Triple Threat Reivew: Scanner Sombre, Hand of Fate 2, Stick Fight: The Game

(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 please check out the previous edition to find more games.

Now, please scroll down and enjoy the reviews!

Scanner Sombre

Scanner Sombre is one of the games that has been sitting, unplayed, on my Steam list for the longest. I got it in a Humble Bundle around a year ago, not too long after it was released, and I’ve been reluctant to play it ever since. Why? Well, it’s quite simple really, on the game’s store page, the first tag the game has is “horror”. Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a total wimp when it comes to the horror genre; in films it doesn’t really bother me, but in games I can’t handle it. However, the laws of random generation picked this game for me to play, so I guess I don’t have much of a choice.

First of all, I was surprised to find that this game was developed by Introversion Software – who made the outstanding Prison Architect – so my interest was piqued since this seemed like quite the leap in genres to make.

The game starts quite simply, you’re in a tent, outside is complete blackness, with a lone light on top of a rock in the distance, so naturally you wander towards it and pick up your scanner. Then the game reveals to you its main gameplay. You are an explorer, who is exploring this cave for as yet unexplained reasons and instead of navigating using light, you use some VR goggles and a scanner to reveal the terrain and represent it in the form of coloured dots.

Straight away, this helps to curb one of the main problems many so-called “walking simulator” games come across, which is giving the player something to do while you’re telling them the story. Normally, just walking through samey looking caves would be quite dull, but because you’re constantly having to work out what the terrain even looks like, and with it being represented in a visually pleasing way, I found that made the game very good at avoiding boredom for the most part.

So what about that horror I was so terrified of? Well…there isn’t really much of it.

Granted, I only got about half way through the game, but in that time, there really hadn’t been much in the way of horror. Pretty early on you come across a figure that looks human, which will creepily turn on the spot to look at you as you move around it, and there’s a small jumpscare a little on from that, but that’s really it.

The game did do a pretty good job of keeping me tense for a while, but eventually that tension faded, sure, having no jumpscares for a while can actually be extremely nerve-wracking, but eventually I’d gone for so long with nothing happening, that I didn’t feel tense anymore and just kept going like normal.

It was at that point, that the game started to lose its legs a bit for me. After a while it began to feel less like I was exploring, and more like I was just going through the motions. I’d wander into an area, scan it, find the exit, rinse and repeat, and towards the end of my time with it, the moments that did try to bring the scares didn’t really have much effect, because I’d already become too comfortable in the world I was exploring.

Not to mention that the environments all began to feel pretty samey after a while. Although the scanning gimmick did keep things fresh for a lot longer than they normally would’ve been, it ran out of steam eventually, and in the last 5 minutes or so, I was pretty bored of it.

That said, I do still want to go back to it, I feel like if I go away from the game for a couple of days before touching it again, then I’ll be able to recapture some of that feeling that pulled me into the game when I first started playing it, and perhaps the second half will be a lot more enthralling than the first.

Overall, while Scanner Sombre isn’t much in the way of a horror game, it’s certainly a pretty solid addition to the walking simulator genre, it’s certainly no Gone Home, but it’s definitely a whole lot better than Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

Score: 2/3 – OK

Hand of Fate 2

Ok, so I’m cheating a bit with this one.

Hand of Fate 2 is actually a game I’ve already played many hours of, but it came out on Switch this week, and I’m never gonna get a better excuse to talk about it so here’s the review.

The first Hand of Fate is a game that had a genuinely very unique concept, the idea of combining  a board game with more traditional types of gameplay is one that I really think should be explored a lot more, and Hand of Fate really proves the idea has legs.

To be simple about it, you have a counter on the board and you move between cards on the table, each card will have some form of scenario or encounter that you have to deal with, either through quick thinking and timing, or by bashing in some faces. When you enter a combat scenario, instead of doing something like Talisman, where you roll dice, you instead enter a small environment and you directly control your character to fight the enemies.

In addition to this you have to manage your resources, you have your health and gold as standard, but there is also food, which you consume as you move from card to card; and fame, which you gain by completing encounters and is required to use certain items.

While, the original Hand of Fate was a tad limited in the encounters, and began to feel a bit samey after a while, Hand of Fate 2 completely fixes this. There are hundreds of different encounter cards, and while some are similar, most of them have their own unique twist in how to resolve them; with tasks such as following the right card, stopping the wheel or the pendulum in the right place, or some good old-fashioned combat.

