SirSmUgly

I like car crash-style matches sometimes; what can I say? It also had the best color commentary job of the year, which really enhanced the match for me.

How does the crowd singing "Hey Bayley, I wanna know if you'll be my girl" while Bayley is getting fucking destroyed in the ring enhance the match? At least Full Sail drops the dumb shit and actually gets into the match when it's time to get serious for the most part. These idiots were no-selling a massive beatdown to do a chant that was only faintly clever the first time they did it in the opening of the match.

I see where you're coming from, Matt D. To me, the match you describe wouldn't be as consistent with the way they have portrayed Emma on TV the past few weeks. Her jobber matches have shown her becoming a more vicious killer in the ring on her own merits; Dana being the focal point of the transitions would have taken away from the way that they built Emma up since the last Takeover. I think that it's fine for Asuka to show some vulnerability to another woman who has been coming out almost every week and pushing herself to become as deadly as Asuka already is. Through the weeklies, the narrative was two-fold: First, that Emma was not going to be caught unaware as Dana was about Asuka's ability to destroy someone and that she would counter-act that by beating Asuka at her own game. Second, that Asuka developed something to get a flash KO if she was jumped and distracted again (as she successfully was for the first time a few weeks back). The second time they tried to distract her to allow Peyton Royce to get the jump, Asuka countered with the flash KO off the head kick...which came into play again as every Dana Brooke attempt to distract Asuka was stuffed until the final attempt ended in another head kick that ended the match. The match was properly built to me because it fit into those dual stories of 1) Emma worked hard to get better and more vicious and 2) Asuka worked hard to make sure that she could counter Dana at ringside in some way after realizing that she couldn't win every two-on-one situation they put her into right up to the finish, which made perfect sense in the context of the narrative that they told on the weeklies. Huh, I didn't even rank this match in my top ten WWE/NXT matches for the year, but I think I just might have talked myself into doing so. If you don't mind, Matt, can you put into more detail why you were so high on Jax/Bayley? I am actually pretty high on it myself, and I'm guessing that I will agree with you in part about it.

Barring any surprise matches in the last two weeks of the year, my (probably) finalized list: 1. Bayley vs. Sasha Banks (NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn) 2. Becky Lynch vs. Sasha Banks (NXT TakeOver: Unstoppable) 3. Bayley vs. Sasha Banks (NXT Takeover: Respect) 4. Seth Rollins vs. John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar (Royal Rumble) 5. The New Day vs. Tyson Kidd and Cesaro, Best Two-out-of-Three Falls (Payback) 6. Sasha Banks vs. Bayley vs. Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte (NXT TakeOver: Rival), 7. Jason Jordan and Chad Gable vs. Rhyno and Baron Corbin (NXT Takeover: Respect) 8. The New Day vs. The Lucha Dragons vs. The Usos (TLC) 9. Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn (NXT Takeover: Rival) 10. Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte (NXT, 7/15/15) Honorable mentions include: Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan (FastLane) Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar (vs. Seth Rollins) (WrestleMania) Rusev vs. Cesaro vs. Kevin Owens (RAW, 7/13/15) Kevin Owens vs. John Cena (Elimination Chamber) Prime Time Players vs. The New Day (Battleground) The Vaudevillains vs. Blake and Murphy (NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn) Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Tyler Breeze (NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn) Kevin Owens vs. Adrian Neville (NXT, 2/18/15) Cesaro vs. Sin Cara (Main Event, 2/14/15) Kevin Owens vs. Finn Bálor (NXT Takeover: Brooklyn) Emma vs. Asuka (NXT Takeover: London)

Reading online, people mostly quite liked this show, but there is a lot of disagreement about which match on the card was best. For me, the two women's matches would be the best things they did tonight. After a bit of reflection, I'm fine with Bayley pulling a Cena and overcoming the odds, I suppose, because Bayley/Asuka is still there as a big match and Nia's not yet ready to be on top. Without the booking being an issue fior me, I can say that as a total package, it was definitely the best match despite the awful crowd trying to ruin it. Bayley is the never-say-die babyface that they want Reigns and even Cena to be, in that she is actually quite easy to root for in that role. Emma has been killing jobbers so beautifully the last few months on top of her work in this Asuka match that I would venture to say that she's now a top five striker in the whole company. Is that too far out there for other people?

