Pre-Show Match: RVD v. Cesaro
I don't know WHAT Cesaro did to be put in the doghouse like he did, but I hate it. He doesn't deserve to be buried like he is.
Intercontinental Championship: Miz v. Dolph Ziggler
Consider this a pleasant surprise, as I thought Miz would weasel a win out of this or retain the IC Title in some way. He didn't, and Ziggler being pushed and kept relevant is a good thing.
DIVAS Championship: AJ Lee v. Paige
I think Paige's victory here is due to her carrying this feud from Battleground to Summerslam. Night of Champions will result in a third match between the two, where I expect Paige to make AJ tap out to the Scorpion-Cross Lock, a move Paige hasn't slapped on AJ in this entire feud, which is what it's leading up to, I think.
Lumberjack Match: Seth Rollins v. Dean Ambrose
After last month's bait-and-switch along with the stipulation that the match would be a Lumberjack match made people question this feud continuing. Consider the doubters put in their place as a Lumberjack Match delivered the match of the night. Good storytelling, good emotion, good wrestling. It even resulted in the match going into the crowd as well as Sin Cara getting beat up. How can you top that? Well, an Ambrose win, but that didn't happen. I expect this feud to lead to Hell in a Cell, because right now it's the #1 feud in the company.
Flag Match: Rusev v. Jack Swagger
When they announced that this was just a regular match instead of a capture-the-flag type of deal, I knew Rusev would win. This was a good match, with great selling from Rusev. It played into the match heavily as well as Swagger's broken ribs. But in the end, Rusev won, and the USSR theme, not the Russian Federation theme played. Oh Vince, you cad, you. It sucks that Zeb got laid out afterwards, and the feud is probably ending.
Chris Jericho v. Bray Wyatt
This match was much better than last month's match, but overall there's something about this feud that just isn't working and needs to be stopped. It wasn't bad, but there's no storytelling going on here and there's no momentum behind it.
Stephanie McMahon v. Brie Bella
First off, Stephanie's outfit is something HHH must've had modified from Chyna's old outfits, because that guy definitely has that kind of taste in women. Secondly, this match was good. It started slow, but considering Stephanie hadn't wrestled in 10 years and Brie just got re-hired kayfabe wise, it made sense for it to start slow and build from there. The heel turn by Nikki at the end was predictable, but it leads to a new feud, as well as Stephanie hitting a great-looking pedigree at the end for the win/
Randy Orton v. Roman Reigns
This match was forgettable, like Wyatt and Jericho, but at least this match had good booking behind it. I felt that Orton really carried this match, and it just shows that Reigns needs A LOT of work before he's ready, like everyone thought. The last third of the match was really where the match caught fire, and it felt like the crowd wanted Orton to win, which, considering the effort he put into the match I don't blame them at all. While Reigns won, he wasn't the star of this match.
WWE World Heayweight Championship: John Cena v. Brock Lesnar
The most famous squash match of all time. For 15 minutes, Brock Lesnar dominated John Cena in probably his worst match ever. In the first 30 seconds, Lesnar hit Cena with an F5, which would've been an amazing ending to this buildup and event. As the match went longer, with Lesnar proclaiming the early pin was Cena's only chance of escape and saying he'd kill him, looking as if he'd absorbed the Undertaker's powers, it looked as if they might pull a Super Cena victory out of thin air again, but it didn't happen. Lesnar hit a second F5 and it was over. Domination. Conquered. Beautiful.
Overall, Summerslam was WWE's best PPV of the year, even above Wrestlemania. There wasn't a bad match on the main card, and overall gets an 8.5/10 from me.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Friday, June 27, 2014
Building My First PC
It finally happened. After years of wanting to, I finally pulled the trigger and bought parts to build a true PC. Sure, I don't have a dedicated monitor, speakers, video card, sound card, or a big hard drive (it crashed during early issues, forcing me to get a Solid State Drive), but it's up, running and I can finally enjoy the splendor of it. But it wasn't easy.
Roughly two months ago, I had someone help me assemble a wishlist of PC parts to buy so that I would buy and build a PC in the near future. While it took me sooner than I thought it would, two weeks ago, we did some fine tuning on the parts and I ordered them, along with a full retail copy of Windows 8.1. Putting together the PC took roughly 8 hours of labor, including opening the case, screwing in grounding screws, the motherboard and as well making sure everything fit the case. Getting the CPU in there was quite simple, actually. As was the ram. The power supply is where everything got tangled, with so many wires that connected to things. After installing it, I put in the DVD drive as well as the 1TB Hard Drive. I turned it on after plugging it, and it didn't turn on. It started, but stopped almost immediately. After some internet searching I found out that I didn't plug in a key component, and after I did that it started. SUCCESS!
Installing Windows 8.1 was somewhat effortless but a problem was apparent, the system wouldn't reboot. It would power on fine, but when it went to reboot it went to a black screen of nothingness, forcing me to power it off and turn it back on. Even after installing drives multiple times, the problem persisted. Checking with Microsoft across two days resulted in nothing but a broken hard drive and forcing me to return it. I was depressed and angry at the turn of events. I spent $500 on the stuff, built it and faced the real possibility of having to dismantle it and replace the motherboard. But I was determined it wasn't the problem. So late Saturday night I decided to use an Amazon Gift Card towards the purchase of a 64GB Solid State Drive. While I had other plans for that gift card, I wasn't willing to wait two weeks to get my other hard drive back.
