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The Gaffer

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Everything posted by The Gaffer

  1. Pretty much just Dynamite during work, a bit of Collision and whatever the 'main' in ring promo/segment on Raw and Smackdown were on YouTube. I acquire the AEW and WWE PPVs and watch them on a morning off but usually either skim halfway through or just fob them off because waiting to see what's been posted here about it is more entertaining. I still feel invested, it's just that once that initial massive anchor wrestling has like twice a year wears off, I can't stick to actually watching the full shows. I'll see Punk coming back, or Cody finally getting the push, or whatever it is and feel as hyper-invested as ever, and then once the weeks start rolling into one another - even if the angle's being handled well - I'll just drop off again in no time at all. Wrestling's retrospective content for me and there's enough of it there that I'm sort of okay with that. It's OSW, Wrestling Bios and podcasts. Just...good fan made ones. Because I'm way over the hill with even the supposed clever carnies and their endless takes on how they'd do it, based on that one year they got that one storyline really right. I'd love to be sitting on WCW PPVs for the occasional fun watch but it's not worth maintaining an active paid sub with the evil empire over. The last time I watched week to week in full - live where I could - was 2005 which is nuts as I type it because like I said I still feel like I've been invested in the almost 20 years since then. That was the last year the 1 AM "THIS is Sky Sports" call got me excited. And it got me very excited. I was so into it, and felt like I was fighting wrestling's corner against a world that didn't understand it. Those were the days. But these are the days too. You grow up.
  2. Yeah it was a bit marmite wasn't it. I think keeping scrapping and base building an essential part of what's possible but completely divorced from any actual main quest progression/badgering should be an easy enough task to do. Treat it as a roleplay element essentially. Then again it is Bethesda we're talking about.
  3. 10 - Final Fantasy VII Nothing will ever touch it. Pretty much my favourite piece of media ever and played a genuinely massive role in shaping my child mind's imagination and sense of storytelling and emotion. A random pre-rendered backdrop of some tiny store in Junon's upper layer holds a sort of memory resonance with me that leaves most films I've watched in the dust. 9 - Metal Gear Solid I feel the most zealous on behalf of Sons of Liberty - a fucking audacious work of postmodernism that predicted and articulated on a nuts amount of how the world feels these days. But it's still just impossible to put anything above the sheer importance and mindblow of playing this first one in 1998. I'll never get over thinking it was a simple enough action game for that initial sequence in the docks. Gruff, hard nosed lines, claustrophobic atmosphere, "Escape this easy peasy bunch of cubes on the floor". No problem. Then you get the escalator up, Snake gets half his kit off, you're watching a movie for about half an hour, he immediately doesn't trust his commanding officer, and there's this Christopher Eccleston plays Vince Neil motherfucker lording all over the place in a chopper. Then ten hours follow where something incredible happens every 15 minutes or so, and in between you play as a guy who has been betrayed, left for dead and up against an infinite supply of conspiracy and genetically modified soldiers and he's having just a ball of a time. 8 - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion It's one of those "Everyone has their favourite" series and IV hits the sweet spot for me. It's essentially my ultimate ASMR/anti-anxiety game for much of the same reasons other people think it's the most boring of the bunch. Classic European fantasy setting. Lush rolling hills, good weather, levity. It's gentle to you whilst still allowing you to role play to a decent degree, unlike in Skyrim where you almost always feel funnelled into being 'The Hero'. Chorrol is my place in videogames I actually want to live in and inhabit as an NPC. Idyllic gaming at its finest. 