Triple Threat Reivew: Dreaming Sara, Toy Odessye, Bear With Me

(Originally Posted Jul 2018)

Another fortnight has passed so it’s time for another Triple Threat Review!

If you’re new, then please check out the previous article; this is a series where I pick 3 games semi-randomly from my Steam list – ones that I’ve never played before – I play them for an hour or so and then I give you my first impressions on them, scoring them on a scale of 1-3 based solely on how much I enjoyed playing them.

So let’s look at this week’s games!

Dreaming Sarah

Well, Dreaming Sarah was certainly able to capture what it felt like to be in a dream considering I didn’t have a clue where I was, what was going on, or what I was supposed to be doing at any given moment.

Dreaming Sarah is a very obtuse game, it just sticks you in a location and expects you to explore and work everything out for yourself. This isn’t an inherently bad thing, plenty of games have done it to great success, but Dreaming Sarah really missed the mark with it.

The first 10-15 minutes are pretty straight forward, you just wander about and sort of just stumble into puzzle solutions and there’s not really a whole lot of thinking to it, but things very quickly get harder from there. It wasn’t long before I found myself reaching puzzles where I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to be doing. Granted a couple of times this was just due to me being inept, but often it came down to the developer essentially saying “guess what I’m thinking”, resulting in me having to look up the solution on YouTube.

While that wouldn’t be a deal breaker on its own for me, as it is only one aspect of this game, it adds a couple of mechanics that make things very frustrating; the main example of which, is the compass. The compass is an item you receive fairly early on that points to places/items of use to you, which I assumed would act like a bit of a guide, if I ever got stuck I could use the compass and it would point me in the right direction; this is not the case however. The compass isn’t context sensitive in its hints, which means instead of pointing to where you’re supposed to go next, it just points to a specified location on the map depending on where you’re standing, this means that it can often be completely useless to you, or worse lead you way off in the wrong direction, to the point where you think you’re making progress, only to realise you’ve been going the wrong way this entire time.

Despite all of this, I kept trying to push through with the game, because there is kernel of something great here. The world is pretty intriguing and there’s a lot of mystery surrounding everything you’re doing, and there was part of me that cared and wanted to find out what happened; but I kept coming across frustration after frustration. In my hour of playing I got to about the halfway point and I still wanted to push forward to get to the end, however I took a pill that teleported me, and then the game crashed so I decided I’d had enough and put it down there.

In summary, Dreaming Sarah is a great concept, with great art and world design, but is ultimately crippled by poor choices in core mechanics and gameplay elements, and for that reason, I sadly can’t recommend it.

1/3 – Bad

Toy Odyssey

I was quite looking forward to see what Toy Odyssey had to offer when I booted it up, a quick scan of the Steam store page made it look like it was right up my alley; a roguelike with some tower defence elements and a nice art style was just the thing I was looking for. Unfortunately, the universe isn’t always that kind and now I sit here typing this review feeling annoyed and disappointed; so let’s dig into this shall we?

The game starts off fine, with some still images telling us the story of a family who move into a new house and the kid falls in love with this toy, the music was a tad over the top, but that’s a minor nitpick. Then it feels like there’s a scene missing between the end of the cutscene and the gameplay, as the character just wakes up Toy Story style, with no explanation as to how he got there, or why he’s suddenly sentient when he wasn’t before.

Here’s when we get to my first major issue with this game. Take a look at the image above, now like me, you probably assumed that the armchair and draws are part of the background, and I could just walk in front of them, however that’s not the case. A lot of the terrain doesn’t stand out from the background in any way, which often lead to frustrations where I would either try to run along something only to find it’s a solid surface, or jump for something thinking its a surface, only to go sailing through it.

The game also hasn’t worked out the kinks in its procedural generation either. As you can see in the image above, platforms sometimes generate in such away that you can’t actually get through, the gap is too small for my character to fit through, and there’s no way around to climb up, meaning I couldn’t get certain items or progress to the objective.

Then we get to the combat, and there isn’t really much to it, it’s pretty boring and there’s no weight to any of your attacks. You have a secondary slot, but I didn’t find it very useful in many scenarios. Enemies will also sometimes blend into the background, meaning you’ll often get attacked and lose health out of nowhere. The enemies attack very fast, with no telegraphing, and the limited combat system means there’s no way to dodge an incoming attack; all of this pretty much means that if you’re fighting more than one enemy at a time, then you may as well give up.

