forameus

He's guaranteed to be World Class don't you know. Kenny said so.

What did Miz do? Saw it mentioned but not actually what he said.

I don't think it was quite the same quality as we've had on other Takeover shows. Still a great show though. Perhaps struggled due to having three matches on the card that didn't really mean much. One was a vehicle just to get Aries on the card, one was effectively a lengthened squash match to introduce Roode and one was them saying "honest, we've still got women on the roster". None of those three were that bad though - Roode's entrance was brilliant and so was the weird springing corkscrew stunner finisher for Ember Moon. The two main events were great though. Expected result for Bayley, and in the time since she's moved up to RAW. Was the right decision, Asuka is the better champion, but what really is there left for her to do in NXT? I'd call her up in a similar way to how Paige was way back. Have her vacate the title rather than drop it, because if we're waiting for someone to come in that deserves to take it off someone like Asuka, we'll be waiting a while. Then Naka-fucking-mura. What an absolute star that guy is. I have never been more invested in any wrestler in WWE. I could see his actual in-ring work getting stale on a long-enough timescale, but when you add in the charisma he has, I don't think anyone would care if it did. He is absolutely brilliant to watch, and definitely the right decision for winning the title. Did Joe actually break his jaw or was it just a great selling job? If it is broken, it'll give him some time to rest up, then have him debut on the main roster as a surprise. Not sure who would be next for Nakamura though, similar problem to Asuka.

Bayley will be massively over on the main roster. Only worry is that they forget about giving her any kind of edge and just have her grin her way through everything. The crowd might turn on her if we get that for years. Until then though, she is going to be massively, massively over.

RAW is going to be brutal for the next 5 weeks. They're always absolutely dreadful with long builds.

And two weeks earlier for the beta. Also a 5% discount for every previous title you own on steam is you order through there, up to 20%. Remains to be seen if that makes it cheaper than somewhere like GMG, but a nice touch from SI.

I think I had one of those missions that sent you to a raider hideout with some scribe. Of course, it was the hideout with the fatman-armed guy on the roof. Two seconds after fast travelling there I heard the whistling and got out of there, expecting the scribe to be another unkillable NPC. Turned around to watch the shell hit him right in the dish. Didn't survive strangely enough.

After playing it a lot more, I'd say it's still a solid 6.5ish. I'm still going to sink a stupid number of hours into it, but In most areas it's a missed opportunity. Any future updates could push that higher, as there are plans for adding new features. Will be very interesting to see what they come up with. I found a planet covered in those horrible maze caves, but then realised there were absolutely hunners of Albumen Pearls hidden away in there. Dumped all my stuff and filled up both my suit and the ship with them and sold them all up on the space station. About 500k a load. If it wasn't incredibly dull you could make an absolute killing just going back and forth picking them up. Already picked up a 1m+ ship off the back of it.

How long ago was it that RAW had that really amazing episode? Seems like forever now. Previous weeks were just a bit meh, but some really confusing choices made last night. Giving away Rusev vs Reigns for free just 6 days before the PPV, putting the PTPs back together just to break them up again a few minutes later, giving away Balor's entrance...

Why do companies do this to themselves... I know that it's hard to ensure that games work on every single system, but surely they'd have an inkling of these performance issues and be able to put the brakes on?

And if it's knickerwetting to worry about Cerny missing a large amount of the season when the alternative is Scully, I'm going to need new breeks Did he not get caught against ICT though? I thought I noticed them leaving the foot in towards the end and him limping a wee bit. Has it been said what's up with him officially? I just assumed that Archie was doing his usual and not giving a single f**k about the cup and giving him the opportunity to rest

Always wondered when we re-signed him whether there was concrete interest, but the other clubs were all scared off. Looks like the case now - wondering what kind of contract we've given him too, given that surely they were looking at a considerable layoff when he signed it. Still, he's our best option as long as he comes back at the same level he left at. At least Welsh has looked better than last season, otherwise it'd be an even bigger issue. Plus should mean we get to see more of the incredibly handsome Ryan Edwards

