Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu & Let’s Go Eevee Officially Revealed!

(Originally Posted Jun 2018)

This is going to be a much shorter post, but for those of you who are unaware, there has been an official Pokemon press conference in Japan, and 3 brand new Pokemon games have been revealed! I’m going to briefly talk about them and give my thoughts.

So first up is Pokemon Quest, a “free-to-start” game available on both mobile and Switch. I really don’t care for this one, but to be fair, it doesn’t seem like it’s aimed at me; any game that relies on micro-transactions is generally a no from me anyway, but this game seems to be aimed more at the younger audience of Pokemon, so it’s not something I’d want to play anyway.

Secondly, there was the reveal that a “Core-Series RPG” will be released in late 2019, there were no further details on this, but one would have to assume this is Generation 8, so we’ll get more information on that much closer to the time, but it’s very nice to know they’re on their way.

Onto the main announcement, the leaked Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee have been officially revealed, and will be releasing on November 16th 2018 and I could not be more excited. Firstly, if you haven’t seen the trailer, go watch it, but it has most of the features that were highlighted in the leaks a couple of weeks ago, plus a few more. Since I’ve already talked about things like Pokemon Go integration and new catching mechanics in my article last week, I’ll just be talking about the new stuff that was announced last night.

No tall grass random encounters – At first, this concerned me, but a couple of the screenshots seem to make it clear that, instead of Pokemon just popping out of the grass at you, there will be Pokemon actually wandering around the routes and caves, which you can go up to and encounter Pokemon Go style. Generally I think this could breath so much more life into your Pokemon adventure, and actually gives you the ability to hunt down a specific Pokemon you want, rather than just waiting for the percentages to roll in your favour. Gameplay wise, I really can’t tell whether or not I’ll like it until I play the game, it seems like it could be the extra touch a Pokemon adventure needs, but it could also be a bit annoying for things like EV training and shiny hunting.

A brand new Pokemon to be revealed – I mean, how could you not want new Pokemon?

Able to dress-up Pikachu & Eevee – Not really much to say here, I just can’t wait to make my Eevee look fly as hell.

2 player co-operative play – This is very much a feature that I didn’t realise I wanted until I got it. While I will likely go through my own single player experience as well, the idea of sharing my Pokemon adventure with someone is a fantastic idea. Personally, I will probably use it to play through the game with my little brother, since he doesn’t have access to a Switch and I’m really looking forward to playing a Pokemon game with him.

My only real concern is balancing issues in the game, for example, do you share a team of 6 Pokemon? Or do you each get to have 6? Because that would give you a lot more options when it comes to type advantages and such like playing against AI trainers. In addition to this, how will battles actually work? You would naturally assume that every battle would become a Double Battle, but the footage we saw in the trailer showed a 2 on 1 battle, I would hope that’s simply because that trainer only had 1 Pokemon, but you can’t be sure.

Well that’s all the new information we’ve got for now! I am so unbelievably excited for these games, and that excitement is only going to increase over the coming months as more details are revealed. I will do my best to cover any major news that comes out about these games, it’s time like this that make me so happy to be a Pokemon fan, and I’ll chat about all this stuff to anyone who will listen.

Until then make sure to follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo for my raw reactions to all of this stuff, and of course also make sure you give a follow to @lauren_cmonster, for turning these 4AM ramblings of mine into acceptable content.

See you soon!

 

Pokemon for Switch Rumours: Let’s GO Pikachu/Eevee

(Orignally Posted Jun 2018)

*sigh* Ok, let’s talk about this shall we?

Before we get started let’s get one thing clear, as of writing this article, these are NOT leaks, they are rumours, as credible as they might be, there is no information in any of this that has been confirmed by Game Freak or the Pokemon Company. However these rumours have been gaining a hell of a lot of steam, and upon researching them, they begin to look pretty credible, so I think it’s worth talking about.

I’m not going to discuss all the details about how these rumours came to light, or how solid their sources are, I’m just going to talk about what these rumours say, and what I think of them.

