I've always enjoyed watching speedruns casually ever since the days of Speed Demos Archive. For the most part I enjoy being on the viewing side but I have occasionally dipped my toe into speedrunning. I spent a good chunk of time putting together a speedrun of Hitman 2016 which I was very proud even though over half of it is spent staring at loading screens. But you know what... I never have gone for a world record. The urge to be immortalized and wanting to add something to do while waiting for the vaccine to be out has led me down the path to buying Speedrun Science: A Long Guide To Short Playthroughs, which is kinda like a speedrunning textbook that has been advertised for the past couple of AGDQs that I've always been interested in.
So I'm enjoying my book and then get to the chapter with the most important question to speedrunning: What game should I choose? Usually you'd want to pick a game that you'd say is your favorite game, but when running down these options I'm seeing a lot of speedruns that are currently at 3+ hours long and that's just something that I have no interest in getting into. Also, most games that I sink a ton of time into these days are Sports games, or games that doesn't really have a "beginning to end". So I decided to go with a game that's special to this website. Persona 4 and Deadly Premonition are the first games that comes to mind here, but once again I don't have that kind of time. So why not go with an old favorite that I've made three different Best Of videos for: BioForge!
Even looking up the current speed run record for it has a glitch that was found by Vinny in his playthrough of it so it's a perfect fit for me. Currently on Speedrun.com there's only three runs recorded for BioForge so my chances of breaking the record should be fairly high if I spend enough time on it! My goals is to discover and implement new tactics to improve on previous speedruns and to execute well enough to improve on the current World Record. This process will hopefully be documented through this blog, as I am intending on sharing all of my findings (which is heavily encouraged in the book).
The current record was completed by a user who goes by "LiquidSteak" and it clocks in at 43m and 52s, which is 13 minutes faster than the run in second place. LiquidSteak's run is super well done but is fairly straightforward and doesn't have any major glitches used, except for one that was accidentally found by @vinny in Backflips n' Bioforge (linked below). Basically in casual runs the player is forced to drop the big gun when they pick up the bomb, causing you to need to do another lap to go back around and pick up the gun after you're done with the bomb, which adds about two minutes to the clock. But what was found is that if the gun is placed in the same spot you pick up the bomb, the player picks up both the bomb and the gun at the same time so you don't need to do that extra lap.
Other than that the only notable thing used was a few ways to skip animations. For example when you fall off ledges if you mash on up the player will skip his "wobbly ledge" animation or whatever you want to call it. Another skip is at the very beginning of the game when you wake up if you hit Escape you skip a screen shake that takes quite a bit of time.
I'm not sure how I'm going to structure this series of blogs/videos, but as of right now I think I'm going to give a weekly update on my investigation phase of this speedrun before I begin routing and executing. Hell, if there's other people out there on these boards who would like to join me in trying to find the best way to speedrun this thing than I'd love to start that community (BioForge is currently $1.50 on GoG).
So my homework for myself this week is to come up with a list of all items that are NEEDED to complete the run and where at I can get these items (I have a skip in mind that I came up with while writing this so I'm excited to test it out and report back on results next week). I'm also planning to open up a spreadsheet and start filling it with data on attack values and HP of enemies that need to be dealt with along the way so hopefully that work will be done by the next post as well.
Thank you for reading (and possibly joining me on this journey) and I will leave you with this beautiful melody:
Hey folks. I kind of did a similar thing last year where I listed out my top ten games of 2017 and also included my favorite things about those games. It's all a gimmick because I make the Best Of vidz for the site. Why not add another gimmick where I also talk about the "Best Feel" from those games. OK!
Onrush carries the “fucking rad” flag into the modern era of video games by building an entire game around traffic checking AI cars in order for you to gain the boost necessary to take down your opponents. They also introduce the extremely novel concept of “not all car games needs to be races” and build game modes similar Overwatch & Call of Duty. The soundtrack design also gives you nostalgic flashbacks to SSX Tricky with the radio DJ popping in every once in a while. Overall Onrush is a very rad game that you better download for free on PS+ this month or else I will be disappointed in you.
Best Feel: Landing On Opponents With The Charger
Every vehicle class in the game has unique abilities, and out of all of them the most satisfying is the airstrike from the Charger. If you hit a jump and you’re over your opponent, just hold the boost button and your car kinda magnetizes to your enemy and you ground pound them into the dirt. Extremely satisfying whenever you have a chance to pull it off.
Favorite Moment: The Sound Effect Every Time You RUSH
As I said before, ever vehicle has their own set of abilities… but with RUSHing I just want to point out how fantastic the “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH” sound effect is and really gets across you flipping the switch on your Overdrive ability. The sound byte comes from a song from The Death Set called Too Much Fun for Regrets, linked below. (video @0:40 if autoplay is broke)
9. MONSTER HUNTER: WORLD
Ever since the PSP, I’ve been standing on the sideline for all of the Monster Hunter games. “What’s going on over there” I’ve been saying to myself. “These guys look like they’re having a good time with this thing, but it just looks tedious as hell”. With the PS4 release of Monster Hunter, I finally got to dip my toes into the water and the developers did a great job of easing in new players and giving us the same joy that long time fans have had. It’s good mindless fun to just start up a mission with a group of strangers to take down these well designed monsters, and it kept me coming back throughout the year.
Best Feel: Landing On A Monster
A lot of the combat in Monster Hunter feels incredibly satisfying and has a lot of impact when you hit your prey, but there’s nothing as satisfying as when you land on top of the Monster and hold on for dear life as you attack it while you’re on top. Whenever there’s a Monster next to a ledge, I usually feel the need to abandon attacking it and go over to the ledge and “Jump into the pool” trying to land a jump attack. Better yet, it’s great when you end a combo by launching yourself in the air hoping you land in the right hitbox to end by riding the Monster.
Favorite Moment: Fighting Paolumu
Look at this fucking weird thing. Most monster designs tend to resemble dinosaurs/lizards, and then every once in a while you'll stumble into really interesting weird nightmare creatures and Paolumu is my favorite one. It's a flying creature that knows how to defend itself and it's shifty so that makes it a bit more difficult for me to figure out how to attack consistently, but the main feature is that it puffs its neck into a balloon that hilariously gyrates and it uses it to blow some kind of wind attack that could fuck you up by pushing you off a cliff.
8. CELESTE
You can jump. You can dash. Go make a game.
Celeste does a fantastic job of continuing to introduce more and more surrounding gimmicks to interact with the core mechanics to make the gameplay more varied. And then at some point you realize just how many things you can do with just your jump button and dash button. The B-Side levels do a great job of showing you just how deep the game is after you think you’ve previously mastered the controls. And by the end of your experience with the game you actual feel like dabbling with speed runs because the game has taught you everything you need to know to conquer it and it’s just up to your execution. Also this game goes the extra mile of including a subtle story about mental health that’s told in a really effective way, which is a pleasant surprise and a huge accomplishment in a 2D platformer.
Best Feel: Dash -> Jump To Launch Yourself Faster
Not sure if I’m describing it the best way that I could, but when you’re grounded it’s just fun to jump by quickly rolling your thumb across the Dash into the Jump button to launch yourself forward a bit faster than a normal jump would. It proves very useful in the later windy levels and just felt satisfying to pull off.
Favorite Moment: Boss Fight In Reflection
Reflection is probably my favorite level in the game from a story perspective (it's when you kinda hit rock bottom) and from a gameplay perspective (it's where the game introduces the feather mechanic as well as those cool rock dudes). At the end you face the boss and it's just the perfect mix of platforming, dodging attacks, and music in the game. Also it does a clever little thing whether you notice it or not where your air-dodge naturally turns into an offensive attack. Every time you hit the boss the game launches you back a little bit and introduces some on-the-fly platforming that you have to worry about, and the further into the boss fight the more challenging the platforming gets. (video @37:50 if autoplay doesn't work)
7. MARVEL'S SPIDER-MAN
Swingin’ around feels real good. I think it says a lot that there is fast travel in the game, but I never once thought about using it other than the one time it forces you to because I’d rather take the five minutes to glide around New York City. Other than the swinging, the combat is a clone of the Arkham series which is fine to me since I don’t feel like it’s been overused yet. And kudos to all involved in actually having the guts to end this game the way that Insomniac & Co. did.
Best Feel: Swingin'
Swingin' around feels real good.
Favorite Moment: Grand Central Terminal Level
Wah Wah Wah. They got stealth sequences in my Spider-Man game. Wah Wah Wah.
The best level in Spider-Man is a stealth sequence where you're in control of Mary-Jane while she's being held hostage where a bomb is about to blow up Grand Central Terminal. This level combines all of the fun gadgets that you've used so far in the stealth sequences, as well as a fun button to command Spider-Man to take out all of the guards once you've got them by themselves. The animations are a lot of fun and it's just fun to finally be able to go on the offensive in a stealth section in the game. (video @9:20 if autoplay doesn't work)
6. RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2
Why am I chopping wood? Why do I brush my horse every time I come back to camp? WHY MUST I GREET EVERY SINGLE PERSON I WALK ACROSS IN TOWN?
Red Dead’s controls are often very criticized with being sluggish, but to me they are extremely grounded and forces me to not just constantly run around a bunch of set dressing that is an environment in a video game and I genuinely feel like I am playing this character in an old school western. And the story is genuinely fantastic. Characters throughout your camp are really fleshed out and create for a really dynamic group of personalities that you care for (or hate).
The real great stuff in this game is the smaller narratives that unfold in front of you through the side missions or the random encounters you have throughout your travels. They range from the classic rockstar goofiness of gathering up escaped “zoo” animals to telling really sad stories well that flesh out the main character to be a good person that you want to get behind (thinking specifically of the woman in the north east corner of the map who’s husband died when they tried to live out in the country and Arthur teachers her how to hunt/survive).
It’s a huge huge game that has many different faults to it, but the sum of its parts make for another incredible entry into the catalogue of Rockstar games.
Best Feel: Running Through Doors
The opening door animations in the game are very magnetic all round, but the animation on it is realistic and feels good. But every time you run through the door you shoulder plow through it and what really puts it over the top is everyone in the building will react to you and call you out on coming through the door like a damn crazy person. It's hilarious every time and it's always the first thing I show off in the game when playing it around others.
Favorite Moment: Building A House
Most people point to the Lenny mission as the biggest standout mission of the game, and they might be right… but it didn’t quite make me smile ear to ear like the house building montage did. I love that Rockstar built up this dumb montage by including MULTIPLE missions that taught you the mechanics of basic labor just to pay it off with this mission backed by THE GREATEST SONG OF 2018. It’s fantastic.
5. DEAD CELLS
I like fun video games, and Dead Cells is a FUN VIDEO GAME. Everything about the experience of playing it feels so incredibly polished. The combat is so incredibly satisfying no matter what combination of weapons I start off with (ok maybe some weapons are duds but it’s always fun to challenge yourself with non-ideal combinations to see if you can survive until you can find something more suitable). The developers are also able to squeeze a ton of personality out of the game with the silly emote animations of the main character to the plot around him, as well as the low-key best new character of 2018 being the cursed crates. Absolutely one of the best games of 2018 and has now become the go-to game for my Nintendo Switch in the same way that Spelunky was my go-to game for the PSVita.
Best Feel: Rolling Through Doors
I know it's starting to sound like I have some kind of fascination with doors this years, but there’s just something incredibly satisfying visually with breaking a god damn door down so hard that a ton of little pieces explode into the next room. Also they made it a useful gameplay mechanic to do this over just opening the door by stunning any and all enemies that happen to be on the other side of the fatal door. There are also hidden perks with rolling through any and all doors that you see by bypassing you having to spend your souls in between levels by just rolling through the locked door.
Favorite Moment: Every Time He Shrugs
It's hilarious.