Finally, there’s the tower defence aspect, while you’re out in the world, fighting enemies, you can also collect resources, which you can then use to build up your “base” (it’s the kid’s bedroom…who now I think about it is seemingly non-existent in this game). At nighttime things will attack your base, but you don’t get to play this section so it’s basically just a dice roll as to whether you lose everything you’ve built or not.

Overall Toy Odyssey is nothing special, the core gameplay is middle of the road at best, and just plain bad at worst. There are plenty of other games out there that do what it does better, so I’d recommend you go play one of those games instead of this one.

Score: 1/3 – Bad

Bear With Me

Bear With Me immediately caught my eye, it’s a point and click, noir game, where you play as a girl and her stuffed bear, who takes the role of a traditional, 1960’s run down drunk PI.

The first thing I noticed about the game was how it oozes charm, the art style works really well with the noir colours and the sound design compliments it greatly. The voice acting is a little over the top, but I feel like that’s the point, it all adds to the feel of the game, you click around stuff and the way the main character will reacts or makes remarks reminds me of the way characters behaved in old point and click games.

Sadly I don’t have much more positive to say about the game, because once you start to get into it, everything seems to grind to a halt; the mystery of the game is set up pretty well, and the cutscene upon first meeting the bear is great. But the one major criticism that carried through my time in the game is that there is just SO MUCH TALKING. I fully appreciate that a mystery game is going to need a large amount of dialogue to tell its story, but this was just ridiculous; There’d be a 2-3 minute long conversation, and in the whole thing only 1 or 2 lines would actually be of importance to the story.

If the meaningless chatter was funny, or telling us more about the characters then I’d be interested in it, but for the most part it’s just meaningless banter that only serves to slow the pace of the game down. If you’re going to have that much talking in your game then make the talking a major part of the game, give me branching dialogue options with choices. Expand on what LA Noire did and make every conversation a puzzle in and of itself; that was not the case however, and after a little while I found myself skipping most conversation.

When you finally get to play the game, you’re greeted with a pretty standard point and click affair, you click around the room until a character picks something up, or shows interest in something, and then you use it on something else to progress. It’s an enjoyable enough formula, but I don’t think this game did as great a job of it as it could have. Most of the puzzles were pretty obvious, and there are multiple occasions where the game basically tells you the solutions if you read between the lines in the dialogue. As such it can sometimes feel like you’re not really a part of the story, but more just there to move the story along to the next conversation.

The weird thing is though, with all of my complaints and frustrations with the game; I still want to keep playing. All that charm and great design I talked about earlier really were enough to keep me in on this one, while the waves of dialogue were annoying, I wanted to get through them because I wanted to see what came next, and while the humour isn’t the best it has its moments and I found myself giggling at the game on multiple occasions.

Overall my advice would be, if you want a point and click with good puzzles and gameplay then maybe look elsewhere, but if you just want to experience the art style and take in the game world, then I’d say you should give this one a try.

Score : 2/3 – OK

Well I eluded to it last time, but I was bound to hit a downer week eventually. As always feedback is appreciated, especially with more negative content like this, it can often be much harder to write effectively than positive stuff.

Please share this around and make sure to follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo,  a big thanks to Elly from the Strong Style Podcast for editing this one I’ll see you 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!

 

WWE Money in the Bank 2018 Predictions

(Originally Posted Jun 2018)

Well, getting 3 PPVs in a month certainly made the 6 week wait for this one feel longer. I can’t say that the build’s been great, especially on the Raw side, but hopefully we should get some entertaining ladder matches out of it. Before we get there though, let’s go through the tradition of predicting the winners for every match.

Daniel Bryan vs Big Cass

It really feels like both of these guys should’ve been in the ladder match, but instead they’ve been put in a throwaway rematch that probably won’t deliver. Their match at Backlash was perfectly fine, but it was nothing special, and I don’t expect any more out of them this time, especially considering it’s arguably the least notable match of the card; which is quite the travesty when you consider that one of the participants is Daniel Bryan.