Pokemon Yellow remakes for Switch

Would I prefer gen 8? Yes. Would I prefer gen 4 remakes? Absolutely. Do I hate the idea of new gen 1 remakes? No I do not.

The last time we visited Kanto in a main series game was in Fire Red and Leaf Green on GameBoy Color in 2004, Two thousand and four, that’s 14 years ago, I don’t understand this bile in the community about Kanto being “done to death”, yes it was in the Johto remakes too, but Gold & Silver Kanto is very different to the original. On top of that the GameBoy Color is very old technology at this point, older than Gen 4 on the DS, and it doesn’t really do Kanto justice as the “definitive” edition of the region.

Finally, there’s the personal note that, I didn’t become a Pokemon fan until 2010, so I’ve never actually played a Kanto game, and while I know roughly what to expect, I’d love to have my first real experience of the region be on the wonderful Nintendo Switch.

Pikachu and Eevee will be the versions

A hundred times yes, I’ve never really had an opportunity to use a Pikachu properly in any of the Pokemon games, so I think I’d have a lot of fun using it for the first time. While Eevee is one of my top 3 favourite Pokemon, it’s in the header for this site for christ’s sake, it makes so much sense as a starter Pokemon given the options you have with it, and having an entire adventure with Eevee as my partner will be a wonderful time. On the subject of choice however…

Only the original 151 Pokemon will be available

This to me, is the clearest indication that these will be side games, because in order to make this work, they’d have to essentially undo all of the balancing they’ve done to these Pokemon over the years, since so many of them have got evolutions now and made their pre-evolutions much weaker in comparison. If they were to go this route, I’d also like them go all in with it and put Special attack and defence back into one stat, and maybe even get rid of all the types that were added post gen 1, just for this game to really capture that authentic Kanto feel.

Pokemon Go integration

Whether you like this or not, it absolutely makes sense, Pokemon Go was one of the biggest trends of this generation back in 2016, and while it died down a bit in 2017, this year it seems to be getting quite the resurgence, with more and more events and support coming out for the game on a regular basis.

In addition to this, Sun and Moon didn’t get quite the boost that Game Freak were hoping for from Pokemon Go when they released in 2016, so bringing in those fans with this game, could easily get people hooked on the more mainstream series of Pokemon games, in time for generation 8 to drop with a massive boom in a year or two.

However, mechanically speaking, the main sort of Pokemon Go integration that was being talked about is the catching mechanics, and this makes for an interesting discussion if you ask me, because if you were to just copy/paste the catching from Go, into this game I think it’d be awful. However, if you were to combine the two, taking all the variables that increase your catch chance from the main series games (health, status effects etc.) and combine that with the throwing mechanics that Pokemon Go has (Nintendo loves their motion controls after all), it could make catching Pokemon a lot of fun.

Announcement soon, releasing this year

Personally, I think one of the purposes of this game is for Game Freak to test the waters with a lot of new ideas they’ve come up with and see what sticks, to eventually put into future main series games.

Regardless, I am so excited to see what’s next for the Pokemon franchise, and I really hope we get some sort of announcement soon to clear up all the confusion in the community right now, but I think it’s important not to get too critical or analytical in a time like this. A dose of skepticism is healthy of course, but don’t let it cloud your joy and excitement for the next major step in this awesome franchise.

Well there you go! This was a bit of a brain dump that I wrote at 3AM, so I hope it all made sense, there’s just been so much buzz about this over the past couple weeks I couldn’t stay silent on it any longer.

As always, make sure you share this about, and keep and eye on this space as I will be posting here once any new information is revealed. If you want my live reactions to stuff like this though, check out my Twitter at @10ryawoo, and of course the wonderful @lauren_cmonster for stopping me from sounding like a lunatic….sort of. See you soon!

 

Triple Threat Review: Into the Breach, Distrust, World to the West

(Originally Posted May 2018)

At the end of my post last week, I hinted at a new format I was working on to try to get some more regular content up here, and here it is: Triple Threat Review.

