Cliff Hanger

Gonna go out on a limb and predict that the women's and tag titles will change hands and both the men's singles champs will successfully defend. The Wolf Dogs are almost certainly losing so Bron can go on tour full time, and I don't really get why they turned Roxanne heel unless they want to see whether she can get the fans to take her seriously when she's not a plucky underdog. The only way Ilja loses is if he's being called up before Battleground. North Am title, hell I don't know. I'd like to see Dijak get some gold but for some reason I think Oba retains.

Thank CHRIST Axiom and Nathan won. I think that's gonna be a huge sleeper hit for the weekend, and hopefully get more people invested in the new champs. Supernova Sessions is always fun and I have no idea who's winning Sat. I don't hate Joe Gacy as a performer, he's had a few very good matches, but man do they work hard to make him too viscerally unpleasant to work as a face or a heel. "Cult leader who uses therapy language to manipulate his disciples" was absolutely not working, but it was better than Cockroach Joe. ...wait, Tony said they were going to the Civic Hall, but this looks more like a warehouse full of goons half-assedly doing repairs! The 6-woman tag will be interesting; this is Izzi's first PLE match if I'm not mistaken, and Kelani's second or third. The other 4 have shown they can acquit themselves just fine outside the super enthusiasts that go every Tuesday. Either this or the North Am title match will be the least of the day, probably, but they'll both still be watchable.

I need to do a ticket too, I'm in the same boat. I'm envying the shit out of your Waller and Davenport cards; I know I mentioned it before, but green Tyler Bate has only a 52 technical submission rating and you have to get 5 tapouts to get him to blue. Even using the Gordian Knot boost to his skills, I have only gotten 2 and that was by playing against Silence the mime and using the Move Thief Payback to do his LeBell Lock (and you'd better beat on him for a WHILE since you only get one shot.) Right now my main cards are Land of the Giants (boss faction) Undertaker, Showcase Steamboat, Hollywood Batista (picked up from the women's story) and Next Gen (boss Faction) Cody for the men, and Showcase Charlotte, Bianca and Asuka with Controlled Bliss (boss faction) Iyo to round it out. Speaking of the women's story, it is very silly but mostly fun. After the "welcome to the big leagues" stuff, you are given FULL CREATIVE CONTROL and get 3 single chapter stories: you can help Liv out by taking her booking on a thinly-disguised Hot Ones goof involving smelly cheese in hopes of raising your Hollywood profile, learn the path of cruelty and terror from Rhea, or unleash supernatural evil with Alexa's help. All 3 have the same number of side quests, and follow the same pattern--get an introduction from your mentor, surpass them, do a couple of side stories and then come back to them for a blow-off, after which a Face of Foley offers you a one-chance bonus match. I have done the first 2, am about halfway thru the Alexa chapter, and I think after this it's gonna ask me which persona I want to take into the final chapter. So far my favorite parts have been in the Hollywood path: toward the end, you get so exhausted juggling wrestling and outside gigs that Chelsea Green successfully Like I said, dumb as hell but with kind of a goofy charm. After i finish this, I'm probably going back to Infinite Wealth before doing the men's story, but I will probably continue to do my Universe (went with the classic mode and decided to wait a bit on doing a superstar mode game) and Faction matches some.

I played that at a sleepover when it was brand new. It was basically incomprehensible to me, and I had never heard of Bam Bam or Honky, and DiBiase I had only heard of when the wrestling kids talked about it, I had no idea what he looked like. I was upset that we had rented that but I don't remember what I asked for and lost out on.

RIP to Joe Flaherty, best known for SCTV (where his recurring roles included station owner Guy Caballero, newscaster and kids' horror host "Count" Floyd Robertson, and Vic Hedges) and as Mr. Weir on Freaks and Geeks.

Aside from 3-4 months of intense FF14 play early in Covid, I haven't really played an FF since 10. But I love music games and Theatrhythm is half off on PSN (for the regular and premium versions; the middle-of-the-road one is still $80, making it effectively an IQ test) so let's fuckin' go.