Fast forward to this past Wednesday, when I got it with the standard mail, and opened it up, and installed into my PC. After installing Windows 8 upon it, the problem of not rebooting persisted. I was sad. Even after downloading various Windows updates again, it continued. So I decided that my last try would be to install all the drivers I previously installed on my old hard drive on the new one, and something different happened. After installing the motherboard drivers, the system gave me command prompt screens, something it didn't do last time when I did this very same process. Afterwards it went to restart, and a few seconds later, the black screen returned. I sighed, but then my PC stopped for a second and sprung back to life, something it hadn't done in my presence before! I couldn't believe it. Once it got back to the Desktop I rebooted immediately to make sure it wasn't a dream. It wasn't! I was so happy and relieved that after a week of trouble with this thing my PC was finally running properly. While I had no sound through HDMI on my TV for a few hours, I managed to fix it by downloading a GPU driver from Intel.
While I'm still puzzled by a few kinks on this new PC, I can at least enjoy the fruits of my labor. I know now how to build a PC, and I'm sure in the future I can build one even faster than I did this time. It's not the most powerful PC, it's not even what I want it to be, but it's a good start and I'm glad I've done something worthwhile in a long time.
Roughly two months ago, I had someone help me assemble a wishlist of PC parts to buy so that I would buy and build a PC in the near future. While it took me sooner than I thought it would, two weeks ago, we did some fine tuning on the parts and I ordered them, along with a full retail copy of Windows 8.1. Putting together the PC took roughly 8 hours of labor, including opening the case, screwing in grounding screws, the motherboard and as well making sure everything fit the case. Getting the CPU in there was quite simple, actually. As was the ram. The power supply is where everything got tangled, with so many wires that connected to things. After installing it, I put in the DVD drive as well as the 1TB Hard Drive. I turned it on after plugging it, and it didn't turn on. It started, but stopped almost immediately. After some internet searching I found out that I didn't plug in a key component, and after I did that it started. SUCCESS!
Installing Windows 8.1 was somewhat effortless but a problem was apparent, the system wouldn't reboot. It would power on fine, but when it went to reboot it went to a black screen of nothingness, forcing me to power it off and turn it back on. Even after installing drives multiple times, the problem persisted. Checking with Microsoft across two days resulted in nothing but a broken hard drive and forcing me to return it. I was depressed and angry at the turn of events. I spent $500 on the stuff, built it and faced the real possibility of having to dismantle it and replace the motherboard. But I was determined it wasn't the problem. So late Saturday night I decided to use an Amazon Gift Card towards the purchase of a 64GB Solid State Drive. While I had other plans for that gift card, I wasn't willing to wait two weeks to get my other hard drive back.
Fast forward to this past Wednesday, when I got it with the standard mail, and opened it up, and installed into my PC. After installing Windows 8 upon it, the problem of not rebooting persisted. I was sad. Even after downloading various Windows updates again, it continued. So I decided that my last try would be to install all the drivers I previously installed on my old hard drive on the new one, and something different happened. After installing the motherboard drivers, the system gave me command prompt screens, something it didn't do last time when I did this very same process. Afterwards it went to restart, and a few seconds later, the black screen returned. I sighed, but then my PC stopped for a second and sprung back to life, something it hadn't done in my presence before! I couldn't believe it. Once it got back to the Desktop I rebooted immediately to make sure it wasn't a dream. It wasn't! I was so happy and relieved that after a week of trouble with this thing my PC was finally running properly. While I had no sound through HDMI on my TV for a few hours, I managed to fix it by downloading a GPU driver from Intel.
While I'm still puzzled by a few kinks on this new PC, I can at least enjoy the fruits of my labor. I know now how to build a PC, and I'm sure in the future I can build one even faster than I did this time. It's not the most powerful PC, it's not even what I want it to be, but it's a good start and I'm glad I've done something worthwhile in a long time.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Thoughts on Wrestlemania 30
Wrestlemania 30 was a very good show. It wasn't the best, there was very little bad, and all in all entertaining. But first, all the credit in the world has to go the WWE Network and MLB for having a near-flawless showing tonight when everyone thought the worst would occur. I personally only had two problems, one involving the feed rewinding before the Cena-Wyatt match and the PS3's Network App crashing on me when I tried to reload the feed because it fell behind after said match. This year's Wrestlemania had two signature moments, although there were a few other quality ones as well, but in the end, the moment we're all talking about now isn't the one we thought we'd talk about going in.
Pre-Show Tag Team Title Match
The Usos retained in a very good match. The crowd got into it, ended in a fine way and started the show off with a bang. Maybe not the biggest bang but a bang nonetheless. Cesaro turning face and swinging Swagger was what it needed, and that's what we got, so all in all a good match.
Daniel Bryan vs. HHH
After 38 minutes of talking, we finally had some Wrestling. HHH's introduction was amazing, crazy and outlandish, reminding me of Skeletor from Masters of the Universe. This match may not have been Owen v. Bret at Wrestlemania 10, but it was pretty damn good. No real botches to speak of, Bryan winning clean and HHH hitting Bryan's injured shoulder with a chair gave caution for the rest of the night. I thought overall, the post-match portion was the weakest part here, as it left Bryan able to wrestle from the get-go in the Main Event, but left little room for the imagination.
Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royale
This match was boring until the last 8-10 guys were in the Ring where you could finally have room to do some cool moves. In the end, Cesaro picking up Big Show and tossing him over the Top Rope for the win paid homage to the end of Wrestlemania 3 when Hogan slammed Andre. It was a perfect ending and the people were happy for it.
John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt
This match had very good psychology and storytelling to it. It was sort of slow, and perhaps needed to be faster. Cena was playing the obvious heel and Bray the face, though the crowd was somewhat muted during it. This match felt like it was in Bray Wyatt's head until the end, particularly with moments where Cena went for the Five Knuckle Shuffle, getting booed and Michael Cole saying 'this is the type of reaction John Cena is used to getting.' Perhaps it was unintentional, but it worked, especially with Cena trying to hold back his inner demons and destroy Wyatt, which he wanted to do. But in the end, Cena resisted those urges and won, which was pretty disappointing.
Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker
In a match with a poor build that people thought would turn out to at least be okay...didn't. This match was bad. It was slow, it was sloppy and overall uninteresting, as people were really just waiting for The Undertaker to win the match. It wasn't Brock Lesnar's fault either...it was The Undertaker, and for that, he lost. That's right, 21-1 happened. This is the moment of complete shock and awe that encapsulated the show for the rest of the night, resulting in a delayed announcement and music for Lesnar, as well as a 21-1 graphic on screen. As the crowd shots occurred, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE was in shock, including myself. Was it the right decision? The Undertaker wasn't physically prepared for this match, Brock was. So in that sense, he deserved to lose. Given the moment, where no one thought Brock could win versus letting it go on forever...they pulled it out from under us, just as the Undertaker stumbles to his feet. While Taker looked disappointed afterwards and hobbled off to applause, you could tell that he was done. But to Brock Lesnar? I'm not against it, but this moment was bad and Undertaker didn't deserve to go out like this.
Divas Invitational
AJ Lee won. The crowd didn't care. They were still trying to comprehend Undertaker losing.
Daniel Bryan vs. Batista vs. Randy Orton
Until Daniel Bryan came out the crowd was completely dead. I feared the worst, and Bryan only got a halfway decent pop when he came out. You could tell when he came back halfway in the match that he was giving it his all, and so were the other 2 guys, but the crowd just wasn't into it until Stephanie and HHH came in. THEN the crowd turned it up a notch. A couple of nearfalls happened when Orton hit an RKO on Batista and the crowd nearly died at this. Perhaps the Undertaker's loss helped this out, for me...yeah, it certainly played a role in me thinking it was over. Next Bryan hit a flying knee and Batista threw out Bryan to get a cover, and the crowd almost died here too, but thankfully didn't. Bryan eventually got the YES lock on Batista and he tapped, giving Bryan the Championship he so rightfully deserved. This match was pretty good with interesting spots, and it pushed this card to a top 10 Wrestlemania, perhaps even top 5.
While Bryan won...no one's talking about it, which is disappointing. It was his night to shine and unfortunately The Undertaker losing cost him a lot of talk. I'm not sure how late the decision to have Taker lose came, but I'm sure it came before the match started, with the burning of Lesnar's casket, as if it were unnecessary. That's unfortunately where I stand on this. Taker's loss puts a stain on the whole Daniel Bryan victory party, because fans aren't talking about him, but the Streak ending. It's unfortunate and I feel bad for him. It took everyone involved in that storyline to get that crowd into the Main Event when it really shouldn't have been necessary. I recommend this show to people who want to watch it, but hopefully you won't get a bad taste in your mouth afterwards.
Pre-Show Tag Team Title Match
The Usos retained in a very good match. The crowd got into it, ended in a fine way and started the show off with a bang. Maybe not the biggest bang but a bang nonetheless. Cesaro turning face and swinging Swagger was what it needed, and that's what we got, so all in all a good match.
Daniel Bryan vs. HHH
After 38 minutes of talking, we finally had some Wrestling. HHH's introduction was amazing, crazy and outlandish, reminding me of Skeletor from Masters of the Universe. This match may not have been Owen v. Bret at Wrestlemania 10, but it was pretty damn good. No real botches to speak of, Bryan winning clean and HHH hitting Bryan's injured shoulder with a chair gave caution for the rest of the night. I thought overall, the post-match portion was the weakest part here, as it left Bryan able to wrestle from the get-go in the Main Event, but left little room for the imagination.
Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royale
This match was boring until the last 8-10 guys were in the Ring where you could finally have room to do some cool moves. In the end, Cesaro picking up Big Show and tossing him over the Top Rope for the win paid homage to the end of Wrestlemania 3 when Hogan slammed Andre. It was a perfect ending and the people were happy for it.
John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt
This match had very good psychology and storytelling to it. It was sort of slow, and perhaps needed to be faster. Cena was playing the obvious heel and Bray the face, though the crowd was somewhat muted during it. This match felt like it was in Bray Wyatt's head until the end, particularly with moments where Cena went for the Five Knuckle Shuffle, getting booed and Michael Cole saying 'this is the type of reaction John Cena is used to getting.' Perhaps it was unintentional, but it worked, especially with Cena trying to hold back his inner demons and destroy Wyatt, which he wanted to do. But in the end, Cena resisted those urges and won, which was pretty disappointing.
Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker
In a match with a poor build that people thought would turn out to at least be okay...didn't. This match was bad. It was slow, it was sloppy and overall uninteresting, as people were really just waiting for The Undertaker to win the match. It wasn't Brock Lesnar's fault either...it was The Undertaker, and for that, he lost. That's right, 21-1 happened. This is the moment of complete shock and awe that encapsulated the show for the rest of the night, resulting in a delayed announcement and music for Lesnar, as well as a 21-1 graphic on screen. As the crowd shots occurred, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE was in shock, including myself. Was it the right decision? The Undertaker wasn't physically prepared for this match, Brock was. So in that sense, he deserved to lose. Given the moment, where no one thought Brock could win versus letting it go on forever...they pulled it out from under us, just as the Undertaker stumbles to his feet. While Taker looked disappointed afterwards and hobbled off to applause, you could tell that he was done. But to Brock Lesnar? I'm not against it, but this moment was bad and Undertaker didn't deserve to go out like this.
Divas Invitational
AJ Lee won. The crowd didn't care. They were still trying to comprehend Undertaker losing.