A friend of mine pointed out to me that, thanks to things like Humble Bundles and Steam sales, I have a lot of games in my Steam library that I bought at some point, but never got round to playing, so I decided to turn them into a bit of a review series. Once a fortnight, I will pick from my Steam list, 3 games to play for an hour or two, and then give you my first impressions on them. These games could be new releases, titles from a few years ago that passed me by, or even retro games I’ve never played before.

As with almost every type of review comes an obligatory scoring system, but with a series as basic as this, I decided to keep the scoring basic as well. Each game, will be given a score of either 1, 2 or 3. 1 being Bad, 2 being OK and 3 being Great.

Now with all the explanation out the way, let’s get into it.

Into the Breach

First up, is Into the Breach. It’s the latest game from Subset Games, who are responsible for FTL: Faster Than Light, a game that I have called one of my favourite games of all time, so I had high hopes going into this. After playing it for about an hour and a half, I can say that it’s certainly got me hooked in the same way FTL did.

The basic premise for ITB is that Earth is being attacked by the discount Kaiju known as the Vek, and you have giant mechs which can fight them; so far, so Pacific Rim. The way they justify you having an infinite number of goes is of course, time travel, which as always brings up a couple of world breaking questions, but we’ve all heard them thousands of times and I’m not going to rattle them off here.

Looking at the gameplay, I’ve been having a lot of fun with it, I’ve played three runs of it so far, and I feel like I’ve been improving at quite a steady rate. On my first playthrough, I found the game very easy to learn, and the tutorial is very good at explaining everything quickly enough so that you don’t get bored, but not so quickly that it all goes right over your head. The game essentially consists of lots of mini turn-based strategy games where, generally the objective is to survive the specified number of turns without all of your mechs dying or “The Grid” going offline.

The Grid is what powers up your mechs, and is powered itself by all of the buildings on the planet, which creates a very interesting balancing act; because while your mechs will heal themselves between battles, they don’t have much health and things go wrong quite quickly when you start losing them. While simultaneously protecting buildings, since they power The Gris, which acts as your persistent health across the whole game. This entire system can make for some very tough decisions, especially when you’re on the ropes and down to very low health.

As such, each turn is extremely tense and very enjoyable, you are told where the enemies are, where they’re going to attack on their turn, and where the next wave of enemies will spawn. Using this information, you essentially have to solve a puzzle of how to take as little damage as possible on the enemy’s turn, by attacking them with your three mechs. The mechanic that I think helps bring this out the most, is the “push” mechanic, as you can see from the picture at the top, the whole game takes place in a grid, most types of attack will also include a mechanic that pushes the targeted enemy one tile in one direction, this allows you to avoid taking damage without having to kill everything on the screen and it adds that extra layer of strategy, that makes this game that fantastic and fun game that it is, and a game I will absolutely be sinking more time into.

Score: 3/3 – Great

Distrust

I went into Distrust not expecting to have a great time, as it seemed to present itself to be some sort of horror game and I don’t do horror very well. So you can imagine my surprise when I loaded it up and instead got an isometric, exploration, puzzle game.

You control a small group of arctic explorers after their helicopter crashes and it’s your job to keep them alive as they make it to safety, while also solving the mystery of the “anomalies” floating about the place. You do this by exploring procedurally generated buildings and scavenging the place for food and fuel to keep warm and fed, while you’re also looking for things that will allow you to overcome obstacles such as locked doors and toxic gas, in order to progress to the next area.

I wasn’t all that into it at first. Things seemed pretty basic, but it eventually picked up a bit and I started to enjoy myself more. The exploration is the main thing that I enjoyed; as much as all of the buildings themselves are fairly similar, what you find each one is interesting, it may be something to help keep you alive, it may be something you need to progress, or it may be a weird item that you have no idea what it does; but either way, the game is able to keep its sense of discovery alive the whole time.

