A.M.B.

I liked 15 when I played it but it was also the first game I played when I got my PS4, the visuals alone were enough to keep me enthralled. Then I played RDR2, Assasins Creed games, GTA V, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, etc and the open world fatigue hit hard. Don’t think I’d like it at all nowadays.

I tried the first part and thought it was bad, downright terrible with what they did to the story. The real remake to me is just playing FFVII on Steam with fan made graphics, sound, and QOL patches. I think the series has lost their way after FFX and has been 1 step forward 2 steps back every iteration.

I’m in the same boat of not caring about remakes yet here I am playing multiple. RE4 remake was something I had no interest in but I’m really loving it. That said playing it is just reminding me of how much I love the original and how I want to go back and play it as soon as I’m done with the remake. Link’s Awakening has been fun too and has some great QOL improvements but idk, the original (GBC at least) still holds up perfectly well to me. I would never have bought it for 60 bucks though, it seems much more suited to a $30 price tag. Thank god my brother gave me a huge stack of Switch games cause I would never pay full price for most of these. I am pretty hyped for the Mario RPG remake since it’s my favorite RPG ever, but something tells me some of the magic will be missing from a lot of the remixed songs (best OST ever) and once again I’ll end up playing the original afterwards as somewhat of a reminder to what I fell in love with in the first place. The one game I’d totally approve of a remake of though is a top 5 game of all time for me and that’s Dark Souls. That’s assuming they redo every level from the ground up while maintaining familiar parts of them, but making everything on the scale of an Elden Ring legacy dungeon.

Well this is exactly why I couldn’t finish FFVII Remake so it sounds like I’ll be skipping 16 too. 13 as well was a giant hallway simulator. I’ve just come to accept modern FF ain’t for me, luckily there’s some awesome graphics/QOL patches for some of the older games that gives them new life to me.

Yeah I’m sure he loved Mox/Cassidy as much as me.

I’ve been having a big issue with the comedic undertones of seemingly every heel in the company lately. It’s not to say comedy and a top acts can’t mix as I think Sami and Roman did that perfectly, but it sometimes feels like the wrestlers are trying to pop each other instead of really delving into the mind of a bad guy and coming off as believable. I think this Roderick Strong stuff is hilarious and some of his best character work, but it makes a badass like Darby look like a total loser to me to be going tit for tat and then ultimately losing to a whiny baby with a bad neck. It’s a perfect gimmick for enhancement talent, not someone tethered to your biggest feud. Cole vs. MJF is way too goofy for me to view it as two of the best in the world doing whatever it takes to be the best. I thought that dance off a few months back was embarrassing. Basic comedic timing should be that the one bad dancer goes last so we can laugh at him in comparison, instead we have Sammy who can’t dance at all and looks like a dork, Garcia can’t dance and looks like a dork, and Adam Cole can’t dance and is a dork. Somehow the Jewish guy was the only one with rhythm. I really don’t want to sound like Jim Cornette but very few guys come off as legitimately “cool” or “alpha” to me. And yes I hate that I actually used the word alpha but the point stands. I feel like this stuff entertains the adult fan but it terms of bringing in a new, younger generation of fans, kids are more inclined to like a John Cena or Cody Rhodes type of no nonsense ass kicker. Same thing with Takeshita, who’s supposed to be their next big bad villain, but comes out with this absurd painting in his entrance video of him and Callis jacked to all hell. It would be funnier if they hadn’t already done the same bit with the Elite. But aren’t we supposed to be taking this guy seriously? Why is he embarrassing himself like this? It always took me out of Adam Page’s stuff too when he’s supposed to be storming the ring like a badass and his header will read some bizarre bit like “Feeling a wittle bit sad after rewatching Disney’s Up” or some nonsense. Same when Kenny Omega is in some grudge match and they do the North Carolina thing. For a company that is all about giving every kind of fan something in their wheelhouse, I sometimes feel left out as a fan of intense, no frills, competitive, high stakes wrestling. The kind of stuff I get on a regular basis from guys like Seamus, Gunther and Dragunov. Tho the last PPV thankfully bucked that trend, and I will say OC vs. Mox is probably a top 5 match for me in AEW history and it has everything I’ve been feeling starved for. No interference, no gratuitous storyline and unnecessary backstory, no post match beatdown, just two guys struggling to be the best. OC did a perfect job adapting his style to a serious match and him kicking the shit out of Moxley instead of the usual lazy kicks was the perfect way to show range from a comedy act to a top guy.

