NXT Takeover Unstoppable

I like wrestling. There I said it, move on I'm also going to speak about this as if you have somewhat of a clue what's going on so if you think it's lame or have no interest, click away now.

   NXT has been the best pat of WWE for over a year now, or however long it has been since the network got here. week in week out it's full of great wrestling. It attracts so many indie darlings to WWE like Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Hideo Itami and many, many more and could spell a very exciting future for the whole of WWE. It also has a great advantage of always being filmed in the same place. I say this because as the main roster is always on the road and you have to wait for them to go to the traditional big wrestling cities to get the good crowds, but NXT gets it every time and crowd participation is something that is out of the companies control, but makes the product so much better.

There's also a very interesting preview of the show with Triple H where you can see just how proud he is of the show and reading between the lines there's more to see, with comments on how NXT 'divas' are real wrestlers and not just in it for the fame plus essentially saying it's the best wrestling show in the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=447&v=I2-AsE_1w3w .

   So, to the show. It was obvious to put finn balor vs tyler breeze on first as the two of those plus hideo itami (who was out injured) have been going as a group through a series of great matches and this one yet again didn't disappoint. I do worry that Finn's Undertaker challenging entrance is too long though, but the crowd seem to love it, I just hope they don't fart out the title match that Finn earned like they did after the last no. 1 contender match although I think they might given what ended the show.

   Divas tag match was solid. We all know how good a worker Charlotte is by now after her series of outstanding title matches last year and is more than ready for the main roster. Bayley too is very good and well over with the NXT crowd. I'm interested to see what Dana brook can bring but I don't like her entrance as he does the same thing over and over again and I'm indifferent to Emma as she was just leaving NXT as the network got here, so despite her match with Paige at the first live special she's been mostly ignored since she went to the main roster so I'm not sure what I think. The match was fun, hardly the most technical of the live special womens matches but fun for what it was.

    Okay, so I'm in to Rhyno being in NXT. It's fun to have some random veteran in there, especially when the crowd can just chant 'gore' throughout the whole match, added to by the way Rhyno himself gets in to the chant. Corbin I'm not keen on, maybe as he's just had short matches until this point but I find myself not caring. I expected a brawl and we got a good one, Just a shame about the result (although I guess a vet coming in and ending a young talents undefeated streak would be against what NXT stands for).

   Enzo and Cass, what a team. Not convinced they're the greatest wrestlers but wow they're good on the mic and super over with the crowd.  You have to love them, it's impossible not to, they've even got the classic big guy/ little guy partnership like Dion Dublin and Julian Joachim before them (and, I guess, whatever other big guy/ little guy combos have happened). Murphy and Blake are strange as tag champs, it seemed like it was done to a) show that when these stupid title matches against no hopers happen, actually the no hopers could win and b) get the titles off the Lucha Dragons to send them to the main roster. I'd say put them on the Vaudevillains instead and have them feud with 'the Jersey boys' but Blake and Murphy are okay I guess, it can't stop feeling weird to me though that 2 jobbers suddenly won the tag titles. Needless to say I was fully behind Enzo and Cass and bitterly disappointed at the result as this was one of two matches where I truly favoured a winner and it didn't come to fruition. Needless to say there's only one word that can describe the ending of that match...

   Okay, on to the ones that really matter and first the NXT WOMENS championship. It must be said that recently Sasha Banks has took the spot of my dream girl from Aubrey Plaza. Ah, if only I were fitter, lived in north America, were a Pro wrestler and worked for WWE. Maybe I'd have a chance (just a few hurdles to climb then). Needless to say I'm in the 'no she's not (ratchet) category. The women's title match has pretty much stole the show on every NXT live special so far, be it Paige showing her strength and earning her place s next WWE divas champion (although arguably the nxt women's title actually is better) to the classic from Charlotte/ natalya to Bayey's coming out party (as a class wrestler) to an edge of your seat fatal 4 way to another clinic in Charlotte Sasha, to this, which probably compares best of those to Charlotte Natalya with Charlotte the underdog against Natalya the established star. The same was true here with Becky Lynch finally getting a title shot. Granted she wasn't really pushed enough to deserved it and it felt like a rush job to get a different match than yet another Sasha/ Charlotte match (though they've all been excellent) and at the start of the match it seemed like the crowd also saw things like this and gave Becky a hard time, but just like Bayley before her ,Becky Lynch may not have won the title, but earned her stripes in this match and left, as the loser, to a standing ovation.
PS. Triple H in the interview I posted higher up said Sasha Banks was one of the best performers, male or female, he's ever seen. I've got high hopes. Here's to hoping they cut all of the main roster 'divas' except Paige, Naomi and Natalya, put the nxt gals up and give them some serious length for their matches. Then we'll see what good womens wrestling is in WWE.
#legitboss.

