Owens eventually as Strowman is no mere mortal, all it takes is one good yank and the handcuffs shatter just as Owens reaches the top of the cage. At which point Strowman sees red and decides that the only sensible thing to do is throw Owens from the top of the cage, through the announce tables. This finish was brilliant, as it does allow Owens to say he beat Strowman, but it makes Strowman look like an absolute God of wrestling as he stands on top of a cage with his arms in the air with an unconscious Owens at his feet.

2 – Shinsuke Nakamura def. Jeff Hardy(c)
(United States Championship)

I wanted to put this at number one, but it didn’t seem fair considering it was a 5 second match.

I talked in my predictions about how Nakamura needed a good win here to get back all the credibility he’d lost since Wrestlemania, and this match did that and more. With a low blow before the match and a Kinshasa immediately following, Nakamura winning the US title in this fashion puts him right back up in the position he should be right now.

However that wasn’t all, as immediately following the match, none other than Mr RKO himself showed up to stick his nose in things. However, instead of doling out RKO’s to everything in sight, he simply dragged Jeff Hardy to the centre of the ring and stamped on his balls so hard, he may never be able to speak in a low pitch again.

I don’t really know how good a Orton vs Nakamura match is going to be, but the feud is certainly off to a great start.

1 – AJ Styles(c) def. Rusev
(WWE Championship)

How hard is it to get the world championship match as the main event?

That gripe aside, I really enjoyed this match, Styles can get a good match out of anybody, and Rusev can really turn it up when he needs to. While I was worried Rusev would be a bit too much of a heel in this match, I feel they did a good job of playing off the fact that the crowd really wanted Rusev to win here to create a very compelling match, and while I never believed Styles was losing that title, I definitely doubted myself a couple of times towards the end.

The only major negative is Aiden English’s presence at ringside, when he distracted Styles at the start, that was good enough, but other than that he didn’t really do much of any value. Sure, he technically helped Rusev escape the Calf-Crusher, but that rope was well within Rusev’s reach anyway, and the moment English removed that turnbuckle pad, it was obvious that Rusev was going to go into it.

However, I don’t think that took away from the match that much and it actually left the window open a little for Rusev to maybe comeback into things in the future; since he couldn’t lock the accolade in thanks to an injured leg, it leaves that door open to say that maybe Rusev could beat Styles if he locks the accolade in properly.

I really had a great time with this match, and if it were the main event of the evening, I probably would’ve thought much higher of this show in general, but oh well, onto Summerslam I guess.

Well there you go! That was my thoughts on every match from Extreme Rules 2018, and looking back on it now, it wasn’t bad as I initially felt it was, although it wasn’t anything that special, but hopefully Summerslam will be an event to remember.

As always please share this around and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo, and make sure you comeback this weekend for another Triple Threat Review!

 

Triple Threat Review: Quaratine Circular, Chronology, Spectrum

(Originally Posted Jul 2018)

Welcome back to Triple Threat Review!

This is the series where I pick 3 games from my Steam list semi-randomly, play them, give you my first impressions and score them as either a 1, 2 or 3.

If this is your first time reading one of these articles, then make sure to check out the previous edition.

Now please, scroll down and enjoy my look at this week’s games!

Quarantine Circular

The reason the screenshot above is simply of the main menu is because this is a mystery text-based adventure game, so I recommend going into it as blind as possible, so if you’re one of those people who wants to experience it blind, then I shall simply say this is a very good game and is well worth the mere four pounds it costs on Steam right now. So far I have played to the end of the fourth chapter, I will try my best to avoid as many spoilers as I can, but I will be using a couple of minor spoilers to illustrate some of my points; so beware of that.

Quarantine Circular is the next game directed by the wonderful Mike Bithell, who made the fantastic Thomas Was Alone and the brilliant Subsurface Circular. This game follows a similar format to that of Subsurface Circular, a text-based adventure, where you’re using focus points and other details to ask questions and learn as much as you can about the world to help you make necessary choices for the story.

One thing Bithell games excel at more than anything else is their world building, in Thomas Was Alone it was done through the soothing tone of Danny Wallace’s narration and in both “Circular” games it’s done simply via dialogue. Normally this can be an issue, as I mentioned last time in my review of Bear With Me, using dialogue for all your exposition can be quite tedious at times, but the writing in this game is so well done that it doesn’t feel like an exposition dump at all.

You play the first two chapters as an engineer who is tasked with setting up a translation matrix, so that the humans can communicate with an alien they have found. Once you’ve done this the alien will converse with you and you begin to learn about what’s going on. This develops over the next chapter until eventually that character is forced to leave; and this is where the first major difference from Subsurface Circular comes in.