Daniel Bryan vs. Batista vs. Randy Orton
Until Daniel Bryan came out the crowd was completely dead. I feared the worst, and Bryan only got a halfway decent pop when he came out. You could tell when he came back halfway in the match that he was giving it his all, and so were the other 2 guys, but the crowd just wasn't into it until Stephanie and HHH came in. THEN the crowd turned it up a notch. A couple of nearfalls happened when Orton hit an RKO on Batista and the crowd nearly died at this. Perhaps the Undertaker's loss helped this out, for me...yeah, it certainly played a role in me thinking it was over. Next Bryan hit a flying knee and Batista threw out Bryan to get a cover, and the crowd almost died here too, but thankfully didn't. Bryan eventually got the YES lock on Batista and he tapped, giving Bryan the Championship he so rightfully deserved. This match was pretty good with interesting spots, and it pushed this card to a top 10 Wrestlemania, perhaps even top 5.
While Bryan won...no one's talking about it, which is disappointing. It was his night to shine and unfortunately The Undertaker losing cost him a lot of talk. I'm not sure how late the decision to have Taker lose came, but I'm sure it came before the match started, with the burning of Lesnar's casket, as if it were unnecessary. That's unfortunately where I stand on this. Taker's loss puts a stain on the whole Daniel Bryan victory party, because fans aren't talking about him, but the Streak ending. It's unfortunate and I feel bad for him. It took everyone involved in that storyline to get that crowd into the Main Event when it really shouldn't have been necessary. I recommend this show to people who want to watch it, but hopefully you won't get a bad taste in your mouth afterwards.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Wrestlemania 30 Predictions
It's been a long time since I cared enough about Wrestling to watch a Wrestlemania. Because the company cleaned up their act from the Attitude Era, along with the WWE Network to allow people to catch up on classic wrestling libraries that the company owns, I took the plunge on the Network in order to watch this year's event. Given that I write here from time to time, I thought I'd provide my predictions for tonight's card.
Pre-Show Match: Tag Team Championship Fatal Four-Way
The Usos (C) vs. Los Matadores vs. Rybaxel vs. The Real Americans
It's disappointing to think about how good this division was a couple of months ago to now be pre-showed at Wrestlemania. You have the Usos, who are hard workers and okay champions, basically getting buried at the top of the division. It's also disappointing when you realize that Wrestlemania is four hours long, but only has 7 matches. To put things in perspective, Wrestlemania 12 was three hours long, had six matches, but one of them was an iron man match. Also, Wrestlemania 17, perceived to be one of, if not the best Wrestlemania, had 11 matches on the main card in a four hour time frame. But I digress, there's not much competition for the Champions here, and I expect them to retain their titles.
Winners: The Usos
Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royale
30 Participants, some currently unknown
There are too many competitors to name here, but so far, the names that come to mind are simple. The Big Show has the strongest push going into the match, getting the upper hand at every opportunity. The Miz is being pushed as a big heel here, getting the short end of the stick every time out. There's also Rusev, who hasn't appeared much on TV and hasn't been seen in a long time. Obviously, I think Rusev will win this match if he's in the match, since it will be the start of a push he gets as some kind of monster-like heel. Otherwise, I'll go with the Miz since they're going to try and get him over again.
Winner: Rusev
Divas Championship Invitational
AJ Lee (C) defends against 13 others
Some explanation is required here. This is a 14 woman match that is 1 fall for the Women's Title. Considering the skill that some women have in this division, this is a low blow for the division, because it's obviously going to have a low bar of quality. This match was made by Vickie Guerrero in hopes of having AJ Lee lose her title. So the choice here is simply AJ versus the Field. I think the field wins here, particularly Summer Rae, since she's on Total Divas, and is being played up as a heel and apparently is hated by a fair number of people in the locker room. It's a surprise win, but it does carry a lot of weight, including the continued burying of Fandango.
Winner: Summer Rae, New Champion
Six-Man Tag Team Match
The Shield vs. Kane and the New Age Outlaws
Unless they plan on turning any of the Shield members heel during this match, this should be an easy prediction, as the Shield should win this match. I don't have much interest in this match, as it feels like a 'get the Shield in a match that's not the Battle Royale' match, which is fine, but ultimately lacks a lot of punch. I think it will be an okay match, but The Shield's opponents aren't very interesting.
Winner: The Shield
Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker
If the buildup to this match was supposed to lead us to believe that The Undertaker had no chance in beating the monster that is Brock Lesnar, the WWE has completely failed. With the exception of a weak clothesline and F5 on the last Monday Night Raw, Lesnar has been physically and mentally neutered by The Undertaker. While Paul Heyman has cut fantastic promos like he always does, he is not Lesnar. If he was, I'd pick him to win this match 10 times out of 10, because Paul is that good. I think this will be a solid match, and might surprise people, even though the buildup has hurt it from being something greater. But since he's not, the Streak marches onto 22-0.
Winner: The Undertaker
John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt
The buildup for this match has been absolutely fantastic. When the angle started at the Royal Rumble, I wondered if the company had gone insane by having their top face go against an up and coming heel that could be destroyed in an instant. However, I think they've proven everyone wrong here, and going in is my most anticipated match. I think the important thing here is how it will finish. Bray Wyatt in order to prove his point doesn't have to win clean, but simply prove that John Cena isn't as clean or great as he says he is. Any other way, and the character of Bray Wyatt is tarnished forever. I think Cena wins the match, because the company protects him most of the time, but I don't think he does it clean.
Winner: John Cena
Daniel Bryan vs. HHH
This is arguably the main event of the evening, despite it not being the last match. It's clear that the winner here goes onto win the Title, no questions asked. What's important here is where it's placed on the card, which is right before the Title Match to close out the show. This leads me to believe that Daniel Bryan is going to win, since I don't think HHH can physically last for an hour plus in the ring nowadays. This will obviously make the Title Match more dramatic as it will probably leave Bryan in a weakened state and possibly out of that match at the beginning.
