Milkman

@retris: not a regular Dragon Gate watcher like I used to be but this match for sure kicked ass.

The reason the Last of Us was great was because of Joel and Ellie. The fact that so much of this game isn't about them at all was a huge mark against it. I didn't care about Abby, I didn't care about the Wolves vs. the Scars, I didn't care about Owen or Lev or any of these other people. I get what the game was trying to tell me. Everyone's got a story, everyone's got a reason for what they do and without understanding each other, the cycle keeps repeating and kills us all. That's a fine message but it doesn't make me more interested in their story. I would have been fine with an hour or two as Abby, learning about her past and her dad. But half the damn game felt like a MGS 2 level bait and switch.

There's a scene at the very end with Joel and Ellie where Ellie tells him that she doesn't think she'll ever forgive him for taking her out of the hospital. It's an extremely effective scene and exactly the dynamic I wanted if Naughty Dog was insisting on making a Last of Us sequel. Instead we're forced to spend all this time with these facsimile characters that I could not have been less interested in.

I didn't hate the game or anything and I do think there are some great moments and set pieces but as someone who counts the original Last of Us among my favorite games of all-time, my feelings when the credits rolled were mostly just me wondering why this game even needed to be made. I wish the game just picked up right after the original and followed Ellie and Joel in Jackson. I know criticizing a game for what it isn't isn't really fair but that's how I felt.

I'm almost 7 hours in and I have no clue what people are talking about with characters acting differently or inconsistently than they did in the first game. My only real criticism of the game so far is that they really do lay it on kind of thick with wanting the player to feel bad about what they're doing. Whenever you're fighting human enemies, they make a point to have the other enemies yell out things like "oh my god, they killed Brian!" and shit like that. It's clearly trying to nudge the player and say "that person had a name and friends and a family and you killed him, don't you feel bad? huh? huh?"

I've been rolling my eyes at that stuff and if it keeps going down that path, I can see myself souring on it a bit but other than that, I, so far, don't really have too many complaints. The character moments seem just as good as the first game, the game is absolutely gorgeous, the character's facial expressions in particular are pretty incredible. I know fun is apparently a dirty word with this game but I do actually find the combat a lot fun and it's been a good mix of stealth and gunplay. I've had scenarios where I've snuck past enemies and avoided fighting all together, scenarios where I stealth killed everyone without them being alerted and scenarios where I went loud and just shot the shit out of everyone. All of them have been pretty satisfying ways to play. Game seems good to me.

All I took away from this is that I wouldn't want to ever be in the same room as any of those people.

Pretty amazing to go to Metacritic and see the game at a 96 and then look at my Twitter feed and see pretty much nothing about negativity about it.

NJPW is back on June 15 with nine shows all streamed live with no audience between then and July 3. The New Japan Cup will happen on these shows featuring heavyweight and junior heavyweight wrestlers. The finals with be at Osaka-jo Hall on July 11 with fans at 30% capacity and the winner will face Naito for the IWGP and IC titles the next night also in Osaka.

The New Japan Cup first round matches are:

Yota Tsuji vs. Togi Makabe

El Desperado vs. Tomohiro Ishii

Jado vs. Toru Yano

Tomoaki Honma vs. Hiromu Takahashi

Gedo vs. Kazuchika Okada

Minoru Suzuki vs. Yuji Nagata

Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Yuya Uemura

Gabriel Kidd vs. Taiji Ishimori

Taichi vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Kota Ibushi

SANADA vs. Ryusuke Taguchi

Shingo Takagi vs. SHO

Hiroysohi Tenzan vs. YOSHI-HASHI

BUSHI vs. YOH

EVIL vs. Satoshi Kojima

Yujiro Takahashi vs. Hirooki Goto

@rorie: just want you to know that any criticism I've expressed really does come from a place of love. I know most of these decisions probably come from people who don't even work at GB and I'm sorry that you especially have had to deal with the backlash from all this. All of this obviously isn't in your or anyone else at Giant Bomb's job description and it shouldn't have to be but I feel like I do need to be honest about this stuff.

I feel bad saying this and I know Giant Bomb's heart is in the right place but between this and that stupid tone deaf 8 minutes and 46 seconds post yesterday, they are getting some bad advice.

"In order to show our support against injustice in this country, for a day, we will do nothing." How is this at all useful? Do another charity stream if you don't feel comfortable doing the usual programming but this is just performative nonsense.

Not sure I'll ever find the right words for this one. As a wrestling fan, you've kind of got to be conditioned to handle all kinds of tragedies but this young, this talented and under these circumstances? It's gonna take a long time to process something like this.