7 - Halo Again much like Metal Gear Solid there's individual bits of improvement and perhaps better entertainment scattered across the sequels (the whole first Halo trilogy I find hard to separate, it's all top notch stuff) but it's impossible to put any sequel over that feeling of just playing this for the first time. Not only did it look and play better than any other shooter on the market, it's probably the only time the PC was ever included in that. I remember watching it on Games Network ('member that?) on Sky Digital for a few weeks after it came out when I still didn't have an Xbox and it may as well have been an entire generation up from anything else out at the time. 6 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 Could have went with anything from 3 - THUG 2 here. What's with the overriding nostalgia for 2 still? The series was nothing without being able to revert off ramps to keep a combo going! At its height, it was essentially the best platformer ever created, with an insanely satisfying game loop and perfect synergy of sound and visuals. Unlike a lot of other games on the list which exist in a sort of cultural vacuum, it also directly fed off and fed back into the whole Jackass/skater zeitgeist which was huge at the time before we all obviously outgrew it. Right? 5 - TimeSplitters 2 Again all of then are close together here for me, but the first one (yes, it's got merit. Probably the fastest gameplay and best multiplayer maps of the bunch) is too bare bones whilst Future Perfect is a tad too EA-ified. The true GoldenEye/Perfect Dark successor and so synonymous with PS2 split screen carnage in the early to mid noughties. a 15" screen split in four? No problem. It's not like you could even aim properly in this game anyway. I'm still taking your head off with a shotgun from the 16th century whilst trance music pumps out. 4 - Grand Theft Auto 3 It's still this one for me, and no that's not a hipster choice! I mentioned in the electronic music thread awhile back how much I loved that eternally post-midnight, subversive early 2000s vibe. Everything felt sinister, edgy, sort of burnt out and kept awake to drum and bass. GTA III was its videogame. The first taste of the 3D GTA world - that breakthrough moment - is still where it's at for me (a theme is developing, here). Joyriding around the edges of Portland causing the motion blur and draw distance to form a sort of anarchic swirl as Rise FM blasted out? Series peak. 3 - Fallout: New Vegas Just one of the best RPGs ever made. Stuffed with insane dialogue trees, madcap characters and a one of a kind ambience. I don't think it'll be bettered within the series. Give it Fallout 4's settlement building and you have a perfect Fallout game. 2 - Doom II Would feel far too weird not having a Doom game on the list. The first two are so close together in terms of release and impact that it makes sense to just go with the one on steroids. But classic Doom as a whole is genuinely timeless, I think. It doesn't look or sound old. It just looks and sounds like Doom. The new ones are fine but the ultra-appeasement, killgorelol vibe of them is still a galaxy away from the charming meat grinder atmosphere of these old ones. 1 - Unreal Tournament 2004 As highly rated as it is, this is probably one of those left of field "Wow you must have played it loads" choices, I guess? This game was the zenith of my love affair with PC gaming when I was a teen. One of the most refined, giving games ever. Endless maps and modes. Looked great but was relatively stress free to run. I went so far as to making my own maps for it. I know they still exist in some form but god I miss arena shooters being a big time era.
  4. I'd never have said main event, but this Test look was the best he could have had. One of the worst "Gonna cut my hair and get short trunks" turns ever:
  5. I always struggle with shows where there's no real babyfaces to go for, but Aidan Gillen's character was good fun as he just came off as someone who got into this whole gangland stuff through pure accident of birth and far preferred sitting around listening to his 70s records smoking hash.
  6. 'The Miserables Fucks' has new UKFF faction written all over it.
  7. Not saying it's an incorrect take - because I'd personally rather just the straight bullseye shot of heel Roman Vs. face Cody too - but it's reflective of what a mental timeline we're in that "Hot crowd divided on their support between Cody Rhodes and uh...The Rock" can be perceived as a negative. Watching the segment, though, it was so brutally anachronistic that I'm confident it was planned as straight heel Rock and people were just popping for the occasion moreso than the content/character. It was back to the usual Gerwitz drizzling shits. "People who talk about wrestling on the internet need to pay to have sex hahaha!" The little promo after it was some good old school stuff though.
  8. Asking Google the exact years and months since my signup date was the laziest thing I've ever done with it, quite possibly. I then shouted its answer back to me in my head in a Bill Alfonso voice with the days, minutes and "Daddy-O!" added. Good craic.
