forameus

This. A lot of the stuff they got away with in the attitude era wouldn't improve what we have now. Like you say, you can easily have a good product no matter what rating it has. The NXT Tag Title match never came close to breaching PG, but it was absolutely amazing.

Have Goldberg come out in the second wave of the Rumble, give him the full entrance treatment with everyone in the ring doing their usual "OMFG look who's here" routine. Have him eliminate everyone (it'll be only relative jobbers by that point) then celebrate for the remaining seconds before the next entrant. Lesnar. Have them batter the living shit out of each other until the next guy comes in (make it Ellsworth or something). They completely ignore him and battle out eliminating each other, setting up a match at Wrestlemania. Then after Ellsworth dances around like the odd looking fucker he is, Strowman comes in next and tears his arms off or something. That seems to be the most obvious route they could take, but I'm not sure what they could really do with another Lesnar Goldberg match. I don't think the latter can go for a long match, and neither can the former at the moment without resorting to suplex after suplex. I'd far rather Lesnar moves onto something more interesting (if they manage to take this opportunity to make the character itself more interesting) and have Goldberg do something different. Or maybe they'll go mental and have Goldberg win the Rumble or something.

I didn't really get into Roode/Dillinger that much. Not to say it was a bad match or anything, just don't see it as as good as some have said. Asuka/James was solid - probably the best they could have hoped for given the empty room that the women's division is now. Thought it ended pretty abruptly though. Dusty Classic....meh. What was really the point? I know they're probably building up the heel team to go against the new face champs, but the match didn't really seem t fit anywhere. Another solid match, and in no way bad, but the shark cage thing felt pretty out of place - probably because it was purely to promote a toy - and the previously dominant, dangerous heel team poses with the Rhodes family at the end like they're at a particularly meh Butlins. I thought they might do something heelish after the win, but alas no. The main event...ooft. Absolutely did not see Nakamura being beaten, so that was a huge surprise, but the match itself was also pretty good. Suitably brutal, and slightly better than the one they had last time. I really hope it means that they're slingshotting Nakamura to the main roster, and not that they're going to have another few months of tepid build to a match at the next Takeover where they reevaluate. But the absolute gem of the night, obviously, is that tag team match. It's an absolute shining example of what is great about wrestling. Like Bryan winning at WM30, you build up that emotional investment, then put on a match that absolutely lives up to the hype and keeps you guessing right up to the last moment. Personally I was always hoping for them to come up short one last time and then Ciampa to turn into the heel he already looks like. Scary fucker. But seeing them win it and the celebration after was brilliant. Assuming they go up against Authors of Pain now, which should be interesting as the babyfaces in peril. I wouldn't even be totally against them dropping at the Rumble if it means we get a singles feud leading up to Mania. And special props to the Revival. They don't seem that universally popular, but from a pure performance standpoint, they're my favourite team to watch. Enzo and Cass are more entertaining, American Alpha are more naturally athletic and impressive, but the Revival do all the little things absolutely perfectly. Their heel work is brilliant, and I really hope that when they do go up - surely it's imminent - they don't just get lost in the shuffle and lose what has made them great. Empty hope probably though.

I didn't agree with how he was just plain dropped against Slovakia, but it's understandable why he didn't feature. Maybe once the game was gone you could argue he should have come on, but I think there was more call for him to do the same against England. At 2 or 3 nil there, would've been good to have him as one of the subs coming on. But let's at least wait for more than just these two games before we declare that it's such a terrible thing for Burke. There's now months before the next game, in which time Burke will be hopefully featuring for his club. If he's amazing between now and then and Strachan still doesn't pick him, then fair enough, he deserves criticism. But he didn't show anything against Lithuania that showed he was an absolute must-pick. Definitely should have been one of the subs against England though, and unless something goes awry, he should feature fairly heavily in March.

But I've seen plenty of reviews around saying that Mafia 3 gets incredibly repetitive after a while, so interesting comparison to draw. It's all people's tastes. One man's terrorist, another man's freedom fighter and less used cliches. I'd say I enjoyed the time I spent with NMS, while still knowing it could be so much better. I found it a good alternative to other games I enjoy playing.