Winner: Daniel Bryan
WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match
Randy Orton (C) vs. Batista vs. Daniel Bryan
Batista came back, the fans didn't care. Batista won the Royal Rumble, and the fans turned on him and the company because Daniel Bryan wasn't in the Rumble. CM Punk left the company, which is why Daniel Bryan took his place. The fans essentially caused this match, and they're going to get what they want or they're going to riot, which in some alternate reality happens and is crazy. But not here. Daniel Bryan wins the Title, pins Orton clean, and leads the crowd of 70,000+ in "YES!" chants to go off the air. Hopefully he keeps the Title for more than a day this time.
Pre-Show Match: Tag Team Championship Fatal Four-Way
The Usos (C) vs. Los Matadores vs. Rybaxel vs. The Real Americans
It's disappointing to think about how good this division was a couple of months ago to now be pre-showed at Wrestlemania. You have the Usos, who are hard workers and okay champions, basically getting buried at the top of the division. It's also disappointing when you realize that Wrestlemania is four hours long, but only has 7 matches. To put things in perspective, Wrestlemania 12 was three hours long, had six matches, but one of them was an iron man match. Also, Wrestlemania 17, perceived to be one of, if not the best Wrestlemania, had 11 matches on the main card in a four hour time frame. But I digress, there's not much competition for the Champions here, and I expect them to retain their titles.
Winners: The Usos
Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royale
30 Participants, some currently unknown
There are too many competitors to name here, but so far, the names that come to mind are simple. The Big Show has the strongest push going into the match, getting the upper hand at every opportunity. The Miz is being pushed as a big heel here, getting the short end of the stick every time out. There's also Rusev, who hasn't appeared much on TV and hasn't been seen in a long time. Obviously, I think Rusev will win this match if he's in the match, since it will be the start of a push he gets as some kind of monster-like heel. Otherwise, I'll go with the Miz since they're going to try and get him over again.
Winner: Rusev
Divas Championship Invitational
AJ Lee (C) defends against 13 others
Some explanation is required here. This is a 14 woman match that is 1 fall for the Women's Title. Considering the skill that some women have in this division, this is a low blow for the division, because it's obviously going to have a low bar of quality. This match was made by Vickie Guerrero in hopes of having AJ Lee lose her title. So the choice here is simply AJ versus the Field. I think the field wins here, particularly Summer Rae, since she's on Total Divas, and is being played up as a heel and apparently is hated by a fair number of people in the locker room. It's a surprise win, but it does carry a lot of weight, including the continued burying of Fandango.
Winner: Summer Rae, New Champion
Six-Man Tag Team Match
The Shield vs. Kane and the New Age Outlaws
Unless they plan on turning any of the Shield members heel during this match, this should be an easy prediction, as the Shield should win this match. I don't have much interest in this match, as it feels like a 'get the Shield in a match that's not the Battle Royale' match, which is fine, but ultimately lacks a lot of punch. I think it will be an okay match, but The Shield's opponents aren't very interesting.
Winner: The Shield
Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker
If the buildup to this match was supposed to lead us to believe that The Undertaker had no chance in beating the monster that is Brock Lesnar, the WWE has completely failed. With the exception of a weak clothesline and F5 on the last Monday Night Raw, Lesnar has been physically and mentally neutered by The Undertaker. While Paul Heyman has cut fantastic promos like he always does, he is not Lesnar. If he was, I'd pick him to win this match 10 times out of 10, because Paul is that good. I think this will be a solid match, and might surprise people, even though the buildup has hurt it from being something greater. But since he's not, the Streak marches onto 22-0.
Winner: The Undertaker
John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt
The buildup for this match has been absolutely fantastic. When the angle started at the Royal Rumble, I wondered if the company had gone insane by having their top face go against an up and coming heel that could be destroyed in an instant. However, I think they've proven everyone wrong here, and going in is my most anticipated match. I think the important thing here is how it will finish. Bray Wyatt in order to prove his point doesn't have to win clean, but simply prove that John Cena isn't as clean or great as he says he is. Any other way, and the character of Bray Wyatt is tarnished forever. I think Cena wins the match, because the company protects him most of the time, but I don't think he does it clean.
Winner: John Cena
Daniel Bryan vs. HHH
This is arguably the main event of the evening, despite it not being the last match. It's clear that the winner here goes onto win the Title, no questions asked. What's important here is where it's placed on the card, which is right before the Title Match to close out the show. This leads me to believe that Daniel Bryan is going to win, since I don't think HHH can physically last for an hour plus in the ring nowadays. This will obviously make the Title Match more dramatic as it will probably leave Bryan in a weakened state and possibly out of that match at the beginning.
Winner: Daniel Bryan
WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match
Randy Orton (C) vs. Batista vs. Daniel Bryan
Batista came back, the fans didn't care. Batista won the Royal Rumble, and the fans turned on him and the company because Daniel Bryan wasn't in the Rumble. CM Punk left the company, which is why Daniel Bryan took his place. The fans essentially caused this match, and they're going to get what they want or they're going to riot, which in some alternate reality happens and is crazy. But not here. Daniel Bryan wins the Title, pins Orton clean, and leads the crowd of 70,000+ in "YES!" chants to go off the air. Hopefully he keeps the Title for more than a day this time.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Animal Crossing: Fixes and Wants
Animal Crossing is a very relaxing series that really only demands from the player what the player wants to put into it. While Wild World expanded the scope of the series with things like new characters and online play, City Folk’s attempt to add the fabled “City” to the series was received a gigantic sigh from its’ audience. Then along came New Leaf which added new items, a new mayoral system and changed how older mechanics worked, specifically special visitors and how certain items are collected. However, the world of Animal Crossing is still not ideal, with many problems old and new plaguing it that need to be addressed for the series to improve, as well as desires from myself that I’d consider a major step forward for the series.