As for a winner this pretty much just feels like a way for Big Cass to get his win back, which is fine. Daniel Bryan seems like he’s beyond being “damaged” by constant losses at this point, although we’ve been wrong before…

Seth Rollins(c) vs Elias
(Intercontinental Championship)

I genuinely can’t believe that this is Elias’ first championship match sicne coming up to the main roster, he’s been here forever, you’d think he’d have at least gotten some meaningless title shot at some point down the line. I seem to be finding it harder to call this one than I should, logically I think it’s got to be Seth Rollins, but there’s just seems to be so much more to it than that. There were rumours that he might be facing Brock at Summerslam, but those rumours were quickly debunked and there’s also the fact that management seem to have taken a liking to Elias this year and given him some pretty high-profile spots; Also I just really like Elias.

I think I’m going to go with my heart over my head here and say Elias picks up the title from Rollins here, and maybe the two of them will hot potato the belt for a little while.

Bobby Lashley vs Sami Zayn

Honestly, I can’t even pretend to care about this match. The build has been terrible and pointless, they brought Bobby in as a big powerhouse that could match strength with the likes of Braun Strowman. Then they decided to have him talk about his family for 10 minutes and then sit idly by for weeks barely reacting while Sami made jokes about it. Then Sami brought out men in drags pretending to be his sisters in a segment reminiscent of “Bayley: This is your life” and “The Old Day”, and any remaining interest I had in this feud vanished.

Since this just seems like a feud designed to kill time until either man has something meaningful to do, I’ll pick Bobby Lashley and hope that this ends soon.

The Bludgeon Brothers(c) vs The Club
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

While I’m all for The Club getting a push, this feels like a really weird direction for them to in with the Smackdown Tag belts. I get that The Bludgeon Brothers have done all they can with The Usos but surely you’d have them move on to someone they were more directly involved with like The New Day, or hell even The Bar. Instead, they plucked The Club up from almost fading into obscurity and stuck them in this feud where everyone knows they don’t really stand a chance.

Pretty straightforward here, The Bludgeon Brothers keep the belts and move on to the next team to squash.

Roman Reigns vs Jinder Mahal

Wow, this show really is just “Throwaway Feuds: The Musical” huh? So this all started when Jinder cost Roman his Money in the Bank qualifying match for…..some reason, and Roman responded by trying to kill him and then constantly complaining about management keeping him down despite no actual evidence to support that claim. Roman is just going to carry on with feuds like this until Summerslam when I pray we can finally just get this over with, and as such, I’d be quite surprised if Reigns took any kind of major loss between now and Summerslam.

Once again, there’s no doubt in my mind that Roman Reigns walks out of this one the victor.

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

I don’t really have a whole lot say about this feud really, mostly because this feels like the start of a long road. So far there’s just been a few petty insults thrown back and forth, and we’re yet to get into the meat of this. You’ve got to think they can’t hold Asuka down forever right? Regardless of what you think of Charlotte ending her streak at Mania, you can’t deny it’s made this match a lot harder to predict; Asuka isn’t untouchable or immune to any WWE brand bullshit anymore.

As a result, I think Carmella is going to heel her way to win here, and this feud will likely carry on till Summerslam.

Nia Jax(c) vs Ronda Rousey
(Raw Women’s Championship)

I’m pretty excited for this one if I’m honest; Ronda’s debut match at Wrestlemania was arguably the best on the show and I’m really looking forward to seeing how she will do in a one on one match, and I think Nia could be a really good person for her to work it against. Much like Carmella vs Asuka, this feels like the start of a multi-month feud, although in this case, Ronda might not actually wrestle again until Summerslam; this sure has been a funny kind of “full-time” contract she was apparently signed to.

As for the result, this one is really quite hard to predict for me and I’ve flip-flopped on it a lot this past week. On the one hand it feels a bit too early to put the title on Ronda, but on the other, WWE want nothing more than to do just that right now. I feel like there’s more to it though, on Raw the past few weeks it’s become clear that Natalya is going to play some sort of crucial role in this, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say Natalya will cost Ronda this match.

Still not very confident in my pick, but I’ll say Nia Jax retains her title thanks to Natalya.

Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match

Well at least there’s very little chance of a man winning it this year.

This match needs to make up for last year, the match was very underwhelming and it was won by a man. So there’s a lot riding on it and looking at the participants, I’ve got pretty high hopes. As for predictions, I’m going to talk about what kind of chance I think each woman has.

Lana – Zero.