To some people it will be. It's certainly a far better reaction and review than people who are going to rate it 0 on metacritic (or 10 from that matter, they're just opposite sides of the coin). I can't remember if it was you, but someone said a while ago that it was borderline unreviewable. I can see that point, so does it really matter what someone else thinks of it? As long as the review is well-written, which I believe that one was, then there is no issue. Also worth noting that the scoring system Jim Sterling uses is slightly different to a straight 1-10 that some sites will use. He outlines it on the site in a lot of detail. Not to mention that putting a DDoS attack on a site because it holds an opinion you don't like about a game is an incredibly cringey thing to do from those sweaty VLs that did it. One parallel I'd actually make is with the Division. In both of these games, the location is very much the star - NMS for its procedural generation, and the Division for its painstaking mapping of New York. Both are great in their own way, but the Division struggled to not fill gameplay with repetitive grinding tasks, and it looks like NMS will go the same way too. Completely different games, I understand, but there is a comparison to be drawn.

With three weeks between Summerslam and Backlash, they might actually be able to get some good focused build in. That made me happy. Then I realised that it gives RAW five weeks of build for Clash of Champions. That made me sad.

So just because it was bad or average, it's attention seeking? I read the review this morning as his site's back up, and you can't really argue with anything he says. It fits with his tastes in games, and there's nothing hyperbolic about it. After playing it for 3 or 4 hours last night, I have to say I agree with him in most points, although I wouldn't mark it as low as 5. Maybe 6-6.5 at the current point. I put the game in while I was working from home to get the update downloaded and installed, and when I came back to it I was greeted with a white screen prompting me to press square. I did, and was booted straight into the game, in a little ravine needing to fix my ship. No real intro, no real tutorial as to what I was supposed to be doing, just go and dae it. Went into a nearby cave to try and find materials and got lost several times. Being a cave, it was pretty dark in points, and short of a hovering icon on the HUD, there was no real indication as to where you were supposed to go. Then I got killed by sentinels. Admittedly at the second attempt, because I provoked them after the first, but hey ho. Got back to the ship and headed down again, this time found my way through the cave and back to the surface. When you see that, the planet spread out before you, all kinds of new stuff and creatures charging around, then you have to admit the game is impressive. Graphics-wise it isn't mind-blowing, but the colours make up for that to make a very vibrant world. I managed to get the ship repaired, and then it was off into space. I was supposed to go visit a space station to advance the story, but instead headed to the huge planet I'd seen from the surface of the first one. It looked a lot different - hot instead of snow - but aside from a few new species, there wasn't that much different. Went back to the first planet because I'd missed a quest point and met my first alien. Which doesn't move. And shows off the absolutely woeful writing. I'd say they were going for corny 70s Star Trek, but I don't think they were. Still, it's a minor thing, not as if the game relies on its writing. Headed to the space station to meet another stationary alien, with more absolute nonsense to say. Did what I needed to there and saw another ship fly in. Ooh, exciting, maybe it's another...no, it just sits there. Apparently you can interact with them if you go to the ship directly, but there was no indication to do that. I repaired the warp drive and headed to the next part of the galaxy, and that's where I switched it off. So my thoughts so far... Pros + If you look into the sky and see a planet while you're on the surface of another, it's brilliant to think that you can get in your ship and go and visit it. + The soundtrack is varied and atmospheric + While it doesn't have the polish of a "hand-drawn" world, it does look good. Immensely colourful and very clear. + The scale of the game is vast, but it's a double edged sword, as... Cons - It's shallow. There's absolutely no getting away from it. Scale is brilliant, but there's a reason that more developers are moving away from the "look how many square kilometers I've got" and concentrating on depth. There's a reason Bethesda moved from Daggerfall having a map "the size of Great Britain" to Skyrim having around 10 square miles. People complained that Fallout 4's map was too small, but it was probably one of the best examples due to how densely packed it was. Witcher 3 has an absolutely enormous map, but there's vast swathes of nothingness in it. That detracts from the experience. When you boast about how there's a squillion planets to explore, you better hope that they're distinct enough and have enough interesting things in it to actually matter. - The procedural generation isn't mature enough to achieve what they wanted to achieve. There's a limited palette the game has to work with, particularly in the creatures (from what I've seen so far, and read in reviews). - The world as it stands doesn't seem quite "there". You clip through most things, particularly the creatures. I clipped through the world a couple of times by going into gaps you shouldn't be able to fit in. It all just seems like they concentrated on building the world visually and then called it done. - The meat of the game at the moment seems to be "venture to planet, gather resources, feed resources into charging your suit, gather more resources, leave". This may change as you go into the game, but even if it does, that's a poor choice to make. They'll end up losing a lot of people in the early hours of the game because it just seems incredibly shallow. - I get the impression - purely personal perspective - that it's trying to be a little smarter than it deserves. The lack of any real intro or tutorial made the start of the game a bit jarring, and it doesn't stop there. They tell you which buttons do what in popups, but there's very little other than that. It could be that the game is a lot more deep than I'm making it out to be, but with such a huge game, you perhaps need to prod people in the direction of this depth, otherwise they'll never find it. - Combat is paid little more than lip-service. The sentinels are just annoying, and really the only things you'll get to fight. I know there's space battles, but I'm yet to experience any. From reading reviews it looks like it's much the same. The game isn't bad, but it's not particularly great either. I'm going to keep playing it, and will probably end up putting many, many hours into it. There's definitely the core of a great game there, so it's all the more disappointing that this is what was served up.

