forameus

Absolutely. It's just the effusiveness of some praise that goes too far. What you said could be applied to Oliver Burke, who people were absolutely tugging the heid off it over when he moved to Germany. And Gauld (to a lesser extent) before him. Any player with potential could come good, but I'd far rather just sit back and let him show it rather than piling undue pressure on to him, or just proclaiming that he's pure shite.

The only thing more cringey than people hyping up young players to be Pele (not that anyone's been particularly effusive about McTominay...yet), is people that are absolutely desperate to take an opposite view. Well, maybe apart from the "but he's no pyoor Scottish" brigade.

Didn't they used to have guys at the Spanish announce table who would really overact when anyone came near them or smashed their table? Always seemed a bit more comedy back then. The last time I remember them having those huge square monitors was at WM30 when Orton decided to have a wee rest on one after the RKO/Batista Bomb combo. Looked fucking agony. A genuine/comedy question - why is there always the OMGGGGGG moment when a guy around 7 foot enters the Rumble when they never, ever win? And has one of the wrestlers considered to be a giant ever won a Rumble? Only one I can think of was Big Show winning the Andre the Giant one, but never a proper RUmble.

Dae they need pashun too? Proper fitbaw men?

Wee Blutes posting on a thread about one of them, that he clearly hates? Colour me surprised. We should be calling up the best players that are available to us under FIFA eligibility rules. If it pisses off the xenophobic, even better.

Can you actually imagine what an Attitude Era style product would look like in the current day? It worked back then, but it would be absolutely tragic now. It reminds me of the people who want to be allowed to bring flares and pyro into the football saying it would "add atmosphere". If you think you need to set fire to something to add atmosphere, then you're beyond help, and similarly if you think that adding some chebs and questionable humour into the current product would somehow make things instantly better, then you're similarly beyond help. Besides, look at NXT - consistently brilliant matches and storylines with no need for pushing the envelope in that way. The only thing I'd support changing is their stance on blood, and have them more inclined to use it when it's relevant and will have the impact (and only then, mind, no Flair blading on the outside of the cage etc) to make matches seem bigger. Even then, it's not strictly necessary, you just need to write better.

I can beat that. I bought Battlefield One last night as CEX had it for £12. Put it in - 30.2Gb update.

Except it isn't really. Looks very much like an obvious swerve. He'll likely go to Smackdown, make the already ridiculous 5-way a 6-pack challenge, lose that too, and then get interrupted by Undertaker at some point over the next couple of weeks. Or he gets the gong tonight after they've directed ratings over to the ailing show. Either way, it looks like it's happening. What else would they have Cena do?

A fun little detour to South of the border after the car's bluetooth connection dropping led me to hearing some of the vile little troll that is Adrian Durham last night. I know what he's trying to do, and I hate to rise to it, but one of his fishing lines last night was particularly egregious. I came in late to the topic, and they were talking about VAR, I presume because something happened in the Caribou (or whatever it is) Cup at the weekend. He started talking about a goal last season where someone scored from the halfway line and then went over to the bench to produce a shirt with a players name on the back whose father had died the previous day. Nice tribute. Great. Durham then started to outline how he feared for situations like this if VAR came in. What if, he mewled, VAR found that there was something wrong with that goal? What happens if that tribute has to be cut short because someone saw something wrong and the goal was disallowed? He finished by calling for the "human touch" to come back, and that in situations like that, goals should just be allowed because stopping such tributes would be disrespectful. I know he's fishing, and, as the Guardian described him apparently, an "expert phone-in troll, arrogantly spouting inflammatory football opinions in the hope of prompting some indignant phone rage from an uppity fans", but this really was quite something.

Lashley vs Brock then? Was rumoured that that was the plan a wee while back.

I need to go back and watch some of the earlier NXT stuff when Neville and the like were still around, didn't really see any from the early years.

The galling thing is that they keep showing glimpses of doing the right thing. He was probably at an all-time low in his big face journey last WM, then came up and cut what would have been a perfect heel turn promo with just four words. Then they did nothing with it. A few times they've looked like they'll either turn him, or at least make him more of a say nothing monster face. But they always return to the well of treating him like the underdog. From his promo on RAW, they look like they'll build well to the WM match, and if Lesnar is sticking around, he'll probably be gone for a wee while. They could fix everything with a decent title reign, but if they screw this one up I doubt they ever will do it right.