God damn I love this sport. Guess they’re looking to do the rematch but I’d actually really like to see them go for Izzy/DDP and Chimaev/Costa vs. Sean next.

Haven’t seen any spoilers yet, any matches worth seeking out on this show?

Mod a 2DS/3DS if you have one and it’s a total game changer, old Nintendo games are so ridiculously overpriced that IMO that’s the only option worth it. Very easy nowadays with a proper video walkthrough. Then you have every DS and 3DS game on its native console plus GBA, SNES, and lots of other stuff. DeSmuME on the CPU is great for DS but idk about 3DS. Sorry if this kind of talk is forbidden here.

Threw this together in 2 minutes, think it looks better than what they’re giving us in just about every way. MJF vs. Adam Page - first ever world title angle they ran at the first show and it hasn’t been properly acknowledged or paid off. Do it on the biggest show of the year CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe or Eddie Kingston. Samoa Joe match would be good if they didn’t give it away a few weeks ago as a nothing match and they really emphasized the magnitude of it. Eddie/Punk was the best Punk feud/match I’ve seen in AEW yet and it had zero follow up and could use a bigger stage. Up the stakes, let fans want to see the ultimate upset, and Punk would be even more hated to beat Kingston again here. Will Ospreay vs. Darby Allin. My two favorite wrestlers right now. Just let them go crazy and highlight the next generation. Orange Cassidy vs. Trent Berretta. Friendly competition match, maybe start pushing Trent towards a more serious singles run. Omega vs. Takeshita. Ibushi doesn’t seem to be in the best ring shape, I’d say just get some traction going with this match they’re clearly trying to work towards and let this be the first of a few. A women’s title match involving Willow. Like her a lot and loved some of her showings in Japan but I skip 99% of the women’s stuff in AEW. I guess you gotta put Saraya there. London Street Fight: FTR vs. Jay and Juice. Such a fucking good match just run it back 5 more times. Young Bucks vs. AR Fox/Swerve. Match that works to everyone’s advantages, PWG tag match. Mox/Wheeler/Claudio vs. Hook/Acclaimed. Start getting Acclaimed into a more serious feud to give them more of an edge. Adam Cole vs. Chris Jericho 60 minute iron man match.

Saw a little 60 second short on how to mod a Vita and since I’ve had one sitting around collecting dust for a few years I gave it a shot. Ended up taking me like 4 hours to get every program installed and everything up and running smoothly but it’s a pretty cool feeling to have every Vita and PSP game freely available to me. Unfortunately the main draw for me, GBA emulation, doesn’t seem to run to well. Tried an alternative method in setting up RetroArch and running GBA emulators through it which was also many hours of troubleshooting. Finally got a smooth GBA emulator running but now of course a few hours into my game it’s always crashing after a few minutes of play time. Pretty hard to get excited about taking on a GBA game like FFVI knowing the game could crap out on me 30 hours in. Luckily all the native emulation plays smooth which seems to be the case with every jailbreak I’ve done. Starting to think I should just get a Miyoo Mini Plus or something for all my GBA needs. I’ve been wanting to jailbreak my 3DS since I really want to get back into a bunch of DS games and they just feel wrong playing on a CPU or non Nintendo devise, but Nintendo systems always seem the most challenging and risky to mod. My Wii was never the same after modding and we’d get crashes all the time.

So your primary complaint for the game is you can’t tell R1 from Square?

The amount of people thinking Hafez won is insane to me. Did he look way better than expected? Sure. Did Jack make some mistakes? More than he should have. But it all comes down to round 2 where Hafez had 1:40 of control time, doing nothing and essentially laying on top, while Madellena did alllll the damage in that round, I believe 85-32 strikes in the entire fight. We have been constantly having this discussion since O’Malley/Yan how damage is much more important in the judges eyes than control is, yet I’m seeing fighters all over Twitter crying robbery. I’d say it’s crazy that these pro fighters don’t understand the judging criteria except that judges don’t seem to understand it too since one gave Hafez round 2. I’ve probably had a few too many beers and should just get off MMA Twitter but I really don’t get what I’m missing.