The big issue nowadays with demos being super-rare. Remember when you could just download a version of the game for free to form an opinion yourself? Now you either buy the game - a significant price too now - or you trust reviews, which is a minefield in itself.

Archie fucking hates the cups, doesn't he?

I've just ordered it, and it'll arrive tomorrow via Amazon Prime's loveliness. If it's pish, I'm coming for you Fide.

Sounds incredibly on the edge of me loving it or hating it. Even the Witcher 3, which I ended up thinking was the best game ever made, I almost gave up on early on because it didn't engage me. One of my favourite parts of Skyrim, Fallout, games like that was always the exploration of new areas, so could well be my sort of game. At the moment my home internet's been dead since Friday night (fucking Openreach) so wouldn't be much point ordering it now. Think I'll get it Thursday or Friday though, have it for the weekend. Unless I see something horrendous coming out in the reviews, which seems unlikely at the moment.

I don't think there is either, I was more meaning generally with day 1 patches. Given the possibility that said patch can still have issues, why not just start the whole process earlier so you can have that day 1 patch in place in the weeks before release? Especially with this one, as the update appears to be adding a sizeable amount to the game rather than just bug fixes. The game will probably be pretty well reviewed - probably not exemplary, but pretty solid. Most will be pretty happy with it, and some will absolutely bomb it. As is the way with games and the hype train they travel on. I'll see what the early reviews are like on Wednesday/Thursday, then maybe pick it up in the days after if it's all positive.

It's more like an exception to the rule. Have there been any other examples where it has? There's been some pretty high-profile games where they've been desperate to embargo the shit out of everyone so their game doesn't get seen for the turd it is. Not saying that's the case here, at least not entirely. I imagine it'll come into every developers mind in some way - why would you let reviews out early if you can get away with it? One thing that annoyed me about it, they said they wanted the review to be of day 1 code, because there was going to be a day 1 patch. Why not just make sure beta testing happens early enough so that there doesn't need to be a day 1 patch? They're by no means alone in this, in fact every game now has that.

That's down to the procedural generation. No need for loads of textures to model a huge world when most of it is just done with formulae. It's certainly sounding more positive than I expected, although I'm sure the hype train will crash for some of the less balanced in their community soon. Tempted to order this now...

I usually think a lot of the stuff in this thread is stretching, and that some just like to pick up on little things and blow them out of proportion. Then I saw that. That is truly awful.

Absolutely. I find watching it incredibly dull, and last season in particular there was a lot more excitement in watching the cooncil telly Scottish Cup games.

Watching CWC now, and have to say I agree with ZSJ being a bit meh. He seems very talented obviously but the match just seems so slow, like duxe has been told to let him get his spots in with little going the other way. Plus he also sounds incredibly dull in the promo segments.