It also fixes the sense of pointlessness you had in the first game as well, since you were just beating bosses in some vague attempt to beat the dealer at the game. While in this game, there are many scenarios and different ideas of what your goal is each time you play, one that particularly stood out to me was one where I was informed that in three days, a murder was going to take place and I had to work out who the culprit was and stop them. It gives this great context to your adventure that the first game didn’t have, and it really helped me immerse myself in the world and become invested in the overall story of the game.

You also get a great deal of deck customisation as many encounters will give you tokens that unlock new cards for you to add to future decks, some are items that will appear in shops or as random drops, and others are encounter cards, that you can put in the deck to either help you, or challenge you on your journey.

The only major criticism I have with the game is that the combat is somewhat basic. While you have a few items or abilities on a couple of buttons, generally you just mash the attack button until everything’s dead, stopping only on the odd occasion to block or dodge, while it can be fun, it does feel tedious at times and lacks a general sense of flow or grace.

This doesn’t bog down the game at all however, and isn’t really the main focus of things. The simple fact of the matter is that the core gameplay here is just too fun to put down, it has the sense of excitement that a good board game can bring, and each adventure is short enough that you want to keep diving into it again and again.

Score: 3/3 – Great

Stick Fight: The Game

The idea of a casual fighting game, is one that I don’t really feel has been done very well up until now, the game will either end up being too complex for casual players, or far too simple to be fun. Up until now the only game I can think of that got it right was Gang Beasts; so, when I saw Stick Fight: The Game, I had to take a look at it.

The first thing you notice about the game is the aesthetic, which is of course that of stick fighting flash animations from the early days of the internet, and honestly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for a high profile one like this to come along, seemed like a definite money maker to me.

Anyway, the actual meat of the game is of course the fighting mechanics, which are pretty damn good for a casual game like this. Personally, I think the mark of a good casual game is something that let’s skillful players do skillful things, while still letting less skilled players do well, and that’s exactly how this combat system feels. When you’re going hand to hand, you will often find yourself just mashing the attack button and doing pretty well, but if you begin to step back and be more smart with your shots and blocks, then you’ll find that you’re able to do even better.

The only major downside is that any real complexity that the combat system has tends to go out the window has soon as weapons come into play. As in every stage, guns and spears and such like will rain from the sky for players to pick up, at which point the game becomes more of a mad scramble than a fight; however, you have the option to turn weapons off if you don’t like it, so it’s not too big of an issue.

One of the most interesting ideas I saw in the game was a pickup that only spawns on certain levels, and turns the player who picked it up into a sort of boss for everyone else to fight (pictured above). I found this to be a really fun way to mix up the established formula of the game, and it’s generally balanced pretty well, and I found it’s fun to play as both the boss and the person fighting it, and can really become a good test of how well you’ve got to grips with the game.

Speaking of certain levels, the majority of levels are very well designed, and there is a great variety of environments to fight on. Be it a pile of precariously stacked boxes, or a giant box that’s constantly rotating, every level adds a unique new layer of complexity to the gameplay that stops the formula from getting boring after you’ve played it for a while.

Although the game is most fun when played locally, it does also feature online matches, and it’s very easy to just jump in and play with randoms, or host your own private session for friends; and most importantly, there is very little in the way of lag. Occasionally I had a couple people jump about the place without explanation, but it was almost always down to my own terrible internet, but when my internet was running smoothly, I didn’t have any problems with online games whatsoever.

Overall, Stick Fight is a great addition to the resurgent “couch game” genre, standing tall next to similar games like Gang Beasts and Towerfall Ascension. I can absolutely see myself pulling this one out when I’m playing games with friends to have a good time.

Score: 3/3 – Great

So there you go! I had a really great time with the games I played this week and I’m hoping that we can keep this good will going into the next one!

Until then please share this around on social media, and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo and thank you to the wonderful @lauren_cmonster for editing this one for me!

 

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!

 

WWE Extreme Rules 2018 Predictions

(Originally Posted Jul 2018)

I’m actually quite impressed with how many meaningful matches ended up on this card. Going into Money in the Bank it looked very much like Extreme Rules was just going to be filler, but they’ve managed to pull out a pretty nice looking card.