Thought last night was one of the best episodes in a long time, maybe one of their best ever. But yeah the Jericho segment was not great and once again cut in to the main event event time, which continue to feel rushed with no breathing room outside of the bell to bell action. I actually really liked the sprint style of the match but for a 7 match series I think they should have treated it as a bigger deal with the entrances and post match celebration. At least there was no shoehorned angle, just a celebration culminating months in the making. This has always been one of Dynamite’s biggest issues for me. Hangman/Mox was fantastic, Jungle Hook match was perfect for what it was. When MJF came out and started doing his schtick I thought they were doing a perfect setup for Takeshita to completely lay him out but instead the dude just leaves the ring like a complete dork so MJF can speak, and basically needed Danielson to save him. I think when you’re doing more edgy, sorta racisty heel work there needs to be a more urgent comeuppance for the baby face, MJF running like a child wasn’t enough for me. I’m really far from the PC police but I find so much of the promo work in AEW to be based around calling someone a pussy, shoving something far up their ass, “Maxy-pad” (why is a super progressive guy like Bryan equating femininity with cowardice? Again I’m not the PC guy it just feels soooo off brand for him), or low hanging ableist/racist kinda stuff. I think there’s a time and place for heels to be cheap and then get the shit kicked out of them for it, but AEW seems unaware of how uninspired all their shit talking is and it feels like the baby faces never take the high road. None of the best promos in the company are based around that edgy stuff, they’re based around real life work/shooty bits like Adam Cole’s fantastic speech. If only I liked his in ring as much as his talking. Sammy and Jungle Boy are learning promos on the job and I can’t say I’m excited for their future promos when they all just boil down to “That’s why this Sunday I’m gonna make you my BITCH”. Also what’s up with all the daddy names. MJF calling himself daddy. Daddy Ass. Daddy Magic. Stroke Daddy. It’s not funny or creative anymore. They need some kind of continuity director, like how the earlier episodes had biting in every match, where only a guy like Moxley should be biting so he can stand out as uniquely gritty.

Yeah not striking when the iron was hot was always one of their biggest problems. For me the real killer of my interest was Yoshihito retiring though. Dude made every undercard match he was on worth watching and motivated all the wrestlers around him. That Strong title run and his match with Sekimoto is some of the most intense wrestling I’ve ever seen and was just as violent as the deathmatches. Hard to put into words but the undercards went from scrappy to sloggy within a few years and their few new projects for the top of the card like Takahashi didn’t seem to catch on with the fans or me.

Yeah watching their shows is pretty sad these days, even back in the pandemic when they were crowd funding I felt pretty apathetic, like if they die they die, always felt like they didn’t want to appeal much to a crowd outside of Japan. BJW Core seems like a very low effort attempt at a streaming service that just offers lifeless house shows shot with a single hard cam. Also I swear every Korakuen show I’ve seen in the last few years the deathmatches rarely go longer than like 12 minutes. They do so few epics compared to the 2005-2010 era and no action ever really happens, no creative weapon gimmicks, there’s just no fire anymore. As a foreign fan it’s much easier and rewarding to support just about any other company in Japan. And pretty much every wrestler who’s been a favorite of mine left over feeling disrespected like Honma, Kasai, and Yoshihito. They dug their own grave by pushing Ito and Kobayashi over everyone for so long. Pretty much every new trainee they have go into deathmatches leaves within a year or two to go freelancer like Tsukamoto, Uto, Ueki, Drew, Sakuda, and maybe more I’m forgetting. They all seem happier in Freedoms. Drew being built up for a long time only to have him vacate the title was real shady, figured maybe it was Visa issues but he went to Freedoms immediately after.

Are any promotions in Japan allowing cheering again yet?

Day of Reckoning for me. What it lacked in content compared to HCTP it made up for with a way better game engine, create a wrestler, and physics

With the way the UFC seems to work these days I might say yes actually.

