Craig H

FUUUUUUCK YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS

Thankfully Fire Pro has the best AI you can adjust in video games.

It feels like that’s every chapter and chapter 11 is the one where it really starts piling on. Hey, you just did this thing, now there are jobs and quests EVERYWHERE!!! I'd be fine with chocobo racing at the Gold Saucer if there weren’t a million races to go through and if there AI weren’t the cheapest and most bullshit AI ever. Getting bumped by literally every other racer and knocking your speed from 10 to 0 is the new blue shell.

Vince selling off a bunch of shares makes a little more sense because only he would be this dumb to do something like that a week prior to this announcement.

Is there a place where we’re discussing how TKO and Endeavor are being sold again? This time to a company called Silver Lake(?) who will be the one to take them private.

Yeah, Dasha is the other release that sucks. She’s awesome. I don’t know why they never used her more.

Malakai just got involved in an angle with Copeland...

I feel like the game is trolling me. So I got to chapter 12, but only the start of it. Before that I did Chadley's protorelic quests and that was by far the most aggravating set of them. To just follow the shambling dudes in black, very, very slowly, to their destination, and you can kind of speed them up by hitting L2 to shove them forward, was something else. To say I was annoyed is an understatement and it was also the very next segment I played after my long rant on here.

Awwww...Jose being gone sucks. Gravity was dogshit in a lucha outfit so no big loss there.

And I see we’re off to the races with his “I just choked him a little bit” remark. I think the funniest take I’ve seen is that he only choked a little bit in his UFC career or judging by his UFC performances choking someone a little bit was the best he could do.

And I see we’re off to the races with his “I just choked him a little bit” remark. I think the funniest take I’ve seen is that he only choked a little bit in his UFC career or judging by his UFC performances choking someone a little bit was the best he could do. EDIT: Wrong thread!

On the one hand it’s clear that he’s grown up quite a bit. On the other hand growing up means he just got better at projecting himself at doing no harm. It’s funny too because in the interview he talks about if he were younger he would have handled things worse than he would now. My man, you still didn’t handle things well, whether or not TK is a good boss. I do think it’s good he’s in WWE. In this current WWE it’s a well oiled machine that caters to what he thinks is best for business and everyone stays in line. AEW to its benefit and its detriment is a little too free wheeling. What surprised me the most about the interview was just how much he talked about what Vince did. As of this moment, they’re still allegations, but it didn’t stop him from talking about Vince shitting on someone’s head and ruining the lives of one or more women. I think it’s the first person on the roster to actually call that out and not just dance around it and my first thought was if he’s going to get in trouble for anything it might be speaking so openly about that. Every other wrestler talks like they have certain talking points they have to stick to where Seth may have gone the furthest in calling Vince out, but Punk went even further than that.

Careful. That’s how you become friends with weirdos like EC3.

There’s a lot of good and not good in that interview, the not good being Punk making himself look like a calm and rational angel when it came to all of the Jack Perry stuff. I feel like when he talks about his side of things that’s how he would have preferred to handle it, but there’s a decent chance that’s not the reality. I won’t even put all the blame on Punk though because he nailed it with TK that TK doesn’t want to be a boss or isn’t an effective boss. Some of the other not good stuff was constantly talking about not wanting to get in trouble and Ariel finally goes, who are you going to get in trouble with and Punk is like, ok, that’s true. He’s done this so often where he talks like he doesn’t want to get himself in trouble but he has no problem just completely going off during the scrums. The other stuff with him constantly saying he doesn’t want to get other people in AEW in trouble because they’re friends with Punk is pretty laughable because everyone there knows who is friends with Punk and one of them, Darby, was just in the main event at one of their biggest shows and moments. The good stuff or fascinating stuff were the mechanics to his return to WWE, how it felt like Nick was putting this into motion as far back as 2020, how this probably wouldn’t have happened without Nick, and what his relationship is like with HHH and others. The revealing stuff about AEW is interesting because yeah, I don’t think he’s wrong, too much of the time AEW is booked to just put on great matches which is fine at a lower level but on national tv it isn’t as effective. However, to that end, AEW is also suffering from WWE finally being a fully functioning machine again with Vince out of the way. But if the quality in WWE TV declines then I’ll be curious to see what happens with AEW.