Natalya – It could be kind of interesting to have Ronda win the title and then Natalya win the briefcase, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case. She’s going to be very intertwined with the Nia vs Ronda story going forwards, and it’d be best if the Money in the Bank briefcase wasn’t tied up in all of it.

Alexa Bliss – I really doubt Alexa’s going to win this, she’s only just left the title scene after being in it for about a year and its way too soon to insert her back into it, especially while Nia is still champion.

Charlotte – Similar story to Alexa really, I’d argue Charlotte has much better odds than Alexa but I still don’t think she’s going to go straight back into the Smackdown Women’s title scene.

Ember Moon – One of the more likely candidates in my eyes, the only thing that causes doubt for me is how new she is, I’m not sure WWE would be ready to give her that push just yet, they probably want to take some time to build her up a bit more before giving her something like this.

Becky Lynch – It’s really hard to tell with Becky, they tend to leave her in the dust for ages, not really doing a whole lot with her, but it also feels like she could be pushed back up into the title picture at any moment, as such, I’m going to tentatively say that she’s my pick to walk out with the briefcase.

Naomi – Naomi is a weird one, because I can’t really think of a reason why she will win, but I also can’t think of a reason why she won’t. You’d think winning the Wresltmania Battle Royal would make her a prime candidate, but the men’s Battle Royal has shown us that it’s entirely meaningless. So I wouldn’t really be surprised if she won, but I’m not expecting her to.

Sasha Banks – Originally – at the start of the month – Sasha was my prediction to win, but now I’m not so sure, all year it’s seemed like this Bayley/Sasha thing has been leading somewhere, but it’s been stagnant for months now, and really feels like the kind of thing they’ll eventually just drop entirely. I’d say she’s still a prime candidate, but not as likely as Becky in my eyes.

Men’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match

Wow, seeing them all in a row like that really makes me realise how similar some of their faces are…

Weird observations aside, I think we’re really in for a treat with this one. I’ve found it quite difficult to call and I’m not very confident in my pick, so we could end up with a nice surprise; either way I think we’ll end up with a great match, so let’s look at the participants.

Samoa Joe – I don’t really feel like the Money in the Bank briefcase fits Samoa Joe; it’s not really his style. In addition to this, he actually climbed the ladder and unhooked the briefcase on an episode of Smackdown recently, which is basically WWE’s way of saying “This guy’s not going to win on the PPV”, so I don’t really like Joe’s chances in this one.

Kevin Owens – Owens is another one of those guys who could easily be shot up into the main event at any moment, and this could be one of those times. I’ve always thought Owens would be perfectly for the briefcase, but unfortunately, I just think there are people in the match this year who could do better with it.

Bobby Roode – Roode however, is not one of those guys. The only way I could see him winning this match is if a heel turn was coming VERY soon, happy smiley Bobby Roode is a bore to watch, and apparently Vince is starting to sour on him as a result. Which means sadly, I don’t think he’s winning here.

Braun Strowman – One of the things I’ve always wanted, is for an absolute monster like Strowman to win Money in the Bank. The briefcase is normally used opportunistically, to strike when the champion is down and out, but Strowman could easily destroy anyone while they’re at 100% and it would be awesome to see a champion absolutely shit their pants when Strowman’s music hits. I believe Strowman is one of the most likely to win this, even though with Brock or Roman as champion my scenario won’t happen, but it would be a great way to eventually reignite his feud with Reigns, this time over the title.

The Miz – Hands down, my pick to win this one. The Miz absolutely deserves another chance at a run with the World title after his pretty crap run in 2011, and now is the perfect time. Ever since the brand split a couple of years back, WWE have been slowly building to Daniel Bryan vs The Miz, and what better way to do it than over the title? Obviously it won’t be for a good 6 months at least, but it would be absolutely awesome and I hope it happens.

Rusev – Sadly, much like his wife, also Zero. Rusev is so over with the fans, and Rusev Day is a great gimmick, but WWE management just refuse to get behind it, they’re still trying to make him a heel and he’s not won a major match in ages, and that trend is going to continue on Sunday I’m afraid.

Finn Balor – This could be a good chance to get justice for Finn, he was the first Universal Champion for quite literally a day, and since coming back, WWE just don’t want to get behind him like they did originally. I feel like he’s going to get back to the top one day, but I still feel like there’s a way to go on that road just yet. Also, much like Joe, he climbed the ladder and grabbed the briefcase on Raw, which pretty much bottoms out his chances.