Beyond just Malenia there’s mandatory bosses like Maliketh that use ridiculous combos that take 30 seconds to finish, and have variations on them with little to no tell. They hit so hard and you hit so hard as well that a lot of the battles just felt like getting lucky with aggro towards my spirit, then getting off a few big nukes of attack. Often times I couldn’t keep the camera on the action since there’s so much movement compared to other games. I’ve never had extensive troubles soloing anything until Elden Ring, (Though Sinh and Midir were awful) and that’s just a personal thing for me to not view it as highly as other Souls games, at least from a pure boss battle perspective. Seeing how easy it was to kill Gwyn the first time I used an NPC summon soured the experience for me and made me want to solo everything for what I felt was the proper experience. Beating a final boss in one attempt standing back and watching an NPC slash away doesn’t feel like the “right” way to play. Only in DS2’s DLC did I ever feel like I was in an area I’m supposed to summon NPC’s for. I’ve never felt fatigue and indifference to winning tough battles in a Souls game like I did by Elden Ring’s endgame. Ultimately “hard” mode is too hard, “easy” mode is too easy. Whereas the other games felt like normal mode with an easy option. Every other game besides some issues in 2 felt way more balanced. That’s to be expected in a sandbox game vs. a curated linear game with some open world elements. I prefer the latter and I hope they go back to a slower more methodical style of combat next, honestly wouldn’t seeing them remake DS1 next with a more polished end game.

Yeah this is why I have to say Elden Ring is not the peak of Souls games and that I hope it doesn’t scare people off from other ones in the series. DS3 and Bloodborne are much better designed to be played completely solo, with bosses that don’t use many cheap tactics, positioning matters more, less hit trading and the speed is fast but not dizzying like some of Elden Ring’s bosses. Beat Malenia two times, both were just a matter of getting good RNG to only get one or two waterfowl dances in the first phase. Then in phase two I’d just blast a Comet Azure or Rotten Breath and it’s pretty easy from there. The feeling of accomplishment, that you and only you used pure skill and wit to outclass your opponent is weaker in Elden Ring than any Souls game before it. I hated having to use spirit summons for cheap aggro breaks but it felt necessary for some of the worst bosses, unless I wanted to repeatedly die trying learn their moveset and face loading screen after loading screen. And the game is less about “getting gud” than before. Sure I can always beat Renalla and Radahn on my first try attempt instead of the 30 or so it took me the first playthrough, but that’s not so much from skill but more from me knowing where all the smithing stones and good items are. BB and DS3 did a way better job at having checkpoints you couldn’t get past, so you could never be too overpowered for the bosses and the bosses didn’t use cheap ass anime combo attacks that are impossible to have the reaction time for.

I said it here but I think Aljo deserved the win last time, it just sucks that round 1 was the deciding round, and Yan’s 4/5 more impressive than Aljo’s 2/3. It’s just a fault of the judging system. This one I don’t understand at all though. Any time O’Malley looked good Yan would immediately punish him and even the score. You can say it was even on the feet but Yan had 5 minutes of control time, and not just holding him down. They should do what they did after Aldo/Moraes (which I thought was more of a toss up) and reward the rightful winner. Not that I expect that tho.

Islam just won me 40 bucks in a friendly bet, 20 for him winning, 20 for the arm triangle finish. That ending sequence was exactly how I saw things going, though it’s hardly a controversial opinion.

The term robbery is definitely overused, but that’s one if I’ve ever seen it. Feel for Yan, I still view him as the best in the division but now he’s probably looking at 2-3 more fights for a title shot when it should be his next fight. Maybe they’ll do him vs. Chito for the #1 contenders position while O’Malley gets a shot he doesn’t deserve.

Just finished my second full play through. First time took about 70 hours missing a lot of stuff, this time I pretty much did everything in 90 hours, only thing I really missed is Corwyn’s quest. Still not the biggest fan of the end game. Maliketh just makes me dizzy. Malenia basically came down to hoping the RNG wouldn’t do waterfowl dance too much. Hora Loux was a joke after Maliketh. Elden Beast gave me some issues but feels nerfed from when I first beat him. Being familiar with some of the levels actually helped my enjoyment though, I was kinda overwhelmed in my first play through, second time I was able to fully explore things. I still think DS3 bosses are the peak of the series though, IMO nothing in this game comes close to fights like Lorian/Lothric to me. Level design has too much repetition for me with the catacombs and whatnot, but the legacy dungeons, specifically Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, and Leyndell are the best of the best. But I’ll be going back again. Build variety is insane here and that’s my favorite part. Pretty much every Souls game I’ve beat multiple times since going through then with a different build feels like a whole new game. I’ve done an int build and arc/faith with some dex, maybe I’ll just go pure strength next time. Also doing an SL1 run in Dark Souls right now, beating O&S was an incredible rush. The DLC is daunting though. It’s very weird, these games always seemed so stressful to me as a more casual gamer who likes RPGs and Stardew Valley-like games where I could just turn my brain off. But now the entire series are my comfort games I keep going back to.