I had assumed at that point, I would be following that same character as he wandered around the ship, asking questions and trying to uncover what’s going on, but instead the perspective then switches and you then begin to play as the alien. At first I was slightly wary of this difference, I believed that the singular perspective in Subsurface Circular was what made uncovering the mystery so enthralling, but as I started to play as the alien, I realised how brilliant of an idea this was.

You see, over the first two chapters I had been conversing with the alien, and learnt a lot about them, their personality, what they think of humanity and such like. This meant that now I was playing as them, I was able to properly get inside their head and really be able to react and talk in the way I think that character would do so normally. Jumping around perspectives like this allows you to really sympathise with all of the characters, because you’re forced to think like them in order to progress.

My only worry is how everything will be resolved, as I said I have just finished the fourth chapter and – according to the Steam achievements – there are only two more to go. I’m just a little worried that the ending might end up begin a bit rushed based on where I currently am, but that is purely speculative as I haven’t played that section of the game yet.

Overall, Quarantine Circular is another gold star for Mike Bithell, using all of the elements that make his games great to brilliant effect. The world is enticing, the story gripping, and one that I’m going to go back in and finish, the moment I finish writing this review.

Score: 3/3 Great

Chronology

As you’d expect from the title, Chronology involves no small amount of time travel. Most of the main mechanics in this puzzle-platformer centre around manipulating time in some way, to create an enjoyable, albeit flawed, experience.

The game does a very good job of introducing all of it’s mechanics to you, at a pace that gives you enough time to get used to them, but not so fast that you feel overwhelmed by the information. The first is the main puzzle mechanic of the game, which is a watch that our main character created which can switch him between two points in time; before or after the world was ripped up.

After a few pretty simple puzzles based around using the passage of time to make trees grow and such like, you meet a rather chatty snail with a mechanical shell, that you can use to cling to walls and ceilings, allowing you to traverse terrain that you couldn’t on your own. Then things start to get a bit weird, because the snail can teleport to you no matter where you are. This goes unexplained, but I can look past it for the sake of game mechanics; what I can’t look past however, is why the snail can FREEZE TIME. They give a passing line to it saying “That’s what I was built to do!”, but that doesn’t explain how it’s even possible in the first place.

While these are annoyances, they don’t drag the game down too much, as in a puzzle-platformer like this, story and world building is generally pretty bare bones, and the gameplay is what we’re all here for, so what’s that like?

It’s ok I guess.

The platforming aspect of this puzzle-platformer isn’t great, a lot of platforms have hitboxes that don’t quite make sense, and I’ve found myself messing up jumps on multiple occasions, because I feel through what I thought would be solid ground. However, the platforming in this game is pretty secondary to the puzzle aspect of it so what’s that like?

Well, it’s pretty much the same way I’d describe the game as a whole: enjoyable, but flawed. The difficulty ramps up nicely, and I found myself scratching my head on a couple of occasions, and the solutions are always logical and make perfect sense with the mechanics, so that’s one big tick. However, the mechanics don’t always gel very well, while all of the mechanics individually are clever, when you pile them on top of each other, they can often become a bit much.

Not in the sense that it gets to complicated, but in the sense that you have to do so much stuff for a single puzzle, that once you’ve worked out the solution, executing it feels more like busy work, and it led to several occasions where I got to the other side of a puzzle, and instead of feeling satisfied that I solved it, I felt thankful that I didn’t have to faf about with the busy work anymore.

All that said, I did come away from Chronology feeling positive overall. While the platforming could get frustrating the puzzles were, for the most part, enough to keep me going.

I don’t think I’m going to go back to it any time soon, but I had fun with what I played of Chronology, and I recommend you give it a try.

Score: 2/3 – OK

Spectrum

Now. If there’s one genre I’m a self-proclaimed expert on, it’s extremely difficult reflex games. Super Hexagon, Boson X, One Finger Death Punch; all of them have fallen by my hand. So when I saw Spectrum – an extremely difficult reflex game – I knew I had to try it out.

The basic premise of the game is simple, you must guide a small black blob through the level, it can jump and dive an infinite number of times and must avoid coloured surfaces. Pale surfaces will do one point of damage (you have 3 total) and darker surfaces will instantly kill you.

When it comes to these types of games, I judge them based on 3 main criteria, which are: movement, difficulty curve and how death feels; so let’s explore them shall we?

First off, movement. If I were to play this game with a keyboard, I’m not sure I’d be such a big fan, but I played this game with a controller and it was excellent. The little black blob (whom from now on, I shall simply call Geoff) is very responsive when it comes to direction and jumping. There’s a nice flow to every action you perform, and once you’ve got the hang of things, it can be very satisfying indeed.

What’s most interesting about the movement, is that it’s a lot faster to dive down than it is to try to jump up, so you are faced with scenarios where you need to position yourself properly at the end of each movement in preparation for the next one.