So let’s just right to it, here are my predictions for Extreme Rules 2018

Kickoff Match: The New Day vs SAnitY
(Tables Match)

So after waiting for about 4 months, SAnitY finally debut, and well….why did we have to wait this long? If they were waiting for the right time to do a big feud then it’d make sense, but they could’ve done this match in April and it wouldn’t have been any different.

Regardless, I think this has been built ok, and I would’ve liked it to be on the main show instead of something like Balor vs Corbin, but it should be a nice win for SAnitY to hopefully move into something a bit more weighty for Summerslam.

Finn Balor vs Baron Corbin

While I did just praise this show for not feeling like filler, that doesn’t mean there aren’t one or two filler matches. This is one of them.

While I did ironically love Baron Corbin for a little while, I’m over it now, and I really don’t care about anything he does. This whole “Constable” thing had been alright (although I’m not entirely sure WWE knows what a constable is), but I can’t how it serves any real purpose other than giving Corbin something to do for a few months.

While I do love Finn Balor, WWE haven’t done anything interesting with him since Wrestlemania, and I can’t see that changing any time soon. Balor is very much a guy who can be thrust up into the main event scene whenever they want, so they tend to just keep him treading water until that time.

As such, I think it’ll be a standard clean win for Finn Balor here, and he’ll hopefully get himself involved in something good for Summerslam.

Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt(c) vs The B-Team
(Raw Tag Team Championships)

Surprisingly, this has been one of the more entertaining things going on over on Raw this past month.

Bo & Axel have always had great chemistry together, but it’s really shone during this feud. Their 4th wall shattering impressions of Bray & Matt have been the highlight of Raw week to week and I’m holding out hope that this should be a great match. Honestly, it’s a shame there’s almost zero chance that they’re actually going to win this match.

While Matt & Bray haven’t been doing much since winning the Tag Team Championships, I don’t think there’s anyway they’re dropping the belts yet, and losing to the B-Team would be a pretty big death sentence for the team.

So disappointingly, I’m picking Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt to retain in this one.

Braun Strowman vs Kevin Owens
(Steel Cage Match)

Well this has been quite fun. Well…not for Kevin Owens, but for the rest of us at least.

I don’t expect this to be a long one, we’ll have some nice spots where Owens tries to run away and Strowman stops him, leading to Owens being murdered live in front of thousands of people.

Normally, I’d say Braun Strowman would win without a shadow of a doubt, but he’s the Money in the Bank holder now, and they traditionally lose a lot. Not to mention I feel that the Steel Cage stipulation is entirely designed for Kevin Owens to somehow win accidentally, only to send Strowman into a rage and destroy him.

Carmella(c) vs Asuka
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

I cannot begin to describe how much I don’t care about this.

Sure, Asuka’s a great wrestler, but if we take an honest look back on her time on the main roster so far, it’s been crap; it’s not her fault, but it’s the fact of the matter. As for Carmella, she’s fine, but she’s not brought anything interesting to the Smackdown Women’s Championship.

James Ellsworth being suspended in a shark cage doesn’t really change anything, since it always ends up with the person in the shark cage getting involved anyway; not to mention Ellsworth can probably pull and Enzo and slip through the bars in the cage.

So sadly, I think once again Carmella will retain thanks to Ellsworth getting involved.

Jeff Hardy(c) vs Shinsuke Nakamura
(United States Championship)

Given recent events, I think a Kennel from Hell match may be in order.

I must admit, I’m quite disappointed that this feud didn’t get as much of a chance to build as it deserved, but for once it wasn’t WWE’s fault in any way; because who really could’ve seen Nakamura getting bit by a police dog coming? (If you did, could you pick some lottery numbers for me?).

All jokes aside, this should be a great match, Hardy’s been on a roll since becoming a singles star and Nakamura can put on a great match whenever he wants; so as long as WWE don’t dump some of their home-grown bullshit on it, this should be great.

As for a winner, it’s gotta be Shinsuke Nakamura, he’s not won a Pay-Per-View match since February, and a loss here would destroy what little legitimacy he has left.

The Bludgeon Brothers(c) vs Team Hell No
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

This is a feud that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense until you look at the bigger picture.

