SirSmUgly

I am playing on Normal. Most of the time, the game feels fair, but I have missed a lot of point-blank, high-percentage shots, and that gets frustrating. If I understood why I missed more clearly, that would be nice. It is still fun, though. The customization and base building are actually more fun than the tactics to me, and I hope they expand the latter significantly for XCOM 2. And after that, I hope we get Civ VI in 2017 because this is the longest that Firaxis has ever gone between base Civ releases and Beyond Earth was the most disappointing and lukewarm successor to Alpha Centauri that I could have ever imagined. Whoever is the lead designer for VI should combine the gameplay of Beyond the Sword with a beefed up version of the World Council in Brave New World. Bam, instant classic.

I like XCOM Enemy Unknown/Within, but fuck, my guys walk practically up to an enemy only half-shielded or not shielded at all and, with 90+ percentage chance of hitting something, miss way too often. Having a 75 percent chance of hitting something feels more like a 50/50 shot. The only times that I have lost any soldiers outside of the ones scripted to die in the first tutorial mission is when I have missed enemies at 90+ percent twice in the same mission.

I can't wait for Bryan's music to hit at #15 or whatever while the crowd goes nuts until after thirty seconds, he doesn't come out and the music changes to HHH's theme.

One of my favorite posts that I ever have read on this board is the one where some guy was talking about playing with his action figures as a kid and his Wolverine was unstoppable except for when he'd run up against his Jakks Papa Shango, who was basically like the Galactus of all his toys. Shango was way over with the nine- and ten-year-olds in my school. That's one of those gimmicks, much like the Wild West Zombie Undertaker gimmick, that is conceptually silly, but was executed perfectly in practice.

I never really enjoyed Batista at all in his career until two years ago when he turned heel, put in work in those awesome six-man tags against the Shield, and then did his little wave thing on the way out, which whenever I see that GIF is an automatic belly laugh for me for whatever reason. His problem was that he's much better as a shithead pampered entitled heel than as a face, but they (logically) brought him back as a face for that run. Even if Bryan weren't on fire at the time, I think the crowd would have turned on it fairly quickly. Plus, without heel Batista, we don't get those two six-mans between Evolution and the Shield, so it all worked out well from my perspective as a fan who wants to be entertained. I wouldn't mind seeing him back again, but only if he basically does his own version of The Rock's Hollywood heel gimmick.

With respect, you're grasping at straws. If HHH's concern is "my kids might Google it," I'm pretty sure he likely wouldn't think that his kids searching and easily finding pictures of a topless woman being sexually provocative was cool either. This is why I think I disagree with Matt in the sense that while HHH is smart enough to understand the politics of his answer, I don't think his answer was meant to be political beyond it being the only reasonable response to Austin's question that could replace, "Well, my wife and I can't stand Chyna and we don't want her using her speech to talk about us being together behind her back, so she's never getting in no matter what." Beyond wiggling his way out of that question in that moment, there was no political import to his statement.

Sunny was part of a topless softcore site with Missy Hyatt long before she was inducted, IIRC, so even that doesn't really wash. Congrats to your Panthers from a Seahawks fan, by the way.

Lesnar lives in the Gay Socialist Republic of Canada? Holy shit, I thought he lived in Montana or a Dakota with the rest of the right-wing survivalists. I learn something new every day.

Except this time it would actually be logical and somewhat compelling. I'd be fine with this if it led to an angle where they apologized to Roman publicly and begged him to get the title back. They admit that they were foolish and that he's everything they want in a champ. Then he says that he'll do it, but if he wins at WM, they have to stop trying to control the title and only show up weekly to book matches and settle disputes, maybe relay match orders from a championship committee instead of arbitrarily making the matches themselves. They agree, he wins, we get a championship committee and the Authority become figureheads instead of active participants in storylines.

And I think very much of Reigns's in-ring, but Bryan was on another level in 2014 when he had that miracle match with HHH at WM. I don't think Reigns is in the place to do that, and I don't believe that HHH has changed his ideas about working long, bloated matches because the Bryan match where he effectively targeted a body part in interesting ways was an outlier and he was back to his old tricks in the match with Sting.

I see where you're coming from, Matt. I don't believe Hunter's excuse for not putting Chyna in the HoF, though. It's a smokescreen. First, he doesn't want Chyna up there giving a speech about her time in the company, which ended with HHH cheating on her with Stephanie. He doesn't want to risk being put on blast in a speech on their prestigious HoF show. I'm sure Stephanie doesn't, either. He's also a petty dude, the type of dude that said fifteen or so years after it happened that he wouldn't be as stupid as Bret was in not seeing the screwjob coming, so I'm sure he's also sticking the knives in a bit as well because that's what he does, much like Vince.

I backed Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and it looks like it's coming together nicely from a graphical/art direction standpoint! This is one of the better Kickstarters I've seen for staying in constant contact with backers and sharing updates of the work. I just bought SotN for my Vita on the latest Sony sale, and I'll make my way through it again (never got close to the 209.3% or whatever total completion is in this game), but it will be nice to eventually have a modern spiritual successor to that game from Igarashi himself.

Papa Shango ruled so hard, Wright should get in. I am mostly serious about that. Actually, between Shango, NOD Kama, and Godfather (I was 16, so forgive me for enjoying that gimmick), he had three gimmicks that from my narrow viewpoint I find particularly notable in WWE history. I would be fine with his inclusion. Also, he made the Warrior drip with voodoo blood once. VOODOO BLOOD!