4. INTO THE BREACH
Every time the winter olympics come around, I get to witness my favorite weirdo sport: Curling. There’s just something so oddly captivating with fucking over your enemies by moving their shit around in a way that they didn’t attend it to be. The people that made FTL (which is a game that had amazing music, nice sprites, and a really fun gameplay loop) made a Turn-Based Mech Combat Curling game. I am in heaven. I had to hold out from original release until a Switch version was available because I knew that this would be the perfect Switch game and turns out I was right! I have probably played this game the most this year based off of just me having to play something while GB Videos/Sports/TV is going on in the background. The AI is outstanding in this game and every move has a chess-like counter move that the game expects you to perform after every turn.
Best Feel: Pushing Ground Enemies Into The Water
Of course there’s many different ways in which you can out maneuver your enemies and make you feel like the smartest person in the world, but sometimes the simplest way to kill your foe (pushing them into a water tile) is the most satisfying.
Favorite Moment: Losing
Ok, the word "Favorite" might be a weird way to put it... how about "The Most Effective"? The Game Over screen does an amazing job of making you feel so defeated. YOU LET DOWN EVERYONE WHO LIVES IN THIS TIMELINE! And then Space Bugs start spawning on every tile of the play field... it really makes you feel like you fucked up in a way that I super appreciate.
3. GOD OF WAR
God of War was a series that got stale by the end of the second game and desperately needed a breath of fresh air. God of War 2018 takes inspiration from a bunch of different places (I’m thinking Skyrim, Dark Souls, and even a bit of Tekken in the combat system) and still is able to bring it all together in a package that feels like it belongs in the God of War franchise. The story goes off into very interesting and exciting places that surprises you throughout, and the game does a masterful job of transitioning from slow-paced grounded exploration into bombastic set pieces that God of War is known for (the key example here being the first meeting between Kratos and Baldur). The game also smartly integrated things I loved about previous God of Wars into this one, including a world that is basically arena mode from the older GoW games is a really cool addition and the rogue-like mini game was surprisingly very addicting and was a good distraction from the main storyline.
Best Feel: Recalling the Axe
Sure the gameplay is spectacular and I can go on and on about how I felt executing long strings of juggle combos mixed in with the bow to extend the combos felt amazing, but really the most weirdly satisfying part of God of War was recalling the axe. It’s so goofy, but it really makes you feel like some Jedi Knight every single time you do it, and the audio and visuals go a long way into making you feel like the axe is coming back from a long distance away as it clangs throughout the entire level from wherever you left it. They also go the extra mile in building many puzzles around throwing the axe in a specific place and you walk into another area and recall the axe in such a way that to cuts through a puzzle piece.
Favorite Moment: Meeting The World Serpent
There are many moments throughout God of War that are amazing, but nothing quite floored me like any and every interaction with the World Serpent. The size of many characters in the God of War franchise have been quite large, so not exactly breaking new ground there, but the sound design of the World Serpent is out of this world great. Every time you talk to the thing, more of the world also opens up so there's a little bonus for you right there. Get yourself a pair of nice headphones and buckle in!
2. TETRIS EFFECT
The world needed Tetris Effect in 2018. Lumines is one of those games that I always look back on incredibly fondly. But when revisiting Lumines Remastered I realized that the gameplay in Lumines is interesting but incredibly basic. When you figure out the certain number of combinations to form, you can get out of a jam fairly easily and manage to always be in control. The presentation around Lumines from music to Styyyle is what really puts it over the edge. So why not take the timeless gameplay of Tetris and mix it with the Styyyle from Lumines?
Well… that’s what Tetris Effect is, and it’s exactly what you expect it to be. Tetsuya Mizuguchi has been making these types of games for his entire career now and it shows (this game exudes confidence in what it’s doing). Tetris Effect features music in many different genres, most of which is stuff that nobody is going out of their way to listen to, but it’s incredibly worthwhile to experience with or without the VR headset due to the stages that are built around the music. And unfortunately there’s no multiplayer, but the game goes way beyond what I would’ve expected them to in additional features. Now join me in crossing your fingers and hoping they put some Lumines bangers in this game as DLC.
Best Feel: Clearing 300 Lines In Master Mode
Just kidding… but just wanted an excuse to post the Master Mode song in this post because it’s one of the better songs in the game and I never get to hear it because holy fuck how in the fuck do you even survive for over a minute in that mode?
Favorite Moment: Yours Forever
Tetris Effect really opens with the show-stopper. Just an absolutely beautiful pop song that always tends to make me weirdly emotional playing it, plus we’ve got the signature Mizuguchi space whale swimming around in the background.
1. ASTRO BOT: ROBOT RESCUE
When the PSVR was first released, there was a free set of mini games released alongside with it called Playroom VR. A lot of the minigames were novel party games and were designed around having different screens between the person wearing the headset and the other players watching the screen, but there was one demo named Robots Rescue that stood out as a proof of concept for a single player platformer. It was only a single level, but it looked stunning in VR and there was a few gameplay mechanics in it that was really neat and left me wanting to see what a full game would look like.
Astro Bot is that game, and it’s something that is a must own if you are in possession of a PSVR Headset. This game really nails the classic PS1 vibes that Knack tried to pull off years ago, and is very comparable to a modern day Crash Bandicoot game that’s done right (all the way down to the dancing at the end of every level… just imagine that Crash replaced the crotch chops with flossing). Each level often features something new and keeps the game fresh throughout the five worlds, and the level design itself improves level-by-level. Looking out for hidden lizards and robot buddies throughout all of the levels smartly adds an extra bit of exploration throughout a linear game. The 26 different mini games are fun distractions from the main levels if you get burned out on those while going through them, and are surprisingly really varied given the limitations of being a platformer. The boss fights are all simple but visually incredible, with the final two fights as the biggest standouts in the game. All of this is anchored by stunning visuals in VR and a steller soundtrack that is almost Splatoon-like.
Also, the game made me weirdly emotionally attached to this weird little protagonist. Everytime you look at him in the game and he’s facing you he waves at you. Everytime you’re in the main menus he’s right next to you and I couldn’t help fist bumping the little guy with my controller whenever we pulled off some cool shit. This game does a lot that just generally made me a happier person than I was before I started play sessions with it. It’s a landmark game for VR and it’s personally my favorite game of 2018.
Best Feel: The Hover Jump
Usually in 3D platformers you want some sort of visual representation of where you want to land when jump from platform to platform. Most of the time a shadow underneath a character achieves this. It’s a little bit trickier in VR since sometimes the developers want to include platforms that you are looking up at, so their solution in Astro Bot was to make the hover jump shoot out lasers from his feet so you know when he’s safely over the platform. This is extremely useful in telling where he’s at when he’s airborne, also it’s used as an attack on enemies. Smart!
Favorite Moment: The Last Boss
Astro Bot to me was a game that continually gets better and better the further you go in it, and they absolutely stick the landing with the last boss of the game. Going up against a giant alien dude who’s using a stolen PSVR headset and giant Dualshock 4 controller had me grinnin’ from ear to ear throughout the fight, and being able to stick my Dualshock into a bigger Dualshock almost made me lose my shit the first time I realized that was about to happen. From there more gimmicks are introduced including a pseudo-Punch Out! section. (video @16:00 if autoplay doesn't work)
Once again, thank you to the people who support me and this website! You guys continue to have an opportunity to completely reject me yet you still somehow decide to put up with me and for that I'm thankful. Hopefully your 2018 was as good as it could be, and if it wasn't then I'm sure 2019 will be better!
As always, Like Comment and Subscribe to this video below and continue to make me feel important!
Hey folks, Derek here. Also known as “the guy who makes those Best of Giant Bomb videos”. Yeah, I can’t believe they haven’t replaced me yet with somebody else yet either.
Anyways, I’m here to unveil my next video series that I’m doing: Best Match Ever!
The quick elevator pitch is that over the past couple of years we’ve heard the phrase “Best Match Ever” being thrown around constantly to describe several different pro wrestling matches… the problem with this is that the people who are making these kinds of claims are operating on a broken scale of reviewing wrestling matches. We used to have a simple five star scale, and now suddenly people are throwing around six star reviews and seven star reviews. Unacceptable!
So my solution is simple: We rank every single pro wrestling match of all time to determine which match is truly the Best Match Ever. I’m doing these videos with fellow wrestling duders @papercut, @ht101 & @cmblasko.
The first episode is below, an Exploding Barbed Wire Cage Bomb Deathmatch!
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The idea of this video series is to combine ideas from Ranking of Fighter (taking slightly obscure matches and putting them on an arbitrary list) & OSW Review (video series that likes to review old WWF PPVs) and melds those together into something that I think can be enjoyed by wrestling fans and non-fans alike (every time wrestling is the focus on a Giant Bomb video there’s always dozens of posts saying “I hate wrestling but I’m fascinated whenever people speak of it”, so that’s why I believe non-fans will like this show too). I’ve always been a fan of the editing styles of Red Letter Media and similar other channels to so that’s kind of what I’m going for here.
We’ve got 5 episodes that are already done that we’ll be rolling out weekly and hopefully many more following that. Any and all feedback is wonderful to me so please if you’re kind enough to check it out let me know what you think!
If you want to be updated on future episodes, I recommend subscribing to the channel (smash that like button)!
Hey folks. 2017 kinda sucked huh? Games were pretty good though. I'm known for the Best Of stuff, so why not include favorite "moments" along with each entry? That's a fun gimmick, right?
Warning: Spoilers.
10. Resident Evil 7
RE4 was one of my favorite games ever, but it really derailed the entire series from it's roots and desperately needed a game like this to go Resident Evil properly back into the Survivor Horror genre. I really loved that the game subverted my expectations in many different ways, mainly being that I went in expecting a P.T./Amnesia/Outlast clone but what I got was a game that was true to the history of Resident Evil (also was a good reminder that a game can still be scary even if you have weapons to fight back with).
Favorite Moment: There's a lot to choose from, but the Garage fight with Daddy might be the most insane thing I've seen this year. The visual of Daddy clanging back and forth in this claustrophobic garage trying to run you over is something I'll never forget. Also, kudos to the developers for making that boss fight with several different paths to beating it.
9. Statik
Statik is a simple concept with incredible execution. Each puzzle is unique and fun to explore, and the visual feedback that the cubes give you for trying out new things to figure out the puzzle is satisfying. Also, kudos to the developer for actually working with the limitations of PSVR and developing a game that plays into the strengths of PSVR and hides its weaknesses. Everyone should give this game a shot if you've picked up PSVR.
Favorite Moment: Not exactly a moment everyone has, and it's more of just a dumb joke in my head... but Statik lets you interact with the game by assigning the L3 and R3 buttons to smiley/frowny faces on the LCD screen that's on every panel. Occasionally the game will ask you if you're enjoying the puzzle by giving a smiley face or a frowny face. At the end of every puzzle, the doctor injects you with sleeping gas and you pass out. Every time this happened, I vocalized my displeasure of this by hammering on the frowny face button and showing the LCD screen to the doctor in game. I found it hilarious every time because I'm an idiot, but it's just a good example of what levels of interaction VR can add to video games.
8. Cuphead
Boy, this game looks good. But what really shocked me was how much I enjoyed playing it. In the video Giant Bomb made with the makers of the game, they explained how the game really focused on nailing the mechanics first before they chose the art style, and you can really tell. Not only does it emulate great games of old really well (Gunstar Heroes), it also adds in a fairly satisfying parry system and upgradeable weapons to keep the gameplay fresh from beginning to end. Also, this game looks really good.
Favorite Moment: Djimmi The Great is probably my favorite boss fight in the game. The background is unique from the rest of the art style because it was a physical model that was shot frame by frame, which delights the film nerd in me. Djimmi animates great and is a fun character design, the highlight being him in a sarcophagus with an ENTIRE UNIVERSE inside of it throwing ghosts at you.