I never got that far, but the tutorial stages are all the same quest ("do X Y times and then win") but the dialogue between them is entirely different; it's all about putting over the Junior division as unique and dynamic. Champion Road Beyond, meanwhile, is completely differenr--it was written by Suda51 as a sequel to the infamous Fire Pro 3 story where Ric Fl...I mean Dick Slender kills your tag partner and your hero commits suicide after winning the belt. It doesn't have the stat management, etc that the NJPW modes do, just a straight shot thru a series of matches with a story that isn't even Suda-level crazy.

Sunday is the last chance to use the YOURSTORY2K24 code to get the toy version of Cena in all modes and a couple card packs in Faction, or to unlock Cody's "ugly" mask for CAWs (by winning the Live Event tag match with Dusty and Toy Cody.) So far those are the only two time-limited Faction things that unlock anything anywhere else in the game, though we know there will be more "Oddities" cards coming later in the season--pieces of signature gear like that which unlock the item for CAW and, when you complete the set, grant a card--but not when or how.

No. When Sami stole the case from Priest to prevent him cashing in on an unconscious Rollins, Pearce made him return it the following week before the show on pain of firing. So while having the contract in your possession is necessary to execute it, it has to be the rightful owner (as others pointed out, there's precedent for it changing hands in a sanctioned match that isn't the ladder match but it has to be an agreed-on stip.)

https://www.si.com/fannation/wrestling/nxt-stand-and-deliver-main-event Shawn Michaels confirms that Trick vs Melo will close the show.

Yeah, I was kind of stoned and distracted, and way too bought in. Rewatched it today and lol.

I'm no judge on camera. The AI is significantly more challenging, yes, and pacing is slower in large part because your stamina meter is a lot more important. Last year I had to remind myself what it was because it appeared so rarely; this time I'm having to make conscious choices to whip someone to the corner so I can let my stamina recover and do a taunt. "Video game wrestling" isn't nearly as viable, though it's by no means Fire Pro level enforced slow build. It's also a valid strategy to whip someone to the ropes and then do 2-3 leapfrogs/drop-downs to gas them out, which would have been absurd before. In general, aside from the camera thing (I'm just not near that observant) all those points are correct.

I swear to God, if we get Wolf Dogs vs Good Bros when we COULD have an Axiom/Frazer rematch or Dogs vs LWO...ahem. Anyway. --Dijak/Spears was a pretty good match. The Gacy interference for the finish was painful, but the payoff with Gacy on the roof was probably the first time his shtick has actually made me smile. I am, however, disappointed that all the big guys getting in Oba's grill had to be whittled down to 2; I was hoping for a North American multi-man challenge like last year, but this time with mostly big ass dudes instead of mostly nimble smaller guys. --Hail vs Nyx I didn't pay that much attention to for a variety of reasons. Nyx has the look and is a good sidekick for Jacy, we'll see how she turns out as a worker and personality. --I thought the video packages for the Women's title and Trick v Melo were awesome. The fact that Trick has family in Philly and he lived there for a while just reinforces that this should have been for the title. --Ilja vs Stacks was a great angle to set up the title match at SAD. --if Ridge's departure is a work, then it makes sense (in the context of the angle, not wrestling logic more broadly). If it's real, then it almost feels like the last 4 months of his booking have been people trying to pressure him into it. I wasn't watching when he fucked up Big E, and I don't blame fans or other pros for holding it against him, but reducing him to a sad sack who's terrified of maiming an opponent instead of merely beating him bad enough to pin him is so unnecessary when they could just release him. --wow, Nat won a match. --didn't pay enough attention to Duke/Josh. --has anyone called the Orlando hospitals to see if Tozawa's okay? Jesus.

IMO, if Roman takes a Stunner or Austin otherwise causes the finish, then yes. Otherwise, no. I don't have any real logic behind it, just instinct, and the amped up crowd might well prove me naive, but I think if Cody's sidekicks are losing to the Masters of Samoan Evil outside and Rock is about to make it to the ring but Austin pops up to even the odds, it probably won't hurt Cody or the win.

