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I don't think I actually watched any of the Mass Effect 3 trailers as I got into the games a bit after the fact but I did get the impression from the commercial that they were at least teasing the battle being brought to Earth itself, likely by the reapers. Is that about the extent of it, or does Andromeda go into more than that?

So someone unexpectedly gifted me this game for Xmas and I have to ask... will playing this before 3 spoil any of what happens in that game? I beat the first two games but am waiting to play the third until I can pick up the DLC on sale and... Bioware are very stingy when it comes to putting their DLC on sale (coming up on two years of waiting). If I could play this consequence-free while waiting that'd be swell.

I know that Rev and Senator of Fire Pro Arena have pretty strong edit reps, I think only Senator does much in terms of Japanese wrestling though. He'd be good for at the big All Japan names of that era, beyond that you'd likely have to go digging. The thing you may want to look out for if possible is how old a given edit is, as additional logic options and moves were added throughout early access and the older edits might not take advantage of them.

The whole DC/Bucks clusterfuck deal is amazing to me as it isn't even that it is a super flippy sequence... it is basically an in-joke spot. It is basically them doing that "two people dropkick and neither hit" spot to an absurd degree. That's only gonna work on people who watch enough wrestling to recognize the trope, and even then only a portion are gonna really love it. As happens whenever an in-joke is shown to people who aren't in on it, they looked at it with a confused look on their face and thought it was stupid as hell. I see that DC has a passing interest in pro-wrestling but nothing gives me the impression that he's that huge of a fan. You show that spot to a hundred people who don't really watch wrestling and I don't know that you even get a few positive reactions. That is perfectly fine as long as enough people dare in on it and enjoy it (the Bucks have never been about broad appeal, they have been about making their existing fans diehards and monetizing them to the fullest degree possible), but even on the spectrum of "MMA guys don't like pro-wrestling" this is the most nothing thing imaginable. ...Also if you are gonna do that opening "counter and flip" sequence try to at least perform it better than that. The second "backflip out of your hand sweeping my leg" was telegraphed and just done poorly, and these kinda of sequences are hut most by things like that.

I am aware that the lower weight classes didn't just appear overnight... but perhaps I am being too harsh towards the level fighter Mike Brown was at one point. Fair enough. That said, if Brown's issue is that he got old then it sorta looks like Aldo beat an old Mike Brown. You can pull up Brown's post-Aldo opponents and results, it is not impressive and there is no gradual drop-off after the Aldo fight (and it's not like Aldo put a career altering, Cain-on-JDS-esque beating on him). Over the next fifteen months he goes 2-3 and it wasn't like he was losing to worldbeaters (and the two wins aren't impressive in the least). I just don't see any way to argue this as a career-defining victory for Aldo that is worth much in terms of "this victory shows why he is the GOAT". Perhaps through no fault of his own he fought Brown a bit too late and Cub a bit too early for it to mean as much as it could have.

Mike Brown was about as long in the tooth when he fought Aldo as he was when WEC closed, he was getting whacked by Manvel only six months later. Also if we are being honest he benefited mightily in the second Faber fight as Faber managed to break all of his hands during it. The first fight was clearly his though. Brown was good during the time right before the talent level raised dramatically (his non-Faber/Aldo WEC title defense was against Leonard Garcia to give one an idea of what a title contender looked like then), and when it did rise he was basically going 50-50 with the equivalent of UFC journeymen. I will allow that age was also a contributing factor. I actually like Mike Brown FWIW, but he's basically the same kind of earlier-era good fighter that Fedor faced and bested and is not getting credit for. His opponents also got older, moved into talent-heavier groups and started to lose much more regularly as well. That is why I had to point him out, it feels dishonest to give Aldo credit for this one while knocking Fedor for all the similar fighters he beat. Also the Cub Swanson Aldo beat wasn't really the Cub Swanson we all think highly of, that fighter was still a few years away from emerging. What I've gotten from all this is that Aldo just doesn't really have a GOAT-level resume.

You shouldn't have been, I was way off... It was an odd season finale only in that while I felt it tied up much of what was going on during this season it didn't really set up any real tease for where we go next season. You have the specter of whatever is going down in the Congo (which I'm not sure will even be addressed as it has been teased forever) and the reemergence of Fernando, but that feels rather small scale after where we've gone since he was last seen. Undoing the 5/9 hack feels like it might just be a background detail moving forward, more significant for showing the growth of Elliot this season as opposed to shaping things next season but I could be wrong. Basically it satisfied me as a viewer of this season but didn't really do much to excite me for the coming season.

One of these things is not like the others >_>

My great fear is that the fact that there really does seem to be no big build up to the finale means that the time travel/alternate dimension deal is gonna happen, and the finale sets the stage for that. How would you set the stage for that in a way that works as a season finale? Simple: you kill Elliot. He legit 100% dies (I'm talking like a clear headshot or something) and you have a whole off-season with people going "how can the show work without him?" and such, the first episode or two of next season goes along without him and then he is back via either a shown time/dimension jump, or as a mystery where that is revealed as the answer later on. So basically the whole Jon Snow deal. I'm not sure that is what is gonna happen, I don't even think it is likely. As I said, it's what I fear may come.