I still have The Witcher 2 on my 360 hard drive from when it was free. I know that I should play it, but I always end up playing something else instead when I sit down to play it. I boot up the 360 and then get distracted by another playthrough of New Vegas or Red Dead Redemption or another All-Pro Football 2K8 season. I think the fantasy setting is probably what turns me off, but I got through Shadow of Mordor, so I'm going to steel myself and get through TW2 at some point this year.

I don't believe in "go away heat." When the crowd wants you to go away, they just sit there in relative silence.

I'm a huge fan of Crews. He absolutely connects with me. Good bumper, smooth in the ring.

Re: Tammy Sytch Ew. She doesn't seem healthy enough psychologically for that type of profession. Re: X-Pac I'd be kinda excited. I like X-Pac. Unfortunately, I don't like the possibility of X-Pac bleeding on someone accidentally, so alas, your daydream remains a dream.

They really didn't play that up on the NXT weeklies until recently, though, and the idea is that Carmella is getting the shot against Bayley so they can run a "friend vs. friend" angle. And honestly, I really have zero interest in Carmella as a worker or a character. I read somewhere that some people were surmising that Breeze got called up partly to give progression to his story on BG that he was still down in NXT, but the time was coming for him to leave. I don't know if that's true, though if it is, he's being wasted up on the main roster for a BG narrative. I stopped watching BG after about five episodes because I didn't want it to ruin my suspension of disbelief with NXT, so I'd prefer that they don't bring BG narratives over to NXT to build storylines from them, or if they do, to at least better develop those stories simultaneously on NXT so that they make narrative sense even if I don't watch BG. Even though I don't want to see Carmella on my screen, I could more easily accept this if they did a better job of setting it up starting back in October or so to coincide with their real-life friendship being highlighted on BG.

I agree with pretty much all of this. Emma and Asuka might be the two best workers on the NXT roster right now full stop, not just in terms of the women. In fact, Emma and Asuka might be top six workers in the company overall right now. They are really wasting Emma by having her be the gatekeeper for ascending faces in NXT. Re: Stro's post, I am hoping that NXT weekly goes to ninety minutes for that reason. I think it's still short enough to not overexpose all the talent by having them working each week, but long enough to alleviate some of the problems of a stacked roster.

Biff Busick's on the way to NXT. Now, they just need to sign Timothy Thatcher and ZSJ and let Bryan come back only on condition that he stops doing stupid dives and headdrops and does limbwork and random small packages instead and we can see it revived in the mainstream. Viva la revolucion! My favorite spots in wrestling today all involve limb/joint manipulation, especially guys working over the fingers of their opponents. I think my childhood love for Bret Hart and the Regal/Flair series where they worked it like WoS-rounds style except with judges scoring the bouts primed me for that sort of thing.

And in comparison to ECW, which was just as trashy, ECW didn't feel try-hard like WWF Attitude storylines oftentimes do. They felt genuine - less cringey for me even if some of the tropes that they use are problematic. The wrestling itself in '99 ECW, while not as good to me as '95-'97, is also worlds better than in '99 WWF.

Just do yourself a favor and stop watching old school wrestling. Clearly people might say things that were acceptable then that aren't acceptable now that will really upset you. The further back you go, the more outraged you may get. 1988 Memphis would probably give you a heart attack. And you'll give up on 1999 RAW not because it's offensive, but because it's fucking horrible. At least until Russo and Ferrara leave. But yeah, holy shit. Austin/HBK v Bulldog/Owen might be the pinnacle of 1997 RAW. Weird thing to say, frankly, and I think that's because you misread me. I'm not upset so much as embarrassed for both the people who wrote/thought up that stuff and thought it was anything but ridiculous and for myself as a wrestling fan because this is what Vince McMahon thinks of as mature storytelling. I love goofy pro wrestling stories and don't really have problems with stuff that would be socially hated on now (like a ton of things from southern promotions in the '80s), but this episode had extremely goofy writing/promoing that I sense was meant to be more than that. I believe that they thought that this was mature and compelling on a level beyond pro wrestling, and nope, it was just laughably terrible (unlike the Pillman/Austin gun angle, which was thoroughly entertaining in its trashiness). This is IIRC the way it goes for RAW over the next few years, which other than Austin vs. McMahon is the hallmark of the Attitude Era. I dug Austin/HBK vs. Bulldog/Owen as a match, but as a whole show, 4/21/97 is still the pinnacle of 1997 RAW from my POV on re-watch.

RAW on May 26th, 1997 has Vince McMahon say to Faarooq: "About your use of the race card, aren't you just patronizing the blacks?" Yep. He said "the blacks" like Donald Trump would say. I totally forgot about this. Then Lawler cut that promo on Goldust where he infamously called him a "flaming fag." I was so embarrassed even though I was alone in the room that I thought about crawling under the couch in humiliation. I look forward to this sort of stuff getting worse! (I don't actually look forward to it and wonder how I'll be able to get through '99 RAW without giving up.)

Best parts were Dana's steady stream of shit-talking on the outside during the tag match and Joe slapping the shit out of Gargano, maybe literally because man that was a hard slap.

If the rumors of making Fastlane important are true, there is a decent chance that either the Rumble ends in a no contest somehow or someone different from Reigns/Lesnar/HHH wins and then drops it at Fastlane.