I’m not entirely sure how long the game is, when I booted it up it said I had 6 areas to progress through, but it didn’t make it clear if that was the end of the game or just the first section, and unfortunately I never got to find out as I died near the end of the second area. That’s another thing that concerns me about this game, I played for a little over an hour, and didn’t even get out of the second area, which means you could be looking at upwards of 3 hours per playthrough, which seems a bit long for a Roguelite. The point in these types of games is to learn by failure and lengthy times for each playthrough runs the risk of every death feeling more tedious, since you know you’ve got to play for another couple of hours to get back to where you were when you died.

Speaking of dying, it’s a game where death creeps up you without you noticing it, and then it suddenly jumps you and there’s not really a whole lot you can do about it, unless the Gods of random generation decide you’ve been good this year and gift you a useful item. It didn’t feel like I was slowly being worn down by the harsh conditions, it just felt like everything was fine, until it suddenly wasn’t and then I died.

That being said, I enjoyed my time with the game and I still want to go back for more, but I can’t see myself playing it over and over again unless it starts to show me new ideas in later areas, that make the early game slog worth getting through.

Score: 2/3 – OK

World to the West

Going into World to the West, I had no idea what to expect but I was very pleasantly surprised because, what I got was a light-hearted, beautiful adventure game that I’ve only scratched the surface of in my hour and a half of play.

The game has a total of 4 characters for you to control, each with their own skills and abilities, although I haven’t got the point where I’m introduced to the 4th one yet, so I can’t talk about them, but so far we’ve got: A wizard girl who can teleport and use lightning powers, a small child who likes digging holes, and an adventurer who can hypnotize animals to take control of them.

With multiple characters like this you’d expect there to be a lot of puzzles where you have to use everyone’s abilities to get by, but so far there hasn’t been much of that. Each of the characters seem to have their own separate goals and places to go around the world, only occasionally crossing paths with one another, which so far has been a really good way to establish all of the characters before they team up properly.

What I’ve enjoyed most about this game though is the world, it feels like it’s going to be a Metroidvania style of open world, where you progress through it in a linear fashion, but there are plenty of places where you can find secrets or backtrack when you get new abilities. It’s not nearly to the extent of other Metroidvanias, but it’s certainly in there.

Aside from that, the design of the world is just beautiful, every area has its own feel to it and the simplified graphics really add to the charm that this game has. I love how all of the elements interact with each other, and it keeps surprising me with new things for me to discover; exploration is one of the things I love more than anything else in games, and this has it in spades.

With all this lovely world building, they didn’t skimp out on the gameplay either, all of the puzzles have been well thought out, and very satisfying to solve. There hasn’t been much in the way of difficulty so far, but I would imagine that’s down to me still being early on in the game, I did get stuck a couple of times, but that was more down to me being unobservant, or the game pointing me in the wrong direction.

Overall, I absolutely want to keep playing World to the West, these are characters that I want to know the story of, and I’m interested to see how the game brings all these characters together to create an engaging story, and fun puzzles to solve.

Score: 3/3 – Great

And that’s it! I’d love to hear feedback on what you think of this new format, and let me know what you think of the games if you try them out! Like I said at the start, I’m aiming for this to be a fortnightly series, so share this around and get some interest stirred up before the next one!

Until then please follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo, and my friend @lauren_cmonster, who makes sure these articles aren’t just ramblings that only I understand. I hope to see you again soon!

 

Best Places To Live In Skyrim

(Originally Posted May 2018)

Over the past month or so there has been A LOT of wrestling, and as such, I haven’t had the time to write much gaming content, so I thought I’d get back into the groove of it by just writing a fun list based on a game I’ve been playing a hell of a lot of recently: Skyrim.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve not had access to my PC, so all of my gaming has been done on my Nintendo Switch. This was my first time playing it on the Nintendo Switch and more importantly, my first time in around 5 years  playing without mods; and I’ve got to say, this is probably the most fun I’ve had playing this game in a good few years.