I am shocked! Shocked by this completely unexpected turn of events.

If I recall correctly the network numbers in India were down after Jinder's reign, and SD's ratings have been up every week since he dropped the belt... so obviously he's done great work getting the crowd to legit hate him.

Someone can correct me on this but if Cody is putting up at least some of the money for this "All In" show, has been teasing a match between himself and Daniel Bryan for months now, and has likely talked to Bryan about this, is there anything to stop WWE from claiming tampering and putting things in legal limbo until that show has passed? When it was a theoretical ROH-only show it seemed like it'd be harder to argue (although I think WWE might have tried it due to the trouble ROH gave them over Cole and Fish and the other guy) as Cody is just an employee but if Cody is now in essence the promoter... that feels like a potential legal problem.

This, basically. Time travel and sci-fi can be swell, but to add them to this show at this point would basically mess up the stakes in a way that would be impossible to fix. I remember reading an iffy article some years back about how Boardwalk Empire was only gonna have one more season, so why not just introduce a vampire character during it (I don't think they were serious FWIW). On one hand it would be funny, but it would basically scrap every bit of world building and narrative set up in all the previous seasons. The same thing would happen to Mr. Robot if they went "ha, parallel dimensions!" after three seasons. If you don't like the show that is already there then sure why not, but it would in essence cancel Mr Robot and replace it with a spin-off that has the same name.

When the Giants somehow, someway managed to defeat the Patriots in Superbowl 42 and ruin their perfect season, as a fan I promised on the spot that I would not say anything bad about them for a decade afterwards. For the past nine years and nearly ten months I have pretty much done that, even when things went poorly (and when they sometimes didn't, they actually won a second ring somehow), even when Eli had one of his games and threw some crippling INTs I kept my word. If there was a bad play or performance I would say so, but I have always been thankful enough for what we got that I would leave it at that. For the first time in this almost complete decade I am pushed to the point where I want to break my word. I will say that there are ways to do what they did while still being respectful and professional to a man who won you two rings, and who outplayed arguably the greatest QB in history in both of those games. That they did not do so reflects poorly on all involved.

Seven pages of talk and am I the first one to note that Joe/Titus was surprisingly fun? It was the rare WWE match (hell rare match anywhere) where the guy going for revenge dropped any pretense of moves and just swung away at the guy until he got caught. Had a very uncooperative brawl feel to it and Joe with his side visually reddened from the bodyshots looked like more of a badass for taking it and still choking the guy out rather than just walking through him.

I could live with Angela also being an insane unreliable narrator. If there is an episode with time travel or alternate dimensions it'll be the last episode of the show I ever watch.

Them shooting for 10k and not doing so on wrestlemania weekend sure is a... brave choice. Still it doesn't hurt no one and if Cody has the cash to burn he can afford to play money mark for a weekend.

Man, I was feeling guilty as heck for the first few paragraphs there. Glad to see it turned around after the first few tracks.

Oh no, I would never suggest that Bisping would pull a semi-dive or anything like that, he's much to proud to do something that skeezy. I just think that if you are "one foot in, one foot out" (combined with being old and worn enough to be near retirement in the first place) that you should probably just take the last fight where you are fully committed to leaving it all out there rather than try to stretch things out. You're half out for a reason after all.

Bisping rather openly talked about wanting to retire at the UK show in March of next year and... I always consider it a dangerous sign when a fighter talks of retiring two fights in the future. Reminds me of Oscar de la Hoya planning his three stage retirement and putting Pacquiao as his second to last opponent, which of course ended up being his last opponent. When the fight was first announced I said I was rather split on how I thought it'd go, now I kinda think it is gonna be a very bad night for Bisping.

I think the decision to put over all of HHH's good management and hiring decisions is very intentional, but not in the way people here are saying. WWE is a publicly traded company, and the market only believes that Vince is capable of steering this ship. Whenever there have been hints of Vince not doing that any longer the stock starts to tank. Whenever you see things out there hyping up the things Steph and Hunter are doing behind the scenes and what have you it is not done for their egos, it is done so that when in the not too distant future Vince legit has to step down and they take over the company doesn't lose 20% of its value overnight.

For a brief terrible moment I was worried that ADR's music was about to hit.

I knew what games you were referring to and I'm more annoyed at companies slacking when it comes to re-using old game names. The Wolfensteins at least are getting subtitles, Doom is much worse in that regard. Of course, in a few years when someone buys Doom and its inevitable sequel on sale and says they got the first two Doom games for $15 I'll still be the old guy in the corner shaking his head.

Not picking on you or anything, but this is why giving new games the same name as old games drives me nuts sometimes. They are like Wolfenstein 8 and 8.5. That is unless you actually did purchase the original two Wolfenstein games, in which case nice but you could have likely gotten them for less...