Next up, difficulty curve. This genre tends to have two ways of executing a difficulty curve, one is the “slow and steady” adopted by Boson X, or the “brick wall” adopted by Super Hexagon. Spectrum does a very nice slow and steady curve, I breezed through the first set of levels, only to slowly grind to a halt as I progressed through each set. I believe doing difficulty like this is generally the better approach, since it makes the entire game feel like a learning process, which goes a big way to offsetting some of the frustration that games of this nature can give.

Finally, how death feels. Games of this genre tend to succeed or fail based on how death feels to the player. It’s very important that the player doesn’t feel like that deaths are the game’s fault because that leads to frustration, however if the player knows that the death was their fault, then they’re far less likely to get frustrated, and instead feel encouraged to persevere and overcome whatever it was that stopped them.

Spectrum very much falls into the later category, the precise movement combined with the smooth difficulty curve and well designed levels, meant that I didn’t find myself getting frustrated at all; I knew every death was because of some mistake I’d made and I wanted to get back into it and try again straight away.

Overall, I can’t describe Spectrum as anything other than a fantastic addition to a genre I love. It passes in all of the major categories, and I can see myself coming back to this one for a very long time.

Score: 3/3 – Great

That’s all folks! I was really surprised by how good the games were this time around, I went in not expecting much and was blown away by what I played, let’s hope we can keep this up for next time.

As always, please share this around and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo, and come back next week for my WWE Extreme Rules predictions and the next episode of the Strong Style Podcast!

Until next time!

 

WWE Money in the Bank 2018: Every Match Ranked

(Originally Posted Jun 2018)

Well, Money in the Bank is in the books for another year, and what a show! Not every match knocked it out of the park, but overall there was a lot to love about this show, and I’d argue it may in fact be the best WWE main roster show of the year so far.

Instead of doing a traditional review however, I’ve decided I’m instead going to rank the matches from worst to best; and, as with all my rankings, they’re based solely on how much I enjoyed each match.

So let’s start off with the crap and work our way up:

10 – Carmella(c) def. Asuka
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

Honestly, I had a hard time deciding how to order the number 9 and 10 spots, because both matches were equally as bad, but in the end, I felt the finish to this match put it over the top. For one thing, everyone knew Ellsworth was going to show up here, so his appearance didn’t exactly make for much of a surprise. More importantly than that, it made Asuka look like one of the biggest morons ever, as she just blankly stared at him for a good minute before Carmella rolled her up, Asuka would then kick out, only to go back to staring at him for some reason; Carmella would eventually kick her in the face and win the match.

I know WWE babyfaces do sometimes suffer from tunnel vision when it comes to distractions, but this one really took the piss, there were plenty better ways that this could’ve been done without making Asuka look like an idiot.

9 – Roman Reigns def. Jinder Mahal

CM Punk! CM Punk! CM Punk! CM P- oh sorry, force of habit.

This match was a tad frustrating to watch, ignoring the fact that the crowd were legitimately not even watching for most of it, these two showed the kernel of a great match, but kept squandering it. If this match was about 5 minutes shorter and a bit of a quicker pace I think I would’ve quite enjoyed it, but instead they would pause for about 15-20 seconds after every move which just amplified the boredom of it all. In a match like this where the crowd is ready to shit all over it at a moments notice, you don’t want to give them time to do just that, go full speed, so they don’t have a chance to chant “CM Punk” or “Boring” at you.

Regardless, I thought what we got was a slow and boring match that built to a very predictable conclusion.

8 – Bobby Lashley def. Sami Zayn

It’s weird putting this match so low because it wasn’t particularly bad, it’s just that nothing of note really happened during it. Pretty much all you have to do is imagine a standard match between these two in your head, and that’s exactly the match we got. Sami trying to be sneaky and using it to get a leg up on Bobby, but Bobby eventually overcoming him and taking him to town. The finish was a tad unexpected, but I guess that’s the problem when you don’t properly establish a wrestler’s finisher, no-one knows what to expect.

Overall, this match was fine, but nothing really worth talking about.

7 – The Bludgeon Brothers(c) def. The Club
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

While the result of this match was never in question, it certainly was a fun ride getting there. I was worried these two teams wouldn’t really mesh well together; combine that with a slot on the pre-show and you’ve got a recipe for a boring match, but this was quite enjoyable in my opinion. It was a pretty basic story, with The Club coming out of the gate like a house on fire in an attempt to stop the monsters that are The Bludgeon Brothers from getting one up on them. This wouldn’t last as a beautiful double dropkick on the outside would bring things back into their favour, eventually the match built to a nice conclusion, with Harper tackling the fuck out of Anderson as they were setting up for the Magic Killer and transitioning very smoothly into their own finisher.

While pretty inconsequential, this match was a very fun watch, and is a good example of what a pre-show match should be.