A Member of the New Day – It’ll probably be Kofi, Battle Royals and Ladder Matches are what originally made his name; and while it would be cool to see the New Day Freebird rule the briefcase, and eventually the title, it doesn’t really feel like it would work with a world title, a middcard title sure, but not a world one.

AJ Styles(c) vs Shinsuke Nakamura
(WWE Championship, Last Man Standing)

I don’t understand this stipulation at all, their last match ended in a draw because neither man could answer a 10 count, so now they’re doing a match which could very well end in a draw when neither man answers the 10 count? I’m pretty fed up of waiting for these guys to have a 5 star match, so I think it’s time to go big or go home with this one; the magic is gone. But, this could quite easily keep going till Summerslam, so I honestly have no idea.

I’m going to do my best to be optimistic here and say Shinsuke Nakamura finally picks up the title and we can all move on, hopefully to a feud with Daniel Bryan. But if this match ends in a draw, I called it.

Well there you have it! I’m feeling optimistic about this show, and I’m looking forward to what we get after it moving toward Summerslam; but until then, please share this around and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo, and follow @lauren_cmonster aswell who makes these articles read in actual English, as opposed to the crap I come out with.

Make sure to come back next week for my review of the show and I’ll see you soon!

 

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!

 

The Best and Worst of the Money in the Bank Briefcase

(Originally Posted Jun 2018)

It’s that time of year once again, where we get to see who WWE is going to be putting their stock in for the future of the company. Well at least that’s what WWE want us to believe, while the Money in the Bank briefcase has created stars and amazing moments in the past, it’s had its fair share of duds in its time too.

So before we look forward to June 10th, let’s look back on the best, and the worst of previous year’s Money in the Bank winners.

Worst: Edge’s False Start

It’s one of the big iconic moments in the history of WWE, a bloodied and beaten John Cena sits in the ring with his WWE Championship after going through the grueling Elimination Chamber, only for Edge to come out with the briefcase in tow, to pick the bones and gain the WWE Championship for the first time in his career.

While that is an awesome moment, what is often neglected, is what came after it. While he would create one of the most iconic moments in Raw history by having sex live in the ring, he would drop his title back to John Cena less than a month later at the Royal Rumble and that was that. Edge wouldn’t win his title back until July that same year, and even then, he lost it to Cena again little less than two months later.

Luckily, this wasn’t a death sentence for him, since he would win the briefcase for a second time from Mr Kennedy a couple of years later to much greater success, but this first win wasn’t the crowning achievement WWE want us to think it is.

Best: Back to Back

There are many parallels to be drawn between the careers of Edge & CM Punk, and their Money in the Bank wins are no exception. Punk’s first contract win didn’t really do him many favours, cashing in on a beaten down Edge, his tile run was very forgettable, and he didn’t even lose it in the ring, he was simply stripped of it after Legacy attacked him backstage. However one year later he was given another shot, winning the contract for a second time, becoming the first and (to this day) only man to win the contract in back to back years.

This time he would cash in on Jeff Hardy, who had just won the championship after a grueling match with Edge, and it would mark the beginning of what – for my money – is one of the best singles feuds of either man’s career. The entire feud was built around Punk’s straight edge lifestyle versus Jeff Hardy’s free spirit, the two played off each other perfectly and it led to a string of fantastic matches. During this feud, Punk would drop the title to Hardy before winning back in the rematch, he would then hold the title until that year’s Hell in a Cell PPV, where he would lose the title to The Undertaker in one of the most one-sided Hell in a Cell matches I’ve ever seen.

Despite a rather disappointing beginning and ending, CM Punk’s time with the Money in the Bank briefcase led to a very entertaining run with the championship and helped build up his legitimacy for what he was to do in the years following.

Worst: The Ones that Failed

A Money in the Bank cash in is usually the most exciting thing to happen on any given WWE show. Even when you see it coming a mile off, watching the briefcase holder sprint to the ring and claim his match is quite the buzz. So it takes the wind out of your sails a bit when the man who cashes in the contract, ends up taking the fall.