But circling round to the topic at hand, as I’ve been traveling Skyrim, I always get very different vibes in each of the 9 cities in the game and it got me thinking, if I were a citizen of Skyrim, where would I most want to settle down? I’m not talking about the houses that are purchasable by the Dragonborn in-game, I just mean what city would I like to live in if I were a generic, nameless character in the world. So I’ve neatly ranked them all from worst to best for your reading pleasure.

9. Markarth

The beds….are made….of STONE. I have enough trouble sleeping as it is and you want me to rest my head on a bed made entirely of stone?! Not just the beds mind, but pretty much all of the furniture as well, it would be horrible. Not only that, but thanks to the Forsworn I’m at a high risk of being stabbed every time I leave the house and that’s not pleasant, trust me, I live in London. But that’s not all, with an extremely corrupt guard force, you could very well be arrested for no real reason and then be forced into slave labour in Cidhna Mine. So Markarth falls dead last.

8. Dawnstar

So at face value, Dawnstar seems like a pretty nice place. It’s got two mines and a port to help the local economy, a lovely climate for someone like me who hates the heat and even a museum, however, it does have a lot against it too. For example, every time I visit there in-game, without fail, a dragon will attack the city, and given that all of the houses are made from straw or wood, it’s not really a risk I’m willing to take. On top of that, everyone in the town suffers from constant nightmares thanks to a staff in the nearby tower, and as I said before, I have enough trouble sleeping as is.

7. Riften

Another city that seems quite pleasant at face value, but is quite the Skeever-hole upon further inspection. I complained a bit about corruption in my entry about Markarth, but that’s nothing in comparison to Riften. The entire city is essentially run by Maven Black-Briar, who bought her way to power, if you do anything to upset her then you lose everything, and I just know I would accidentally upset her somehow, considering I’m a klutz and she’s a rather uptight woman. Not only that but with the Thieves Guild running rampant, I’d never be able to go anywhere without being in constant fear of being mugged. If Markarth is London, then Riften is Birmingham, so no thank you.

6. Winterhold

Winterhold is a town of two faces, if you’re a mage, then it seems like it would be quite a nice place. You get a really nice looking hall to live in with your own bed and a place specifically designed for you to learn and hone your skills as a mage. If you’re not a mage however, then it’s just quite boring really. There’s a general store, an inn, and a single house, I just don’t know what I’d do with myself all day, not to mention half the city’s already collapsed once, how can I be sure it’s not going to happen again? Really just a boring place, that I would avoid if I could.

5. Morthal

Morthal is a weird one, I’ve put it towards the middle of the list because, while I don’t really have anything bad to say about it, there’s also nothing particularly great about it either. Admittedly, I’m quite a fan of natural water, I think it has a beauty to it, and Morthal is almost entirely on water which is nice, but I wouldn’t say that’s enough for me to really want to live there. Not really much else to say here, Morthal’s quite nice, but there’s not really much to it.

4. Windhelm

Much like Winterhold, Windhelm is a city with two sides and, sadly, it depends on your race. If you’re a Nord, then you’ll be welcomed with open arms, you’ll have a full market with a friendly community and be able to rub shoulders with the richest Nords in Skyrim; sure there’s a small problem with a serial killer, but I’m sure that’ll blow over. However, if you are any other race whatsoever, then you’ll be confined to the slums, being forced to work as basically a slave for no money; not to mention, if you’re a Khajit or Argonian you won’t even be allowed in the city at all. So if you’re a Nord, this may be the best place for you, anyone else though, probably best to keep looking.

3. Falkreath

The thing about Falkreath, is that I always completely forget about it. I only ever go there to do that one Daedra quest, and then I never come back; and that seems like exactly the kind of place I’d like to live. I’d love to live in a quiet little town where you’ve just got a load of space to yourself, and there’s plenty of forest around the place to wander, it generally seems like quite a nice place. However, the size could also be considered a negative, as it doesn’t provide the same level of protection or resources that the bigger cities have, so it gets knocked down a few points, but other than that, lovely.