Lucy Abernathy gets kidnapped every other week. You'd think her parents would stash her somewhere else already. How about if you guys just move to the lovely Red Rocket Filling Station or Croup Manor or any of the other fine farms and settlements in the Minutemen-controlled Commonwealth? I think the leader of the Raiders over at the Food Supply Storage down the road is lovesick and won't stop sending guys to snatch your daughter anytime soon.

One of Dash and Dawson did a slingshot suplex. It ruled.

To Corbin, it's all the same. ROH. Evolve. What the fuck ever, man.

WOOO NXT I LOVE PRO WRESTLING SO MUCH AND I LOVE THAT CLASSES ARE OUT SO I CAN WATCH THIS LIVE Is HHH coming out to masturbate? YEP. Face HHH in NXT/Heel HHH in WWE makes no sense, but it amuses me. Emma and Asuka are both nasty strikers. Emma hit a hard fucking clothesline there that made me wince. This was a REALLY good opener where Emma pretty much showed to be a good striker and mat worker, but Asuka was just that much better at it. Also, Dana's shit-talking outside of the ring was great. I loved Emma almost getting the three off of a combination ending in an Emma Sandwich, not getting it, and the collapsing to the mat in frustration and fatigue. The finishing run ACTUALLY had me thinking that Emma would win at least three times even though I knew better. Big Cass should continue to fist bump fans like Sid. Fist bumping fans could get anyone over. Hey, Roman should fist bump fans. Love the juxtaposition of Cass/Enzo and Dash/Dawson. Scrappy street fighters who win ugly against clinical limbworkers with polished double-team moves. This was definitely the best Cass/Enzo match ever. Again, the false finishes caught me off guard...though Enzo and Cass losing again really sucked. Are they ever going to win the big one? This has gone past the point of them getting oh-so-close. Now they look like two goofs that can't win the big one. Gonna be the outlier on this, but the London crowds constant annoying soccer-stadium chanting made me long for Full Sail. I've seen enough Preston City Wrestling that this sort of thing annoys me on a small scale, much less in a crowd this big. Crews is a fantastic athletic bumper. I think he doesn't get nearly enough love for his bumping and selling. "YOU SHOULDA STAYED IN RING OF HONOR" was a pretty good taunt and Corbin is fucking great at this point. He will be the pure heel that a roster needs because he comes off as genuinely unlikable as a human being and translates that very nicely into the ring in every way. Corbin actually needed that win, but I'm bummed that Crews lost. Really bummed. If Bayley loses on top of Enzo, Cass, and Crews, I might have to go sit in a room with the lights off, staring into a half-finished tumbler of whiskey while "The Crying Game" plays on repeat in the background. The Asuka/Nia Jax staredown was the best. But Bayley is definitely going to lose, I see. Oh please the chanting of slightly-modified lines from old songs, make it stop please make it stop please please pleaseeeeeeee. They're chanting this shit while Bayley is getting murdered. She'd be like NO PLEASE STOP HITTING ON ME AT THIS VERY INAPPROPRIATE TIME AND DRAG ME OUT OF HERE INSTEAD RIGHT NOW PLEASE BEFORE I AM TOTALLY INCAPACITATED This match rocked though. Laid out really well. I thought they might do a knock-out finish. Bayley continuing to fight through damn near everything was pretty great. Nia figuring out halfway through that she wasn't beating the shit out of Blue Pants anymore was excellent. THEN SHE GOT THE TAP OUT HOLY FUCK YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME. I mean, it destroys Asuka/Nia undefeated for the gold as a money match, but on the other hand if NXT is going to be its own thing, Bayley as the Cena-like face of the division down there sounds great! Not sure about the booking of the finish, but whatever Bayley won woooooooooooo! Let's talk about Nia for a bit, who is really rounding into a nice little worker. She doesn't bump easily, everything has to be mega-earned against her, and she has awesome facial expressions. She really sold the "wait, I think I might have underestimated Bayley" realization as it dawned on her with each kickout VERY well. She is improving pretty rapidly. Finn being dressed like Jack the Ripper was pretty cool actually...until he just had the demon garb on underneath. Joe was king-sized in this match. His badass aura is all the way back. Great match that got the crowd to chill out on the goofy chants. Finn did a fine job of bumping around even if his offense looked a bit off. Joe doing his Godzilla roar as Bálor fired up to finish him off was great. Then Bálor won and I was sad. This has felt like a looooooong title reign, and not in a good way. I assumed they were going to do Finn ----> Crews with the gold, but now I think they'll have Corbin win it off Finn and lose it to Crews eventually. Another great show top-to-bottom. One day, a Takeover will disappoint, but I'll be shocked when that happens.