So the news came out last week that WWE are preparing for Daniel Bryan not to resign in September, and are thus treating this as his farewell tour which, if it’s anything like RVD’s 3 farewell tours, won’t mean a whole lot in a couple of months. Either way we’re getting some of Daniel Bryan’s greatest hits until he decides to either leave or sign a more long term deal in September. It’s not any of the greatest hits we want to see though, he’s not winning another world title, or beating Sheamus is 17 seconds, he’s just teaming up with Kane again, and fighting people who are taller than him.

So that leads us to this match here. Under normal circumstances, I’d say Team Hell No had this in the bag, however given that this is his greatest hits tour (and it’s been all over the internet for weeks) I’m going to say The Miz gets involved here to set up Miz vs Bryan at Summerslam and The Bludgeon Brothers walk away with the titles still over their shoulders.

Alexa Bliss(c) vs Nia Jax
(Raw Women’s Championship)
(Extreme Rules)

Given that Ronda Rousey has basically told us she’s going to get involved in this match (even if she didn’t say those words exactly), I don’t think there’s any ambiguity as to how this one is going to go down.

While Nia and Alexa have generally put on enjoyable matches in the past, I don’t think there’s anything new that they can bring to the table this time around. The inevitable triple threat match at Summerslam will probably be quite good, but we’ve got to get through this first.

So it’ll be a pretty boring match, until Ronda Rousey let’s her emotions get the better of her and she jumps Alexa. Then in the ensuing chaos, Alexa Bliss will find a way to keep the title, giving Nia some proper beef with Ronda for costing her the title, and we can move forward into what should be quite an entertaining feud.

Dolph Ziggler(c)  vs Seth Rollins
(Intercontinental Championship)
(30 Minute Iron Man)

I really don’t understand the career of Dolph Ziggler. He’ll coast along for a couple years not doing a whole lot and putting me to sleep whenever he appears on the screen, until one day he just suddenly remembers he’s a really good wrestler and puts on a string of really good matches before disappearing again.

Right now, we seem to be in the middle of a string of really good matches from Ziggler, and Seth Rollins couldn’t put on a bad match if he tried; so this should be fantastic.

As for a winner, I’m really hoping Rollins comes away with the title so we can get Rollins vs Drew Mcintyre at Summerslam, since those two men are my favorite wrestlers on the main roster right now. Although I want Rollins to win I’m not entirely sure that he will, because when I think about it, I’m able to come up with a reasonable argument for either man winning.

One the one hand, WWE love Seth Rollins, and he’s been on a tear so far this year and everyone would love to see that continue. But on the flip side an Iron Man match seems like a prime way for Drew, or someone else to get involved and cost Rollins a fall at a crucial moment of the match.

Normally when there’s an option for WWE to go for bullshit, then I’d pick that; but against my better judgement, I’m going to have faith in WWE and say Seth Rollins wins this one 3 falls to 2.

Roman Reigns vs Bobby Lashley

Normally I’d talk a bit about the build for this match, but there hasn’t really been any. There’s been some great build for Roman Reigns vs The Revival, but here he is fighting Bobby Lashley instead. I’m not even sure why these two are fighting, I think it’s because there was originally going to be a number 1 contenders match, but now there isn’t, so they decided they hated each other?

If Brock’s not working Summerslam, then they’ve got to find something vaguely interesting for Roman to do, and outside of a rematch with Cena, I can’t really think of anything.

Either way, Roman Reigns is winning this, it’ll probably be the main event, and it’ll probably crap, but what can you do?

AJ Styles(c) vs Rusev
(WWE Championship)

I was really hoping for a bit more from this feud than we got.

Things started out really well, as Rusev shook AJ’s hand only for Aiden English to be a dick about it, and I thought that was going to be how things were going forward, with Rusev trying to be respectful and good about it, but Aiden unable to stop being an asshole. Instead they tried it for all of about a week, until just reverting back to Rusev joining in with the heelish tactics.

Regardless of how it goes down, AJ Styles is absolutely keeping that WWE Championship, probably after Aiden English tries and fails to get involved.

So there are my predictions for Extreme Rules 2018! I must admit, now I’ve gone through and analysed it match by match, I’m a little less excited for it than I originally was, but I think there’s still going to be plenty to enjoy on the show.

As always please share this around and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo, and make sure to come back early next week for my reactions and review to the show!

 

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!