Fixes
Online Play
- Opening/Visiting Towns
Ever since online play was implemented into Wild World, players have had to suffer through the arduous task of having to open their gates, be notified that someone was coming over to visit, the game saving, watching a slow animation of players passing through the gate and then finally regaining control. This process repeats every time a player enters or leaves a town. While New Leaf allowed hosts to end a multiplayer session, having players leave en mass, there’s still a lot left to be desired about the series’ online functionality. There needs to be an option to allow players to start games with their gates open so players can come and go as they please. Saving every time someone enters/leaves a town needs to stop as well. The game should save in the background, and not impede the gameplay of people already in town, as how it is currently dissuades people from playing online.
- Safety from Trolls/Thieves
Another issue that dissuades players from playing online is trolls and thieves. When a player enters your town, they can do anything you can do in your town, including running over flowers, chopping down trees, and taking items that lay freely on the ground. While it’s recommended that you don’t allow these people into your town, you never really know who you can trust or when accidents may happen. To remedy this, visiting players need to be restricted from destroying flowers, chopping down trees and picking up items unless they are in a designated area of some kind. While it may “restrict” some of the fun players can have visiting peoples’ towns, it still allows people to get items from different towns as well as shop, talk to villagers, catch bugs, fish and visit the island. Ultimately, this doesn’t really take away anything from anyone.
Inventory Management
- Tools
Tools are a staple to the Animal Crossing series, as well as to any player’s inventory screen, which is exactly the problem. Tools give you the ability to cut down trees, uproot fossils and gyroids, catch fish and bugs and shoot things out of the air. In New Leaf you are only allotted 16 item slots, and with new tool additions such as the Wet Suit and Megaphone to go along with the Shovel, Net, Fishing Rod, Axe and others, your inventory becomes limited very quickly. As much as 10 inventory slots can be taken up by unique tools overall. Additionally, your Tools aren’t granted protection like some items, which means they can be sold accidentally to Re-Tail and lost forever, which is painful if you accidentally sold a Gold or Silver item. So what’s the solution here? Some items in New Leaf are granted what I call “protection,” meaning that they can’t be sold, traded or let go of, like the Bingo card during the winter months. My suggestion here is that Tools and items like the Bingo card be allotted their own inventory screen so they don’t take up regular inventory space and can’t be lost by accident. They’re staple items, and should be treated differently from regular inventory items.
- Money/Fruit Stacking
In previous entries, Animal Crossing allowed you to stack money that you accumulated over 99,999 bells in your inventory space up to 99,000 bells per space. New Leaf took this a step further by allowing you to stack fruit so you could carry more. The major missing component here is that these do not stack automatically has to be done so manually, which is a chore and cumbersome to do every time. This needs to be addressed going forward by automatically stacking fruit up to 9 pieces in one slot as well as bells. This would immensely help minimize item management.
Public Works Projects
- Police Station
There are two types of PWP’s. Ones that are received by performing a set of various in-game objectives and those received at random. The ones received from objectives are special ones, such as the Dream Suite, the Reset Center and the second floor of the museum. Like these, the Police Station share the same restriction that they can’t be demolished once built. However, this one can only be received as a random request from a villager. The question is why? It’s the bane of many New Leaf players that haven’t received the request to build this, despite having played for months. It needs to be unlocked in a special way like the Museum’s second floor, the Café, and the Reset Center instead of being rewarded at random.
- Katrina’s Shop
Katrina’s Shop is earned by visiting Katrina’s Tent in the town plaza of your own town 20 times you’re your playable residents. Considering that Special Visitors in New Leaf are not on a strict schedule like in previous games, this is a major pain. It can be months between Katrina visits in your town, delaying how often you can get psychic readings from her. The fastest way for you to get her shop is to visit Katrina 5 times with 4 different playable villagers and the last visit being with your Mayor. The number of required readings needs to be reduced, Katrina needs to be put on a set schedule (like other visitors) or the chances of her visiting goes up once you’ve gotten everything from all special visitors that come on a schedule (Redd, Gracie, Gulliver, etc.)
- Dream Suite
The Dream Suite is unlocked by visiting Isabelle after a few days of playing the game where you find her asleep at her post. This place allows you to visit copies of player’s towns at the exact moment of them being uploaded and updated with the exception of Main Street, in-town shops which are closed, and villagers which still roam freely around town and can interact with them. While the concept of the Dream Suite is nice, and being able to see a large portion of villagers you may have never seen before, the one problem here is the process. Your dream town, which if damaged won’t affect your regular town, is assigned a dream code. Now if you don’t update every couple of days your code can change. But the question is why? The old code still remains, and can still be accessed by players, but can never be updated, nor are they deleted like the game says. This needs to be fixed. When your town is assigned a Dream Code, it needs to stick. It shouldn’t be change, regardless of how often you update your Dream Town. It’s a hassle to change dream codes, it causes confusion for people who want to visit the same town multiple times and it follows the same stigma of friend codes, which are simply unintuitive.
Grass Wear/Animal Tracks
Animal Crossing City Folk added a new mechanic to the series that quickly became a bane to most players, known as Grass Wear or Animal Tracks. This mechanic slowly wore down grass so dirt paths were now present between common paths players and villagers took in each town. In City Folk, the mechanic worked too quickly, making it very easy for towns to become a barren wasteland where no grass was in sight. While New Leaf improved greatly on this mechanic, it’s still nearly impossible to re-grow grass, even in matters where the best player knowledge comes into play. There’s no specific in-game trick, tool or device to allow players to grow or maintain grass levels. The fix here is simple: Get rid of the mechanic entirely or give players a tool to allow them to maintain grass levels. One thing is for certain though, grass wear is not a mechanic many players enjoy and needs fixed.
Tournaments
Every few weeks or so on a Saturday, your town plays host to a Fishing or Bug-Catching Tournament. The rules are just like you think, with limitations some of the time on what can be entered. The big problem here is that there isn’t a scoreboard available for the Tournament. You can only receive your current standing when you talk to the Coordinator, and he’ll vaguely tell if you’re first, second or third. There needs to be some kind of visible scoreboard available at all times to give you an indication of where you stand against other competitors throughout the day.