This was a strange year for me in that I found more pleasure from re-visiting old games or from playing games from a year or two ago. I got a Wii and have had some good fun with it. However, I would shortlist a few games that I enjoyed (or am enjoying right now, even). 1. Rocket League - Arcade sports is a dying subgenre, sadly, so I appreciate any entry into said subgenre. Rocket League, however, is the perfect arcade sports game in that it has deceptive depth though it can be picked up and played by anyone. The devs deserve a whole lot of credit for adding new cars and even hockey mode into the game for free. The support they have given this game should be a lesson to all devs out there. It's definitely my GotY, and I hope it wins at least one GotY award out there. 2. Bloodborne - The pace of the game is fantastic; it's an all-offense affair. The level design is brilliant and encourages exploration even in such small, compact areas. The difficulty was a bit overstated, but it was a genuine challenge, something that is certainly welcome. 3. Fallout 4 - I want to praise Fallout here because it does a lot of things that I like; interesting open world, general freedom, good character skill customization. I dig WRPGs quite a bit, and I find fun in playing a lot of those old CRPGs from the mid'-90s like Fallout, Fallout 2, and Planescape: Torment. However, though this is a very good game, it is a bad Fallout game. The narrative is missing the complexity of something like 2 or New Vegas and the focus on using combat to resolve issues over giving multiple outs to resolving a conflict is a real bummer. I've seen a quest tree comparison between NV and 4 going around online, and the quests are designed to such a linear state that it feels like Fallout except severely dumbed down. However, dumbed down Fallout is still better than a vast majority of games out there. 4. Pillars of Eternity: On the other hand, this is how to do an awesome WRPG. Interesting, complex quests and varied skills that allow one to feel like they're roleplaying a specific character instead of becoming storyline Jesus. The only reason that I have it slightly behind Fallout 4 is because I much, much prefer Fallout's aesthetics. Here's to hoping that Obsidian gets another crack at Fallout this generation. 5. J-Stars Victory Vs+ - This game is just stupid fun. I've played through most of the first two storylines for two characters, and using a ten-kick combo to blast someone back through a building that crumbles to the ground is one of the more satisfying things in gaming this year. The best games that I've played for the first time all year, regardless of release date: Fallout 2: Finally beat this in preparation for Fallout 4. It's a fantastic, thoughtful game with interesting quest lines. The ultimate RPG, even more so than... Planescape: Torment: I see why people tout this game as having some of the best writing in a video game ever. Fantastic narrative and the CRPG gameplay still feels good here in 2015. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars: Better than UvMC3, and I love UvMC3. Maybe the best Vs. game Capcom has yet made. Super Mario Galaxy: The most interesting failure I've played in awhile in the sense that I don't think it was very good, but then again, I did beat it twice and end up with the 121st star on my file. I thought that the levels that were creative were great; unfortunately, they were few and far between compared to some of the more irritating or uncreative stars. I played through SM64 again recently, and that latter game definitely has better stars overall. On the other hand, Galaxy might be the most aesthetically pleasing game ever made. The OST is brilliant, and the game is quite beautiful. Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition: Fantastic little Metroidvania that was a better Metroid than any of the Prime games. Aesthetically pleasing as well with wonderful music and fantastic, colorful visuals Rogue Legacy: What a great little throwback to Castlevania-style games. It was a genuine challenge and the conceit of adding genetic traits to future versions of your hero was quite clever. The Wolf Among Us: Maybe the best game that I've played in a long time. I finished it straight through twice. It worked as a throwback to hardboiled cop novels/TV shows and as an exploration of class conflict. I LOVED THIS so much and retroactively name it my personal GotY for 2013.

Sorry for the double post, but while I hoped for a Fallout 3 character to show up, I was really hoping for Moira or Fawkes.