I am engaged in something when I'm watching something else, just not playing a game (at least that game). But if you'd rather spend money on every single game you're interested in, you do you. And if you have the time to do all that, then you're lucky. Yeah, that is an issue. Just a matter of finding the decent ones and filtering out the 1000s of people who put no effort into the content and just see it as a way to get rich and/or famous just because PewdiePie (who is absolute shite) did it.

I agree it won't be to everyone's taste, but it was the "very sad" part I didn't agree with. I don't sit and watch them paying 100% attention, but they're good background stuff. There's more games that I'd like to experience than I have anywhere near the time to play, so it's a good way to get to see what they're about rather than buy them myself and leave them sitting on a shelf doing nothing. Or it's a PC game that I simply don't have the specs to play. Also a good way of seeing whether games are actively worth getting by seeing them played out (now that demos are very rare). I watched an LP of Inside start to finish, knowing it was unlikely I'd get it. Until Dawn, Papers Please, Subnautica etc etc. It does depend on who is doing the video though. Just watching someone play through a game would be boring, completely agree, but if the person making the video knows when to add something to it, and - more importantly - when to just shut up and let the game speak for itself, then it's usually a good watch. But then on the other hand, there's people that watch people play Football Manager on youtube. That sounds incredibly tedious.

What's wrong with watching Let's Plays? As long as the person actually playing it is engaging, then it's certainly far cheaper - time and money wise - than buying and playing the game yourself

See, that makes the most sense, and it would turn a forgone conclusion into quite a good match, but I don't think they'll be particularly interested in having it anything other than Reigns finally bettering Lesnar. And also still no guarantee that Lesnar is going to re-sign with the company. Heyman was slipping in and out of character in an interview with ESPN hinting at a UFC return. I imagine he'll announce signing just before WM once again, but it's still an unknown.

It is pretty good, goes at wrestling from a slightly different angle than most of the ones doing it as fans. They're ripping the arse out of it by splitting each one out into two episodes though, so they can just record hunners and then drip release them.

While I think Cena/Taker is the one big match they've yet to do, and they could tell a great story, I'm not really sure there's a finish that makes sense or wouldn't piss everyone off. This isn't some star that can get the rub of beating Taker like Lesnar did, and I'm not sure Taker winning really does much for him. A lot can change depending on which story you tell I suppose.

I wonder if they just don't know yet whether he'll be at WM. People were saying he was moving better than he had in years, but I imagine they - or Taker himself - would be reticent to risk having another shitshow like last year. Or they don't want him. Or he doesn't want to. Looking unlikely we'll see him again.

If they didn't do it when he was dismantling a crowd favourite, or the next night when he was getting one of the biggest heel reactions the company had received in years, then him leading a largely unbelievable beating on Lesnar isn't going to do it. He's going to come up against heel Lesnar, make a comeback, kick out of the F5, and win the title. Cue fireworks.

But seriously, a good visualisation of what's going wrong. If there was one woolly concept I could try to apply to Thistle it's that if we go ahead, we just seem to revert to hanging on, even if we could easily be dominating. That definitely needs to be addressed. Are the players being told to protect the lead at all costs and be reactive, or are they doing that because that's the type of players they are?

Is that their plan? Hopefully Meltz is just on the poppers, because that is indeed ludicrous. I get that they now have a huge roster, but there's far better ways to deal with that than to just fire another hour onto shows. They already play fast and loose with timings (think the WM before last clocked in at just over 5 hours for the main show) but to mandate that...jeezo. Assume that would be still starting at the usual time? f**k staying up to 5am...

It's apparently "mutual consent", so perhaps with all that's happened he just fancies freeing himself from WWE and going back to the indies. I mean, I'm sure he's earning a decent wedge, and he's at the "top of his industry", but what's really his future? Would WWE have been reluctant to push him in the next few months even though he was cleared? Probably just decided to leave, and I doubt WWE would be too bothered about losing him.

The higher levels definitely get more brutal. I think on the lower ones you can sleep and completely replenish health, which I roundly abused on my first few playthroughs. I did New Game Plus, thinking my updated gear would help, but fucking hell it was tough. And Stellaboz is right, Skellige ramps things up quite a bit. I always found the highest difficulty to come when you were facing a lot of low level enemies rather than one powerful one. Getting caught with 10 drowners meant you had to get it absolutely spot on, or they'd just hit you as soon as you dodged a couple of them. In terms of how far in you are, you'll reach a point when you think you're coming to the end of the game, and it'll keep going. When you reach that, I'd say you're 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through. I remember being quite disappointed when I reached that part, not really wanting it to end, then there was hours and hours left over building up to the excellent final couple of boss fights.