6 – Daniel Bryan def. Big Cass

I must admit, when I was putting this list together I expected this match to be a lot higher up than this, just goes to show how much good stuff there was on this show really.

This match hit just the right spot for me, and showed that a match doesn’t always need a multi-layered build as long as the in-ring storytelling is good; and that’s just what this match had. It told a simple story, and it told it brilliantly, we all know Daniel Bryan works best when he’s the underdog, and he fit that role greatly here. Cass would beat him down viciously, but Bryan would pick his spots right and take advantage, to the point where near the end, it was a very solid back and forth contest. Daniel’s sudden burst of energy style worked really well here, as it felt like the knee plus at the end really came out of nowhere, and the crowd reacted perfectly; following that up with the leg lock to tap the big man out was a great finish to a great match (and hopefully, the end of this feud).

5 – Ronda Rousey def. Nia Jax(c) v. Disqualification
(Raw Women’s Championship)

Ronda Rousey is just a natural at this.

I was a little worried that Nia might not be the right opponent for Ronda’s first singles match, but those worries were quickly dispelled; Ronda is a fantastic wrestler, with a whole bunch of talent, even if she is still a little green, she’s able to work a brilliant match. Speaking of which, I really enjoyed this, Ronda tried coming out of the gate fast, but Nia quickly put that idea to bed, and the whole match was the story of Ronda learning and adapting to Nia’s style. This lead to an excellent comeback from Ronda which built to a perfect crescendo until…

Alexa Bliss – who had won the Women’s Money in the Bank briefcase just a couple of hours earlier – rushed the ring and laid Rousey out. I said in my predictions that I didn’t want Alexa back in the title scene this quickly, but after seeing this I take that back. Having Alexa cash in and steal the title right away adds so much to this story, it gives you a get out so you don’t have to turn Nia heel again, it gives Ronda an arguably perfect opponent going forward, and in the end, I really feel like it will elevate all 3 women in the process. I can’t wait to see where this goes next.

4 – AJ Styles(c) def. Shinsuke Nakamura
(Last Man Standing, WWE Championship)

I had a lot of trouble getting into this match at first, I’ve said before that the magic is sort of gone with these two now, so I went in with no hype at all and that made it hard for these two to really grasp me with their performance. However as the match went on things picked up a lot, the pace didn’t really get much faster, but the action was substantial and engaging enough for me to enjoy myself. There was a lot of carnage and fun stuff (including the best dick kick I think I’ve ever seen) so I had a good time watching this match. My only real issue is that, there wasn’t a lot of tension, it was pretty obvious when either man was about to miraculously get up at a count of 9, and it was pretty obvious that the finish was going to be the finish. However that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the match that much and I liked it overall.

I can’t say I’m thrilled with the result though, while I love AJ and am glad he’s getting such a long title reign, I really don’t see what you can do with Nakamura now, all the momentum he gained from the heel turn is gone now, and he’s pretty much back to where he was six months ago, it’s going to take a lot of work to build him back up again in my eyes. That said, if the rumours are true, and tonight he’s going to be revealed as the cover star of this year’s video game then I understand why you’re keeping the belt on him, but please, let’s just give up on this feud now, maybe revisit it in a year or so, but it’s done all it can for now.

3 – Seth Rollins(c) def. Elias
(Intercontinental Championship)

I don’t think Seth Rollins even knows what a bad match is.

Another one that was a little slow to start but built to a brilliant match, every beat of this was excellent. While Elias isn’t the most gifted of wrestlers, he was able to slot into the role needed for this match perfectly. He’d do his best to keep up as Rollins ran circles around him, while he waited opportunistically for a chance to strike, there were a lot of nearfalls in this match and I believed damn near every one of them was the finish. The actual finish was great though, Elias’ spot picking finally backfired as Seth reversed a roll-up into a roll-up of his own (and a handful of tights) to surprise Elias.

This was a great way to keep the belt on Seth without making Elias look weak, and it leaves the door open for a rematch, either on Raw, or at Extreme Rules, so I’m looking forward to how this one progresses over the next month.

2 – Alexa Bliss wins the Women’s Money in the Bank Briefcase

Now THIS was the match we were all hoping for last year, and it really was a great one.

It wasn’t perhaps what we’ve come to expect from ladder matches, but it was certainly a great watch all the same. While ladder spots were kept fairly minimal, the main story of the match was more about all the different women’s relationships with each other and how they would respond to each other in these scenarios, you had pairings like Charlotte & Becky, and Ember & Naomi briefly teaming up, and clear motivations from the girls who clearly hate each other, like Ember Moon & Sasha Banks, and literally anyone & Lana.

The finish was a tad wonky, either Becky or Alexa got their timing wrong and it left Becky having to deliberately not win the match for a couple of seconds while Alexa climbed into the ring, but that didn’t really take away from what as a great match; and while I may have thought Alexa was a weird choice at the time, what happened later on with Nia & Ronda made it clear that she was a great choice to win the match.