7. Tekken 7
Probably the most fun I've had with a fighting game since Street Fighter IV, Tekken 7 feels like a true return to form for the series. The new additions they made to the gameplay are incredibly smart and changes the dynamic of late-game Tekken matches for the better. The amount of customization is plentiful and goofy, and rewarded you for the grind of unlocking everything you want. Also, you can dress King up as Kazuchika Okada and do the Rainmaker in the game.
Favorite Moment: Kazuya throws Heihachi into a volcano. It's like poetry, it rhymes.
6. Polybius
This might be the fucking most audacious game I've ever played. First of all, Jeff Minter named a game Polybius, which is a ballsy thing to do in it's on right (more info on the story of Polybius here). Minter somehow is able to make a game that lives up to its name... Polybius is hypnotic in its sheer sense of speed mixed in with abstract power ups along the way. You don't exactly know what the hell is going on most of the time, but the visual and sound design does just enough to hint you the mechanics that are being introduced in each individual level. Going back to the audaciousness, there's straight up sounds and sprites from old Atari-era games that are just straight up stolen and used throughout in this game (which is an aesthetic that I super appreciate). This game in VR is a trip, and I highly recommend anybody who's willing to experience it to check it out.
Favorite Moment: The "Thank You" sound effects from level 10. Every time you shoot one of the bouncy enemies, you hear a "Thank You" in a different pitch. It's hilarious and I think about it a lot.
5. Persona 5
P5 brings a lot of smart changes from the previous game of the series to really improve the quality of life of playing through a 120 hour JRPG game. This game oozes styyyle and has an incredible soundtrack with many songs that stuck with me throughout the year. The story has its hits and misses, but ends with an amazing last chapter that's incredibly relevant to America in 2017. This whole game from top to bottom is flawless and in any other year would've been my favorite, but 2017 is a hell of a year and I'm just not that into JRPGs, so unfortunately it's at number 5 this year.
Favorite Moment: SATAN SHOOTING GOD IN THE FACE AND SAVING CHRISTMAS
4. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Finally, someone put a Breath of fresh air into open world games.
*cough cough*
With many years where the "Ubisoft formula" has become incredibly stale, I feel like I was done with open world games. None of them did anything for me, but this Zelda game has so many great ideas in it that really makes the simple act of exploring a huge land exhilarating. It's also an incredibly well designed game, even though theoretically you have the option to go anywhere, I'm guessing that 90% of the people that played it made kind of a counter clockwise journey around the map from the starting area. That shit isn't an accident. Also it's incredibly impressive just how many systems are in the game and how natural it is to come up with your own solution to any type of scenario.
Favorite Moment: Eventide Island plays off of the last sentence I wrote and strips all of your equipment off of you and forces you to play through an incredibly well designed challenge scenario from the ground up. It never feels like a grind and it pushed you to be a little creative in how you handle different enemies.
3. Destiny 2
I liked the Raid.
Favorite Moment: The ping from shooting the cup out of Calus' hand.
2. Yakuza 0
I fall into the same category of being on the bubble of always buying any of the Yakuza games. "They look so cool" I said, "They look right up my alley" I said. Years after years... excuses after excuses.
Yakuza 0's hype was more of the same... funny gifs on twitter... a chicken that becomes a real estate agent. Funny goofs that were dumb and made me finally want to check out what everyone is raving about.
What followed was my shocking surprise that Yakuza 0 told an amazingly dramatic story that was filled with extremely likable characters. There was twists and turns throughout the way that was expertly executed and kept me hooked. There was incredibly well choreographed fight scenes. The main characters and villains were badass, and the relationship between Tachibana and his sister led to a tragic conclusion that really hit me super hard.
The "Beat-em-up" genre is filled with games that have no right in being 5+ hours long, but the way Yakuza 0 was designed made me want to do a complete playthrough even though I had put over 50 hours into it. Each of the fighting styles are unique and rewarding once you have mastered them, and the game does an excellent job in peppering in different engaging minigames to help break up the gameplay loop of "go here, fight dudes".
I fucking can't wait to play more Yakuza now, which shows how much of a slam dunk this game was.
Favorite Moment: The introduction of Majima is just one of those cutscenes where you want to show every one of your friends that don't play video games to show them what they're missing out on. It's badass, over the top, and hilarious.
1. Super Mario Odyssey
The jump + hat throw + dive onto the hat bounce + additional hat throw + additional dive sounds so incredibly complicated, but after a bit of practice you was able to do it. Mario encourages you to utilize it's masterful controls and explore the levels in unconditional ways. I'm not using that sentence hypothetically, it actively encourages you to do that by hiding stacks of coins in extremely random areas as a way to tip its hat to anybody who dares to be unconventional. There's a sense of love to its players in every minute of playing through Mario that I don't think I've ever gotten in any other video game ever. It's really weird to explain it.
Each of the levels are great, the boss fights are pretty fun, the difficulty is there for those who look for it, Bowser's hair is incredible, the game does a good job of balancing nastalgia with newer elements, the hat throw gimmick is great and the developers do a good job in making specific mini-levels for a lot of the creatures you possess along the way, I got chills when I got to the moon in a way many games don't give me anymore...
I love this game.
Favorite Moment: POKIO MVP
I love this dumb bird. He has a very good, effective attack. The way he's used to climb walls is incredibly fun. The way he sticks his beak into random holes and somehow gets a moon out of it is hilarious to me. The boss fight where you have to Shadow of the Colossus your way up a mech bunny is great. The spin jump mechanic that the game doesn't tell you is a fun discovery and makes a great sound. The side-level where you have to hit bombs at a certain angle is fun, but the secret moon on that level where you have to hit a bomb around the outside half pipe around the level is the best side-level in the game. NINTENDO GIVE ME A POKIO GAME PLEASE.
And to finish this off, just wanna say a quick thank you for the Giant Bomb community for continuing to support me and the website. You guys haven't turned your back on me and called me out on being the hack fraud that I am, so I sincerely appreciate it. Have a great weekend and hopefully 2018 will be a bit better for all of us.
Dead or Alive is Dragon Gate’s yearly event where 6 competitors compete in an elimination cage match where the loser is shaved bald (or loses their mask if they have one) and will not be allowed to grow their hair back for a full year. Throughout the PPV leading up to the match, a series of matches determine who will be the Dead or Alive participants’ delegates who face similar punishment if their assigned wrestler loses the match without freeing them. Before someone can escape the cage and save themselves, they must first score a pinfall or submission to free their delegate. Beyond that, the delegates outside of the cage can do anything they want to ensure their man wins: firing soccer balls out of a pitching machine, pies to the face, rocket punches, anything is legal.
If that all sounded super confusing, welcome to Dragon Gate. And despite that all sounding completely wacky and silly, the back half of this match is actually one of the most emotionally investing stories I’ve seen all year.
This year’s competitors were 6/7 members of VerzerK (Mondai Ryu managed to get out by winning a match) the major heel faction in the company. In the months leading up to this match, tension had been building VerserK’s leader Shingo Takagi and YAMATO. This divide in the faction had split the faction with Naoki Tanizaki and Naruki Doi siding with YAMATO and Shingo being backed by Kotoka and Cyber Kong.
The first half of this match is fun with a mix of DG’s “LuchaResu” blend of Mexican and Japanese styles of wrestling along with the absurd and often hilarious interference from the delegates. However, once it gets down to Kotoka, Doi, Shingo, and YAMATO, the match takes a turn in tone.
At one point, YAMATO has a chance to escape but, seeing his long time tag partner Doi getting beat down by Shingo and Kotoka, decides instead to climb back down and save his best friend. From there, things start to go downhill for him. Through the rest of the match, both Tanizaki and Doi turn on YAMATO, leaving him betrayed, without a faction, and on the verge of losing the match. In an equally shocking turn, members of the roster begin coming out to help YAMATO, including BxB Hulk returning from injury.
The post match promo from YAMATO brings it all together, with him swearing vengeance on his former best friend Doi and the rest of VerseK as well as delivering a tearful apology to the crowd and his three saviors for being the villain he was for the past three years, admitting he was wrong in calling himself the Almighty and that he really didn’t know anything. It’s one of the best and most well earned face turns I’ve seen in years and absolutely makes this one of the best matches of the year.
9. Sami Zayn vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (NXT Takeover: Dallas)
It would be hard to blame anyone for being nervous when the WWE signed Shinsuke Nakamura in January. The WWE’s track record with Japanese stars is poor, to say the least. It alleviated some of those fears to see Nakamura having his debut match against someone like Sami Zayn. It seemed appropriate that Zayn, who during his time at the brand was the face of NXT, would pass the torch to a new face in his final match. If there was any doubt that NXT would be good hands with Zayn gone, those doubts were dissipated by the end of the match. From the moment Nakamura’s music hits, the atmosphere in the arena is off the charts with the crowd absolutely losing their minds for both men before they even lock up. Nakamura’s charisma instantly shows that it will translate perfectly to the WWE style, a special gift that allows Nakamura to eliminate much of the same hurdles that were a death sentence for many Japanese wrestlers in the WWE in the past. Nakamura speaks the language of professional wrestling better than just about anyone in the world, which can easily break down any language barrier. Zayn, to his credit, has no problem looking like he belongs across the ring from one of the very best wrestlers in the world and matches him move for move. Zayn is never better than when he’s wrestling desperate as he does in the final minutes of this match, throwing everything he’s got at Nakamura to no avail. In the end, it’s Nakamura who gets the win and takes the throne at the top of NXT but Zayn had one more classic performance in him before he walked out that door.
8. Kazuchika Okada vs. Tetsuya Naito (NJPW Dominion)
Naito’s win over Okada at the Invasion Attack event was the exclamation point on Naito’s return to New Japan. With the title win over the golden boy of NJPW, Naito’s popularity soared as he become the top guy in a promotion that overlooked him time and time again. Okada was given his rematch at the Dominion event in June. Unlike the match in April, this showdown was not punctuated by constant interference by the rest of Naito’s Los Ingobernables stable mates, but was more personal fight.
The start of the match had Naito send back the rest of Los Ingobernables to the locker as Okada taunted Naito into a one on one battle. From the bell ring, it was a high impact match that saw the two trying to outdo the other with the fight spilling outside of the ring several time.
As the match wore on, the ever growing threat of interference was there, but it never came. Okada was able take advantage of Naito trying to hit a second Destino to reverse the momentum to a win.
Looking back, it’s a miracle that the Crusierweight Classic happened at all. There’s really no good reason why the WWE of old would bring in a bunch of indie wrestlers from around the world, let alone a bunch of indie wrestlers who are under 210 pounds. But 2016 was the year where wrestling stopped making sense so of course, the singles match of the year in WWE was between a slimmed down Cedric Alexander and an un-signed Kota Ibushi. Beyond the obviously great wrestling that takes place, what elevates the match to a cut above the other matches in the CWC is the real life stakes attached to it. Alexander gave up a Ring of Honor contract and dropped about 25 pounds in order to enter the CWC but entry into the tournament didn’t come with the guarantee of a contract after it was over. Alexander had two matches to earn a contract and justify walking away from guaranteed money from ROH. By the end of his match with Ibushi, he had Full Sail chanting “Please Sign Cedric”, a live co-sign from Triple H and soon after the CWC, a roster spot on Raw. Fair to say, he justified the risk. Up against the favorite to win the entire tournament, Alexander had the match of his life and elevated himself from another solid indie wrestler to one of the very best cruiserweights on the planet.
6. Kazuchika Okada vs. Tomohiro Ishii (NJPW G1 Climax Night 13)
Before we begin there is one thing you should know about Tomohiro Ishii, even tho he looks like he doesnt care about anything and might have killed before the truth is he is the biggest bro in Chaos(the faction he and Okada are part of) you see every single time any member of Chaos was ambushed the only one that ever comes out to help is Ishii, when you need a helping hand you can count on him.
Knowing this you already made the an idea of how this match will go, it could be ok but your head is saying we all know who is winning this, that idea last for 48 seconds trust me I counted, then Ishii reminds you that HE DOES NOT FUCK AROUND after a very normal clean break Okada gets a lariat that almost takes his head off, on this night at this very moment Tomohiro Ishii is not fighting his pal and leader from Chaos, he is fighting the current IWGP Champion and has every intention to prove he is a worthy contender, after the initial shock Okada knows this will not be easy, both men go all out trading moves with so much intensity and ferocity you could swear they hated each, hearing the crowd loose their minds adds to this insane match, after what it feels like a damn war Ishii finally takes the victory and when you get Jushin Thunder Liger on his feat claping you know it was a special match, let this be a reminder that if you ever find yourself face to face with the Stone Pitbull he will BITE U.
5. Mount Rushmore vs Matt Sydal, Ricochet, & Will Ospreay (PWG BOLA Night 2)
Many times The Young Bucks have been asked how they would describe their flavor of wrestling and every time the answer is the same: they want to go out there and create a party atmosphere, giving the audience the chance have as much fun as they are having in the ring. This mentality has created a very divisive split amongst wrestling fans with some preferring a more classic realistic style. This progressed to wrestlers like the Bucks, Ricochet, and Ospreay coming under fire recently from veterans of the business saying that they’re ruining wrestling by making it seem “fake”. The main event of BOLA Night 2 was a culmination of all of this and one giant middle finger to wrestling traditionalists.
After first watching the match, the best way I could describe it was as the Mad Max: Fury Road of professional wrestling; it’s got a barely-there story to tie together the magnificent, mind-blowing action. The Young Bucks & Adam Cole as Mount Rushmore have been together since 2013 as the primary heel force in the company and this match was yet another chance to take them down a peg. Beyond that, this match is simply a series of sequences that are almost impossible to believe you’re seeing performed live, and the crowd loves absolutely every second of it.
Besides one noticeable botch early on (that is covered up and hand waved impressively well with some quick thinking), everything in the match is spectacular. These guys (Ospreay, Ricochet, and the Bucks in particular), have absolutely mastered their high energy style and they display their creativity in full force here. I could easily just sit here and name off cool moments from the match but I’d be here for at least a page and a half. From when Ricochet had me feeling like a child believing in superheroes again when he pulled out an insane 1v3 series that looked like it could have come out of The Raid, to the absolutely unreal finishing sequence that had the whole room on their feet screaming, the whole experience was a full on adrenaline rush.
Special shout out to Chuck Taylor and Excalibur on commentary for simultaneously making jokes about the people in the match like MST3K and absolutely losing their minds when the crazy stuff started happening. The levity they brought in the commentary perfectly set up the feeling of watching crazy dumb action movies with your friends.
4. Will Opsreay vs Ricochet (NJPW Battle of the Super Juniors Day 6)
As we move into the fourth best match of the year, I wanted to write about this one specifically for a couple of reasons. The first is that this was one of the first matches that introduced me to New Japan Pro Wrestling. In my life, I have only watched WWE and Lucha Underground(LU), with a little bit of mid 2000s TNA from time to time. Because of this, I was ignorant of wrestling that took place around the world. I knew it existed but I had no way to search it out so I left it alone. This year, I started to watch wrestling with other like minded people here on Giant Bomb and they opened my eyes and my mind to wrestling around the world. This brings us to the match.
To set the stage, let’s talk about the two people involved in this match. Ricochet is a wrestler I was familiar with because he is also Prince Puma in LU. I have loved watching him the past two seasons and feel his is one of the best wrestlers in the world. The other man, Will Ospreay, is someone I had never heard of before this year but I would see a lot of him as the year went on.
They start off reversing and countering each other for a good 4 minutes or so and this builds to the most insane reversal/counter/show off sequence of the year. This is what got people talking about this match and it was amazing enough that I had to search this match out for myself. I can’t really describe how it was, so here is a video of that sequence:
After that sequence, they start trading off moves that are slowing beginning to grow in both impact and look. You realize that they are going to try and oneup each other and continue to go for bigger and bigger moves. The other thing that leads to this being an amazing match is that the crowd chants during the match. Crowds in Japan are normally some of the most polite fans in all of wrestling. When a crowd that is normally quiet with some polite clapping and cheering reacts like this, you know that you are watching a seminal match from that year.
The match comes to an end after Ricochet goes for his 630 Splash but misses. Before this, there are two different times he hits a suplex and then deadlifts Ospreay for another suplex. After the miss, Ospreay then took over and finally beat him. Ospreay also went on to win this tournament so this match was one of his toughest contests on his way to the trophy.
The biggest thing to come out of this match was the controversy of some people, most notably Vader, came out and said this was not a wrestling match. They likened it to more of a gymnastic match and that it had too much “flippy shit” in it. The other thing brought up was that there was no story told during the match. Those people, I believe, are wrong and here is why: these guys played to their strength to help tell the story. They are super athletic and decided to use that in order to tell the story: two men who are super athletic and confident in their abilities to help them win the match. They decided they had to show they were the best and this was by doing crazy move upon crazier move until they either won or messed up. Ricochet messed up first and Ospreay won because of it. This was not the way stories are normally told in wrestling but it was how THIS story had to be told.
After failing to capture the NXT tag titles #DIY and their Do It Yourself #brand were given one last shot (or at least as much as anything in wrestling is) at the Revival’s tag team championships at NXT Takeover: Toronto in a ⅔ falls match.
The first fall of the match ends with Dawson catching Gargano out of a slingshot spear for the Shatter Machine. A display that despite all the underhanded tactics that the Revival uses, that they can also prove that they can be just a better unit than any other team.
The second fall is the struggle of Gargano desperately trying to tag out of the match and the Revival pulling every single trick they have to prevent him. Including one sequence where Dawson cuts between Gargano and Ciampa, Garano fights off both members of the Revival, only to have Wilder scramble underneath the ring to hold Ciampa. And even when Gargano fights off the Revival one more time to finally make the tag, Wilder is able to distract the ref so he doesn’t see it. The entire gorgeous sequence ends with with the Revival, wearing their pink and black ring gear in Canada, delivering a Hart Attack to Gargano for a near fall. One of the better sequences of the year where all the participants, including the ref, just flowed freely from spot to stop to chain together the sequence.
The final fall for the most part is a throwback to the #DIY vs Revival match from NXT Takover: Brooklyn II where Gargano attempts to survive on a damaged leg after kicking the title held up by Dawson. Surviving that and a chop block to his other leg, #DIY was able to get over the hurdle that ended them at NXT Takeover Brooklyn II. And send with Gargano and Ciampa locking submissions on both Revival members as the Revival hold hands trying to come up with anything else to save their titles before ultimately tapping out at the same time.
All three falls of this match told their own small story within the grander tale of this feud. The entire match, but especially the second fall, had an pace and spots that all build on to top of each other. The match propelled #DIY and their #brand to the top of the NXT tag division while also showing that Revival are the true top guys in wrestling.
2. Kazuchika Okada vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (NJPW G1 Climax Night 17)
By this point the G1 tournament has had some of the best matches in the whole year but you might be wondering how is the same match twice on this list, well im glad you asked this match has been descrived as the perfect match not only for the in ring quality but the way it was handle, a lot is riding on this match who ever wins takes A Block and goes on the to finals, its also a very anticipated rematch from WK and finally who ever wins this match will prove if their first match at the start of the year was fluke or not.
Unlike the championship match this has a 30 minute time limit that makes things go faster than usual both men know they dont have much time to waste and they need to use every second, once the match start they each pic a spot to work as much damage as posible to take the victory, Tanahashi recently healed shoulder and Okada´s leg will take a lot of punishment before this is over. For most of this match it feels the match is very even and could end at any point but once we start to get near the end the tide turns in Tanahashi´s favor however Okada is not going down just when you think a second High Fly Flow might end it Okada kicks out and its then that the bell rings signaling the end of the match in the end neither was able to put the other one down making Hirooki Goto the winner of A Block.
In any other circustance this ending could have been a disapointment but the story of how both men gave their all and how a single 30 minute match is not enough for this 2 feels earned and thats how this match became the only other 5 star rated match to feature the same wrestlers on the same year a testament on how important in ring storytelling can be and how its our number 2 match of 2016.
1. Kenny Omega vs. Tetsuya Naito (G1 Climax Night 18)
At the beginning of 2016, the big news of AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura leaving NJPW for WWE came out of nowhere. All of the sudden, there was two spots vacant in the top four promoted wrestlers in the company (often referred to as the “Aces” of New Japan). Tetsuya Naito was going to be the first guy who was picked to fill a spot, already coming off of an extremely successful 2015(We gave him the “Most Improved” award last year). It seemed pretty easy to use that momentum and turn him into one of the permanent fixtures of the main event scene by the end of Spring this year.
The second person was going to be Kenny Omega (who turned out to be our favorite Wrestler of the Year). Omega solidified himself later in the year as a current day Ace of the company by winning the G1 Climax in a finals match against Hiroki Goto (which ended up being our #15 match of the year). Before Kenny Omega gets Goto, he has to defeat Tetsuya Naito in the semi-finals.
The crowd is immediately on fire for this fresh matchup. It’s somewhat obvious that whoever is going to win this match is most likely also going to win the finals as well over Hiroki Goto and the crowd knows it. The early parts of the match has Naito attacking Omega’s knee. There are glimpses of Omega comebacks, but Naito continuously cuts him off with a knee strike and contains Omega for the opening 15 minutes. And then Omega finds a way to hit a desperation combination of moves together to turn the momentum: a powerbomb through the announcers table followed by an incredible springboard flip from the ring to outside the guard rails.
After this moment, the lid really comes off and both guys just go back and forth. It’s really incredible to watch two wrestlers look so natural in the ring. One of the key things to note is that the night before Tanahashi and Okada went to a 30 minute draw which eliminated both of them, so the possibility of a draw was really present in the match and added another layer of excitement. The match did end at 28 minutes with Kenny Omega coming away as the victor. This was the first out of hopefully many that we’ll see out of Omega and Naito, and it paved the way for the first ever matchup of Kenny Omega and the current top Ace of the company, Kazuchika Okada.
Let’s get this out of the way first. This year’s NJPW’s G1 Climax event was simply outstanding, and quite possibly the best G1 Climax ever. Like the Battle of the Super Juniors, it is an event that has wrestlers compete in one of two pools in round robin competition. The winner of the pools compete in a final match, with the winner of the match earning the right to face the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at the biggest show of the year for NJPW, Wrestle Kingdom.
You will see many mentions of it throughout the entire Brass Ring Award writings, and for good reason, but one of the highlight matches was much more than simply a fight for points.
Hiroshi Tanahashi has been the face of NJPW for well over a decade. He was elevated to top star of the company at a time when New Japan was struggling, and helped raise the promotion to the second largest promotion in the world behind WWE. He is the record seven-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion, and has defended the title more and held the title for most days than any wrestler in history. For an entire generation of fans he is the walking embodiment of Japanese professional wrestling.
Naomichi Marufuji’s rise was something different. Originally a part of All Japan Pro Wrestling, Marufuji joined the exodus from the company when the legendary Mitsuharu Misawa created Pro Wrestling Noah. Marufuji would become one of Noah’s premier Jr. Heavyweight aces and would become the only man to win the Jr Heavyweight title in the three premier Japanese promotions; Noah, New Japan, and All Japan.
Every submission looked like a limb was being torn off. Tanahashi spent the first half of the match trying to hurt Marufuji’s dangerous knees and legs. Midway through the match, the two went on a two minute chop spree that drew blood on Tanahashi’s chest. Marufuji damn near took Tanahashi’s head of with a series of kicks and knees. It was two men who started in the business at the same time not giving an inch to the other. Tanahashi was able to finally put down his opponent after hitting his finisher, the top rope dive known as High Fly Flow, twice to get the pinfall.
Day 13 was the moment that this year’s G1 Climax went from being really good, to becoming an all time great tournament. It was one of the best days of professional wrestling in 2016, with another match that will be talked about later in this list.
19. American Alpha vs. The Revival (NXT Takeover: Dallas)
Tag Team wrestling has evolved over the past decade to usually be much more chaotic and fast paced than it used to be many years ago, but there’s been a revelation this year in NXT: The old stuff still works. A lot of American Alpha and The Revival’s success should be credited to them watching tapes of the top 70’s and 80’s tag teams and being able to resurface a lot of sequences from years ago.
This match was the opener for NXT: Takeover Dallas and it was in front of a very pumped WrestleMania weekend crowd. Jason Jordan and Chad Gable came into the match as the hottest team in WWE, but the match was a real coming out party for The Revival (at this point in time the crowd was still chanting “Which one’s Dawson/Which one’s Dash?”). Throughout the match the heel team tried to use every single dirty tactic in the book to try and maintain advantage of the technically better babyface team. The Revival’s attack is methodical and fun to watch. There’s a giant fuck up in the middle of the match when The Revival try to do a double team move and completely miss, this could potentially ruin most matches but the way Scott Dawson brushed it off and played to the crowd would make you think that he’s been wrestling in front of arenas for decades.
Chad Gable finally gives Jason Jordan a hot tag and Jason Jordan just knows how to connect to big crowds off of hot tags. He just runs in and finds limbs to get a hold of and tosses guys around like they’re nothing. It’s a really cool spectacle every time you see it. There’s an inspired moment of selling where Dash Wilder is holding Scott Dawson’s feet on the ropes with a towel and when Jason Jordan kicks out the towel goes flying into the floor seats. The match ends with American Alpha winning their first NXT Tag Team Championship, and the post match promo that Jason Jordan gives being thankful for where he’s at now in the company after years of struggling within NXT makes him(and Chad Gable) stand out as a team that has an unbelievable amount of potential in WWE for years to come.
Gargano and Ciampa are the best of friends and this match is a test of that friendship. Ciampa wants to win this match and shows how far he is willing to go throughout the match. Gargano wants to see if he can survive what his friend is going to do and pull a win out.
Tommaso has the upper hand for most of the match but he shows his care for Gargano when he holds up from finishing him off and Gargano surprises him with a giant superkick right to the face. We see the conflict on Tommaso’s face before deciding not to truly hurt his friend and you really feel the emotional connection between them. The main thing from Gargano in this match is that he takes a hell of a beating but wins after a minute long sequence of reversals and counters.
This is how a match like this should be done. Brothers battled it out and in the end, their love for each other was still intact. However, when the bond between them breaks, it will be that much more emotional and heartbreaking for us. I never want them to break up but I know they will. When it does happen, I know that I will be an emotional mess and will hate whoever turns on the other. The only thing I will be able to look forward to will be their reunion, which will make the break-up hard but not unbearable. That is what makes a good match become one of the best matches of the year.
17. AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura (NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 10)
It’s rare that you get two of the best in a chosen field to meet each other and work together in their prime, especially in sports, but that’s exactly what we got in Shinsuke Nakamura vs. AJ Styles: two of the best wrestlers in the world working their craft on one of the biggest stages pro wrestling has to offer. This match was my introduction to both of these men, and considering how much praise was heaped on them before the match even started, you would think there was no way their first match together could live up to the lofty expectations established for it.
Somehow it did. This was the last major match that both guys would have in New Japan and they certainly went out on a high note. It was a bit of a slow start with both men feeling each other out, but from the bell we could tell that they were evenly matched. This feeling continued throughout the entire match. It was basically twenty minutes of momentum swings and it was incredibly exciting. The smoothness and ease with which Nakamura and Styles moved was incredible. Every spot lead perfectly into the next. It’s one the most organic pro wrestling match I’ve ever seen.
There were tons of memorable spots in here too. My favorite is when Styles pretended to shoot Nakamura and Nakamura just grabbed the bullet out of the air, ate it, and spat it out. It was such a great little moment of character. There was also a sick back breaker early in the match, Styles turned an armbar into a Styles Clash, and of course some fantastic knees from Nakamura. Styles did an excellent job of selling his back. Prior to the match it had been reported that Styles had some pretty serious back problems that had left him out of action for a few months. The blending of reality and fiction is one of my favorite parts of pro wrestling and both performers perfectly mixed the two.
When the list of wrestlers was announced for the Cruiserweight Classic, both Kota Ibushi and Brian Kendrick stuck out for different reasons. Kota Ibushi is without a doubt one of the best high fliers we have seen in the past decade, he’s deceptively strong and all of his striking moves look devastating. He’s the prototype wrestler in an ideal Cruiserweight division in 2016 and was one of the early favorites announced for the tournament. And then for Brian Kendrick, he was a name that was relevant within WWE for a couple of notable stints, but nothing more. Brian Kendrick was thought of as just an older name in the tournament whose only purpose was to lose to a younger guy in the early rounds and continue work as a trainer within WWE’s developmental system.
And his character also reflected this. He came into the tournament just grateful that he’s getting one last shot to make a name for himself in the WWE. He doesn’t even feel like he belongs there to begin with, but he wins a couple of matches in the tournament and he gains a lot of self confidence, but his next opponent is the favorite to win it all Kota Ibushi. Kendrick knows that he stands no chance against Ibushi in a regular match, so he’s only going for desperation wins early through trying to win by countout against Ibushi. Kota Ibushi dominates most of the match early on.
The tides turn when Kendrick is able to execute a neckbreaker across the turnbuckle steel and damage Kota Ibushi’s surgically repaired neck. This makes the match much more evenly fought and from here we go a little bit insane with the moves. First, Kota Ibushi does his rarely seen deadlift german suplex from the second rope. After that Brian Kendrick gives Kota Ibushi a Burning Hammer. Mind you, this is in a room with a few hundred people in it, not the Tokyo Dome. The overall match is a joy to watch and tells an excellent underdog story.
15. Hiroki Goto vs. Kenny Omega (NJPW G1 Climax Finals)
Kenny Omega was my favorite wrestler this year and this match was a big part of that. It’s not a perfect match, but the storytelling and the ending make it one of the more spectacular and memorable matches of the year. The match has a great intensity and energy to it and a lot of that is thanks to a crowd that is extremely invested in what’s happening in front of them. Every near fall takes on much greater significance with the crowding losing their minds.
That of course is a testament to how good Omega and Goto are. The match has your standard chain wrestling start but it soon begins to tell its own story. Goto worked Kenny’s knee at the start of the match, a call back to how it had been heavily damaged by Naito the night before. Omega did his own reference to the previous night when he teased power bombing Goto into the crowd like he did to Naito the night before. Instead he slams him onto the apron (the hardest part of the ring). There was also a lovely little moment where Omega kissed the G1 statue in the middle of the match and then moonsaults onto Goto. It perfectly demonstrates his brashness and lack of respect.
After the beginning though the match slows down for a bit and becomes a fairly standard wrestling match. Things really picked up near the end though, when Omega broke out of a sleeper hold by falling off the top rope. It doesn’t sound that crazy, but the brutal simplicity of it was pretty remarkable. From then on the match is hot fire. Omega uses everything finishing move he can think of to put Goto away, Kota Ibushi’s Last Ride power bomb, Prince Devitt’s Bloody Sunday, AJ Styles’ Styles Clash, some very Shinsuke Nakamura looking knees, and even Goto’s own signature moves. Goto refused to give up and it took Omega’s finisher to keep him down for good.
The image of the first ever foreigner winning the G1 with the crowd going wild is exciting no matter how many times you look at it. It’s certainly one of the most significant and historic matches of the year, but that doesn’t give enough credit to the amazing show that both Goto and Omega put on.
The WWE raid of New Japan talent was one of the biggest news stories in wrestling in 2016. Seemingly overnight, NJPW lost Shinsuke Nakamura, AJ Styles, Karl Anderson, and Doc Gallows.
Nakamura’s departure was the most difficult. He was the IWGP Intercontinental champion, a title that has become synonymous with the King of Strong Style, and there was no major show on the schedule before his departure at the end of January. It was decided that he would vacate the title at his last show with the company, leading Kenny Omega to come out to verbally assault the departing Nakamura and wanting the title, officially leaving the Jr Heavyweight division and entering the main card. Kenny was stopped by Hiroshi Tanahashi, and the two would be booked to compete for the vacant title at the next big show, The New Beginning in Niigata.
Even though he was nursing an injured shoulder, Tanahashi would go on to fight Omega in Niigata, only to lose to Omega. Tanahashi would demand a rematch, only for Kenny to decline, saying he would only to fight Tanahashi “American style” in a ladder match. Tanahashi would agree, but due to his injured shoulder, had to step away from the match to recover.
This opened the door for Michael Elgin to take his place. A friend of Tanahashi ever since Elgin first showed up in New Japan, he would take Tanahashi’s place in the ladder match.
Gimmick matches are few and far in-between in New Japan. The last ladder match was in 2007, coincidentally also featuring Tanahashi, and the concept of gimmick matches usually go against New Japan’s approach of wrestling as a sport. Unlike most ladder matches, Omega and Elgin spent a considerable part of the match competing without resorting to ladders for moves. It built anticipation for the ladders, and added a real sense of escalation when ladders and other objects were in play.
The match contained the usual interference that you expect from a Bullet Club match, but it just helped to add to Elgin’s struggle. He was just a replacement in this match, and was never expected to defeat a fire hot Omega. When he was handcuffed to the rope by the rest of Bullet Club, it was a foregone conclusion that the match was over.
But Big Mike is not going to let a pair of handcuffs stop him. Tearing free from the ropes, he lifted the ladder with Kenny at the top, knocking him out of the ring and on top of the rest of Bullet Club, and climbed the ladder and claimed the title for himself. Elgin became only the second American to win the IWGP Intercontinental title, the first since MVP was the inaugural champion.
This was one of the most unlikely outcomes to a match in 2016. It was one of those matches that I tell to myself “I know what the outcome will be, but I just hope it’s a good match to watch.” It is a feeling that seems to permeate WWE’s almost by-the-numbers booking that the result is long written in stone. New Japan is not WWE, and they prove it time and time again by truly shocking the audience.
Last year we talked about how the idea of pasing the torch has always been there for wrestling such a simple idea yet it carries so much at the same time, by this point Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada had have some of the best matches in the world 6 of those have been for the IWGP beltwith making this match a little more special, its even more amazing that this same match has been the main event of 3 of the last 4 Wrestlekingdoms but one thing never seemed to change no matter what Tanahashi was always number #1, he won the last 2 matches on WK7,WK9 and when it came time to decide the "real" main event on WK8 the fans decided that Tanahashi vs Nakamura was more important than Okada vs a pre Tranquilo Naito. Seemed no matter what Okada was always going to be nothing more than a shadow but then 2015 happen Okada did what Tanahashi could not he beat AJ for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, the same man who took everything from him was defeted in many ways The Rainmaker was reborne, of course Tanahashi didnt like this idea he was now done so he goes and wins the G1 Climax for a second time to get another chance at glory.
Pride vs Revenge, Ace vs Rainmaker, Old Guard vs New Guard the stage was set and what follows is a match that will talked about for a long time. At the start of the match you see that Okada is taking things at his own pace stoping Tanahashi ofensive and keeping things cool but that doesnt last for long Tana begins a vicious comeback delivering some really nasty looking dragon screws and an insane high fly flow to the outside cause he is a crazy man, just when it looks like history will repeat itself Okada fights back with everything his got he will not go down not this time and at moments it does feel like it could end at any point, in one of my favorite moments of the year after taking a suplex Tanahashi slaps Okada to escape the Rainmaker but Okada holds on to Tanahashi´s hand he is not letting it go no matter what this is his time, 3 Rainmakers later Kazuchika Okada can finally say he is NJPW #1 Star, Krazy to think this 2 could an even better match right?
12. Ladder War 6 (The Addiction vs The Young Bucks vs Motor City Machine Guns ) (ROH All Star Extravaganza 8)
The Ladder War is the pinnacle of Ring of Honor gimmick matches. A normal ladder match in design, it has been the decider in some of the all-time great feuds in the history of the company. The Briscoes, Kevin Owens, and Sami Zayn are just some of the wrestlers that have competed in this exceptionally rare match.
The three teams that competed in this year’s Ladder Wars fought for more than the ROH Tag Team Championship. These are three teams that have been together for years, and their careers have criss-crossed all around the globe.
Nick and Matt Jackson, The Young Bucks, are considered one of the best tag teams in the world. Their list of accolades can be compared with some of the all-time greats in the industry, but they continue to push themselves to put on the best show possible. While they tend to wrestle a style that is part-comedy, and part-Attitude Era throwback, the Bucks enter a different level when the stakes are high. They lobbied hard for Ladder Wars 6 to be a reality, because they know
The Motor City Machine Guns got back together in Ring of Honor in early 2016. Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley have been a team for the better part of a decade, but took a break when Shelley went to Japan and teamed with KUSHIDA. The long anticipated reunion came when Sabin turned on Christopher Daniels, helping Shelley beat him in a singles match. THey have been feuding with The Addiction since, falling short of winning the belts several times.
The match itself is one of the greatest gimmick matches of all time. It is difficult to put into words just how much the six men placed their bodies on the line to get tossed from incredible heights, got slammed with all manners of objects, and escalated the violence as the match went on. The finishing move was one of the most brutal looking spots seen in a wrestling ring in the US as the three teams added a bullet point to their already impressive resumes.
11. Tomohiro Ishii vs. Katsuyori Shibata (NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 10)
If you have seen a Tomohiro Ishii vs. Katsuyori Shibata match before, then you knew exactly what this match was going to be. It was going to be Ishii and Shibata kicking/chopping/elbowing/punching/headbutting the hell out of each other. The only difference to note was that this time it was going to be in the Tokyo Dome instead of being in the middle of the G1 Climax.
And that’s the match we got. There is no lock up or early match “feeling out” process. Both of these guys are immediately trying the hurt each other and are continually going back and forth daring each other to hit them harder. It’s like watching two wild animals fight to the death. You can only do this type of match once or so a year or else it would be considered barbaric.
The ending sequence of the match involves both men putting all of their momentum into headbutts towards each other, resulting in a sickening thud every time they do it. In 2016 where unprotected chair shots to the head are pretty much banned everywhere and now wrestling is starting to take concussions much more seriously today than in years past, these headbutts are extremely brutal looking, and somewhat out of place. You'll either love or hate this match due to the headbutts, but either way you have to respect both wrestlers for putting their bodies through the hell they went through in front of the Tokyo Dome.
To properly understand who 2016 Kenny Omega is, you first need to understand who 2011 Kenny Omega was. Always a fan favorite among internet wrestling fans for his anime and video games references (he used a Mega Man techno remix as his entrance msuic in DDT), Omega was always “our guy” among wrestling dorks online. In 2016, Kenny Omega was still our guy but he became their guy too. The most incredible part of Omega’s meteoric rise through New Japan Pro Wrestling in just a years’ time is that he never had to change who he was. Omega was still the same goofy video game and anime obsessed nerd that he was when he was having matches against nine year old girls five years ago. The truth is the difference between 2016 Kenny Omega and 2011 Kenny Omega is negligible at best. His playground just got his bigger.
After WWE poached Shinsuke Nakamura, AJ Styles, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson from NJPW following Wrestle Kingdom 10, the company looked as if it was in dire straits. Two of their biggest superstars were gone along with the three core members of their most popular group, Bullet Club. It would be easy to argue that NJPW turned to Omega out of pure desperation but regardless of the reason, this outlier of a junior heavyweight was suddenly thrust into the role as leader of the Bullet Club. In just over a month’s time, Omega had graduated into the heavyweight division and defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi to become NJPW Intercontinental Championship. This was noteworthy in and of itself for a guy who was in the same company that regularly has a blow-up doll as one of their champions but Omega ascent didn’t stop there. In August, Omega entered NJPW’s annual G1 Climax tournament for the first time. A near month long marathon of a tournament, winning the G1 Climax is the highest accomplishment in NJPW outside of becoming IWGP Heavyweight champion. Omega won the tournament, having the best match of his career against Tetsuya Naito in the semi-finals along the way, becoming the first non-Japanese winner in G1 Climax history. In less than a weeks’ time, Omega will move up another rung on the ladder to wrestling immortality and main event NJPW’s biggest show of the year, Wrestle Kingdom 11 against IWGP World Heavyweight champion, Kazuchika Okada. Win or lose, Omega will have done it his way with Terminator stomps, Hadoukens and anime villain promos. Perhaps the most satisfying feeling for any wrestling fan is seeing someone you believe in, someone you know is great but isn’t getting the rightful recognition that you know they deserve finally get their due. No one in wrestling gave their fans that feeling of satisfaction more in 2016 than Kenny Omega.
Runners Up: AJ Styles, Tomohiro Ishii, Kazuchika Okada, Ricochet/Prince Puma
Wrestler of the Year (Female) - Asuka (NXT)
Previous Winners: 2015 - Sasha Banks | 2014 - Charlotte
The NXT women's roster was gutted in 2016. While the division lost Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch in 2015, NXT still had a considerable roster that was centered around long-time fan favorite Bayley and enough depth to continue to entertain in 2016.
The roster started to thin when Dana Brooke was called up to the main roster in May, and the WWE announced their brand split in July; making it a point that there would be several NXT call-ups to help fill out the Raw and SmackDown roster. During the draft, Alexa Bliss, Nia Jax, and Carmella were drafted, and in October, Bayley was promoted to Raw.
As the roster thinned the past year, and the next generation of NXT women’s talent was still getting used to the new exposure, there has been one constant in 2016 that helped keep the division afloat.
Enter Asuka.
Spending the first part of 2016 outside of the title picture, Asuka has impressed crowds with her charismatic personality and a Strong Style wrestling technique that is rarely seen in the US. Watching Asuka, and you get a sense that she is having fun when she competes. When she strikes her opponent, or tries to tear their arm off, there is a wide smile on her face.
At NXT Takeover Dallas, Asuka defeated Bayley for the NXT Women’s Championship; winning via TKO when Bayley passed out from the Asuka Lock submission. She would then go on to successfully defend the title against Nia Jax, a rematch with Bayley, and against former WWE Divas champion Mickie James. As the year progressed, Asuka became a dominating force in the division, and more importantly, knows that she is the best and carries herself as much. She has become cocky in her style, going so far as to not respect her opponent after the match.
It is a stark difference compared to what we have seen in WWE’s main roster this year. Raw has been in a long holding pattern with Flair and Banks dominating the exposure, and SmackDown trying to do their best with a roster that is less talented. The Women’s Revolution of 2015 has become a token angle.
Asuka’s presence elevates NXT Women’s division. She has become a “final boss” for the promotion, and acts like it.
The story of Chuck Taylor and Trent? is one that had been brewing for over a year by the time this match was announced. In PWG they teamed as The Best Friends for a couple years to a fair amount of success, even going so far as winning DDT4 (PWG’s tag tournament) in 2014. However, in 2015, Trent had gotten the opportunity to work in NJPW as Rocky Romero’s partner in Roppongi Vice, leaving Chuckie T without his best friend and less work opportunities.
Over the months, the banter between the two continued on Twitter with Chuck saying that Trent ruined his life. PWG, being home for all the weird inside jokes and meta humor in the American independent wrestling scene, set up a match between the former Best Friends at their Thirteenth anniversary show, aptly titled THIRTEEN.
At first, it seemed like the match would be just a light fun comedy match between the two, given the matches they generally have in PWG. They started with some standard chain wrestling and countered each other’s anti-climactic springboard attacks, even hugging each other like they used to.
Then it all took a hard left and Trent? whipped a chair at Chuck’s face.
The ref allows the match to continue once Trent screams “BEST FRIENDS DON’T NEED RULES” in his face and from there, it becomes a full on hardcore match with chairs, a ladder, and even thumbtacks being pulled out. It’s an almost comedic (if it wasn’t so brutal) level of escalation. Of course, despite beating the shit out of one another for 15 minutes, they still manage to hug it out after the pinfall, showing that Best Friends are forever and not even chairs to the face can stop that.
In storyline, Sexy Star was kidnapped by the super creepy Marty “The Moth” and was tortured by his sister Mariposa at the end of Season 1 of Lucha Underground. During some point of Season 2 Sexy Star escapes but is haunted whenever she’s in the presence of Marty and/or Mariposa. This builds up for a while and Dario realizes what happened to Sexy Star and motivates her to take her revenge on Mariposa. And thus, we get the first ever “No Mas” match!
Take a look at Mariposa, she’s dressed like a female version of Mankind. One of Mankind’s most famous matches is the vicious “I Quit” match against The Rock at WWF Royal Rumble 1999 where he took 11 unprotected steel chair shots to the head. So going into this match you have some sort of an idea that there is going to be a certain amount of brutality between the two during the match.
The match starts out simple enough, and I feel like it’s important to say this: Sexy Star isn’t a great wrestler. In most matches she needs to be put with someone who is great enough of a wrestler that they are able to carry her through a watchable match. However, in this match type you can get away with complete smoke and mirrors and have a match filled out of the ring brawling and weapons. There’s an incredibly creative spot fairly early in the match where Sexy Star wedges a steel chair in between Mariposa’s legs and then hammers another chair in there so hard that Shelly Martinez could feel it. From there they brawl all around the temple and even up to the rafters at some point. Sexy Star is busted open up here and starts dripping blood on the fans below.
Once they get down from the rafters, the brawl continues around the arena and Sexy Star has an amazing babyface comeback towards the end of the match. Mariposa puts Sexy Star in a submission hold, and the ref asks if Sexy Star is ready to say “No Mas”. Sexy Star replies by screaming “FUCK YOU!” followed by one of the most insane crowd reactions you’ll see in 2016. Within the past ten minutes, Sexy Star goes from being a mediocre wrestler at best to being a crowd favorite in the company by the end of the match. After this match she carried the momentum and was able to be the first female Lucha Underground Champion in the company by the end of the year. It’s a match that is never going to be viewed as a technical masterpiece by anybody, but it was extremely effective in catapulting a new wrestler in the main event position within the company.
23. Kyle O'Reilly vs. KUSHIDA (NJPW Battle of Super Juniors Day 1)
The Best of the Super Juniors is New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) annual showcase of their Jr Heavyweight division. Similar to other New Japan events, the competitors are put into one of two pools where they compete in a round robin. The top score in each pool faces off in a final match, with the winner gets a shot at the IWGP Jr Heavyweight Championship. Day one of the event was highlighted by a rematch from the 2015 Brass Ring Award seventh best match of the year; Kyle O’Reilly vs KUSHIDA.
Since winning the title last year KUSHIDA has gone on to become one of the biggest stars in NJPW and face of its Jr Heavyweight division. He spent his 2016 defending the title in feuds with Kenny Omega, Bushi, ACH, and Jushin Thunder Liger.
Kyle continued to tag with Bobby Fish and competed in NJPW’s Jr Tag division as reDRagon; competing against The Young Bucks and Roppongi Vice.
This year’s BOSJ match was almost a copy from last year’s exhibition, with the exception being that KUSHIDA spent the majority of the match on the offensive, attacking O’Reilly’s arm throughout to weaken it for his Kimura Lock finish. This was a high octane match where even the holds and submission attempts took a huge physical toll on the two.
The highlight of the match, and one of the best moments of the year, came when KUSHIDA, sitting dazed on a chair outside of the ring, catches a diving O’Reilly and applies an armlock.
Kyle would end up coming out on top and get a measure of revenge for his loss in last year’s finals. While neither of these two would win the tournament, they put one of the best matches of the entire event.
Wrestling is an inherently silly thing that can sometimes take itself too seriously. Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and remember that Pro Wrestling is an entire art form and not a singular genre. While it can be used to tell strong, emotional stories such as Zayn/Owens over the years or Sasha/Bayley in NXT, it can also be a vehicle for absolutely bizarre comedy and fan interaction.
Such is the case in PWG’s now annual Battle of Los Angeles 10 man tag match; a match that fully embraces how fun and dumb wrestling can be. As soon as the bell rings, Chuck Taylor makes a call back to the previous years’ matches by yelling at Ciampa “If you stick your thumb in my ass I swear I’ll kill you!” which is far from the most absurd thing shouted in the match but all the same sets the stage for the match that’s about to happen.
Early on it’s pretty standard fare for a match of this size, with everyone pairing 2 at a time to show off their stuff. A particularly great moment comes when Jeff Cobb and Matt Riddle tag in and receive the biggest pop for basic amateur wrestling ever. Eventually, it cycles back around to Chuck and Ciampa and when Chuck gets set up for the aforementioned “Thumb in the Rear” Jushin Thunder Liger intervenes.
And then things get weird......
It’s worth mentioning that in addition to Jushin Liger, one of the greatest high flyers of all time and certified legend of wrestling, the prestige of many of the other participants is staggering, especially when viewing the match just a couple months after the fact. You’ve got: A man who competed in the 2004 Olympics, a former UFC fighter, one half of the current NXT Tag champs, 2 standout performers of the CWC (one who would go on to win the Cruiserweight Title about a month after this match), and the PROGRESS Champion who is being heavily featured for WWE’s upcoming UK Championship tournament.
It also can’t be overlooked how much the rowdy crowd adds to the atmosphere of the match. Everyone in the room plays along with all of the absurd hijinks without anybody taking away from the wrestlers, from reacting and chanting in slow motion with all of the action in the ring to joining in an R Kelly sing along. Simply put, this match is the best comedic match of the year and just an absolute joy to watch.
There’s few rivalries in the modern day wrestling that feel as special as Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens. Every time these two have shared a ring for the past seven years has felt like an important moment. And their most high profile meeting yet came at WWE Battleground this year. In what was billed as an at least partial finale of the rivalry, Zayn believed that he need to exorcise Kevin Owens from his life in order to properly move on with his career. With the WWE Draft looming, Battleground felt like his final chance to finally put Owens in his rear view for good. Of course, this is the WWE so they never actually followed up on that and both guys ended up being drafted to the same show. But WWE’s inability to tell a coherent story aside, Owens and Zayn are still masterful storytellers in their own right. The Battleground match joins their Fight Without Ladder, multiple ladder wars and NXT championship meetings as classic matches in the pantheon of one of the greatest wrestling rivalries in the modern era. You have to believe it’s only a matter of time before they add another classic to their ever growing list.
There’s currently a certain generational and cultural divide among modern wrestling fans. The usually older generation of wrestling fans longs for the days where a DDT meant something and when a finisher actually finished a match. On the other hand, there’s a more hedonistic wrestling fan who believes that if it feels good, you should do it. If you can do a springboard 630 splash to the outside of the ring, why not do it? Pleasing both sides of the fence has proven to be a near impossible task but one of the very few to pull that off in 2016 was The Revival. With their “No Flips, Just Fists” slogan, Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson played the role of the curmudgeon old guard against the flip happy indie invasion of NXT. With no notable independent wrestling career to speak of for either men, the Revival started in a pretty big hole in the context of modern NXT where anyone with any indie experience is instantly more over than just about any performance center acolyte. But they slowly but surely gained the respect of the fans and kept having great matches until they were impossible to ignore and the “which one is Dash again?” jokes weren’t all that funny anymore. With old school heel tactics that would make even Jim Crockett take notice, the Revival ruled the NXT tag division in 2016 and even more impressively, did it while pleasing just about everyone. The older fans loved the old school smash mouth style while the newer fans had a true villain to root against that wanted to stomp a mudhole in all their favorite indie darlings but still could keep with anyone in the ring.
Runners Up: The Young Bucks, DIY, Johnny Mundo/Jack Evans/PJ Black/Taya, The Hardy Estate
Worst Match of the Year - Shelly Martinez vs. Rebel
Previous Winners: 2015 - WWE Royal Rumble | 2014 - Naomi vs. Carmella
After the last two years, there was definitely a feeling that giving out an award for “Worst Match of the Year” was silly and maybe the category should be cut. Last year’s winner was the Royal Rumble, which was a fine match but was terribly laid out. The year before we gave it to Cameron vs. Naomi, which was a terrible match (it was the one that featured Naomi trying to pin Cameron with Cameron facing the wrong way), but it was far from a “MINUS FIVE STARS” match you would want to give an award to. The problem with a “Worst Match of the Year” award is that most wrestlers on TV are at least competent at worst, or if they aren’t people know how to protect themselves and wrestle a safe boring match.
However, this year gave us Shelly Martinez vs. Rebel: A train wreck. Shelly Martinez comes out dressed in Day of the Dead makeup (in March) and an outfit that looked like a chunk of my shower curtain. The match itself started out just fine. There’s a solid arm drag, a section of the match featured some submission wrestling that looked like a standard match, no complaints. And then Rebel puts Shelly Martinez in a stretch that pulled her legs apart from each other. This causes Shelly to scream “MY VAG!”. This was the exact moment that the match took a turn. The TNA crowd of 50 people for this match was stunned silent at this moment, and you could hear one person in the crowd reply back with “Wait, what did you say?”.
The match concludes with Shelly setting up a suicide dive to the outside of the ring onto Rebel. The spot clearly is supposed to be that Rebel was supposed to hit Shelly in the middle of this dive and interrupt the move, but Rebel just… forgot I guess? This made Shelly pause her momentum of 2 miles per hour running to the outside and just stop on the ropes. Rebel then proceeds to just get this nightmare over with by rolling Shelly up in the ring and pinning her. The most amazing part of this match was that it was pre taped and nobody decided to just cut it from airing.
Runners Up: Chris Jericho vs. Dean Ambrose (Extreme Rules), Knockout Gauntlet Match, Shane McMahon vs. The Undertaker (WrestleMania), Roman Reigns vs. Triple H (WrestleMania)
Ask wrestling fans and a lot will tell you that wrestling has never been better. New Japan is still on top, Lucha Underground is still going strong, and of course even the WWE has a ton of great talent. However, my favorite wrestling material of the year came from the perennial laughingstock known as TNA. The saga of the House of Hardy has easily been the best stuff in wrestling for me, and it is all spearheaded by Broken Matt Hardy.
The Final Deletion, Delete or Decay, Delete or Treat, The Great War, Total Nonstop Deletion. Matt Hardy has been the mind behind some of the best stuff TNA has put out in years if not ever, and easily the best stuff of the year. His wrestling ability…still isn’t great. But his new character combined with the amazing segments he wrote did the unthinkable. They made TNA worth watching. At the beginning of the year, if you told me that not only was Matt Hardy the best part of TNA, but TNA in general actually had decent material? I would have laughed you out of the building (Don’t get me wrong, the rest of TNA is still terrible!). Matt Hardy went from completely irrelevant to one of the best performers of 2016. If you watch a wrestling show and hear DELETE! DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!, this is why.
Runners Up: The Miz, SANADA, The Revival, Cedric Alexander
News of the Year - Daniel Bryan Retirement
Previous Winners: 2015 - Hulk Hogan's racist rant being leaked
One year ago this February one of this thread’s favorite wrestlers was forced into retirement. Daniel Bryan, after dealing with injuries to the neck and concussion-like symptoms announced his retirement on the February 8th episode of Raw. As a huge Daniel Bryan fan I was hoping for the swerve, that this was all one big lie, imagine Bryan in the salmon-colored suit, ala Mark Henry. But alas it was not to come and Bryan was forced to step away from in-ring competition, in what was to me one of the best wrestling retirement speeches ever. I know for others their favorite is Ric Flair or Edge, but Bryan got me back into wrestling in a way I never had before.
Daniel Bryan was my favorite wrestler and I’ll admit he wasn’t the greatest promo, but I feel like he is one of the best at making you feel something when he can speak his own words. His retirement speech is great evidence to this. Throughout the whole 15+ minutes, you can tell how much retiring hurts him and how much he truly loves to put on a great performance in the ring. The problem is that drive may have contributed to his early retirement and that just makes it all sting the more. It is knowing all this that makes you tear up when you watch his retirement speech. You know you don’t want it, he doesn’t want it, the WWE probably doesn’t want it, but you know it’s for the best. Bryan didn’t wrestle the safest style but it was crazy entertaining, and maybe that’s why he became so beloved wherever he went, putting it all out there and leaving the crowd entertained. Hell, I thought his match with Kane after his WrestleMania 30 win was great in so many different ways, even though I recognize most thought it was crap.
The retirement of Daniel Bryan receives News of the Year for reasons beyond Bryan being one of the “Greatest of All Times” (my opinion there for sure), but also for the impact he made on the business as well as what his retirement marked. If it weren’t for Daniel Bryan and CM Punk I don’t think we would see so many guys in NXT and on the main roster who came up from the Indies. Do we really think AJ Styles would be main eventing WWE PPVs if it weren’t for guys like Daniel Bryan changing minds in the WWE front office? Guys like Samoa Joe, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, etc would probably be in TNA or the indies if it weren’t for Bryan and Punk changing opinions on the smaller wrestler.
Bryan’s retirement feels like an end of an era. Today guys like Punk and Bryan aren’t wrestling anymore and Cena is now a part-timer, although you could argue a lot of this change over happened much earlier, Bryan’s retirement really feels like the time things drastically changed. In many ways this new era is off to a better start than the last, I mean who would have known that Smackdown would be one of the best shows they put out? However, it is really bitter sweet that Daniel Bryan isn’t wrestling in it, but at least we get him being the best ever on Talking Smack, so that’s something at least.
Gallery
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Oh and he's going to be a father too! Imagine Daniel Bryan being your dad.
PS: Bryan is still the most over guy in the whole main roster, that either speaks to how good he was, how bad WWE is at making new stars, or a combination of the two.
Runners Up: The Slow and Painful Death of TNA, NJPW Talent Going to WWE, Brand Split, and Paige and Del Rio Drama
Credit goes to @papercut for the Brass Ring design
Brief Introduction:
If you are reading this, congratulations. You have made it to the other side of 2016 still alive. Much like video games this year, Pro Wrestling has had an incredible year despite the rest of the world sucking. Our humble little thread has gathered and is collectively going to shine a light on the best things about Pro Wrestling this year... from dumb awards to the Top 25 best matches of 2016 to check out. Please feel free to comment in the thread and start discussions with us, we won't bite.
With that being said... let's start!
Wrestling Thread Moment of the Year™ - Matt Hardy Fucking Up Jeff Hardy’s Yard
Previous Winners: 2015 - Shoot Dragon | 2014 - The Hemme Hole
The Wrestling Thread Moment of the Year just might be the most prestigious award that this little thread offers every year. In the first year we documented the night where EVERYTHING CHANGED when Christy Hemme escaped a steel cage through the cut out hole on the side of the cage for cameras to use (thus effectively calling it the “Hemme Hole” from then on). Last year it was given to the moment where Lucha Underground turned from “Solid showcase of today’s lucha talent” into a show where morphing into an actual dragon was possible.
This year, it features the masterpiece that was “The Final Deletion”. TNA is a company with no money left. It’s hard for them to shoot TV when they have to rent out a building, bring in and pay a bunch of wrestlers, pay their TV staff, and put on a show in front of zero paying customers. So instead of doing that, they sent some cameras up to Matt & Jeff Hardy’s house and hoped for the best.
The segment begins with Maxel Hardy’s first birthday. Matt Hardy has one gift to give to Son, and that is to restore honor to the Hardy name by “Deleting” Jeff Hardy. We then cut to an overhead shot of Jeff Hardy’s house (which is next door to Matt Hardy’s house, mind you). Jeff Hardy is just finishing working on his yard. You can tell that Jeff Hardy treats his yard like it is a work of art, cutting out designs similar to all of his imagery on his merchandise and tattoos. You can tell that Jeff Hardy must spend hours working on this yard every week. It must mean a lot to him that this yard is cut with this much attention to detail. Jeff Hardy decides after a long hard day of work, he goes inside and takes a load off by playing his acoustic guitar. Today is a great day for Jeff Hardy.
Matt Hardy then sends a small army of drone robots to Jeff Hardy’s house. The main drone sends a message to Jeff Hardy challenging him to a fight on the property line that night. Jeff immediately tries to take the drones down by swinging his guitar at them, but one gets away. Jeff Hardy tries to chase down this annoying drone on his motorbike. But it was all a trap… a ruse… a diversion!
While Jeff Hardy is away from the house chasing down the drone, Matt Hardy drives up to Jeff Hardy’s house on his own lawnmower with very evil intent in mind. Matt Hardy proceeds to drive straight through the middle of Jeff Hardy’s lawn, ruining everything that Jeff Hardy had put work into for the day. The sense of satisfaction on Matt’s face as his diabolical plan works out is flat out hilarious.
And thus, this set up a fight to the death between the two Hardy brothers which featured a lot more dumb shit. This skit was extremely successful (very briefly) for TNA, and really revitalized Matt & Jeff Hardy for the rest of the year. We live in a backwards world now where the hottest fued in ROH is The Hardy Brothers vs. The Young Bucks and at every WWE show during a bad segment the audience is chanting “DELETE” like we live in the Roman Empire or something (no pun intended).
In February 2014, the WWE announced the creation of the WWE Network. Through this ambitious streaming service, the WWE had goals to provide an incredible amount of content to the wrestling fan of the 2000’s; consumers that are “cutting the cord” in favor of on-demand content services like Netflix. While the biggest selling point of the Network was access to WWE’s monthly PPV’s for only $9.99, there was also promise in original programming that would only appear on the Network.
The Cruiserweight Classic is the result of that promise of Network exclusive content.
Announced in June, the Cruiserweight Classic (CWC) would feature 32 of some of the best talent in the world that weighed at/under 205 lbs.The initial announcement from WWE contained a who’s who of not just some of the best cruiserweights in the world, but some of the pound for pound best performers in the industry today. Stars from independent promotions including Kota Ibushi, Rick Swann, Zack Sabre Jr and Akira Tozawa joined current and former WWE superstars like Johnny Gargano, Tommaso Ciampa, Tajiri, and Brian Kendrick.
The 32 man, single elimination tournament, played out over the course of four months with a weekly show that aired on the WWE Network on Wednesday. Unlike most of WWE’s live programming, this was simply a competition of the best in the world applying their trade without the baggage of a story written in a writers room. Personalities were allowed to shine as wrestlers like Jack Gallagher and Cedric Alexander became household names, and international stars were given their first, big, North American exposure.
Complementing the weekly show was a two man announce team with Mauro Ranallo doing play-by-play, Daniel Bryan providing color commentary, and Corey Graves in front of a green screen. Mauro and Bryan did an outstanding job giving the event a voice and drove home the importance of the event.
The event was considered a huge success. The cruiserweights were slotted into Monday Night Raw on the main roster, given their Network exclusive show, and the Cruiserweight title has been defended at every Raw brand PPV since its introduction. The WWE is also looking into having a similar tournament for women sometime in 2017.
Runners up - Talking Smack (WWE Network), Lucha Underground (El Rey Network), CMLL Super Friday (CMLL YouTube), NXT (WWE Network)
PWG is an American based independent promotion based in Reseda California. This promotion is very much a fan friendly promotion. The shows take place in a super small American Legion Hall that is hot, stinky and very cramped. You would think that the fans would be surly, shitty and some of the worst in the country. That is not the case. Whenever you talk with someone who has gone to a PWG show, they talk about how nice the fans are, what a great experience is and how you are a part of a wrestling family.
Night 2 of the 2015 BOLA was one of the honorable mentions last year and this year, Night 2 came through and blew all of us away. The tournament matches were all solid to great. Some of the stand out matches were the opener between Dalton Castle and Tommaso Ciampa which was a comedy match at times but it also was an excellent way to warm up the crowd with Ciampa pulling out random WWE finishers to get some heat. While science says the best tournament match of the night was Cedric Alexander/Mark Haskins, I loved Kyle O’Reilly/Matt Riddle more. That match had an amazing slow burn that showed how much O’Reilly hates feet and hands and how Riddle is going to be a humongous star in the future. Both guys went all out and brought the crowd into the match with them.
The reason this show was the best of the year though was because of the two tag team matches that night. The first tag match was between Pentagon Jr/Fenix and Chris Hero/Tommy End. Everyone in the match was at their best and it showed throughout the match. The biggest and most insane spot was when Fenix jumped onto his brothers shoulders and then backflipped off of them onto Hero and End outside of the ring. The main event of the night was the best match of the night as well. We saw Ricochet, Will Ospreay and Matt Sydal take on Adam Cole and The Young Bucks. This match is what a young child would say their ideal wrestling match would be. It’s people flying around, doing insane moves and making the crowd and announcers freak out. There are so many moments that make this match amazing but here is the best one. The biggest and coolest move was when the Young Bucks went for a Meltzer Driver but Ospreay countered it into one of the best cutters I have ever seen then Sydal and Ricochet hit a no big deal Shooting Star Press Meltzer Driver.
For a show to be the best of the year, you need to have matches that you care about, matches that pull you in when you don’t think they’ll be good and matches that blow you away with how great they are. Battle of Los Angeles Night 2 had all of those things and more. Buy this Blu Ray from PWG’s website and see why it’s the best of the year.
Runner Ups: G1 Climax Night 17, NXT Takeover: Dallas, ROH Final Battle, Wrestle Kingdom 1
Breakout / Rookie Of The Year - Jeff Cobb / Matanza Cueto
The first season of Lucha Underground featured a year long build of Dario Cueto’s brother, Matanza Cueto. Matanza was a monster who was locked in a cage, and whenever Dario needed to murder any of his wrestlers he would feed them to his Brother. It was (like a lot of Lucha Underground) extremely whacky, but it did help make you imagine what this guy could possibly look like and wonder how he would fit in to the rest of the show. Was he over seven feet tall? If he was as big as you would imagine, how would it be entertaining watching him fight with luchadores who were known for their acrobatics?
In the 20 man Aztec Warfare match, Matanza Cueto made his debut as the surprise entrant at #21. The man himself is only 5’9”, but he is built like a tank and was able to show off his complete moveset which featured many different types of suplexes and was able to throw around the smaller Luchadores as if they weighed nothing. Matanza won the Lucha Underground Championship on the night of his debut and he continued to hold the title for the remainder of the second season. It was an incredibly effective debut for a new wrestler that made for a great first impression.
It only took a few months after the initial exposure of Matanza before we started to see more of Jeff Cobb. Cobb represented Guam in the 2004 Olympics in amateur wrestling, so him mixing his amateur wrestling abilities and using his size is always extremely fun to watch. By the end of 2016 Jeff Cobb is being featured frequently on popular independent promotions PWG, Evolve, and RPW along with being signed to a contract for Lucha Underground. After his first year it’s easy to see that he is going to be a big name in wrestling for years to come.
(MPP7 UPDATE: New graphs and tables below, and new updated sections for each of our players. I added in stats to dice rolls throughout the game for MPP7. Enjoy?)
Hello everyone, and welcome to my insanity.
We are currently falling head first into the remaining four Mario Party Parties in the next couple of months while Dan is still on the west coast, so I thought it would be fitting to compile ALL of the data of the past couple of years and assemble The Mario Party Party Tracker.
The main function of the tracker to me personally is a way to show who's winning the overall game of Mario Party Party(MPP). As we all know Dan is ahead of his competition in terms of wins in Mario Party, having 3 wins out of the 6 games that have been played so far. The ultimate problem with the Giant Bomb series would be if Dan managed to get two more wins before Mario Party 10 and make it mathematically impossible for anyone else to catch up. If that happened, the all-important narrative of the series would dissolve into nothing.
The solution of this would be to track the overall game a little bit differently. With the MPP Tracker, the overall positions are tracked by the percentages of stars and coins owned by each competitor. For example, at the end of the first Mario Party, Dan owns 7 stars (and 16 coins) out of the possible 13 stars (and 70 coins) that was on the board by the end of the game, so his percentage number of owned stars/coins ended up being 53% of the board. These stats are carried over from game to game.
I wanted to factor in coins to the overall percentage owned on the board, so I started at one star being equivalent to 30 coins. However, I wanted the standings of every Mario Party to be congruent with my Tracker. So I had to adjust the value of the coins on the tracker until I got my desired results. If you look at MPP 4, you can see that each of the competitors had an absurd amount of coins, making the value of the coins go down (616 coins on the board at the end). So the best value for the coins I could get without any of the results being wonky would be 160 coins to one star.
Quick note: if you want to make it simpler for yourself, you can just focus on the total number of stars owned. And if we manage to end in a tie, then you can factor in the rest.
With all of that out of the way, let's see where our current standings are in regards to the MPP Tracker:
Current Standings
Player
Position
% Owned
Behind
Stars
Coins
Mini-Game Award
Coin Award
Happening Award
Mario Party Wins
Dan Ryckert
1
39.18%
Leader
52
649
5
2
3
4
Jeff Gerstmann
2
24.87%
-14.31%
32
573
1
3
2
0
Drew Scanlon
3
22.14%
-17.04%
30
269
1
1
2
2
Brad Shoemaker
4
13.80%
-25.38%
18
280
0
1
2
1
Dan Ryckert
With Mario Party Party 7, Dan continues to prove his point: Mario Party is a game of skill. Dan increases his lead in the overall meta game, and currently has twenty more stars than anyone else. At this rate, Dan can probably tank if he wanted to and still come away with the highest amount of stars & coins.
In MPP7, Dan made great use of the Boo orb that steals his opponent's stars, trapping other players 5 times. He also came away with the most mini-game victories with 9 solo wins, and was on the winning side of a game 25 times total (Dan gained coins from mini games over 50% of the time).
Dan's late game in MPP7 was down right inspirational. On turn 41, Dan used a flutter orb to gain a star and rolled a dice to gain another star in one turn. Two turns later he had another two star turn via his Boo steal orb. Two turns after that, he had a three star turn because of two more boo steal orbs that were laid out on the board.
2. Jeff Gerstmann
Jeff has still not won a game of Mario Party, however he is clearly the most consistently good player of Mario Party whether he wants to admit it or not.
After trailing Drew by a very small margin, Jeff has finally moved forward into second place in the overall meta game of Mario Party Party. Outside of Dan, Jeff also gained a lot by using his Boo steal orbs, stealing three stars throughout the game.
3. Drew Scanlon
Drew... had a pretty rough game. The only reason he came out ahead of Brad was because of a star awarded to him in the "Bullshit Finale" 51st turn for him using the most orbs out of everyone else. However, it should be noted that even though Drew didn't have a good outing, there are some good things to say about his performance. Most notably the VICIOUS use of the Pirhanna Orb, which trapped his opponents a whopping six times in MPP7. He was also a lot better at the Gondola ride than Dan was.
Brad Shoemaker
Brad finished in last again, making this his fourth time. However, he did have the second most wins in mini-games. Unfortunately, Brad didn't make good use of his orbs. In fact, he made zero use of his orbs, since no other players fell on any of his traps.
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If you want to take a look at the stats for yourself and missed the link at the top, here it is again:
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