  9. Got a Girl board today, in the latest episode of "Staying Off the Drink Does Weird Shit to the Gaffer." I've spent a few weeks now slowly teasing my way back into watching old skate team VHS rips on YouTube and re-falling in love with that whole mood of it all. I packed in skateboarding as a teen. Wasn't much good but I could cruise around and grind a rail like Tony Khan before a big Dynamite. Definitely was one of the many "I play Tony Hawk more than I actually skateboard" type people. I then realised I literally walk through an outdoor skatepark every day as a bridge between the street I live and the city centre (the local chemistry enthusiasts hang out there too, and it's affectionately dubbed 'The Bumhole') so I may as well just buy a board again and get into it. Found this great series as well on my voyage of rediscovery. It's relaxing to watch if you love skateboard noises, and the host seems like a stand up dude. Anyway, better get some sleep before I wake April and Phil up with fireworks tonight.
  10. People like Icke always present a sweet outer layer before you bite into the nutty middle. The first half hour of his WrestleMania length shows are almost always "You know when you think about it, love's really great and we can only really perceive a certain amount of the actual light and sound that's there" and it's like...well...yeah. Then once you're nice and settled he'll whip up a slide that shows Queen Elizabeth, Jay-Z and Jimmy Carter barbecuing human heads or whatever and get into the thick of it. I've never understood the point in giving such a crank the benefit of the doubt because you're able to take his 10% agreeable stuff and conveniently just fob off the rest of it. Story of dogma though, isn't it? His books can be a hoot. It's essentially the adorableness of someone trying to put together an interactive card for one of their grandson's birthdays by using Microsoft clipart, only applied to the world's most fucking insane takes and topics.
  11. Thought the Mone stuff was cringy in parts to be honest. I was dying for someone to interrupt her at the end when the camera just lingered. All the accoutrements, the non-stop "Waving my hands down the side of my head" dance to what's already one of the worst entrance tunes on the roster. But I was never a massive fan once the more aggressive, self aware post-NXT character came out.
  12. Not going to lie, I saw the video title this morning and just thought to myself "Oh no, not again. Does it need this?" but damn if it's not a total shoot coming from this wonderful, odd man. And that's it all but confirmed now, surely? Imagine losing after this?
  13. Yeah low hanging fruit here. There's nothing Rollins can ever actually do to be a bigger star than Rock.
  14. I always knew it in the back of my head, but my god Dynamite looked so much better in that Pac/Omega match!
  15. The segment was obviously top notch. It feels pointless trying to point out any potential lulls in what's probably one of the top bits of business they've ever done. So many moving parts, the crowd there for every bit of it. But of note, I thought Seth fitted in much better this week - which was the last piece to fit the build really needed - with his Arsene Wenger in The Matrix look. As much as I hate the diarrhea stuff, him doing his idiot laugh when the crowd chanted it completely unprompted got me good. No witty comeback from the Great One either. Gerwitz should have fed him a line for that eventuality! Rock and Roman trashing Seth as a clown and a crossdresser makes complete sense, for me, because it's something the crowd already like about Seth and it's exactly what two bullies would do, so it gives him a bit of fire and lets you know in the context of the angle "This guy's lower down the totem pole, but that's poor form lads. I want him to leap up it and beat you both now."
  16. Yeah this is spot on. The Ruthless Aggression era WrestleManias are awful to watch back. It's come in for some expected rose-tinted nostalgia, and I've been guilty of it myself, but it was an awful few years in hindsight. The real low down, tawdry "Recapture the Attitude" moments they reached for every few months were all in far worse taste than most of the Attitude Era itself, only now completely ripped from any sort of finger-on-the-pulse context. Orton, Batista and Cena all got the push yeah but none of them were booked nearly as well as they could have been. It's a miracle all three are such big, respected stars in their own way now. Countless guys either underperformed (Carlito) or didn't get invested in enough (Benjamin). The period of generic big guys like Luther Reigns and Heidenreich. That era of Smackdown where they went 80s SNME vibe and had Tatanka, Road Warrior Animal, shit like Simon Dean. Awful. But yeah 23 in particular is a good shout for one of the worst WrestleManias ever. It done the worst thing a WrestleMania can do for me. It just felt cold. Nothing on it felt particularly celebratory or fun or properly remembering the past. 24 is much better.