   PPS. Corey Graves made a killer reference in relation to Becky's newly bright ginger hair.

   So after Kevin Owens made a truly incredible Raw debut on Monday, putting John Cena in his place, I was excited (added to by his entrance attire). Not that I wasn't before. The match at the last special was great, the build has been great and the things you hear about their ROH matches all makes it more special. The only thing I feared for was another Sami Zayn injuy. Not a real injury mind you. He's a great wrestler, but in basically every high Profile match Sami Zayn has it has to get stopped for a period of time due to him being injured. If pro wrestling were real, he shouldn't be doing it, it makes him look so weak. And yes, it happened, again... he came out all guns blazing and fighting Owens off, but the very well put over brutal ring apron powerbomb put Zayn down. Owens wins by the match being ended again and he looks great, but Zayn, who knows. Added to the fact the freakin' Samoa Joe, still named Samoa Joe came out to save Zayn at the end. Don't get me wrong, I was excited. I loved TNA in the late to mid naughties, but stopped watching in the Hogan/ Bishoff era (y'know, when they ruined it) and I gather Joe was bumped down the card at that point too, but Samoa Joe is a truly great wrestler. Next to maybe AJ Styles the only person who could come in to WWE right now and keep his name. It was  great to see him (despite his awful music) but where does his leave Zayn now? He looks like an aftherthough. The next live special will clearly be Joe vs Owens so where does Balor fit in, I assume with another blowoff regular show match. Don't get me wring the match will be great, like the last one, but we all know Owens will retain.

   The show was, just like every other like NXT special, outstanding. Watch it if you have the slightest interest, but I just wonder, where does this leave the title picture with 4 men basically involved now, not to mention the champ's big match against John Cena (sucks) in 2 weeks.

PS Plus May

   After being so excited about all the games coming free on PS plus this month, I felt it my duty to play them before The Witcher 3 took over my life and see if these games were really as good as it was said. Often times you hear indie games are great only for them to turn out to be some artsy nonsense that have little merit as game per say, but are more interactive adventures the likes of which Katherine Janeway may enjoy on the Holodeck as they all pretend to be fancy hundreds of years in the future. Yes, I am still watching voyager (half way through season 4 now (which is about half way in general)) and yes I think games are supposed to be entertainment, not just a chance for developers and reviewers to pat each other on the back and say how great they all are.

   That being said I'd have to take my hat off to 'Race the sun' as that was a good game. I played it first as I thought I would like it the least out of all these games, but how wrong I was. This game is basically an endless runner as viewed from behind where you control a little spacecraft. You have certain objectives to complete as you go to unlock more things like speed boosting pads, jumps and paintwork which all (well, most) help you on the ultimate job of trying to get as far as you can without dying. It's a simple but great concept as you have to both dodge obstacles (moving and static) as well as make sure you're going fast because, as the title suggests, your ship is solar powered and when the sun goes down that's game over.
   There are other modes you unlock too like a sort of maze mode, and an extremely hard mode, but the normal mode is where the most fun is as trying to get as far as you can. The only thing I found a disappointment is that there is no end, not even ridiculously far away, there is a point where the score stops going and 20 or so people have managed that world-wide (this game has been on Steam for a while too) but for most people, me included, it would have been nice to have a just about reachable end to game, so you could aim for it, as it is though, I know I'll never catch those 20 or so with unstoppable scores so when I unlocked everything, I just stopped, I did have all these other games to play too remember.

   As for the other 3 games; The Unfinished swan, Ether One and Hohokum, I have completely different thoughts.

   Firstly the unfinished Swan, which was more of an 'experience' than a game. Now, don't get me wrong, I played Gone home (another interactive story) and loved it, but this just didn't grip me. It was about a boy coming to terms with the loss of his parents (I think) which was doled out in small pieces of information between navigating mazes of no colour, which you threw balls of paint at to help you figure out where to go. That was the game play element of it really, throwing paint or water balls to help you see where to go in basically colourless landscapes. I think it was quite a good idea for a game play element to be fair, but as soon as they seemed to start getting somewhere with it, they'd change it to water, or night-time or other things and you'd be back to step one and you never really got to see how far that mechanic could go, which I'd think could be implemented very well in to a stealthy game (there's a money making idea for someone). I wish I could stay more about the story but after an hour or so, I started zoning out and lost interest, in fact the only reason I finished it was due to how short it was.

   That's why I didn't finish Ether one. Again, it seemed like a good concept as you were some sort of mind changer that goes in to peoples dreams and solves their mental problems. You were accompanied by your boss' voice in a cheap GLaDOS imitation role. The problem for me though is that it seemed to be very reminiscent of point and click adventures where it was a case of trying to combine everything with everything else while looking in every little cupboard in the game, and being on foot (as it's a first person adventure game (just like unfinished swan before it)) it takes forever walking back and forth. I know this one is more personal opinion but I like my puzzle games more like 'The Swapper' (which I talked up a few months ago) and not in the form of trail and error of trying to combine everything in the game together. Sorry, it's not for me so I chucked in the towel after a few hours.