Wants
Expanded Able Sisters
The Able Sisters throughout the history of Animal Crossing has been the primary place where you purchase clothes. While the series has secondary ways to acquire clothes and City Folk introduced Gracie’s shop in the City, New Leaf brought a lot more purchasable clothes in all forms, in addition to new forms of clothing such as pants, socks and shoes. While Kicks is a place to get Socks and Shoes as well as accessories from Labelle, you’re still severely limited to the amount of shirts/bottoms you can normally obtain from the main Able Sisters shop. While Nookling Junction has been expanded many times, the Able Sisters haven’t. I think it’s a good time for this to happen, allowing you to buy even more Shirts, Dresses and Bottoms than you can normally.
Bigger Town
Animal Crossing has over 300 unique villagers. In New Leaf, at any one time, you can only have 11 (10 villagers and 1 camper) villagers in your town. Players of the series can play day-in, day-out for months and not see a single new character if they don’t play with others or visit other peoples’ towns via the internet in some way. Animal Crossing needs to expand by allowing players to have more villagers, perhaps in the form of districts where more villagers could make residence in each one. Doing so would allow people to meet more villagers and have an expanded view of what the series has to offer to fight off repetition.
Item Bank
Animal Crossing has always been notorious for item collection. It’s also been notorious for having a low amount of inventory space in each game. With the increase of items in New Leaf, as well as ones that can’t be re-purchased, item space became even more premium. One of Nintendo’s recent releases is Pokemon Bank, which allows players to transfer and keep Pokemon from older games and be able to transport them for use in newer games. The concept would be similar for Animal Crossing, but for items and clothes. It can take years for players to obtain a complete Catalog in a single Animal Crossing game let alone multiple versions. Why not allow loyal players to keep their item collection for years to come? It would definitely cut down on some of the monotony of daily window shopping and allow players to concentrate more on their town and villagers.
Statistics
New Leaf introduced the concept of Badges as proof of your accomplishments in-game. One thing that’s missing however is the simple understanding of how close you are to achieving certain goals for them. New Leaf allows you to see the number of people who’ve visited your town, but beyond that, there isn’t much. Luna should be able to tell you how many times you’ve dreamed, Leif should be able to tell you how many weeds you’ve picked, flowers you’ve planted, etc. etc. etc. It may not seem like much, but it will make those seemingly unobtainable goals seem much closer than you think they are, encouraging players to keep going.
Animal Crossing is a great series, and New Leaf is arguably the best entry in the series to date after offering a fresh entry into a series that was getting stale. In order to prevent it from getting stale in the future, these fixes need to occur, and I hope the things I want get added to the series in the future so I can continue coming back to my town for years to come.
Fixes
Online Play
- Opening/Visiting Towns
Ever since online play was implemented into Wild World, players have had to suffer through the arduous task of having to open their gates, be notified that someone was coming over to visit, the game saving, watching a slow animation of players passing through the gate and then finally regaining control. This process repeats every time a player enters or leaves a town. While New Leaf allowed hosts to end a multiplayer session, having players leave en mass, there’s still a lot left to be desired about the series’ online functionality. There needs to be an option to allow players to start games with their gates open so players can come and go as they please. Saving every time someone enters/leaves a town needs to stop as well. The game should save in the background, and not impede the gameplay of people already in town, as how it is currently dissuades people from playing online.
- Safety from Trolls/Thieves
Another issue that dissuades players from playing online is trolls and thieves. When a player enters your town, they can do anything you can do in your town, including running over flowers, chopping down trees, and taking items that lay freely on the ground. While it’s recommended that you don’t allow these people into your town, you never really know who you can trust or when accidents may happen. To remedy this, visiting players need to be restricted from destroying flowers, chopping down trees and picking up items unless they are in a designated area of some kind. While it may “restrict” some of the fun players can have visiting peoples’ towns, it still allows people to get items from different towns as well as shop, talk to villagers, catch bugs, fish and visit the island. Ultimately, this doesn’t really take away anything from anyone.
Inventory Management
- Tools
Tools are a staple to the Animal Crossing series, as well as to any player’s inventory screen, which is exactly the problem. Tools give you the ability to cut down trees, uproot fossils and gyroids, catch fish and bugs and shoot things out of the air. In New Leaf you are only allotted 16 item slots, and with new tool additions such as the Wet Suit and Megaphone to go along with the Shovel, Net, Fishing Rod, Axe and others, your inventory becomes limited very quickly. As much as 10 inventory slots can be taken up by unique tools overall. Additionally, your Tools aren’t granted protection like some items, which means they can be sold accidentally to Re-Tail and lost forever, which is painful if you accidentally sold a Gold or Silver item. So what’s the solution here? Some items in New Leaf are granted what I call “protection,” meaning that they can’t be sold, traded or let go of, like the Bingo card during the winter months. My suggestion here is that Tools and items like the Bingo card be allotted their own inventory screen so they don’t take up regular inventory space and can’t be lost by accident. They’re staple items, and should be treated differently from regular inventory items.
- Money/Fruit Stacking
In previous entries, Animal Crossing allowed you to stack money that you accumulated over 99,999 bells in your inventory space up to 99,000 bells per space. New Leaf took this a step further by allowing you to stack fruit so you could carry more. The major missing component here is that these do not stack automatically has to be done so manually, which is a chore and cumbersome to do every time. This needs to be addressed going forward by automatically stacking fruit up to 9 pieces in one slot as well as bells. This would immensely help minimize item management.