1 – Braun Strowman wins the Men’s Money in the Bank Briefcase

There was just so much carnage in this match, it’s hard to break it all down.

So first off, holy crap Braun Strowman is quite simply the world scariest human, the dude rises from under a pile of ladders like he’s the terminator; he threw Kevin Owens off the top of a 15-20 foot ladder, presumably to his death since we’ve not seen him since; he then ran THROUGH a ladder in order to get back to the ring, before beating everyone up and quite literally shaking Kofi off his back to grab the briefcase.

It wasn’t all Braun though, as everyone got great spots in, Finn with a Coup-de-Grace from the top of a ladder that was outside the ring, Miz sprinting up the ladder while everyone was busy with Strowman, Joe flattening just about everyone; Rusev crushing three people at once, and of course Kofi jumping all over the place.

I could go on for ages about all the mad shit that happened during this match because there’s just so much of it. This was a great match and exactly what a multi-man ladder match should be.

Braun as the briefcase holder was a great choice too, because you really don’t know when he’s going to cash in. Sure, my gut says the second Reigns beats Lesnar at Summerslam, but it could easily be way after, or even before then.

And that’s it! Overall this was a great show that I shall certainly look back on fondly at the end of the year, and I hope WWE can keep producing shows like this going forward.

As always make sure to share this around on social media and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo, and also follow @lauren_cmonster for editing these ramblings of mine.

I’ll see you all later this week with another Triple Threat Review!

 

Triple Threat Review: Rumu, Lost Castle, Omensight

(Originally Posted Jun 2018)

Well, people seemed to enjoy the first one, so let’s keep this going!

Welcome back to Triple Threat Review, this is a series where I pick three games at random and review them! Each game gets a score of either 1, 2 or 3; I score them based simply on how much I enjoyed playing them.

So without further ado, let’s get right to it!

Rumu

So first things first, this is a mystery game that’s all about the story, so go in as blind as possible. I’m going to avoid any major spoilers, but I will mention some minor ones in order to get my point across; so if you want to avoid that, just know that this game is very good and you should go play it.

For the most part, story focused games generally aren’t my thing, I really don’t like any Telltale games, and things like Life is Strange generally fail to enthuse me. However, about once a year a story focused game will come along that manages to appeal to me in just the right way. These are usually Mike Bithell games such as Thomas Was Alone and Subsurface Circular, and Rumu caught me off guard a bit.

I originally found it while I was scrolling through older videos on Jesse Cox’s channel, I saw the aesthetic and thought it looked like my kind of thing. I then watched a clip of the very beginning of the game, after seeing this clip it looked to me like it was going to be some sort of puzzle game where you play as a sentient vacuum attempting to clean everything in sight, so I stopped watching the video and picked the game up and well….I was half right.

You do indeed play as a sentient vacuum cleaner, with AI that attempts to mimic human emotions; specifically love. There’s a lot more to the emotional side of things than that, but saying any more would ruin it. Either way, once you’re finished with the tutorial the story starts up properly and the game establishes all the story tropes you’d expect from this kind of thing, however, where most games would either conform to all of them, or attempt to subvert all of them, this game has an interesting mixture of the two which does a great job at keeping you guessing.

Speaking of keeping you guessing, the game really pulls you in every direction throughout the story, even when things seem to be coming together it’ll reveal something you never saw coming. Although, not in the kind of way where it feels out of nowhere and unearned, all of the twists make total sense when you piece everything together. The best example of keeping you guessing I found was the AI who gives you your tasks and information. Now I, very much like most people, heard a overbearing AI telling me everything’s fine and instantly assumed it was the secret bad guy, but as I said, the game does a great job of keeping you guessing, there were moments I was certain it was the villain, and moments I had the complete opposite belief, and it never became clear until the final revelation.

There’s so much more I could say about this game but it’d just spoil the experience, so just go and play Rumu, it’s a fantastic experience.

Score: 3/3 – Great

Lost Castle

Roguelike is a very crowded genre these days, and as such, any game in said genre is usually heavily scrutinised and compared to the kings of the genre, such as Binding of Isaac, or FTL, so there’s a lot for Lost Castle to live up to.

At first glance, one would compare Lost Castle to Binding of Isaac, but upon playing it you soon realise that they don’t have as much in common as you’d think. The basic plot of the game is that, thanks to a spell gone wrong, demons have taken over a castle and you’re a daring treasure hunter looking to grab all that’s inside; and in order to eventually accomplish your goal you have to die…..a lot.