Well, let's put Big E on top and see if he draws! Yeah, I know, I keep on banging that drum. It's too bad that WWE doesn't believe much in managers beyond Heyman and Zeb because Xavier Woods as the manager of Big E would be great. Woods is probably about thirty years too late for what would be the best role in which to use him.

Curie definitely goes to settlements in my game. You might be bugged. Brysynner. I didn't understand the "I slept with Wonder Woman" remark until I was playing and talking about how much I loved Magnolia's singing and my wife looked up who did the songs. This is a weird game because I definitely don't like it nearly as much as 3 or especially New Vegas precisely because of what glfpunk is talking about. In New Vegas, you had options about how who to align with politically (if you wanted to at all). I know that 4 has the same idea at the end, but right now, you're just Wasteland Jesus setting everything right for every faction instead of trying to navigate a political landscape where helping one group might sour you with others, so you have to really think about what you're going to do before you do it. I've decided to burn a play session or two working on my settlements. I've set up emporiums in a few settlements and am making a tidy profit on my investments, so I'm just going to buy raw materials straight up from all the vendors that I like in order to make sure that every settlement has a recruitment beacon, a couple of turrets, and a few beds. The skyscrapers at the Starlight Drive-In , Sanctuary, and The Castle will have to come later, when I have the patience not to be frustrated by how finicky the placement of floors and walls can be in this game.

My viewpoint on Reigns is just so weird. I think he's a good wrestler. I think that he is likable, generally speaking. However, I am completely ambivalent about him. I have pretty much no interest in him whatsoever. He comes down the stairs and hops the barricade and I don't care. Then he has a great match, but I don't care about the ending. He wins, I don't care. He loses, I don't care. I feel like I should like him or love him or hate him, but I can't even gin up anything beyond "This guy has solid 3-4 star outings on PPV every time I see him" as a thought or feeling about him. Even guys like Diesel, who I think is his closest comp in terms of push-to-crowd-acceptance ratio, I could find a way to be interested in as a kid and again on my '95 WWE re-watch. And there was nothing compelling about face Diesel.

Once you realized your mistake, did you switch to yelling YES! every time you shot a mini-nuke?

This is the second year of this PPV in a row where the best AND hottest match was the first one on the card (not counting the pre-show). Last year, everything was downhill after that awesome Harper/Ziggler ladder match and this year, everything was downhill after the triple threat ladder match. Xavier Woods is light years ahead of everyone else on that commentary table to an absurd point. There were just too many insane spots capped off with that wild Salina del Sol off the ladder, but my favorite spots were actually the Big E ladder press and Xavier throwing the trombone at Kalisto. Jumping back, Banks/Lynch was the second best match on the show even with that awful skit beforehand. Sorry, but Team BAD ain't The New Day on the mic or anywhere near it. The rest of this was okay. Owens had another mediocre match with Ambrose. They have awful chemistry together. Sheamus busted his ass and took an absolute beating, and so did Reigns, but the crowd was just so somnambulent, like with that WEAK "Holy Shit" chant after a genuinely impressive White Noise-through-the-table spot. It got so bad that I swear there was a "WE WANT CENA" chant from this jaded Boston crowd that usually boos him out of the building. I felt bad that those guys also got a "NXT" chant in the middle of a match where they were busting their butts. They even did try something different and not do a bunch of climbing, instead opting to beat the shit out of each other first, which differentiated it a bit from that first ladder match. The problem is that we saw ladders snapped in half, tables broken with wild moves, etc., all night. This whole idea for the PPV is stupid, though of course that's a common talking point that has always been absolutely correct. They woke up for the finishing run, however. Rowan shouldn't have been eliminated in that tables match. It should have been a clean sweep for the Wyatts. Decent wrestling tonight overall, but that was the worst match on the show. That or Rusev/Ryback. I like both of those guys a lot, but what an awkward match with too much flying from a guy who isn't good at it. Swagger/Del Rio was as good as it could be with that stipulation, but Swagger got beat the fuck up for minimal crowd reaction just like Sheamus did. Re: Booking. Ambrose winning the Intercontinental Championship got the type of reaction that says that he should be the dude feuding with Sheamus over the WWE Championship and eventually winning it. He's got the worst offense in the company with Rollins out, but he can take a shitkicking and survive, and the crowd would love him for it and accept him at that level. However, they really should have had Ambrose come even the odds and save Reigns, leading to a Reigns win. That finish was SO tepid. They are trying to get Reigns over by having him fail over and over, but that won't work. Instead, they need to have Reigns leech off Ambrose's popularity. Should have just had Ambrose come out and even stuff up by clubbering all the other League of Nation guys with his newly won title so Reigns could make the comeback on Sheamus. Instead, he loses again, looks like a doofus, and then throws a tantrum with the chairshots after the match. It took a whole lot of smoke and mirrors and HHH and Stephy to get the crowd to give some type of reaction by the end of that drawn-out post-match. It got people to care more, definitely, but not really at the level that I would expect. Awful booking because it's so tone deaf in terms of what many of the fans want and what will cause them to get behind Reigns. Plus Rusev being the Erick Rowan of this group SUCKS. What a waste. I feel as though they are trying to sabotage the women by booking them as totally insane characters so that there isn't any heat there for anyone because no one knows who to cheer for. It's so bad that Charlotte's lukewarmness (I made that a word now) transferred to Ric fucking Flair somehow.