  17. First of all I'm really disappointed after WrestleMania: Play Button that WrestleMania: Bell hasn't gained traction yet. Anyway, in the interest of a quiet Friday eve let me talk to 'ya: First WrestleMania watched? XV. I still maintain that if you were a child who was into whatever the Attitude Era threw at you at the time then it was an exciting show. Pure dross, in reality, of course. I got it on the Silvervision in 2000. I got into wrestling that year, but it was after WrestleMania 2000. I was 9 at the time and in my only moment of "I know all the rest of that stuff is fake, but fuck -" that I can really recall, the video package detailing the Ministry vs. the Corporation before the Bossman/'Taker cell match genuinely scared the shit out of me and convinced me Undertaker was genuinely evil for a few days. The first WrestleMania I ever watched live was X-8 and I blew it. Burned through all my excitement that night, sugar crashed, fell asleep during DDP/Christian and woke up just as Rock and Hogan were suddenly best mates in the ring, with the latter out of nowhere now the most popular wrestler on the planet again. Favourite WrestleMania? It has to be X-Seven. It's the only realistic answer for a 'Mania I'd take to a desert island. I find most of the New Gen/Attitude Era ones immensely watchable but the overall quality isn't there, and for the newer ones that actually are good they still feel like giant undertakings that give you a migraine with all the lights and graphics before long. Have you ever been to WrestleMania? No and I don't think I ever will. I've long consigned myself to the fact that I don't like wrestling live. Honestly, without commentary and just hearing the mic under the ring boom out every little movement way too much I think it's kind of shit. Being way back in an enormo-dome holds no appeal to me either. I enjoy watching wrestling more than ever in a way now, but I'm happy to have it be something I do in private. Best/Worst WrestleMania matches. It's still Bret/Austin and TLC II for me. My favourite gutsy, 'realistic', violent storyline match ever and my favourite spectacle, show-it-to-your-friends match ever. They both piss enormously on any of these self-aware 'epics' HBK brought into fashion in his second run. I'm not going to name silly undercard matches nobody remembers for worst matches. It's going to have to be those Triple H slogs, isn't it? The Roman match, the Big Dave match at 35, even the Lesnar match. He's had some overlong stinkers at the big one towards the end of his career. Best/Worst WrestleMania moments. WrestleMania XXX is full of moments. The opening promo between Rock/Austin/Hogan, Cesaro seemingly getting made in the Andre battle royal, the fucking streak ending! I was in the chat that night and it was just people typing 'FUCK' for about ten minutes. The My Way package of course. Shawn proving he was back beyond a doubt with a vanilla match with Jericho. Just the whole feel of WrestleMania 14, knowing the business had changed for good. Sweet Zombie Linda (she played a blinder!) Worst? Probably the endings to some of the modern 'Manias where it felt like a sort of groundhog day of "Fuck off, it's not getting hot again and we're not changing it for you". Cena beating Rock at 39. Reigns beating Triple H at 32. Just horrible, horrible vibes. The product was dead. 'Taker coming back from the dead looking like GM-grown Shakespears Sister whilst people behind the curtain tried to stop a fire from spreading was pretty funny too. Favourite WrestleMania theme and/or intro? I'll go for a forgotten one here, 22 with the "Let me introduce you to the characters" package that contrasted the wrestlers then and now. There's been loads of them though. In terms of bad, 14 cracks me up. The shitty DX cover of the Star-Spangled Banner ("Oh say can you see"). Favourite WrestleMania announcer call? ("The boyhood dream has come true" etc etc) Gonna cheat on this: Heyman and JR. The entire night. The best show ever had the best commentary track ever. I could probably listen to it in isolation.
  18. Channeling his sobriety into a positive and longstanding passion, yeah.
  19. Bam Margera's been sober for months by all accounts and is back on the board. Lovely to see.
  20. I fear this has proved to be some sort of mad summoning ritual.
  21. I check out a few minutes of it every year, and despite the professed improvements it just still isn't for me. Even when it gets it right, it seems to be 'getting it right' in this mad overproduced continuum of self reverence that gives me a headache. So - really - it's absolutely fucking nailing it as a WWE sim considering the above could have been written about watching Raw every week.
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