 

Brock Lesnar’s Best Matches Since 2012

(Originally Posted Jul 2018)

I was a big defender of Brock Lesnar for a long while, I liked the idea of the title not being on every Pay-Per-View and a champion that felt genuinely unbeatable. However in the last year or so, it’s become pretty hard to defend.

Now, a Brock Lesnar match is not so much a treat and more just something you have to sit through (with a meer 3 matches in 2018 so far), and having him holding the Universal Championship has made the belt the single least important thing in the entire WWE; but that’s not to say Lesnar hasn’t had his fair share of great matches.

Sure, he had plenty of great matches in his original ’02-’04 run, but I want to talk about the phase of his career that people knock, so with the announcement that he will be defending his title at Summerslam (maybe), I’m going to talk about some of Lesnar’s best matches that have taken place after his WWE return in 2012.

vs AJ Styles – Survivor Series 2017

To think that this match was originally going to be Lesnar vs Jinder Mahal…

Starting off with the most recent match on this list, Lesnar vs Styles was the match we were all hoping it would be. Going into the match, no-one believed that Styles was going to beat Lesnar here, but goddamn that wonderful man if he didn’t make us all believe for a brief moment.

This match started with Lesnar trying to do his usual boring formula, but Styles forcing him to up his game. Styles knows how to bump with the best of them and he used that to great effect here, and it made his slow comeback really entertaining. The match ended at a fever pitch, with Styles having the beast on the ropes on multiple occasions, and while it did only take one F-5 for Lesnar to put Styles down, you felt like he only just scraped the win.

Now yes, you have to give a lot of credit to Styles when you talk about how great this match was. Styles is unquestionably one of the best wrestlers in world right now, and he put a hell of a lot of work in to make this match something special; but Lesnar’s contribution should not be discounted. I mentioned earlier how Lesnar really upped his game for this match and I stand by that, not to mention that Styles’ comeback wouldn’t have worked were it not for Lesnar being the perfect monster opponent for him to fight against.

vs Goldberg – Wrestlemania 33

This match was a car crash; but sometimes car crashes are fun to watch.

So what if this match was only 5 minutes long? Can you honestly say you wanted it to be longer? To put on an entertaining match, these two had to destroy each other and that’s exactly what they did. It was signature move after signature move and by God it got me pumped watching it. In this era of technical masterminds and amazing in ring action, we often forget how fun it can be to watch two jacked up dudes try to kill each other for our entertainment.

Not much else to say about this match, but I couldn’t have asked for more.

vs The Undertaker – Hell In A Cell 2015

While their match at Wrestlemania 30 will go down in history for obvious reasons, the match itself wasn’t anything to shout about. This match however, was fantastic.

After the aforementioned Mania match and a further good but confusing match at Summerslam, I can’t say I was expecting a whole lot from their grand finale, even if it was to take place inside Hell In A Cell; but boy did these two prove me wrong. In this match, Undertaker went harder than he’d gone in a good couple years and Lesnar responded in kind.

Within the first 5 minutes, both men had been busted open and it only got more insane from there, with both men going at each other like you would expect age-old blood rivals to. The match also told a great story, with Undertaker desperately trying to prove that he can still go, and Lesnar proving that his Streak ending win at Wrestlemania wasn’t a fluke.

The pace didn’t slow either, including one point where the doctors came to check on Undertaker, and Lesnar threw them to one side to keep beating on him, in a moment that I honestly still don’t know if it was planned or not. With the match finally building to a climax involving the ring padding getting ripped up – which is a very rare spot to see in WWE – Lesnar got the win, with both men looking like they’d gone through hell. Brilliant.

vs John Cena – Extreme Rules 2012

This was Lesnar’s big return match, he hadn’t been in the WWE since 2004, and in the time he’d been away, he’d won both UFC & IWGP heavyweight championships…let’s have him lose to John Cena!

Jokes aside, this decision didn’t really make much sense to me, while I understand Cena was coming off the back of the biggest loss in his career to The Rock, surely it would’ve served the story better for their eventual rematch if he’d kept losing, and really bottomed out like they claimed he did a year later.

Regardless of the result, the match was undeniably a great one. With the two men using the Extreme Rules stipulation to its full effect, and while Cena’s comebacks were often pretty contrived and formulaic, the style that the two worked in this match made it feel much more organic and exciting and set a pretty high bar for Brock Lesnar matches going forward.

vs John Cena – Summerslam 2014

Two years later, the two men would clash again, and this time, things would go down very differently.

