Eoae

Death Stranding can be a slog at times, but I think's it a top 20 game for the generation. Probably not in my top 5 or 10, but close. I'm all in on the Director's Cut which releases later this week. I think there's a lot of legitimate reasons to criticize Kojima, so I can understand why people dislike his work, but it works for me. Didn't become a MGS fan until fairly late in the game. Basically became a fan after the Peace Walker HD remaster and really enjoyed 4 and 5. I will concede a have a fondness for polarizing creators like Cage and Kojima. I also have a thing for weird Japanese people who make strange games. Besides Kojima, I'm a big fan of Okami & Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya, Shinji Mikami (created Resident Evil franchise and directed RE 4, one of my all-time faves), No More Heroes creator Goichi Suda, Yoko Taro (NieR Replicant and Automata), D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die director Hidetaka Suehiro (also directed Deadly Premonition), and a few others. Edit: How did I not mention Fumito Ueda? Shadow of the Colossus is possibly my favorite game ever and Ico isn't too far behind. Edit: Forgetting to mention Silent Hill/Gravity Rush creator Keiichirō Toyami may be an even worse omission than forgetting Fumito Ueda.

Shredder's Revenge? I don't think it's ever had a release date more specific than "2021".

Snyder's Court of Owls story was funny. He says Editorial wanted him to change the ending to Court of Owls to prove conclusively that Lincoln March was not Thomas Wayne Jr. and is not related to Bruce (the story as printed is ambiguous on that point). Snyder wouldn't do it and fought with DC over it. Snyder said in the interview that he distinctly remembers wheeling a cart full of paper towels through Target while screaming into his phone 'I'm not doing it. Go down the hall and tear up my contract. I'm done.' Lol. I still think New 52 turned out pretty well. I enjoyed an awful lot of books during that period and the weekly 52 book is what got me back into comics after a long period of not reading anything at all. Rebirth... meh. 5G would have been a disaster if they'd done it. Tynion has been talking about 5G. Seems like a bad idea to start with made worse by poor communication with writers and artists and terrible pitches for books. Tynion was making wacky pitches for niche titles in an attempt to keep from being asked to write a 5G book. Joshua Williamson recently said he would have left DC (not signed a new contract) if 5G had become a reality. Seems like several writers had zero interest in writing 5G books. Speaking of editorial blunders, I only learned a few days ago that Neil Gaiman and Jamie Delano were supposed to follow Rick Veitch on Swamp Thing. Both agreed to do the book, then backed out in protest when DC fired Veitch a couple issues early over the Jesus Christ storyline (technically, DC didn't fire Veitch. Editorial approved a script that had Swamp Thing meeting Jesus Christ, then unapproved the script after the issue was drawn and shot down Veitch's ideas for a compromise. Veitch quit the book in protest).

I guess you're not a "Other people like things different from me and that's ok" type of guy? I mean, you don't have to be shy. Tell us how you really feel. It's ok. And, yeah, I'm down with all of Kojima's bullshit, past, present, and future. Not even a Metal Gear Solid uberfan. Just think the dude is extremely talented.

I'm a big fan of David Cage & Quantic Dream and Detroit: Become Human is probably at least in my PS4 top 10, but i can't imagine what a "more action-focused" David Cage game is going to look like. Obi-Wan Kenobi opening the game with an hour-long TED talk will not be a surprise. Elsewhere, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is getting mostly great reviews. The Zelda-esque footage used in reviews of Kena crawling along the face of sheer mountains and fighting monsters is gorgeous and is doing a lot more to sell me the game the early trailer footage of Kena standing around herding Pokemon. The game is apparently a lot more Zelda-esque than it first appeared.

Didn't work in my household. I flipped back and forth between football and the early part of the show. Caught the announcement of the main event, thought to myself that I liked all three guys, then..... flipped back to football and didn't think much about Raw the rest of the night. That's probably not the reaction Vince was hoping for. I'll probably enjoy the main, if/when I get around to it. I like Big E and Roman and the Uso's are consistently the best thing about WWE TV. Not as high on Lashley, but he's been punching above his weight with this current run.

Did they announce the main event ahead of time? Since Vince is fighting for his ratings life, I have no idea why you wouldn't announce a three-way with those three guys ahead of time. I mean, someone might tune in to watch. Is that not the point of the show? Vince's idea of selling the show often bewilders me.

Digging back through the 2021 release calendar to see what I forgot to buy and realizing this has been a really good year for indies.

Watched Shazam over the weekend. It.... made me wish I'd watched a Zack Snyder movie instead. That's not a compliment to Zach Snyder movies or Shazam. Lol, there really is no winning with DC.