The first thing that struck me about the game was its combat, which is the main crux of the gameplay. You play with either a Two handed, One handed, Ranged or Magical weapon, each of which play differently and you randomly spawn with one of them in each run. Here is the first of my gripes with the game, one of the things I find most fun about games like this is how each individual player will adapt to the game in a different way and choose a different style that they excel with and having you spawn with a random weapon takes away from this somewhat. For example I found I couldn’t play with magical weapons very well, which meant that when I spawned with one, it felt like my run was a waste of time, and I invariably died within the first couple of rooms.

In addition to this, you can only hit enemies on a horizontal plane, and generally I don’t have a problem with this as it seemed to work for the game, however I was often frustrated as it’s not always entirely clear whether you can hit your enemy from the plane you’re on. There were multiple occasions I’d fire off an attack that I thought was sure to hit, only to have it miss entirely.

While I did find I got more used to it as I played, this game seems to be littered with all of these little frustrations like the one I mentioned above. Another that would constantly rear its head is that enemies would often have the same animation for being stunned and death. The only indicator an enemy is actually dead is a little skull that appears above its head, a few seconds after it finishes it’s animation. This means there were many scenarios where I had assumed an enemy was dead, only for it to suddenly leap back up and deal me a bunch of damage.

The game also has up to 4 player co-op, and to an extent, the single player experience does feel a bit lacking because of it, right out of the gate some enemies feel a bit too bulky for no real reason, and I generally got the overall feeling that the game had been balanced for you to play with at least 2 players.

In games like this – that are designed to be difficult and you’re supposed to die a lot – it’s important that the player never feels like the game is screwing them over. While for the most part I did feel like every death was my own fault, there were occasions like those mentioned above, where I’d lose a large chunk of health or die because of what felt like poor game design.

With all of that said though, I did still have a lot of fun with Lost Castle, while it might take a little while to get the hang of, I found myself wanting to keep going back for more and seeing how far I could get. I’m interested to see what some of the late game has to offer, whether it is more unique enemies, or just more enemies.

So while Lost Castle definitely has its flaws, I did have fun playing it and I imagine I will go back and play more of it in the future.

Score: 2/3 – OK

Omensight

There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to Omensight, it’s quite a seamless blend of many genres, it contains many mystery, hack-and-slash and RPG like elements; normally a game trying to cram this much in would be quite the mess, but Omensight manages to achieve it well.

Not flawlessly however, it seems to have a lot of information to give you so the first 20-30 minutes feels like quite the exposition dump. I would’ve preferred it if the game had spent a little more time easing you into the world, with a bit less telling and a bit more showing. However with that said, once the game is done setting itself up, it takes its foot off the gas a bit and lets you enjoy the world some more.

The basis of the story is that you’re some ancient spirit tasked with preventing the end of the world, but despite your seemingly infinite powers, you don’t actually know what’s causing the end of the world, or how to stop it. You have to work it out by reliving the final day over and over from the perspectives of different major characters, gaining new abilities along the way that allow you to take different paths and uncover more of the mystery.

Spending time with each of the different characters does a really good job of involving you in the world, and seeing its complexities from every angle, and I found myself becoming more attached to some of the characters than others. This does make me wonder how much your choices will affect the outcome of the game, since you’re supposed to be an unbiased party attempting to prevent the end of the world, will there be consequences if you choose a side?

As for the gameplay, I found myself very much enjoying my time playing Omensight. The combat is pretty much what you’d expect from any hack-and-slash style combat system, with fast reflexes for attacking and dodging being key to your success in combat and some magical abilities thrown in there too.

While it’s nothing unique I think that’s perfectly fine, there’s been quite the trend in recent years of games trying to reinvent the wheel with combat in games, and while there are a few that excel because of it, most fall flat; so I’m very happy to see that this game simply focused on trying to perfect the existing formula. Speaking of, I’d say it does a very good job of using this formula, the flow of combat feels very nice and every attack feels weighty and important, and the magical abilities flow nicely with all of it. I’m interested to see how things fare when the game is played on a harder difficulty however, I played on the “balanced” difficulty and I didn’t really come across much of a challenge in my couple hours of playing. I only died once and that was because of the camera.

This brings me to my only major issue with the game; the camera. While it would often frame a room quite nicely, I found it to be rather uncooperative when trying to perform certain tasks. The game encourages exploration and going off the beaten path, yet I often found that quite frustrating to achieve because I couldn’t make the camera point where I wanted it to. The death I mentioned earlier was due to me attempting to make a jump that wasn’t possible, because the camera made it look like it was; and then upon my death, the camera panned down more and revealed a much closer platform I could’ve jumped to.

But this doesn’t drag the game down too much in my eyes, because I’ve still had a lot of fun playing it, the story is very intriguing and I want to keep going, but more than that, I want to keep playing the combat and hack through waves of enemies, feeling like an ethereal badass. This is a game I will definitely be playing to completion.

