A.M.B.

Co-main was really frustrating. I’m never one to call fighters “quitters” but STOP TALKING TO THE DOCTOR UNTIL YOU TOOK YOUR 5 MINUTES!!!! He looked fine and ready to fight after they called it off. Either you were looking for a way out, or you’re completely unaware of the rules that apply to your profession, which makes you an idiot. EDIT: with this and the Johnny Walker incident basically we need fighters to adopt a Bryan Danielson gimmick and start telling the doctors they have till 5.

I actually just beat Lies of P last night as well and absolutely loved it. I’d love to see Neowiz take on more projects like this if FromSoftware is gonna keep making their games bigger and bigger. I was inspired to replay Bloodborne afterwards, but about 15 minutes in I couldn’t get passed how choppy and downright terrible the 30 fps felt and couldn’t get back into it. Rise of the Ronin is aesthetically right up my alley, but I’ve heard some mixed reviews so far. Looks dangerously close to an Ubisoft checklist open world game. I really hope it’s great tho.

Edit: I hate pasting from notes on this board, sorry for the weird text guys. Guess I’ll post this here since its kinda the catch all Souls thread at this point. Currently playing Lies of P and am amazed at the lack of praise I’ve seen about it and how it didn’t manage to get any awards last year. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’m actually liking it more than Elden Ring in ways. The big thing is the difficulty curve is much more well balanced because of the linearity. And it actually feels refreshing to have a linear game where when a boss comes I have to face up and beat it with skill. I was worried at the start it might be too linear, with really simple levels and a boss that you’re stuck on for hours and nothing else to do. But the more I play the more these criticisms go away when they give you bigger areas and some easier bosses in between the big skill checks. Maybe I’m just thrown off cause Bloodborne hits you in the face with the first level being basically the best designed one in the game and they don’t progressively get bigger or better. Here the levels get bigger and more complex little by little. With Elden Ring I was either underpowered or overpowered and it was also so hard to find the right balance of difficulty. And as I replay it more it’s just kinda hard to not go get all the upgrade material and become OP at the start. Lies of P brings me back to Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 that had the best bosses in the series, and a perfect distribution of upgrade materials where I never had to wonder if my weapon is the right level or if I need to explore more. I’m worried the Souls’ series will continue to focus on bigger worlds and faster enemies when more linearity and slowing things down could really benefit them. I just beat Elden Ring again to get ready for the DLC and I focused on soloing every boss. Spirit ashes really impacted the quality of the boss fights and I wanted to beat everything through skill, but even then there is just always some element of cheese I ended up using. The envoy long horn absolutely melted every large enemy in seconds which makes a lot of the bosses completely forgettable, but like, what else am I supposed to do? Not use a weapon that’s not even the most broken one in the game? Malenia should be this triumphant feeling of soloing the hardest Souls boss ever, instead I just felt like I got the RNG I needed. Just don’t use your one OP attack and let me get lucky enough for more than one of my Burn o Flame pillars to hit you, and it’s cake. It felt way more about luck than skill. My opinions have really changed on Elden Ring when I’ve replayed DS3 and now Lies of P. I’m kinda worried the DLC will just be too much for me. I’m already a super high level so I’m worried exploration won’t be as fun since I’m not looking for material to develop a build, which is the best part of the game to me. Smithing stones are one of the main points of exploration to me and won’t be necessary here. And I honestly didn’t love most of the end game bosses and am worried we’re gonna get more of them, overtuned and way too fast. But we’ll see. FromSoft hasn’t let me down before. Anyway Lies of P is so great. There’s a couple times I had to pinch myself and realize I wasn’t playing a game actually developed by FromSoft. Calling it a Souls-like will scare people off I think, because Souls likes usually suck and are completely missing the atmosphere of a proper Souls game. In that sense Lies of P isn’t a Souls-like, it’s just a Souls game. The story is great and they don’t insist on being cryptic with the major beats just because that’s what Miyazaki would do. The atmosphere and aesthetic of the world is so unique. Feels more Bioshock than Bloodborne to me. And ultimately the weapon and combat system is just fantastic. The mixing of handles and blades to fit your stats is awesome, and the combat feels like a perfect mix of weighty but not clunky. I’ve actually never been a parry guy, and I love that Souls games have builds that lend themselves to your play style so if you don’t have great reaction time like me, you can get by the games with never parrying. I couldn’t get into Sekiro because of the emphasis on parrying and how it all felt too chaotic for me, but in Lies of P, while parrying is basically necessary to really beat the hard bosses, I had enough other options to always keep me thinking and getting creative. I’m maybe 75% thru now, and maybe I’ll change my mind and say everything’s too overtuned when I get to raging at the end game bosses, but god damn is this game giving me that boss slaying high that only FromSoft has done before. My minor criticisms right now would be that build variety doesn’t feel too robust besides the 3 basic offense stats, and that the game could use just a few more split paths, like Bloodborne has 2 paths/bosses at a time you can choose from, there’s always just one way to go here. But yeah, I came to write a couple thoughts and it turned into an essay. Get this game. It’s fantastic and my 2023 GOTY (haven’t played Balders gate yet). Also apparently they’ve hinted the next game will take its lore from the Wizard of Oz which sounds like the coolest thing ever. Going to the Emerald City and Flying Monkey boss fights? Take my money now.I

I’m actually expecting the main event to be a bit boring as well. O’Malley hasn’t gone 5 rounds before and I think he’s going to be very judicious with his strikes. Not the co-main tho, god damn.