At this point in his career, would many people be excited about Chris Hero as a mystery partner. Dude was in a lot of matches, angles, & feuds I liked during the 2000's, but his last prominent run was probably his Kings of Wrestling tag team with Claudio (tiny trunks edition, after they both thankfully lost their supply of baggy transhbag pants). Claudio signed with WWE in 2011 and Hero has been basically invisible since. Almost literally, since he signed with WWE and spent most of that time off tv. Ten years is a long time to be gone from the indy scene. I kinda wonder how well fans going to indie shows this year remember him. I feel like Hero showing up as Ospreay's partner would be the indie equivalent of Savio Vega. I'm hoping it's Murphy. i don't dislike Ospreay near as much as some of you. An Ospreay/Murphy team would be fun.

Forgot to mention that FXX is also adding Futurama to the rotation come November. So yeah, all Fox animated shows, all the time.

Is it too much to ask that she wear a different colored muppet pelt to the ring each week?

Am I the only one that half-expected little Brock Anderson to have 5 o'clock shadow?

JR generally strikes me as about as subtle as a Monty Python skit. if we're not supposed to insert "nudge nudge wink wink" into most of his statements about breast implants, working through injuries, steroids, etc., I don't know what to say.

To be fair, I've never watched the podcasts or the After Dark (Talking Dark? Whatever it called) segments. I know next to nothing about the creative team. One of the dudes apparently directed Hobo with a Shotgun. Not sure if that's an endorsement or not. I'm under the impression that the flight attendants got money from an out-of-court settlement. If that's the case, there are probably NDA's attached. I could be wrong. Don't know much about the story aside from what was in the show. If they went to court and won a judgement, there probably is not a NDA in effect. Actually, I was wondering if the flight attendant they interviewed just decided she wanted to speak out and could afford to return the money.

Another exciting down-to-wire prime time game. Meanwhile, hometown Steelers looked rough. Defense gave up 400 yrds. passing, though they had two starters out and two more get injured during the game. O-line looked mostly unable to give Big Ben time. Rushing game was almost non-existent. Looked bad enough that you could be forgiven for wondering why Ben was brought back for one more year? Steelers don't seem to be in a position to win now and Ben is likely past the point where he can do the gunslinger thing and win you the game by his lonesome.

Learned from Twitter that Family Guy is exclusive to Disney platforms as of today (FXX mostly. Eps will still stream on Hulu apparently. Does Disney own Hulu? No clue) and will no longer be on Cartoon Network or TBS. FXX intends to run block of Family Guy most every evening as they did with Simpsons, but it still feels odd not to see Family Guy on Adult Swim at 11 PM. I've never really paid much attention to the show one way or the other, but I did occasionally turn on AS at 11 at let it play while I checked email or whatever. My impression is that Cartoon Network buying the rebroadcast rights when Fox canceled the show had a lot to do with making the show popular and getting it back on Fox. Also seem annoying to see FXX lean harder into cartoons. Plan appears to be block of Family Guy in primetime followed by block of Cleveland Show at midnight. Adult Swim seems to be leaning into even more Rick and Morty and American Dad. All of these shows are overexposed, so I'm not really sure who's going to win here. (Cleveland Show isn't as overexposed as the other three, but it's been running on Comedy Central for a lot of years and there are only 90 episodes of it so you can beat in into the ground pretty quick.)

I hate to be a cynic, but I'd be willing to bet you $10,000 or so that the producers could not care less about whether Dustin Rhodes has turned his life around or not. Am I correct in assuming that all the stewardesses received settlement payouts and probably signed non-disclosure agreements that would prevent them from talking about that night?

Ross throwing up his hands and saying "it's not my job to make grown men not act like children" is annoying. Professionally, I'm part of management. There have been a few occasions when I've had to talk to one of my employees about something going on in their life outside of office hours. it shouldn't be part of my job, but if it gets to the point where it's spilling over into the office in some fashion and affecting the firm, it's definitely part of my job. I don't want to judge Ross too much. i wasn't there and sometimes there's only so much you can do. Maybe he thought the situation was too far out of hand and beyond his ability to shut it down. Maybe he was scares of the guys. Who knows? At some point, we all make the wrong decision and hopefully learn from it for next time. Fortunately, I've never had to deal with a flight from hell situation. There have been a couple similar episodes in my firm years ago, but, thankfully, nothing I was a part of or had to deal with. The few times I've had to stick my nose into personal matters, it's been simple stuff handled with a pleasant conversation.