Go up the scaffolding on the outside of the building first; then, go inside. That will help you survive the plant.

Just bought tickets to RAW in February because family wanted to go. I wonder if our crowd will be dead, or if the Road to WrestleMania will have people in the audience vociferously turning against the company?

Part of the problem is that there aren't enough faces in the NXT Women's division for her to beat that would make for a credible win. Maybe they should send Becky Lynch back down for a short program and put Emma over. Or alternately, after Bayley loses, maybe have Emma beat her in a short program or even in a one-off match on TV.

Mediocre dungeons, even duller combat than typical games in the series, bland overworld with intensely annoying random encounters (though I do love the random encounter music), and though it is unfair to ding it for this last one, it also is Not Link's Awakening, which is by far my favorite TLoZ game, unlike most of the other 2D games which look and play a lot more like Link's Awakening. Re: SMB2 (US), I'd rather play SMB2 (JPN) any day, and the latter veered toward unfair in its difficulty pretty early on in the game. I actually don't mind Nintendo's experimenting with Mario even if it has resulted in some mainline Mario platformers that I genuinely don't enjoy. As for sequels, I'm fine with a sequel being very different from its original in theory, but I really do appreciate the sequel as a refined version of what the first one offered quite a bit more in practice.

Yep, undefeated Asuka vs. undefeated Nia Jax for the gold is what I want to see. Emma has been thrashing jobbers and has built an aura of toughness that will get solidified by this match with Asuka; just hanging with Asuka will make her look awesome, and we still get undefeated Asuka vs. undefeated Nia Jax...but hopefully not before months of Nia killing everyone but Asuka.

I don't really buy that as an excuse. It's up to the creative minds there to figure out how to keep people away from one another and how to have segments that deviate from "twenty-minute in-ring promo," "video repeat of what we just showed you," and "repeated match from the past three weeks in twelve-minute segments." NXT has more variety in segments (control center, backstage promos, in-depth video packages to build face characters, in-ring promos, squashes, evenly-worked matches, etc.) with less time to fill than the main show does. Everything about the main show is just stale and stuck in a rut. There is a deep enough roster on the main shows that they could get seven hours of unique television a week out of them with creative booking and a re-imagining of how they present their segments.

Yeah, the opinion on WWE 2K16 I'm cool with, but TLoZ 2 SUCKS. Objectively. It's a fucking truth carved in granite by whatever deity that you may believe in. Fucking game disappointed the shit out of six-year-old me almost as much as Super Mario Bros. 2 did. NOW I'M ANGRY

Yeah, some of the assaultrons and advanced synths are actually harder to kill without dying than deathclaws. Mark IV turrets, too. Fuck Mark IV turrets. Deathclaws ain't shit in this game. I just used the 2078 World Series bat to knock the head of one about four hundred yards away. As someone who found the CRPG Fallouts to be precarious experiences in terms of dying and who had his share of trouble with New Vegas because of Hardcore Mode and those fucking Cazadores, Fallout 4 seems much easier. Some tips: Build initially with strength, endurance and perception for your first run. More health, better in VATS, more killing power. Just go from Sanctuary to Concord and deal with all the stuff in that area first. That should give you a good foothold for further exploration.