I thought that was a fun card today. My expectations are so low for the apex fight nights that when I can recognize 3, or in this case at least 10 decent names on the card, it’s usually a nice treat that I would otherwise have ignored. Was surprised but honestly Tyson Pedro’s retirement made me kinda sad for a minute. I remember when he first came to the UFC he seemed like a second generation talent that was gonna bloom along the lines of a Tom Aspinall. Unfortunately that wasn’t in the cards and his press conference comments about mugging someone cause he needs the money was more poignant than I think he meant it to be. The fight game is rougher than it needs to be, damn. Also Umar is so great, he’s totally giving me Islam vibes in that no one is gonna give his streak credit since no names want to fight him, but his list of victories, like Islam has over Tsarukyan, will age like fine wine. That kid looked good and will definitely get some good wins in the division. Bantamweight can be so great if the champion wants to acknowledge and engage with the top 10 like a champ like Izzy would.

My body is ready for the Elden Ring DLC trailer. Definitely gonna have to do another playthrough leading up to its release.

Glad the judges got that one right. Neal’s clinching was getting pretty infuriating by the end. Not the best fight I’ve ever seen, but this card has been flying by for me.

I always root for Fluffy since he trained with a Japanese professor of mine from college, but honestly I thought that was some good money on Roman and the striking would be too much. But Hernandez won’t be denied, really impressed with his pressure here, he ate some bad shots but just wouldn’t let Roman get in the flow. Still think Roman has a great shot getting into at least the top 10 soon enough though.

I love this card. Curious to see Oban for the first time and Nakamura’s fight, but that main card is the best I can remember in a good while.

Card looks a little more fun than the usual fight night, which isn’t saying much. Should be some bangers.

DDP vs. Adesanya feels like the only realistic, non freak show match that’s big enough to headline 300 so I’m kinda glad about the result. From what I remember it basically came down to who took round 2, which Strickland had maybe a little cleaner striking but DDP had a takedown. Sean’s popularity has really skyrocketed and it felt even more apparent on fight night, but I don’t think this loss hurts him that much. Mallot’s loss reminded me of Rory vs. Condit. Looked great and then crumbled at the very end. I was saying Mallot’s activity was a real problem for him and it showed here. Now he’s 32, and if he fights once a year like usual, or even twice a year he won’t be getting a title shot till he’s 35 which is pretty much statistically impossible to win at that point. also Dana calling Movsar’s fight the least entertaining thing anyone has seen is hilarious given the sleep inducing co-main event this show had. I thought it was a really entertaining high level fight where Allen looked great even in defeat. They really make the path to the title so much harder for Russians, if it were an equitably booked company non-Russian champs would be notable exceptions tho. I think Movsar could definitely beat the winner of Volk/Ilia.

Off the top of my head the big one is the Elden Ring DLC. I’ll probably do a new playthrough when the release date is close. At this point I’m expecting it to be huge and have no issue with how long the wait has been since FromSoft never has disappointed me. Behind that is the P3 reload (whoever said play it before P5 is wrong, just play the best one with the most QOL features first). I liked 4 but 3 was just a little too dated to get into. Namely the choice between no control of teammates in the PS2 version, or the lack of movement around the world in the “improved” PSP version. I’ve been intrigued by Eiyuden Chronicle, the Suikoden spiritual successor, but I somehow am not convinced they can come close to capturing the magic of 2. Hope I’m wrong. Also the remakes of 1 and 2 are coming out and I’m debating whether I want them. concernedape’s next game Haunted Chocolatier is interesting, Stardew Valley was everything I could ask for as someone who loved Harvest Moon growing up, we’ll see if this has the same level of quality or if it’s too different and will suffer from comparisons.

Leon consistently kills all my hype for his next fight every time he talks. Really reminds me of a Tyron Woodley when I wish he could be more of an Israel Adesanya. Talking about how Belal doesn’t deserve it, despite being ranked only behind Kamaru Usman. So Colby didn’t deserve it, Belal doesn’t deserve it, can you at least call out Shavkat and say you want to be the 1 in 18-1? He also said look what I had to go through to get my shot even though he was complaining about how unfair his road was to the title shot and that he deserved it sooner by his 7th or 8th win in a row. I love seeing it when guys like Jones or Izzy would be like “oh this guy looks great, let him get a title eliminator so I can derail the hype train”. I guess we just won’t be getting that with Leon.

Well that’s why I lean more towards hoping, rather than thinking it actually will. My impression was that the weight of this all possibly blowing up in their face hasn’t hit the UFC till the last year or so but I could very well be wrong. Maybe naive, but I was thinking that by giving the fighters more leverage in contract negotiations, it would increase their bargaining power to make more requests to improve the product, which includes standards of professionalism, or they’ll go somewhere else. It seems like there could be locker room leaders, Khabib type of guys, who would be willing to take a stand against some of this stuff. But maybe that’s something you’d need an entire union for. Ultimately this stuff seems to fall on Dana’s shoulders and he needs to get checked.

I mean I know there’s way more material for me to be embarrassed about than tonight, but Chael and Conor were at least somewhat eloquent even if they are responsible for creating the monster that is the modern UFC press conference. Colby’s schtick is just sad and I’m so tired of guys like him getting the nod over actual humble, active, from all accounts great guys like Belal. I’ve never wanted to see a brutal knockout so bad as in this main event. I’m an MMA fan in spite of the UFC, not because of it. Really hope this lawsuit, merger with the generally more PC WWE, and financial backing of the PFL pushes the UFC to actually start encouraging professional behavior. it’s pretty sad seeing all these dumb, young, confused men act like hating this stuff makes you soft. Cause you know, all those soft beta males like Yoel, Poatan, anyone out of Dagestan, Shavkat, etc etc etc could be making so much money if they had Dan Lambert write a script for them! I don’t really get why I even use social media and look at instagram comments at this point.