Tommy Dreamer seemed to eager to talk and not at all cognizant of how the footage was going t make him look. I'm wondering how savvy he is dealing with media. He's been involved with creative in a couple different companies, i think, so I'd hope he was a little savvy, but, then again, maybe not. He seemed like he needed someone to look our for his interests and pull him aside to remind him "those guys are not your friends." Honestly, i wouldn't mind if people stopped cooperating with DSotR. I feel like they've leaned hard into the tabloid trash aspect of the show. Didn't feel like the first two seasons were as lurd/exploitative

Double post.

We had four kids (all daughters). If I'd suggested having five, I feel certain my wife would have only let me into bed once I was wearing a beekeeper outfit. Or maybe one of those hazmat suits employees wear when working around hazardous waste. I'd like to think separating my penis into five pieces would not have been up for discussion, but I'm probably being overly optimistic.

Everything about Deathloop worked for me from start to finish. Not my game of the year, but definitely top 10. Really looking forward to replaying this in a year when it hits Xbox. Next three weeks look packed for me. Got 20 games on my list, most of which are probably definite buys regardless of reviews. A little bit of everything. Couple big games (Death Stranding DC, Lost Judgment, Metroid Dread), a couple remasters I'm really looking forward to (Diablo II Resurrected, Alan Wake Remastered, frigging G-DARIUS HD YESS!!!!!). Some prestige indies (Sable, Kena). And.... some indies I've fascinated by. I've got no idea if Away: Survival Series, A Juggler's Tale, or The Eternal Cylinder are any good, but they look like the sort of offbeat, fascinating thing I look for and two of the three had intriguing demos. Played I am Fish last night after finishing Deathloop the night before. It's a lot of fun. Ridiculous and absurd, but oh so fun. The controls are clunky, but I think that's intentional? The developer, Bossa Studios, also made Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread. Won't appeal to everyone and will probably frustrate a lot of people, but I'm hoping it becomes at least a niche success.

Am I the only one who did not think Ospreay was teasing Chris Hero? Never even occurred to me, so I feel like Hero's kind of being an ass about the whole thing. Does Chris Hero have some connection to Will Ospreay or New Japan that I am blanking on?

Very surprised people are surprised about the episode. I knew very little about the Flight from Hell except that it was wrestlers behaving badly, and yet, the stories were very much what I expected. Anyone surprised that Ric Flair doesn't know where to draw the line when he's drunk or thinks no means you really do want to touch my penis either knows nothing about Ric outside the ring or only sees him as they want to see him. I'd be more surprised if that wasn't an semi-regular occurrence for Ric given that he's partied like a rock star for decades, claims to have slept with over 100,000 women, and generally fronts himself as the self-absorbed, hedonistic, super-virile man's man he plays on tv. These days, when I watch Ric's character cut promos about how every man wants to be him and every woman wants to be with him, I just assume he's talking about the party last night. Ric's an infantile narcissist who lives for the spotlight and the afterparty. I feel like we've known that since.... the early 2000's? The advent of the internet? Metlzer's first newsletter? It's interesting that people have been more or less willing to overlook the many, many story or Ric's drunken escapades and his being a terrible absentee father and his being a worse husband and the sketchy financial dealings and the fairly evident drinking problem and everything else that goes hand-in-hand with being a human dumpster fire, but drunkenly exposing himself to stewardess is a bridge too far. You're kidding yourself if you think Heidi is the first person Ric has traumatized. Hell, that line probably starts with Charlotte or one of his ex-wives. That's not to excuse the flight from Hell. I kinda wish the stewardess had pressed charges or at least made enough noise to get Ric fired. But, yeah, we should probably be more surprised if Ric sits on a plane drinking for seven hours and doesn't try to sexually assault (or at least coerce) a stewardess. Same for Scott Hall. I'm not at all surprised that the noted substance abuser and alcoholic drank (and maybe drugged) himself into a near catonic state and got inappropriate with a stewardess. Very short hop from all the stories we heard before to that. More like a tiny step, really. I am sort of surprised someone bothered to drag his unconscious ass off the plane and re-enact Weekend at Bernie's with him. I'll give Dreamer a tiny benefit of the doubt here. He probably doesn't deserve it, but I hate to jump to conclusions about people I know practically nothing about. If Dreamer's been involved in these sorts of incidents before, I'm unaware of it. I mostly assume the producers of DSotR use whatever footage makes the wrestlers look the worst. Or, at least, whatever will get people talking. It's basically tabloid tv so assuming its an unbiased accounting is probably naive. I'd want to talk to Dreamer or at least see the footage they didn't use before getting too outraged and jumping to conclusions. That said, I'm skeptical Dreamer was misrepresented here or that his comments were taken out of context. At the very least, dude has been standing in the vicinity of a lot of sketchy goings-on in a couple different locker rooms now, so....