Has to be the home straight for his career. There's 5 or so PPV's left until (and including) Wrestlemania. I see no reason why he couldn't be at most of those building up a final angle to culminate at WM. Pretty cryptic stuff said last night but saw someone suggest that he start a program with Styles, win the title at the Rumble, then set up a feud with Cena for WM. Can add in a retirement angle if they really want to go all out, but it's a nice way to get Taker vs Cena, Cena getting that title he clearly wants. Would be a bit harsh to drop Styles so soon, but there's plenty of options for him outside of the title.

Get the demo and see for yourself. It's going to be a better indication than asking people on here. Some will hate it, some will love it, probably neither will have your opinion.

That's a wonderfully well done part of the quest. The first time around, I couldn't do it, and then the second I couldn't either, even though I knew that it wouldn't be harmed either way. Might've been the wife looking at me with a horrified expression... So aye, you fucking monster

I think, although could be wrong, that it went as follows... Journalist reports (before Hello Games did) that NMS was going to be delayed Journalist gets roundly pilloried for "lieing" and gets death threats directed at him and the company he worked for Hello Games announce the delay No apologies to the journalist for being correct, but the hate and vitriol gets directed instead at Sean Murray and Hello Games. I'm genuinely fascinated by these creatures. I'd love to know who they are in real life - are these actual sociopaths who would be a real danger to someone if they were in real life and not on a computer screen, or are they just basement dwellers doing it for shock value? I'm not really sure which is worse to be honest.

This. Sensible people would probably be fine with him coming out and saying he'd fucked up. I'm with you, Edgarus, it'd be refreshing to see it happen, and probably grab him back a lot of favour. But then there's the crowd that gave him death threats for announcing a one month delay. A fucking delay. What would they do if he came out and did a Billy Clinton?

That's the key part. At the point he promised them, did he think that was the case? That's where we probably disagree - personally I think he fully believed in the project to the point where he believed things that ended up not being implemented. To each their own though. To be honest, I still think I probably got my money's worth out of the game, on a pure hours basis. I'd say I enjoyed most of it. It could have been a million times better though. Bethesda use the "radiant quest" stuff, started with Skyrim. Basically the ones where some basic NPC tells you to go clear out x, or go kill y. Then they populate that location with things and have you go do something. In that sense, they are endless, and they marketed it as such particularly with Skyrim. It sounded great on paper, but once you actually get down to doing these endless quests, they're incredibly repetitive. But then they're supposed to be, and the world they inhabit is much, much more pleasing than the one in NMS.

Yeah, like I said, it isn't the greatest comparison, but if we're going purely by the repetitive nature of things after an initial period of time, then there's a lot of guilty parties. That's fair enough. I imagine he pretty much shat himself though. He drove himself off a cliff and instead of fronting up, he's stuck his head in the sand. To give him one little thing, the whole hype culture built up around the game (which admittedly he was very much responsible for fostering, directly or otherwise) meant that there wasn't going to be the possibility of just fronting up. They got death threats for a perfectly normal delay. It's the scam part I disagree with. Just think he's fucked up rather than anything malicious.

The latter in your question. They put a developer out in front of the cameras because he had a good gimmick, and they rode him all the way into the ground. He was a rabbit in the headlights and just kept promising thing after thing. There's a small chance there's something machiavellian about it all, but he looked to me like someone who genuinely believed in the product, and was just spouting every idea that made it onto the long-list. Then it gets closer to release, and they've not got close to all the things he's promised. They delayed once and got death threats. I honestly believe that if they didn't have a huge publisher behind them, they might have delayed further. But instead they released, and the shit storm picked up. I feel sorry for the guy. I've always said he should never have been put/put himself in that position. It should've been a PR guy in there with a message, not a developer who looks like he's not comfortable at all in front of a camera. Don't agree at all with your last part. Although it depends on what you mean by "formula". If you mean the type of game it was, then they'd be mental not to. Look at how much excitement the concept shook up. If someone can essentially make the NMS that was hyped, it's a licence to print money. Of course, if the "formula" you speak of is now Sean Murray handled things, then absolutely, no-one should touch that. Think that's a bit far calling it a scam. It's not quite as blatant, but you can say pretty much the same as bolded about a lot of games. Fallout 4 springs to mind. Obviously that's a bit of a rubbish comparison, as obviously FO4 is a much better game, but to call it a scam just because it was repetitive is a bit much.

They're not quite in the same place from what I read. I believe Smackdown are in Aberdeen tonight, and then RAW are somewhere in Germany tomorrow night. House shows though, so not necessarily the entire roster.