2. Solitude

Rather ironic that the most populated city in the whole of Skyrim is named “Solitude” isn’t it? Aside from that, Solitude generally seems like it’s quite a pleasant city, I’ve talked about security and protection a lot throughout this because in the lands of Skyrim, Dragon attacks and bandit raids seem rather frequent, and if I were living there I’d like to know I was safe, and where better than Solitude? It’s got city walls taller than the buildings, most of the buildings are made of stone, without having everything inside of it be stone as well. Not to mention it’s the home of the Imperial Legion and Castle Dour, so if we’re looking at safety alone, Solitude is the place to be.

The main downside to it, is that it seems you have to be quite rich in order to settle down there. Out of the purchasable houses in-game, Solitude’s Proudspire Manor is by far the most expensive, and I can only imagine the rest of the city has a rather similar economy, so while I’d love to live in Solitude, I’m not sure it would be a place I’d be able to make a decent living.

1. Whiterun

There’s just so much life to this city, you’ve got the Plains District, where there’s almost anything you could want to buy for life in the city, and it’s always bustling with a (mostly) friendly community. Then there’s the Wind District where most of the citizens of Whiterun live, along with the Gildergreen and a lovely plaza to take a seat and chat with the locals; and then of course there’s Jorrvaskr, home to the Companions, who would be willing to take care of any problems you had for a bit of gold. Finally there’s the Cloud District (which you don’t get to very often) that houses Dragonsreach, the Jarl’s palace, and while I can’t see why I’d have much reason to go up there as a regular citizen, it makes for quite the impressive view as you leave your house each morning.

As great as Whiterun is though, it’s not without its negatives, since it’s pretty much slap-bang in the middle of Skyrim, it’s a key city in the civil war, and both sides want very much to control it. However, regardless of who’s running it, the city itself remains largely unchanged, so I can’t see how it would affect me in my day-to-day life.

So overall, Whiterun just seems like the most pleasant and most affordable place to live in Skyrim, and that is where I would try to set myself up, where I a citizen of Skyrim.

Well there you have it! I hope you enjoyed this fun style of list, I’m going to try to do more articles like this in the future, but make sure to check back soon as I’m working on a new type of article to write for the blog!

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

 

WWE Backlash 2018 Predictions

(Originally Posted May 2018)

Well, we got a whole 9 days rest, but it’s time for another WWE Pay-Per-View. Thanks to the single week of proper build, this doesn’t feel like that important of a show, but looking at the card it could have some pretty good matches; however that doesn’t stop it feeling like it’s mostly setup for Money in the Bank next month.

Still, let’s arbitrarily speculate over what we think is going to happen at the show.

Braun Strowman & Bobby Lashley vs Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn

The problem with meaningless matches like this on PPV’s is that it’s always so difficult to predict a winner, because ultimately it doesn’t matter. We make up a scenario that justifies whatever pick we make, but in actuality the exact opposite is just as likely to happen.

As such I’ve gone back on forth on this one a lot. On it’s surface it seems like a no-brainer, but Owens & Zayn are new arrivals on Raw and they’ve been getting their arses kicked week after week on TV. So I think Owens & Zayn are going to pick up a win here, there’s no way it’ll be clean, my money’s on a count-out of some description, but somehow, they’ll walk away with the victory.

Jeff Hardy(c) vs Randy Orton
(United States Championship)

This has gotta be Hardy right? No-one wants to see Orton hold that title again, not even Orton because he’d have to be on TV every week. You’ve got Shelton Benjamin waiting in the wings to pounce the winner anyway, and Hardy vs Benjamin should be a great match – if a little 2007 for my tastes. I don’t really have much else to say here, any feud where Randy Orton is the focal point isn’t really worth talking about, so Hardy wins and onto the next one.

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

This match is really nothing more than a formality, they’re having this rematch because that’s what logic dictates they do. I don’t really see anything interesting coming out of this and there’s no way Nia Jax is losing that title this soon. Maybe we’ll see her next challenger appear at the end of the match but I doubt it, we just need to get this out of the way so we can see what’s next.