Score: 3/3  – Great

And that’s it! Three more games that I enjoyed this time round! This does make me wonder if my luck is eventually going to run out and I’ll get a bunch of bad games, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

As always follow both myself and my editor on Twitter, @10ryawoo and @lauren_cmonster respectively, and please make sure you share this around and come back next time!

 

WWE Greatest Royal Rumble Review

(Originally Posted Apr 2018)

What an evening! This was quite the mixed bag of a show, and there’s a whole lot to unpack, so let’s not waste any time! Here is my match-by-match review of the Greatest Royal Rumble:

John Cena vs Triple H

This was a great match to open the show with if you ask me, as it really set the tone going forward; That tone being, a show more focused on having fun, than on progressing stories, and I think, for the most part, it was much better for it. If you imagine in your head what a modern Cena vs Triple H match would be, that’s exactly what this match was, nicely paced spots to get the crowd going followed by a whole bunch of finishers and kickouts, for John Cena to eventually get the win with two consecutive AA’s. Nice, simple, fun match to get things going.

Cedric Alexander vs Kalisto

This match followed pretty much the same formula as the previous one, only with a very different style of wrestling. My main problem with the cruiserweights, is on Pay-Per-Views, they don’t let them so cruiserweight matches, they just let them do cruiserweight spots. You watch any singles match on 205 Live in the past couple months and compare it to the PPV matches and you’ll see a whole world of difference between the style of matches. There was no reason for Cedric to spend 5 minutes working a hold to ground Kalisto, when Cedric is very much a high-flyer himself.

That said, there was also a lot to enjoy about this match, the cruiserweight spots they did are always fun, and when Kalisto has a good opponent to work he shines, the Spanish Fly from the top rope was especially fun, even if Kalisto did decide to do an extra flip once he landed. The finish was also great fun as Cedric Alexander countered the Salida-Del-Sol into the Lumbar Check to retain his title.

Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt vs The Bar

This match is a weird one for me, because I remember watching it, and enjoying it while it was going on, but thinking back to it now, I can’t remember a single thing that happened during it. Since rewatching it however, I’ve seen it was more of what we’ve come to expect from both these teams. The Bar are fantastically talented, and they’re going to thrive in the tag scene on Smackdown, but I’m mostly interested to see how this Matt & Bray thing reaches its final form, so to speak.

While I’ve been having fun watching it, there still feels like there’s a lack of cohesion between the two, Bray feels like he needs to adopt more of Matt’s tendencies in order to fit this gimmick; This is inherently a silly storyline and Bray still feels like he’s trying to be too serious. That said, now these two have the titles, they’re going to likely be getting a lot more development over the coming months and I look forward to seeing where this goes next.

Jeff Hardy vs Jinder Mahal

I mentioned in my predictions that, when Jinder is forced to work a faster pace, he can put on a decent match, and I think we saw that here. Jeff Hardy could easily wrestle circles around Jinder, but he did a very good job of keeping up to make a very enjoyable, if inconsequential, match.

It wasn’t all good however, the weirdest botch of the night in my opinion happened in this match when:

– Jeff goes to the top rope for Whisper in the Wind

– Jinder, with no sense of urgency, gets up and walks off

– Jeff pauses, looks back, sees that Jinder isn’t there anymore

– Does the flip onto nothing anyway

– At which point Jinder walks up to Jeff AND JUST FALLS OVER

I honestly can’t even work out what they were trying to achieve, but I can safely say that, unless it was an attempt to confuse me, they very much failed at it. Luckily the match picked up again after that, for Jeff Hardy to win the match with a Swanton Bomb.

The Bludgeon Brothers vs The Usos

I think we all went into this not expecting much. As much as the build has been fantastic, the match at Wrestlemania was certainly nothing to shout about, and I was certainly expecting another glorified squash here. But to my surprise, these two teams put on a competitive and fast-paced match that was thoroughly enjoyable. The Usos were able to keep that feel that they were fighting against two horror movie villains, just desperately trying everything they could to keep them down, throwing out Superkicks and Splashes like they were nothing. It was all to no avail however, as The Bludgeon Brothers continue their dominance, and retain their titles.

Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor vs The Miz vs Samoa Joe

This match proved something quite crucial I feel, which is that ladder matches don’t just have to be about ladder spots. I mean don’t get me wrong there were plenty of ladder spots in this match, but it was all laced together with a healthy dose of pure wrestling and good story-telling aswell. The main story of this match being that Finn Balor just cannot catch a break.

There were so many points in the match were he had his fingertips on the title only for someone to knock him down, and make him start all over again. This was typified by the finish, in which Seth Rollins performed his second best heist of the century, leaping out of nowhere onto the ladder, yanking the title pretty much straight out of Balor’s hands and dropping to the floor, winning the match.

AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura

So I, along with many others, was rather disappointed by the match these two put on earlier in the month at Wrestlemania, but after watching the past month of Smackdown and this match, I’m starting to understand the thought process behind it. This feud is one that is going to slowly build to its cresiendo over the course of several months, they’re going to have many matches, and each one is going to build on the last; and that is exactly what we saw the start of here.

Like I mentioned in my predictions, the change in dynamic really helped out this match, because this match felt a lot more like a fight than a wrestling contest. You can tell that AJ is – rightfully so – tired of Nakamura hitting him in the balls every week, and his anger was let out during this match, there were a lot of stiff shots and hard-hitting offense. While a double count-out finish is never the most exciting outcome, in this scenario it helped build this story, you saw it in AJ’s face, he doesn’t care about winning this match properly anymore, he just wants retribution for what Nakamura did to him. This thing is just going to keep building over the coming months, and when it finally blows off with that 6 star match we all know they can put on, every single step of this will all seem worth it.

The Undertaker vs Rusev

Well, this was certainly more of a match than I was expecting it to be. There was never any question as to the winner of this match, especially when you realise that the casket was actually too short to fit The Undertaker in it, but that’s beside the point. What was a surprise was just how much offence Rusev was able to get in on Taker, to actually make it seem like more of a balanced match. It did eventually end in the quick-fire greatest hits, and Aiden English fully bouncing on his head off of a Tombstone Piledriver, but at the end of the day, that’s exactly what everyone wants from an Undertaker match.

Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns

Honestly, who gives a fuck at this point?

This match, was exactly what you were expecting it to be, and that’s it. There was no wrestling at all, both men just spammed their signature moves until it ended, and none of it had any drama or made any sense. We know that neither man is getting pinned 5 minutes into this match, no matter how many F-5’s or Spears they’ve taken. And then there was the finish…Jesus Christ, I’ll admit, the visual of Roman spearing Brock through the cage wall looked cool, but it made no sense.

They always make such a point of saying BOTH FEET have to hit the floor to win, but despite the fact, that no part of Brock’s body hit the floor, and Reigns rolled straight onto it Brock Lesnar was declared the winner. I understand them not wanting Roman to win the title in such an underwhelming fashion, but surely they could’ve come up with a way to do it that actually made some modicum of sense within this non-sensical universe of pro-wrestling. I guess we gotta wait till Summerslam now…

50 Man Royal Rumble

So this match was a hell of a lot of fun, but it was also very long, so I’m not discussing it beat by beat like I did in January, I’m just going to talk about some of my personal highlights.

First up is Daniel Bryan, I had a hunch he might start the match off and he did, alongside Dolph Ziggler, and Jeez did he work his ass off, I did get scared ona couple occasions, like when he didn’t quite flip out of Kurt Angle’s suplex properly and nearly landed on his head; and also when he was anywhere near The Great Khali. However he also had a whole bunch of great spots, his chop battle with Roderick Strong was great, and left his chest looking like a tiger cub had just had a go at him, and near the end where he almost single handed eliminated Braun Strowman, only to unfortunately thrown out by Cass, but man, 1:16:05 is a hell of a long time to do anything, it’s amazing to think two months ago we all thought he would never wrestle again.

One thing that disappointed me, is that there weren’t as many big surprises as I would’ve liked, they unfortunately spoiled some of their big surprises, like Mysterio, Khali & Jericho by announcing them ahead of time; but there were still some good ones in there. I hate Hornswoggle, but it’s nice to see him I guess, and it looks like he’s somehow gotten even shorter than the last time we saw him, but other than that there was nothing really big, with the exception of Strong, the NXT entrants were quite underwhelming, it sorta needed someone like Velveteen Dream or even Aleister Black to make a big impact.

Back to the highlights….Titus O’Niel, I am so sorry, but you’ve just secured your legacy for all the wrong reasons. For anyone who somehow didn’t see it, first of all, watch it, as Titus runs down to the ring, he trips, falls and slides almost entirely underneath the ring. The commentary team lose it and just can’t stop laughing, and neither could I, and from how many times they played it, I think Vince loved it too, who else would show 4 replays from 2 different angles in slow motion? This is the man who says pushing someone into a pool is the funniest thing in the world to him after all.

Finally is of course Braun Strowman, this was the big win he’s deserved for over a year now. I don’t really know what they’re going to do with him after this – my guess would be a feud with Lashley – but this gave back all the momentum he’d lost since Elimination Chamber. Not only that, but he did it in spectacular fashion, eliminating a record 13 men on path to his victory.

Overall, this was a show that, I don’t think will be remembered for much in the long run, but I certainly had a lot of fun while I was watching it, and thinking back to it now, I have pretty positive feelings, so overall that’s a win for WWE.

That’s all for now! Backlash is painfully, only 8 days away now, and I will probably be doing predictions and a review for that too, so keep an eye on this space! Or follow me on Twitter for updates, @10ryawoo. Thank you very much for reading, and I’ll see you again soon.