   Hohokum is an interesting one. I can't decide if it's a terrible example of art getting in the way of a good game or a trippy masterpiece. I'm leaning towards the first one but I'm not sure. Basically you're a flying snake thing and you have to go around the world playing a very long game of hide and seek with your brethren by once again trying to interact with everything possible. The difference here is it's not a first person experience but a side on colour trip and you're basically interacting yourself with everything.

   I'm not sure if I'm explaining the difference very well, but suffice to say there is a lot of similarities, especially in the trial and error sence. The biggest problem though is the lack of information it supplies.It doesn't tell you how many of the other snakes you've rescued, if the are you're currently in has a snake to rescue and most damningly of all, there's no overall map, so it would seem that if you get to a stage where you've only got one or two snakes to get (at least, you assume that) then you could be spending hours trying to navigate the giant map that tells you nothing, yet the game is happy to tell you how many eyes you've found in a level (they're a bonus collectible). I'm not claiming to have really been liking it before, but the knowledge of this to come totally put me off. That said, there's a few days until The Witcher comes out yet, so I may try picking it up again, certainly more likely than Ether One.

Chroma Squad

   Oh how I was loving this game. It was a fantastic idea for a game and really well executed until it all went wrong, but to keep a narrative thread, I'll bring up the issue when I get to the point (it's at the end).

   So, this is basically a game where you make a Power Rangers style TV show where you are in charge of running the show and acting out the show in turn based combat. Much like many other turn based combat games it's as complicated as you want to make it and the light RPG elements of the game add extra intrigue when you're outside of the show such as what to equip on your heroes which help out one stat but drop another, y'know, basic RPG stuff.
   The combat is very much played out in the style of Power Rangers or similar shows which exist (apparently) where you fight off some easy monsters before getting on to the big villain, defeating him, then when he gets big, taking him out in your mech. It's not all that simple though, there's directors instruction to follow, like using a team finishing move on an enemy (remember when they used to join all their weapons together? Yeah? Well, like that), or defeating a certain amount of enemies or finishing in a certain amount of goes and other such things. The mech battles can be frustrating though, they're very easy but can be very time consuming where you have to play percentages and when you miss a punch that has an 88% chance of hitting 3 times in a row, it makes me wonder what the percentage chance of me smashing my monitor is about to be.

   On the plus side though, you can name everything. You studio, your team, the characters the finishing move and so on, so there's plenty of chance for personal gags there, or just blatant rip offs. You even get to hire your actors at the start to fulfil certain rolls in the team and they all add something different, so even though the RPG elements are quite light in the game, they're sill very important.
   Of course, the story goes nuts. At first your just making your own show then it goes crazy and gets real and you actually have to save the universe, and keep your audiences up. I do wonder why those camera men keep putting themselves in the way mind you. It's funny though, there's branching story lines too and the music is retro gold.
   I was loving it, until the final boss. Sigh. So, there's 3 parts of the final level, fail it and you have to go right back to the start. Bare in mind that between getting through the fights and skipping the cut scenes the first 2 sections of this take about half an hour before you get to the big final fight at which point twice now it has stopped working for me. Both times I've nearly 'done him in', but when one of my team goes down, the enemy just doesn't take it's turn and the game can't continue. So I'm stuck there, after spending all this time getting there (and nearly defeating the final boss is no quick feat either) I can't do anything. Everyone is just standing there. I've spent far too long looking around forums and such for help, but none exists. It's sad to say but even if they do patch it now I doubt I'll go back and finish it now, if there's one thing I hate in gaming actually, there's lots) it's re-doing large sections of the game. I was so happy when game overs went away for this exact reason, I play games once and rarely go back, once it's done it's done to me.

   Oh well, I'll try and get off my ramble. At least this month there has been a fantastic set of games put out on PS Plus for me to go through before the Witcher 3 comes out in a couple of weeks, it's just unfortunate that right now the term 'pissed off' doesn't even cut it to describe my mood. 15 damn hours I'd played that game for and I wish I could recommend it, I was going to...

   Additional. I've calmed down now considerably. Chroma Squad is a really good game, and assuming it's fixed within the next few days I'd recommend it to anyone, it was great until that point. I may finish it yet, but I'll give it a few days first. I don't like to run indie development teams in o the ground when I know bugs will always appear after a game launches, but with just a small team it's hard to keep up with the corrections, I'm just annoyed it's affected me when many others seem to have finished the game no problem.