I’m an obsessed Punk fanboy? That must be why I’ve had little positive to say about the guy for the last year, in particular his first promo in WWE. But there you go, forming your own narrative based on the bullshit in your brain. Two other things and then I have to put your shit on ignore because, my god, you are dense. First, if you think that’s the part that is weird about the Sasha stuff and not the, you know, always coming in for extended arguments literally every time her name is mentioned like you have an alert setup for it then I can’t help you. Second, the majority of your post…ISN’T A FACT! You just said you wouldn’t be watching or listening to the interview and then decided to just make up a bunch of stupid shit because it’s what you firmly believe happened. That’s not a fact. That’s living in your own world.

You didn’t even watch it, supposedly, so how would you fucking know? I swear, you are quite possibly the dumbest motherfucker on here. Most of the time a lot of us just look the other way when it comes to your borderline creepy infatuation with Mercedes and the other dumb shit you say, but other times it’s worth calling out and venting about it. The entire program has interviews with order wrestlers and fighters because, huh, weird, there is a pretty big show coming up. But like I said and as you just showed us, formulate your own narrative.

I think since Brawl Out I started thinking that TK is a lot like a manager in baseball. Starts out great, a player’s manager. Player’s managers don’t stay effective for that long decades of roster change and changing dynamics and the ups and downs of a season become more and more taxing. This interview and really the last year cement that. I appreciate all TK has done, I still really like AEW, but I’m not going to pretend AEW doesn’t have major issues once TK ran out of runway, went through all of the booking ideas he had cooked up for years, and then also had to start catering to more and more new hires. Can he right the ship on his own to make the week to week must watch TV? I really don’t know. I sure hope so because I’ve seen the alternative in TNA with bringing in booking help and it fails more than it succeeds.

It’s a really good interview, but whatever. Formulate your own narrative. Shill or not, there’s no bias on Ariel’s end.

Preach dude. I found myself in the same boat last night after trying a bunch of ways to beat King Mu. I sat there thinking, "I'm 95 hours in...what the fuck am I even doing at this point?" Shortly after getting to chapter 11 this sense of dread hit me. The sense of, fuck, ok, I have to do ANOTHER Moogle minigame, there's going to be ANOTHER minigame tied to the protorelic in this area along with a nearly nonsensical story tied to whatever the fuck is going one with the protorelic, there's going to be even MORE bullshit menial tasks to do, in this case, collecting Chocobo feathers, and I bet Chadley is going to have me backtrack to other areas of the game to complete other minigames there, and sure enough, yep, I do need to now go to a couple areas elsewhere to complete some minigames there. The one plus side to the area in chapter 11 is that I cleared all of Chadley's intel stuff really, really fast. Still though, everything you said is right. The story beats that are there, and I'll put them in spoilers, are really fucking good, great even: And sadly, I know there is more to add to that list, but it is buried underneath a mountain of endless minigames and bullshit. The excellent storybeats are there, but they're so fleeting because you're back to just doing all of this other goofy stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love the open world aspect, it's just that I hoped there would be some smoothing out where the main minigames would be Queen's Blood and, I guess, Chocobo Racing. Instead it has been just the most Japanese shit you'd even imagine. Like you, I hope they course correct a little bit for 3. They can keep it open world, just cut down on some of the endless chores. It sucks. I was really loving the shit out of this game where it was scratching a ton of itches and over time it eventually started drawing blood with how much it was scratching at me. I was for sure ready to say that this was my game of the year, but now? Man, there's no way in good conscience I could say that. Not that this is the best place for GotY discussion, but tonight I passed on playing Rebirth more to go and play Helldivers with my friends where one of us is at the level cap and the rest of us are just trying to farm samples. It's just so much fun and such an incredible experience. And had Rebirth not taken forever, I might have tried out WWE 2K24 or Dragon's Dogma, but there's no way I'm buying those when I'm probably not close to being done with Rebirth. And my other hope remains the same - that we get part 3 within 2 years. There's no reason to drag this out to another console generation. They expanded on Remake enough to make it more of a complete experience, now they just need to keep everything else in the game and pare down the amount of fuckery you have to get through to get to the end. Even Elden Ring didn't turn into this much of a slog. Now I'm just venting...One other thing is that I'm essentially fighting on autopilot. Aside from King Mu and Odin, the fights have become brainless. I'm completely OP just because by this point in the game you're given so much materia and so many abilities and you've racked up so much experience and you've leveled up all of your materia that you're essentially a god. I probably need to nerf myself, which is kind of ridiculous. Alright. Venting done. I like the story, I just want more of that and less of, well, everything else.