Kenny and Pep clashing. What a time to be alive. It's like Frost/Nixon.

Fletcher would be best playing behind a striker. They tried it in the Denmark friendly, and I maintain that's the best that he's looked for us. If we can get the right person playing further forward then we could be onto something. Would also allow us to concentrate more on getting midfielders in to shield our dreadful, dreadful defenders.

f**k sake...that's Nakamura's foot? f**k did he do to himself?

Might be slightly revisionist, but to be honest at the moment I'm more looking forward to seeing Goldberg than Lesnar. That's on the proviso that we're just going to get the traditional Lesnar match i.e. an extended squash. His matches have gotten pretty boring, so at least there's an "unknown" quantity to Goldberg (I've not seen too much of him from the past admittedly). Of course if Lesnar goes out and puts on an amazing match, I'd be delighted. He's definitely got it in him to have must-watch matches still, but they've just been pretty tedious recently.

If it's real - which, let's face it, it's dirtsheets so could go either way - then you're absolutely right. What did he think was going to happen? They seem to be stuck massively in the past when it comes to these kinds of things. It used to be OK to just send a guy out and go "How about them <INSERT SPORTS TEAM>? They suck!" and you've got your heel heat. Now you've got to work so much harder. Hometown heroes are always likely to be cheered unless they're well established heels, and the smarks are always going to cheer people they shouldn't. That's not to say you couldn't have Lesnar as a heel, but to just have Heyman go out and try and conjure it out of nowhere was only going to go one way.

I started a save just to look about with them, and going by the general team report, they seem to have got us spot on in terms of descriptions. Didn't play it long enough to see though. I've started a save with Scotland like I did with FM16, and it's proving to be a most realistic experience. Struggled to a 2-1 win over Lithuania away, lost by the same scoreline at Hampden against England (a good performance) but then got absolutely pumped 4-0 by Slovakia away. Might not be so easy this time around

I felt that way about the main game, thinking it was over after Kaer Morhen but managed to get a lot of hours out of it after that. With Blood and Wine I thought I'd feel that way, but I'm not sure what it was, just didn't really get into it as much. In the end I charged ahead just so I could get to the ending. If I go back to it there's still quite a lot of side quests left to do. If you feel like that though, this is the sort of game that you can replay and not really lose much. I did a full new playthrough so I could get to a decent enough level to tackle Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine when it came, and if I thought I had the time I'd do another final one to see a few different endings and take advantage of the bits I've missed.

Like Caley says, the DLCs are absolutely massive, and they ramp the difficulty up nicely so it isn't just more of the same. In my opinion Hearts of Stone has the best all-round quest line of any game - and beats the Bloody Baron one from the main game - and Blood and Wine is just gorgeous.

Fair enough, and eloquently put

When I went on Bleacher Report, I saw the headline "James Ellsworth beats AJ Styles in Championship Match". Just about lost my shit, thought the crazy b*****ds had actually gone and done it. Unfortunately it was a DQ. I might be talking absolute pish, but could they do worse than to insert him into a triple threat at the next PPV? Now that I've said that, next Smackdown one is Survivor Series, so unlikely they'd do that on such an important show, but it would be a good way to carry the continuing feud between Ambrose and Styles without it getting stale. Can't say I'm that into seeing the two go one on one again, so having this would keep things fresh and let them move towards the Royal Rumble with Styles still as champion. They're not exactly blessed with depth to move onto the next feud either. f**k it, I'm booking it. Styles vs Ellsworth at Survivor Series for the title while Ambrose is somehow involved, before he goes into the big 5v5 elimination match later on. Open the show with the young jobber putting in a big effort but coming just short. Far from the worst thing they could do.

On booting up the new FM and starting with Thistle, it just shows how comprehensive their research is Under weaknesses, we have - THere is not a great deal of quality depth outside of the first team - THere isn't much to speak of in terms of exciting youth prospects - Could do better than Danny Devine amongst those able to play as a central defender - Kris Doolan is one of few players of sufficient quality who are able to play as a striker and better depth is required - The squad doesn't work hard enough individually or collectively - There aren't enough players who have a first touch of sufficient quality - There is currently a leadership void in the squad - It might be worth paying attention to the low levels of aggression and commitment in the squad right now Our strengths mutter about Cerny and Dumbuya, and don't mention how they're both made of crepe paper. Otherwise, sadly spot on