Cliff Hanger

To me, this seems like it is exactly the kind of book she's best at--a bunch of weirdos who are all too horny and for whom you need a Mulder corkboard to keep track of both sexual and non-sexual relationships

Thanks. The initial solicitation made it sound like the arena was the only thing waiting for later, but I'm glad to get to wait on it. Finally beat the fantasy Showcase rumble; knowing that I only needed 10 eliminations made it a lot less stressful. I used McIntyre--I had pretty good luck with Steamboat at first, but dudes who have a standing strike or running move as a Finisher have a HUGE advantage, and guys whose Finishers are all top rope, springboard, or submissions are screwed. Now that I've used him, I'm really bummed that Shammy didn't get a Dragon Sleeper for his standing submission; the feud with Owen and Severn where they were all using it wasn't exactly good but I have fond memories of it, and it has more personality than a guillotine.

Winning the fantasy Rumble in Showcase gets you a bunch of Ruby and sapphire cards, other than that it's just Rise that has Faction card rewards (and those are all the fictional rivals from this year and prior years). As for the boss cards in Faction War, once you've beaten the 4v4 at the end of a stage those cards unlock in the Faction Wars shop, and can be bought permanently with the unique points from that mode (not MFP). Emerald are 3k, Sapphire 4 and Ruby 5. I've got enough to get a Ruby but am waiting to see how the run I'm in the middle of shakes out before I buy something that may not end up what I want. Did the five bonus chars from the 40 Years pack unlock at launch or are they coming with the WM40 arena after Mania? Now that I've gotten all the Showcase stuff that buying that version unlocks I'm tempted to spring the extra $20 next paycheck but don't want to if I'm buying nothing today.

Ah, okay. I guess I'm just used to presuming they drew straws or cut cards and never really wonder about the mechanics

All 6 guys had lobbied Pearce for the shot in the past 3 weeks, some of them more than once.

The system for acquiring edits on PS sucks, but it's still a great time and a great snapshot of NJPW and Stardom circa 2018-19, full of people who've come west since

Instead of Universe mode I started Unleashed, the women's story in My Rise. Just like every year, it is very silly. I'm not very far in yet, but i unlocked a couple of Faction cards (Ava Moreno, your on-again-off-again partner/rival from 23 and Odyssey Rift, the first person you fight this year and I think a random optional match in 23). The first match is how I found out you can burn a finisher to set a table on fire this year and gave me a William Regal quote that may replace the Oingo Boingo line that's been my signature here since 2005: "A friend is just an enemy you haven't wronged yet." No more MyFaction work of any note for me, still feeling frustrated enough at Bate's shitty submissions and needing to win with them to level him up that it's just kind of hard to get excited about. The fact that it takes so much more currency to buy new cards doesn't help, but really if you just gave me a bunch of things I can grind to level (like 2k22, where every Season Pass char got an evolvable card) I'd probably never get bored...which is why 2k23 switched the DLC chars to non-evo.

Man, I kind of recoiled when I saw what Riley was wearing backstage, and I don't know how much more it's okay to say without breaking rules.

I had to check and make sure whether this was the Tim Rogers from the Insert Credit podcast

Cody being the kind of person who stops to pet a picture of his dog painted on the side of his tour bus is...actually not all that surprising, but I kind of went "huh? Did he really just do that?"

That wasn't the ending I was hoping for, but holy shit, what a fantastic, intense match. I hope Sami is breaking his fast with...shit, all Houston's great 24/7 Mexican places I went in college in the 2000s are gone now, aren't they?

Now if only Rumbleverse could get a similar second lease in life

Okay yeah, that's a totally valid complaint even though I don't share it

The monetization is SO much worse this year. I bought two packs with my match and challenge winnings, one from each of the 2 types available right now. I got a green Nash from the Legends set, which was cool because I needed a powerhouse. The Heat pack gave me a green Corbin, which would have been awesome if i hadn't bought a Corbin with the same overall rating with my first batch of token rewards literally 15 minutes before. As for basic v deluxe: the Deluxe packs give you a higher percentage chance of the "main" character card being better. If you press square on the item you're looking at, it'll tell you that you have a 100% chance of getting 1 character card and then the relative odds of having at least 1 of the other types, then if you press R2/RT it will show the odds for each rarity within that card type. I usually buy the Deluxe a couple times per set and then switch to regular, because if you just keep buying deluxe you're going to start getting duplicate cards that pay out in pitifully low numbers of Faction points. In 22 and 23, I was able to enjoy this mode for months without spending any money. It feels like that's gonna be a lot harder this year. (It doesn't help that I picked Technician as the class for my starters, and while Nattie is progressing nicely toward her final form, Tyler Bate's submissions suck so hard that i may never even get his first level-up. Really wishing i had made literally any other choice)

Interesting. What does he dislike? Personally, as someone who came in not long after ZH and counts Wally as his #1 DC char, I've found it better than the Jeremy Adams series.

It feels weird that, now that Infinite Wealth, Tekken, and WWE are out, I can't think of a single game the rest of the year that I'm excited about after the Llamasoft Gold Master collection on Wed. I'll find something that I don't already know exists, but right now it feels like 2024 is going to be a year to finally play SRW30 and FF7 remake, both of which I've had since they came out and never booted up, and to keep being angry at Hamster for releasing every pre-crash Konami game except Gyruss and every pre-crash Tecmo game but Pleiads.

Well I'm all fucking in.

True but this is someone I've known for 25 years who isn't usually this dumb

Thank you for correcting. I need to stop listening to Facebook friends. Never mind.

Opps

WAIT WHAT

I have been really enjoying the new Flash series, but I feel like I'm missing something from a book I didn't get with Wally and Barry being on bad terms. Otherwise, it's largely what I've come to expect with Spurrier, who became one of my favorite X-office guys when he was doing that batshit insane X-Force run and hasn't let me down since, and Deodato who isn't exactly my jam but is certainly talented.

So did the original ghost train him or did the ghost of the guy who learned it from talking to the original ghost train him or what

The little QOL things I would most like to see next year are (a) the aforementioned ability to not use the Supercharger if you want to buy a fancy edition but not auto-unlock and (b) some kind of option for people like Rey, Axiom, the Party Girls etc whose gear is always the same design but changes colors frequently, so the game will auto-rotate (for both roster chars and created ones)

They had been building to Dakota and the three Japanese women pushing her out of Damage CTRL since last summer, and she was slowly catching on. She won the Rumble planning to face Rhea so the crew could hold all the women's gold at once, but heard them talking shit behind her back not knowing she could understand enough Japanese to get it. So she changed her plans to challenging Iyo, they jumped her, and the face turn was official. Dakota pretended to be on her side for a while, then sold her out in a tag match against Asuka and Kairi, Dakota's return after being out since late spring or early summer (she tore her ACL in the same match Liv Morgan got hurt)