Not on PS+, though that did just get NBA2K24. The PC version HAS made it into Humble Bundles or Humble Choice the past couple years towards the end of the life cycle.

I think it depends on what parts of the game you enjoy most. I got my money's worth for the third year in a row, but I seem to mostly want different things than most of the other players here. If you want new toys in the playpen for GM and/or Universe, official versions (w/music, commentary, etc) of a bunch of people who've either never been in a game or haven't been in a decade, and new moves to give to edit characters, it has all that but it's just, like, 10-15% more in each case. If that sounds like it's worth MSRP to you, then it likely will be. If it leaves you on the fence, maybe wait til August since that was when it went on deep sale on PSN and Steam the last couple years and you're almost definitely going to get your money's worth then.

At the time those Acclaim Iguana games came out on PS1, I had just started watching wrestling in earnest, was playing a lot of mediocre fighting games in the campus arcade, and so they were great first wrestling games for me at the time. I had no fucking taste, of course, they're basically unplayable. But until I was able to get an N64 and play WM2K, they were what I thought I wanted: WCW Vs the World, which I came around on later, just felt so slow (I hated having to hold down the grapple button for seconds at a time) and didn't have any of the presentation flourishes I wanted. So I played probably hundreds of hours of Attitude, then got really into WM2K and Fire Pro (first thru a copy of X Premium obtained thru Nefarious Means, then a legit copy of G) and so when Hardcore Revolution came out i bought it and hated it. I am aware that the PS1 owners got by far the best versions of these; the N64 ones were missing most of the presentation stuff and the Dreamcast ones (which may have just been the ECW games) sucked because of the lack of enough buttons for the controls the games were meant to have. I have a lot fewer memories of WCW Nitro and Thunder, for whatever reason those absolutely did not work for me. I do remember cheating to unlock the deeper hidden characters; there was a disco-themed arena where if you hit the taunt button, both wrestlers would freeze and do the YMCA. So you could throw somebody out of the ring and just taunt a few times in a row and guarantee a count out win.

I'm not quite sure what I expected for X-Men '97, but the first two eps are pretty damn good.

Not sure if it's on sale or not, but Stardew just got its first patch in years so it's got people coming back after being away for a long time.

Kick ass. Also, hey, daily wrestling podcast that I didn't know about and isn't run by "wrestling journalists"

So, 2 things. 1) thank God for the "END RIVALRY" button in Universe mode. In 2k23 I was still doing an NXT match against Wes Lee every week even after beating Roman. 2) for the third year in a row, I've tried to start GM mode, gotten choice paralysis, and bailed during the draft. Is there a guide (preferably text, but I will hold my nose and watch a video) that will help me ease into it and maybe see why people love it?

I'm really hoping we get a Wolf Dogs v Axiom/Frazer rematch, because they had a really good TV match and they are going to burn the house down on the big stage. Last year's SAD was "where I came in" after a decade of not paying attention, and NXT has been my favorite WWE show since (in part because its stupid parts are 90s Wrestling Stupid and not Modern WWE Stupid), so I have high hopes. Trick v Melo should be emotionally satisfying, all the title matches should be good and fun, Perez as heel champ is gonna be delightful if they go there. I will be sad to see the inevitable dissolution of the Wolf Dogs, because those guys are MAGIC together. How the fuck did Corbin flop so hard on the touring roster when he's so good in Orlando?

Slowly working my way thru Triangle Superman, and while it has its ups and downs it feels like a perfect response to "Superman is boring because he's too kind" weirdos both within and without the Snyder Cult.

That was so incredibly stupid but it was an homage to one of the greatest boss fights ever (vs Kuze in Yakuza 0), so it gets a pass. Really, the whole Sotenbori Street Fight is so full of silly homages to the games as to be charmingly dumb and then you get Takeshita just absolutely fucking up Kenny by hitting him so hard with the bike that the big gear leaves bloody marks on his back.

Eddie is like the last guy left who can make me go full little-kid mark, angry when he loses no matter how good a match is even as I approach 50. That was a phenomenal match, Okada/Pac is going to be a phenomenal match. But the King better get his win back.