First was John Cena, this one wasn’t a particularly exciting cash in anyway, since he announced it ahead of time to take place in the main event of Raw 1000; it didn’t get any better once the cash in actually happened though. While the match between Cena and then champion, CM Punk was a good one, it ended in a move perhaps pretty symbolic for WWE in 2012, as CM Punk would retain the title via Disqualification after Big Show interfered in the match. The Rock would then come down and clear house before CM Punk notoriously turned heel by attacking The Rock. While all that was fairly entertaining, John Cena, the actual briefcase winner, was the least important factor in the whole thing.

Next up was Damien Sandow, his briefcase win was extremely surprising to begin with, and with the power of hindsight it would be quite amazing to think of what Sandow’s career might’ve been had he won the World Heavyweight Championship. However it was not to be, it seems WWE management gave up on him pretty quickly. John Cena had just returned and won the World Heavyweight Championship from Alberto Del Rio, and WWE already had plans to unify both World Championships, but since there was no way Sandow was getting in on that action, they had to remove him from the equation, so in the most underwhelming cash in history, Sandow interrupted a fresh John Cena to cash in his contract, at which point the shows cuts to commercial; I don’t think there’s ever been a more telltale sign that nothing interesting is going to happen. Low and behold, nothing did, after a pretty underwhelming match, John Cena retained his championship and that was that.

Now we come to the most recent Money in the Bank holder, Baron Corbin. Him winning the briefcase last year felt like a given and most people predicted him to win the match, alas, he did and held the briefcase for a good few months. During this time the Jinder Mahal experiment was in full swing and he had a WWE Championship match with Shinsuke Nakamura just around the corner at Summerslam. while a lot of people believed Corbin would cash in on a victorious Nakamura, that wasn’t to be as 5 days before hand on Smackdown is when Corbin would strike. He cashed in the briefcase to a huge pop since literally anything was better than Jinder Mahal, only for John Cena to pop up on the apron, Corbin would get distract, Mahal rolled him up and that was that. It’s still not really clear what exactly he did to upset WWE officials, but while he’s slowly fighting back to relevance on Raw right now, he’s yet to recover, and who knows if he ever will.

Best: One Night Stand

RVD was arguably the single hottest star to come out of the invasion in 2001, and it never felt he ever reached the heights he should’ve, being stuck on Raw while Triple H went on his reign of terror meant he never got the main event spotlight he deserved, this would all change in 2006 however, when RVD won the Money in the Bank briefcase, and he announced that he would be cashing in that contract at ECW One Night Stand 2006, against the champion John Cena.

An ECW crowd was always a very unique and vocal crowd as such, they were ready to tear the place apart if Cena were to walk away with the championship. Luckily the riot was averted, as following a Spear from Edge and a 3 count Paul Heyman, RVD won the WWE Championship for the first and only time in his career. It was a wonderful moment to see RVD get his well deserved crown in his home of ECW, however it was not to last…

Worst: Unfortunate Circumstances

So it’s no secret that RVD is a man who enjoys smoking marijuana, and regardless of what you think of that, it’s undeniably got him into a fair bit of trouble over the years. This was one such time, as he was pulled over as he was travelling between WWE shows and was subsequently arrested for possession of marijuana. Since this was in breach of WWE’s newly established Wellness Policy, RVD was subsequently suspended from the company and stripped of his WWE Championship.

It’s always a shame when a champion doesn’t lose their title in the ring, but this was especially disappointing since it finally seemed like RVD was being given his due. It’s hard to tell how long he would’ve held his WWE Championship as a couple of months later it was back over John Cena’s shoulder, and there’s nowhere that RVD would’ve really fit into the picture. Regardless it’s a real shame that such a beloved performer had his glory stripped in such underwhelming fashion.

Best: Yes!

Daniel Bryan has had quite an interesting relationship with the Money in the Bank briefcase, but more on that later. Bryan’s first experience with the briefcase came in 2011, there were several times he attempted to cash in, but failed. But finally at TLC that same year he would succeed. Taking advantage of Big Show and Mark Henry destroying each other in the match that preceded, Daniel Bryan broke his promise to the Big Show and cashed in his briefcase moments after Big Show finally defeated Mark Henry.