Public Works Projects
- Police Station
There are two types of PWP’s. Ones that are received by performing a set of various in-game objectives and those received at random. The ones received from objectives are special ones, such as the Dream Suite, the Reset Center and the second floor of the museum. Like these, the Police Station share the same restriction that they can’t be demolished once built. However, this one can only be received as a random request from a villager. The question is why? It’s the bane of many New Leaf players that haven’t received the request to build this, despite having played for months. It needs to be unlocked in a special way like the Museum’s second floor, the Café, and the Reset Center instead of being rewarded at random.
- Katrina’s Shop
Katrina’s Shop is earned by visiting Katrina’s Tent in the town plaza of your own town 20 times you’re your playable residents. Considering that Special Visitors in New Leaf are not on a strict schedule like in previous games, this is a major pain. It can be months between Katrina visits in your town, delaying how often you can get psychic readings from her. The fastest way for you to get her shop is to visit Katrina 5 times with 4 different playable villagers and the last visit being with your Mayor. The number of required readings needs to be reduced, Katrina needs to be put on a set schedule (like other visitors) or the chances of her visiting goes up once you’ve gotten everything from all special visitors that come on a schedule (Redd, Gracie, Gulliver, etc.)
- Dream Suite
The Dream Suite is unlocked by visiting Isabelle after a few days of playing the game where you find her asleep at her post. This place allows you to visit copies of player’s towns at the exact moment of them being uploaded and updated with the exception of Main Street, in-town shops which are closed, and villagers which still roam freely around town and can interact with them. While the concept of the Dream Suite is nice, and being able to see a large portion of villagers you may have never seen before, the one problem here is the process. Your dream town, which if damaged won’t affect your regular town, is assigned a dream code. Now if you don’t update every couple of days your code can change. But the question is why? The old code still remains, and can still be accessed by players, but can never be updated, nor are they deleted like the game says. This needs to be fixed. When your town is assigned a Dream Code, it needs to stick. It shouldn’t be change, regardless of how often you update your Dream Town. It’s a hassle to change dream codes, it causes confusion for people who want to visit the same town multiple times and it follows the same stigma of friend codes, which are simply unintuitive.
Grass Wear/Animal Tracks
Animal Crossing City Folk added a new mechanic to the series that quickly became a bane to most players, known as Grass Wear or Animal Tracks. This mechanic slowly wore down grass so dirt paths were now present between common paths players and villagers took in each town. In City Folk, the mechanic worked too quickly, making it very easy for towns to become a barren wasteland where no grass was in sight. While New Leaf improved greatly on this mechanic, it’s still nearly impossible to re-grow grass, even in matters where the best player knowledge comes into play. There’s no specific in-game trick, tool or device to allow players to grow or maintain grass levels. The fix here is simple: Get rid of the mechanic entirely or give players a tool to allow them to maintain grass levels. One thing is for certain though, grass wear is not a mechanic many players enjoy and needs fixed.
Tournaments
Every few weeks or so on a Saturday, your town plays host to a Fishing or Bug-Catching Tournament. The rules are just like you think, with limitations some of the time on what can be entered. The big problem here is that there isn’t a scoreboard available for the Tournament. You can only receive your current standing when you talk to the Coordinator, and he’ll vaguely tell if you’re first, second or third. There needs to be some kind of visible scoreboard available at all times to give you an indication of where you stand against other competitors throughout the day.
Wants
Expanded Able Sisters
The Able Sisters throughout the history of Animal Crossing has been the primary place where you purchase clothes. While the series has secondary ways to acquire clothes and City Folk introduced Gracie’s shop in the City, New Leaf brought a lot more purchasable clothes in all forms, in addition to new forms of clothing such as pants, socks and shoes. While Kicks is a place to get Socks and Shoes as well as accessories from Labelle, you’re still severely limited to the amount of shirts/bottoms you can normally obtain from the main Able Sisters shop. While Nookling Junction has been expanded many times, the Able Sisters haven’t. I think it’s a good time for this to happen, allowing you to buy even more Shirts, Dresses and Bottoms than you can normally.
Bigger Town
Animal Crossing has over 300 unique villagers. In New Leaf, at any one time, you can only have 11 (10 villagers and 1 camper) villagers in your town. Players of the series can play day-in, day-out for months and not see a single new character if they don’t play with others or visit other peoples’ towns via the internet in some way. Animal Crossing needs to expand by allowing players to have more villagers, perhaps in the form of districts where more villagers could make residence in each one. Doing so would allow people to meet more villagers and have an expanded view of what the series has to offer to fight off repetition.
Item Bank
Animal Crossing has always been notorious for item collection. It’s also been notorious for having a low amount of inventory space in each game. With the increase of items in New Leaf, as well as ones that can’t be re-purchased, item space became even more premium. One of Nintendo’s recent releases is Pokemon Bank, which allows players to transfer and keep Pokemon from older games and be able to transport them for use in newer games. The concept would be similar for Animal Crossing, but for items and clothes. It can take years for players to obtain a complete Catalog in a single Animal Crossing game let alone multiple versions. Why not allow loyal players to keep their item collection for years to come? It would definitely cut down on some of the monotony of daily window shopping and allow players to concentrate more on their town and villagers.
Statistics
New Leaf introduced the concept of Badges as proof of your accomplishments in-game. One thing that’s missing however is the simple understanding of how close you are to achieving certain goals for them. New Leaf allows you to see the number of people who’ve visited your town, but beyond that, there isn’t much. Luna should be able to tell you how many times you’ve dreamed, Leif should be able to tell you how many weeds you’ve picked, flowers you’ve planted, etc. etc. etc. It may not seem like much, but it will make those seemingly unobtainable goals seem much closer than you think they are, encouraging players to keep going.
Animal Crossing is a great series, and New Leaf is arguably the best entry in the series to date after offering a fresh entry into a series that was getting stale. In order to prevent it from getting stale in the future, these fixes need to occur, and I hope the things I want get added to the series in the future so I can continue coming back to my town for years to come.
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