The WWE landscape had changes a lot since 2012, Daniel Bryan had just vacated the WWE championship due to injury, and Cena won it pretty much by default. So when he was faced up against the one in 21 and 1 at Summerslam 2014, everyone was pretty sure things would go down the same way it had two years prior; and how wrong we were.

Lesnar DOMINATED Cena, in a match that was completely unprecedented at the time. I remember watching this match with a live internet chat, and the entire time Lesnar was beating Cena down everyone was waiting. Waiting for the inevitable comeback where Cena pops up, wins out of nowhere and strolls off into the sunset smiling away; but it never happened.

The beast incarnate just kept on beating Cena down until eventually that was it, Lesnar was WWE Champion. It was such a shock at the time to see this formula that had been established as the standard for nearly decade to be completely shattered in just 15 minutes. While this “Suplex City” formula would eventually become the borefest that it is today, at the time it was like nothing we’d ever seen, and created a lot of intrigue into where everything would go.

vs Roman Reigns – Wrestlemania 31

This is the reason I was so annoyed with Lesnar vs Reigns this year, because we’ve seen them do so much better, and this match is proof of that.

This was a match that everyone was dreading going into it, but towards the end everyone was on their feet, and that was before Rollins entered the picture. I don’t know what it was that was lacking this year, but for this match something between these two guys just clicked. Reigns did use the Cena template a bit, kicking out of a lot, leading Lesnar to get more frustrated and vicious.

The story told was a very good one aswell, with Lesnar still seeming unstoppable until by some fluke of nature, Reigns was able to bust Lesnar open, and from that moment on Lesnar began fighting like a wounded animal, taking every chance he good to strike, as Reigns slowly got more and more offence in.

While this match will be remembered mostly for Seth Rollins swooping in with the Heist of the Century™, it’s important that we don’t forget the match that preceded it, since it was one of the best of both men’s careers.

vs John Cena & Seth Rollins – Royal Rumble 2015

And now, we finish our John Cena trilogy with the best of the bunch, and the addition of Seth Rollins.

This match was everything a Triple Threat match should be: fast, action packed and full of excitement. With Cena vs Lesnar 4 set for Royal Rumble 2015, it was looking to be another pointless and boring match, but at the last-minute, Seth Rollins was slotted into the match as well; and it was just the shot in the arm this match needed.

Rollins was able to run circles around both men and forced them to up their game and quicken their pace to keep up. While it was never in doubt that Lesnar was walking away with the title, this match allowed that thought to fade away and it dragged you into the action, and there were certain point where part of me believed any of the men could win.

While Lesnar did spend a large chunk of the match taking a nap on the outside of the ring, the match wouldn’t have been as exciting as it was without his presence. Every time it looked like Cena or Rollins was about to pick up a win, Lesnar would appear and lay waste to everyone, until finally one mistake by Rollins allowed Lesnar to pick up the ring and retain the title after an exhilarating match.

vs CM Punk – Summerslam 2013

This is without a doubt, my favourite Brock Lesnar match of all time.

The match uses a similar formula to that of Lesnar vs Styles, but there are a couple of added layers to it. First is that of Paul Heyman, the whole idea of this story was that Heyman had turned on Punk after years of friendship and Punk was out for revenge, this meant there was a lot of Heyman getting involved and interfering the benefit of Lesnar.

There was also the no disqualification stipulation, which allowed for the two men to go nuts when it came to destroying each other in the match; Punk especially used weapons to his benefit, as he slowly wore the beast down. Also, it was genuinely hard to tell who was going to win, at this point in time, Lesnar had already taken major losses to both Cena & Triple H, so he wasn’t the unstoppable monster he is today, which means everyone was genuinely invested in every nearfall and fully behind Punk when it came to hope spots.

Lesnar would eventually win the match thanks to Punk being too obsessed with getting his own back on Heyman, and the storyline would sadly peter out after this match, but it doesn’t take away from the fantastic match these two men put on that night, and that’s what makes it the best Brock Lesnar match since 2012.

And that’s it! I know saying nice things about Brock Lesnar isn’t very popular in the wrestling landscape right now so I hope you’ve enjoyed.

As always please share this around and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo; and finally, make sure to come back on Saturday for Episode 2 of The Strong Style Podcast!