However, the most notable thing about this title run is how he lost it, infamously at Wrestlemania 28, in the opening match, Daniel Bryan would lose his World Heavyweight Championship to Sheamus in 18 seconds, however in hindsight, this was good thing, as it would cause the crowd to get behind Bryan like the hadn’t before and that support would eventually launch him to his crowning glory two years later.

Worst: Sheamus

While for the past year and a half, I’ve been loving Sheamus has one half of The Bar with Cesaro, he never really enthused me as a singles star, I just found him rather boring, and 2015 was when he was at the height of this boredom. I remember going into this match, I thought to myself that I’d be happy with literally anyone in the match other than Sheamus winning, and Vince clearly heard that thought and decided to spite us all.

My main problem with this isn’t even so much about Sheamus himself however, it’s that it was so clear from the moment he won the briefcase that the sole purpose of him winning the briefcase was as a tool to get Roman Reigns over. Admittedly it did work, albeit very briefly, but it always annoyed me how transparent it was that getting Reigns over was the only purpose of Sheamus ever winning the briefcase, so I don’t look back on this one very fondly.

Best: What’s Best for Business

Daniel Bryan vs The Authority is an interesting storyline, because while there was a lot of bad in the middle, the beginning and the end were done to perfection.

Daniel Bryan was riding his monumental wave of popularity into Summerslam 2013 where he would face off against John Cena for the WWE Championship, with Triple H in the background as the special guest referee. After one hell of a great match, Daniel Bryan would finally reach the top of the mountain as he toppled Cena to win his very first WWE Championship. It was a glorious moment, but it was not to last as Triple H revealed his true colour, laying out Daniel Bryan and allowing Randy Orton to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase and become the face of the WWE.

This moment was fantastic writing, and it set everything in motion for 8 months later when Daniel Bryan would finally get his own back at Wrestlemania 30 and reach the top once more. That moment wouldn’t have been possible without this one, so it gets it’s due.

Worst: The Tragic Tale of Dolph Ziggler

It’s become one of the most iconic moments in the history of Monday night Raw: The night after Wrestlemania 29, after almost a year of waiting, Dolph Ziggler finally seizes his opportunity and claims the World Heavyweight Championship.

However, that’s pretty much all of the good there was from this championship reign. Ziggler was set to defend the belt in a triple threat ladder match at Extreme Rules, that probably would’ve been an extremely good match, however on an episode of Smackdown Ziggler suffered a concussion at the hands of Jack Swagger, which put him out of action for a few weeks meaning plans had to change.

Upon his return, he was set to face Alberto Del Rio at Payback, in a match where the story was Del Rio trying to give Ziggler another concussion, which wasn’t great considering a couple of years later, many former stars would sue the company for concussions they suffered in the WWE. Del Rio would win the title in that match, and Ziggler would get a rematch at Money in the Bank, where AJ Lee would interfere and cost Ziggler the match and that was that.

Ziggler’s shown flares of life since then, but for the most part he’s never been able to climb back up and smash that glass ceiling, I like what he’s doing at the moment, but that’s only thanks to Drew McIntyre, who is the person WWE actually want to push as a major star in the near future. It’s a sad tale, but sadly not an unfamiliar one.

Best: The Heist of the Century

How could it ever be anything else?

In my time of being a fan of professional wrestling, this was the single most exhilarating and awesome moment I’ve ever seen, and that feeling comes rushing back to me every time I think about this moment.

In the main event of Wrestlemania 31, Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns were putting on a surprisingly good match, but everyone knew that it was moving to the inevitable conclusion of Roman Reigns as WWE Champion, which no-one wanted. But suddenly, in a move no-one saw coming, while Reigns and Lesnar were both down, Seth Rollin’s music hit and the crowd EXPLODED, he sprinted down to the ring and a couple of Curb Stomps later, Seth Rollins was the new WWE World Heavyweight Champion.

I’ve talked in this article about how many people would have a very underwhelming title reign following a cash in, and to some extent this was true of Seth Rollins, but in this case I don’t think it matters. No matter what happens for the rest of Rollins’ hopefully long career, that image above, will be the single image that defines his career, and what an image it is.

Well that’s all folks! I had a nice break from the wrestling content after going through 3 PPVs in a month last month, but I’m happy to be getting back into it in the build up to Money in the Bank, in what currently shaping up to be a pretty good show!

As always please share this post around, and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo and my lovely editor @lauren_cmonster, and I’ll see you soon!