The Gaffer

My dad WhatsApped me "Ipswitch in the prem now with their Pro Evo unlicensed team crest".

Unhinged crowds, excess swearing, overbooked main events and the evangelicals are on the gas. The boom is back.

People's watches in the arena received a warning about prolonged exposure to the volume in the building. Beautiful. I noticed Generic Crowd Cheer #1 is indeed accented, also. It's a bit of a yeUAHa!

Always had a soft spot for Bingham so I'm in for him. Just seems like a lovely fella and a consumate pro who has always played at a high level like a fan of the game. No controversies. Been a poor tournament so far, mind. Maybe it's just me. There's just not been a whole lot of outstanding play or many developing little stories. I'm also gonna write a letter to WST and ask for the plush red carpets back. Everyone should have learned from 99 WCW that pale elephant grey everywhere looks sickly and cheap.

Can we add this to the forum's header logo?

I miss old, shitty Fallout 76. I tried to start a new character a year or so ago but found it was way too generous with keeping you alive. So like a lot of other MMOs, but those MMOs at least usually have decent content attached. It was barren and pointless when it first game out, but it was at least hard as nails in the first few hours. It kind of worked well as an eerie survival role play. I remember feeling genuinely elated finding bottles of purified water when ransacking gafs.

Yes my tribal chief.

Look in my eyes! What do you see. False equivalencies and honestly Fuck this whole industry

I'd definitely skip the first Final Fantasy. In fact - controversial, perhaps - but unless you actively play and enjoy 16-bit/pixel/retro games I'd probably skip the first six entirely and then go back to them later. The progression and battle systems in virtually all the games are so specific as to be marmite - and there's really no way of knowing if you'll dig it or not until you get stuck in - so I'd tend to just go for the aesthetic that takes your fancy the most. FLips is on the money though with VII and X being logical jump in points if you do want to play it safe at all costs. VII is the sprawling, cutesy, archetypal 'best game ever' entry of the series. It's full of downtrodden oddballs cheerily trying to scrape by on a dying planet. VIII hones in more on a human love story. The physical atmosphere is more grounded and military but everything else about it is off the wall. If your favourite entry in most series is the weird, misunderstood, awkward one then here you go! IX is kind of like Abbey Road. It's got all the best bits of the earlier albums all jammed into one and functions as both a best-of and send-off to an era. If you like medieval fantasy go with this one. That's not to sell it short. It's essentially a story about a bunch of completely different people banded together figuring out existential dread and death. I think it's comfortably the best written game in the series. X is post-apocalyptic Home & Away where some of the characters are religious fundamentalists who play water basketball. X-2 is that, but with Charlie's Angels energy. XII I really didn't gel with so can't speak too much to it but it's like...tech high fantasy?...with the gameplay being modelled almost like an offline MMO. XIII is really linear and the battle system almost sort of plays itself. Not that that's a bad thing. They wanted it to be accessible. I have no idea what the fuck it's about, though. I tapped out here.

To be honest I think there's less a chance of it not happening at some point in the next few years. WWE are practically invulnerable financially at the moment and the content can be consumed anywhere, anytime. I don't think the whole fabric of Americana/time zone thing is as sacrosanct an issue as it once was.

Maybe my thinking is too old school and trapped in what other companies have done, but if you've crowned a new top guy they should be the first thing we see or hear about on the show, even if it's to build up their first appearance as champion much later in the night. Swerve strolling out for a TV match in the second segment like any other guy on the roster was a bit deflating. Especially when it became apparent the focus was instead going to be on another inevitable moneybags slide into getting physically involved with on screen angles. But I'm sure some clever fecker on Reddit with a spreadsheet has clocked that him and Fletcher never wrestled before so this was actually pretty great.

I don't buy the leak concerns as a reason for Klopp announcing his departure with months left in the season. It feels like it was to do a big narrative push for commercialisation reasons, which you could handily rationalise as "Well the team will give it their all now." The kind of hubristic optimism that doesn't bother factoring in "If they blow it in any way that invites jeers, this is going to be proper shit." Oh well. North London forever.

Gotta feel for lovely Ding, crashing out again like that. Delighted for Lisowski though, hopefully he has a great run. With that excellent match and Ronnie coming up today too it feels like the tournament finally has a bit of lift off. This marathon of a thing always tends to take a few days.

You won't be Toiletside, Mothafucka until you rhyme 'Doing a poo like Mr. Magoo' with 'Vigo The Carpathian from Ghostbusters II'. Still, it's better than maybe 25% of what goes in the mosher thread.