Got to chapter 11 with...95 hours of playtime. Surprisingly, or really sadly, I don't think any of it was me falling asleep while playing it. I think Cosmo Canyon might be the part I dislike the most, but it also delivered some really interesting an completely unexpected story elements. It's just such a huge area and it spans chapters 9 and 10. It's just really, really long. Chocobo flying is...unpleasant. I got the top score on two of the courses and just gave up and settled for the bare minimum score on the third. But the thing with Cosmo Canyon is that so much of that area looks the same and it all blends together so you don't know where shit is. I think there was a, let's just call it a shrine because that's what all of these areas have, shrines and towers, that I spent forever trying to find until I basically stumbled upon what was a part of the rock wall the stuck up and ramped upward. There are also a ton of points of interest or fast travel points in that area and again it makes it hard to know which one to fast travel to. Thankfully I'm kinda sorta done there now although I guess I could return but for what, I don't know since I cleared everything out.

Ricky in my eyes died in that promo segment with Edge where he got absolutely brothered and his comebacks were...not great.

When she was on commentary my first thought was, oh yeah, she was TERRIBLE at doing this same thing in WWE. I don’t get how someone with that much charisma who can actually talk is that fucking boring on commentary every time in her career she has been a guest commentator, which has only been a few times, but still. I like Mone a lot, but she needs to shed a bunch of the VinceDunn-isms, like the entrance and the thing no one has mentioned…ALWAYS SMILING. You look like a damn robot when all you do is smile.

Man, Swerve winning really got me thinking he might beat Joe… If it weren’t for Hangman. I still think the money storyline is Swerve tricking Hangman into challenging Joe and helping Hangman beat Joe so he can eventually face Hangman for the title. The only problem with that is Adam Cole. As much as I like Adam Cole, I think he’s become a huge hindrance to the booking at the top. TK seems as enamored with him as he was with Punk. Also, with all of his time injured, guys like Joe, Swerve, Hangman, Ospreay, and Takeshita look so much more legit and believable as being the top guy. Plus Cole just makes the resumption of the feud with MJF seem inevitable. Because without Cole in the picture, things are so much cleaner. Joe drops the title to Hangman, who drops the title to Swerve, and then we build to Swerve vs Ospreay for the title at Wembley. With Cole in the picture, you can’t give a good push to Swerve, or anyone else, because all roads go right back to Cole and MJF for the title when I think the real money is an eventual title match between Swerve and Ospreay. And let’s assume MJF is gone until November or something. What would you rather see? Cole vs Ospreay or nearly anyone else vs Ospreay? With the shape Ospreay is in, he looks he’d destroy little Cole.

That fucking ruled. It’s so crazy. WWE is killing it on stories and in ring segments and backstage stuff and AEW is killing it doing more of a sports style booking and more matches. That’s not to say that WWE’s matches are bad, I don’t care much for the tv style, or that AEW’s stories are poor, but they definitely need more planning and cohesiveness, but it makes for an excellent week of wrestling tv. I swear, Takeshita looks like he murders everyone he faces.

I watched a video saying that the camera has been pulled back a little bit more, gameplay feels a little better even if it's mostly the same, the AI is improved and very challenging, and the action has been slowed down in the ring. Any of that sound accurate?