Daniel Bryan vs Big Cass

I like how this entire feud is about Bryan being small, yet on that graphic, they’ve made him seem taller than Cass. Bad Photoshopping aside, I really don’t see Cass winning this one, this is Bryan’s first single feud since returning and Cass already got his ‘win’ over Bryan be eliminating him from the Greatest Royal Rumble match. I think Bryan will probably go on to be in Money in the Bank, and Cass will go on to beat up someone lower down the card, maybe even stick his head in the US title scene. Either way, I’m picking Daniel Bryan to win this one.

Carmella(c) vs Charlotte Flair
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

This is an interesting case, because I think we all know how it’s going to go down, yet I still think it has the potential to be interesting. As for what is definitely going to happen, Carmella is going to retain, and it’s going to be via some form of dirty finish, probably involving The Iconics.

However, I don’t really know what the match up until that point is going to be like, Carmella is by no means one of the best women’s wrestlers, but she’s certainly not bad, and Charlotte can easily work with her to make the match a fun watch. I just think it’s more down to how heavily they want to go in on Carmella having to use cheap tactics to win. But, be it a win, or cheap loss, Carmella is leaving Backlash with that title.

Seth Rollins(c) vs The Miz
(Intercontinental Championship)

Another formality that it just feels like we need to get out of the way here. There’s no way that IC title is going over to Smackdown, so as a result I’m entirely confident Seth Rollins is winning the match. I think Miz is going to go back to how he was wrestling about a year ago in this one, wrestling safe and taking a few choice shots here and there to try and pick up the win, and when you combine that with Seth’s fast paced, babyface offense we could see a really entertaining match come out of it.

We also have to consider what the Miztourage are going to do here, because they’ve been trying to buddy up to Seth and Finn these past few weeks, but they might still try to help Miz. What I think would be quite funny is if they try to help Seth, but keep screwing it up and Seth ends up having to work around their incompetence. Regardless, Seth is walking away with that title still over his shoulder.

Roman Reigns vs Samoa Joe

This one is quite a tricky one to call in my mind, because both men really need to win here. Reigns has just come off losing to Lesnar twice (even if he didn’t technically lose the second one) and needs to start picking up some wins before they face off again; while Joe inserted himself into Smackdown’s main event scene on Tuesday and needs to win here and legitimize his claim.

It’s so weird what Reigns losing at Mania has done isn’t it? If Reigns had won at Mania, this would be a no-brainer, and yet he lost and it’s cast doubt on every big match he’s had since. Ultimately, I think Joe can lose here and still insert himself in the main event for Money in the Bank, and Reigns can’t afford to start losing to everyone, so I’m going to say Roman Reigns picks up the win here.

AJ Styles(c) vs Shinsuke Nakamura
(No Disqualification, WWE Championship)

In my review of the Greatest Royal Rumble, I talked about how each match these two have will to build on the last, until we get that 5 star match we’ve all been hoping for, however just a week later, I’m not so sure that is the case. This doesn’t feel like the blow off to their feud, but at the same time, I don’t think we’re going to get another singles match between them for at least a few months. As such, I’m starting to feel like it’s time to shit or get off the pot with these two, and while I think this’ll be the best match of the three, I don’t think it’ll be the big one we all want.

As for who’s going to win, they can’t just keep handing Nakamura losses can they? If he loses here, he sorta loses all claim at staying number 1 contender, so I think this’ll be the one where Shinsuke Nakamura finally picks up the title from Styles, leading to a triple threat at Money in the Bank, which includes Samoa Joe.  I’ve got my fingers crossed that this will be good, but I’m not entirely hopeful.

And that’s everything! This show really could go either way in terms of quality, and I like to remain optimistic, but we’ll see. Either way, make sure you come back on Monday for my review of the show!

Please make sure you share this around and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo as I’ll probably be live tweeting the event! Thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon!