devise22

Heyyo everyone, me and my cohorts/colleagues over at Pajodcast Media will be doing this for our second straight year and are looking forward to it. A little more prepped for the energy drain one of these can be and a little more focus on what we'll be playing this year.

We'll be playing through all of The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, getting through a bunch of TLOU(which somehow I've never beaten despite loving Naughty Dog) as well as playing a Best of 7 NHL 20 series, among a few other random things to eat the time slot such as AC Odyssey, Overcooked and Hitman 2.

We'll be playing from 11 AM ET Saturday November 2nd to 11 AM ET on Sunday November 3rd. Come donate or check us out if you have the time. Let's have another great year everyone looks like a nice big team. FOR THE KIDS!

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Wow, it's almost like WWE shouldn't do shows in Saudi or something? Honestly this is going to HURT SD hard. First week back from that low rating on FS1 last week and now they won't even be able to advertise half the roster and will have to run a show with a skeleton crew of talent. This will only continue hurt morale.

Honestly, Vince feels like he's imploding. Not WWE. Just Vince. I'm not saying it doesn't have an affect on their product, but ever since AEW got around to launching WWE booking and stories about Vince's thoughts and such have been getting weirder and more curious. Dude just needs to focus on booking a good wrestling show and stop with the controversial shit already.

Yeah I dug this Dynamite this week although I admit it wasn't it's strongest. That said I actually had zero issues with the comedy stuff. Probably because it's over, and it's weird and I love Chuck Taylor and Orange Cassidy and Trent can go? Honestly both "comedy" matches were squashes by and large in AEW standards and the crowd still loved it. The Mox and Adam Page promo's were both standouts to me. I get that some aren't as sold on Page and I really am not some fan, but I think AEW has handled his booking smartly and well and I see him hovering upper midcard like this for a while while he works on becoming a big deal.

Moxley stole the promo work tonight though, his promo was stellar. I really love them leaning into the idea that he doesn't care about wins/losses and was hoping they'd do something like that once they put so much focus on that stuff creatively early.

Weakest part of the show for me was the main event. It wasn't an awful match by any means, but a couple of bad timed botches pretty much helped turn it into an underwhelming finish. Which is unfortunate because I think in order for SCU to really pull off that upset win the way they were intending, that finish and some of the spots that lead to it should of been a bit more clean to really sell what was happening. As it was it seemed super chaotic into a roll up and the crowd kind of barely knew it happened. The trend of the rollup being a top tier finisher continues, which I like because it sells that move more during matches. But it just came at such a chaotic time on the wrong side of the wrong from where they worked the table bump, was all a little rushed.

While I enjoyed the Limo and contract segments and the weird Brandi hype video, perhaps a little less time on some of that stuff to give Lucha/SCU another 5 minutes would of benefited here.

@drakoji: Yeah I think your putting a bit much emphasis on the idea that the only way they would do it is if Cody wins. I feel like this is just to set a precedent and there is a good chance the match in question doesn't even reach a time limit draw. I think on top of their obvious MMA crush continuing to influence things, this also just lets their fans know that no important title matches going forward should end in draws. I have a feeling if and when they decide to invoke the judges in determining a match it will be with good booking sense. Thus far it has appeared they've leveraged several easily misused booking concepts to their advantage, so I'll reserve judgement here.

Hell if anything in the future I could see this being used for heels they want to book strong. Have them do a bit more offense by a hair in the match, have it go to a draw and then have the judges split on giving it to the heel. Face still looks strong and heel skirts away with a win without it always being by interference or other usual cheating style tricks.

@drakoji: If he just becomes this John Cena esque parody just wearing and promoting overly too much new merch I think crowd would eat that up for sure.

Was another solid AEW show this week I felt. It's going to take some time for AEW to fully embrace/explain the dynamic aspect of some of their tag matches though. Especially with Lucha Bro's nature of more of a AAA/Libre style. Honestly I wouldn't even be against them having more proper tornado tag matches. That said I have felt the story telling of the tag matches has been there and for the most part they make a story of out of who is legal, or allow the chaos/confusion to lead to situations where the right man isn't in and someone can't go for a cover etc.

The Jericho/Cody stuff was peak, both Cody's promo and him still looking like a huge star and Inner Circles antics. Them doing the bit where their tough Bellator guy wasn't around so they were cowards was great and the crowd ate all that up. Jericho's scarf line was hilarious too.

@dizzyhippos Yeah I was watching Bellator and Jake sadly had a no contest due to (fittingly I might add) some accidental knee's to groin. As a long time MMA fan this shit happens to even real fighters and Jake has looked legit/clean and been fine in his other two Bellator match ups. I'd still say he has a long future with Bellator. That said the Inner Circle stuff cage side was cringe in all the best ways. My fighting friends who were watching with me where calling it so cringe but I had to remind them that, like yeah that's the point. They are intentionally being cringey as shit eating heels lol. AEW will still be able to get something out of it both with them being their repping the shirts and even the no-contest finish. They'll be able to milk the "heel aspects" of that on camera more when everyone knows the show is fake.

@sombre That Rock/Austin match does still rank among some of my all time greats, especially as a WWE match. It wasn't just the pre-fight hype although it was peak, it was also the match itself. It told an excellent story, played into existing story dynamics, used the gimmick of the match very well. It was so layered, and in my opinion is exactly the reason WWE struggles to get stars over today. They spend no time with them, they barely let them do the things they are good at or try to find a way to present that in ways that make sense or sell to the audience. Great match though.

In terms of my own favorites of all time, that's a tough question. It's likely not WWE and while I've seen some very very good NJPW throughout the years i'd probably have to lean mid ROH there was a hell of a match in England between Nigel and Bryan Danielson that literally took me out of existence for it's duration. Part of it is me, so a lot of the peak top matches you see even in Japan these days gets so hyped. Even when they are great, even at 5 stars, sometimes it can lack the personal connection when you discover a match/moment/crowd at the right time.

Joe/Kobashi from 2004 in ROH perfect example for me, or KENTA/Low Ki in 2005. I'd also say the Eddie/Rey Match from Havoc mentioned above is high in that list too. An underrated match/fued from that WCW era was Savage vs DDP, they had a falls count anywhere match one PPV that stole the show can't recall now.

@turboman: Yeah I totally agree. Honestly I think them keeping Tazz around could just be for the possibility of them eventually expanding to having a second show every week. It would be very useful to double shift excalibur and put him with Tazz for the ride of a B show.

But yeah I absolutely think the three man team of Excalibur, Tony and JR is the best commentary team going right now in the industry. They help tell stories, acclimate the casual audience with the more unknown/indy names and their styles. Plus Tony is such a huge part not just to that crew but you can see it on the production, it's what gives AEW so much of that weird retro WCW esque vibes.

@humanity: Is it always about the stakes/challenge though?

One of the things that has been brought up constantly in this thread, is that sense of journey/exploration one gets when looking for bon fires/checkpoint spots, and the risk/reward management of the playthrough up until they find a boss. Yet the threads OP and much of the argument has revolved around the actual "challenge" of these checkpoints once you've discovered the boss location.

Doesn't that completely dismiss the actual reason for these bonfires/non linear checkpoints? It's not about challenge. Sure you can boss run and dodge the enemies or grind after you've died. But it's about that initial moment of risk/reward and discovery. That's it. The fact that you can boss run to it after the fact it's just for convenience for the crowd that wants something more linear/less abstract. But the actual initial point is to allow them to leverage far more interesting worldbuilding and overall game design. When you play a standard, linear, story game. Your worry of death is only to stall progress. If you die, you get auto checkpointed to the most convenient location. As such games of that nature are all about forward progression, so anything interrupting that forward progression comes across as exceptionally jarring.

Games, like the Souls for example, ditch the concept of perpetual forward progression in the traditional sense to allow the players to progress as they play at whatever pace they feel. Getting stuck in early areas of those games, and not knowing what is coming next lends to sense of discovery and pacing of the game. I can't just go the direction the game is telling me to go and head to a checkpoint. The game is telling me to go in lots of directions, giving me tons of options and so what I found a bonfire, it doesn't signal a boss or anything else nearby. Only a brief respite and a moment to start in a new place, with new stuff to discover.

Like your not entirely wrong, once you've discovered what is what and where to go those bonfires are nothing more than time consumers as you try to get in another boss run. But I think Sekiro with it's respawn mechanics show they are trying to give that some thought. I think ultimately though what your complaining about is a consequence of their more open ended world design. If a checkpoint always comes before something important or at the most convenient time, it's so easy as the player to look up and go "oh look it auto saved, must be a boss coming up." That's lame, it's lazy, and it's 2008 game design imo. We are way past that. I think that type of stuff works for very narrative based games that are trying to imitate that movie like pacing, say an Uncharted. But for open world games, I want to get lost and confused. If i'm just doing the same motions I've done in a million other games, interacting with the same systems and getting the same signals/cues, it loses a bunch of it's luster imo.

While there was some hiccups that left some of the show feeling rough, on the whole I thought AEW Week 3 was super entertaining. Love letter to tag team wrestling, tons of different stories told throughout the night. All the stories evolved, still lots of presence on making the newer names appear like and seem like bigger stars. So many of the matches also felt like they went just about as long as they should of based on the stories being told, give or take too.

The early over emphasis on tag wrestling though is just, it's awesome. It's also awesome that the crowd/fanbase seems super into it because it gets lots of faces on the screen and lots of opportunity for talent to get themselves acquainted with the audience and over.

@wollywoo: I think the Jesse flashbacks are actually pretty pivotal to the early tension of the movie to be honest. I think he serves a great purpose, because for much of BB we never really got to see to the degree Jesse was tormented, not just by being in captivity and the asshole Uncles being more typical torture like. There was also playing that with the juxtaposition of Todd, and how that really worked on Jesse's pysche with how creepy/normal Todd would behave. I feel it also did well to give momentum to the present day actions of Jesse, as it was hard to tell if due to all those events how unhinged he would be. For me it helped create the illusion that the movie could end in multiple different ways.