Ramblings of an Englishman

Spoilers for Mortal Kombat 1 I’ve always had a respect for some of the ways Mortal Kombat (MK) has gone about its work. Not many other studios could have a roster where half the characters are pallet swapped versions of each other and it ending up being one of the top fighting game franchises in history. With an interesting group of characters they have now had to reboot their universe twice first with MK9 and now again with the new MK1. Comparing MK1 to the storyline of MK9 through to the previous game in 11 I found myself loving this one so much more and wanted to go over some of the reasons why I felt this story has me interested in the future. Liu Kang Isn’t a Dumbass Let’s start with an easy one. You could argue the main character of the past few games has been Raiden. The plot is focused around him in large parts and he seems to be the driving force in a lot do conflict and resolution. However, the key part is conflict as he always seemed to be the one who causes it. MK9 he sends...

What a difference a week makes. After the spectacle of All In the past week has seen CM Punk fired and a the chaos left in his path not overly clear but every story seemingly making it worse. I may cover CM Punk in a separate post but it certainly is a big talking point. One thing I will say on All Out is it is in a terrible place, right after All In it has a real lack of build. I won't be covering the lack of build for these matches as it has been weak with two PPVs in a week and the card overall is the weakest for an AEW PPV so let's see how it delivers on the night.  The Buy In Over Budget Battle Royale Man what a waste of Hangman in this and not having a singles match. At least he won so that's something. A standard battle royale there's not really much to add to this, good to see Kyle Fletcher make it far in as he is someone I feel  Athena, Mercedes Martinez, and Diamante vs. Hikaru Shida, Willow Nightingale, and Skye Blue Athena is great one of the best parts of R...

No real review this time for the AEW PPV and for very obvious reasons. As per the below image I was at All In. In order to save me being biased reviewing each match I think it would just be easy to say how much I loved the show the whole day. As someone that's never been to Wrestlemania I can only imagine this is how it feels, a big show in a big arena. Have to say all matches delivered for me I know a lot of people cried about the build but I don't think that matters at show time, it was always going to be a big event and it was just that it felt more than a wrestling show and felt like a spectacle. I don't know if having All Out a week after is a smart idea I just don't see how it can compete. All in all I loved it a great day, a great show and can't wait for next year. 

At long last All Elite Wrestling released its first console video game entitled Fight Forever. Developed by Yukes the previous developers of the WWE games it was the first time a different wrestling company outside of WWE had released a game since Impact Wrestling (TNA at the time) in 2008. I had high hopes for this game and was interested to see how it went. The below should give a breakdown on my thoughts on all different parts of the game. Roster and Match Types With this game being in development for a good while as expected a lot of the attires are outdated and the roster is lacking a lot of the top stars who have had an impact since the initial announcement window. Now this isn’t like the WWE 2K series with yearly releases so this is something that with enough support can be fixed with the likes of Jamie Hayter, Toni Storm, Swerve and The Acclaimed not announced for any DLC yet it may be that we get multiple season passes with popular superstars to add to the game. I don’t mind t...

It is that time of the year again where two of the biggest professional wrestling companies join forces. Two massive dream matches headline the card and with a lack of injuries form either side this feels as strong of a card as you can get. With AEW having CM Punk back and a new Saturday show in Collision and New Japan seemingly back or on its way back to it's best this was shaping up to be a great show at least on paper but let's see how they fared in execution.  Zero Hour Mogul Embassy (Swerve Strickland, Toa Liona, Brian Cage, and Bishop Kaun) (with Prince Nana) vs. Chaos (Rocky Romero, Chuck Taylor, and Trent Beretta) and El Desperado The Mogul Embassy I really like (well all of them except Brian Cage really), a good stable with a good look but they really do need to start giving them wins. A good match to start the show a fun opening tag match and I am glad Swerve got the win. Let's give him a few more of those and all of the titles. Poor Despy being victim of giving t...

New Japan is in a youth movement as it stands. Pushing younger talents on the way back from excursion such as Ren Narita, Yota Tsuji and Shota Umino who have become featured players it leaves just one of their group out in the cold in Yuya Uemura who I think should return soon. Going on excursion the same time as Yota Tsuji it should only be a matter of time before he comes back. I wanted to have a go at fantasy booking his return in which I think I have a solid idea which helps out some issues with roster depth. First of all I wouldn’t have him return until at least the final day of the G1 or soon after. You look at all of the roster members in their first G1 Ren, Shota, Yota, Kaito, Gabe, Alex as well as the high profile block matches like Okada vs Osperay I feel like Yuya would be lost right away. So instead I would do the following. You either have video packages with hyping him up or randomly appear like they did with Shota. So I would have hype packages for Yuya well for whatever...

With Spider-Man two now set for an October 2023 release for Playstation 5 it will get people myself thinking about what characters will be added to the mythos of past games. While I looked at this years ago here I wanted to have another look now we have an idea of the story and we know that we will see Venom, Lizard & Kraven the Hunter as well as Yuri becomming Wraith but beyond the identity of Venom (my money is still on Harry Osborn) I do think some big reveals and surprises will be saved for launch. I want to go over a few character we could see introduced or at least teased for future released.  Gwen Stacy/Spider-Gwen/Ghost-Spider Starting off wit ha character I feel is very likely to be introduced. Spider-Gwen is a very popular character and one I feel has ton of spinoff potential. Considering the success of the Spiderverse films which the character is the secondary main character and Insomniac's tweet saying they never confirmed Gwen Stacy was dead in their universe ( htt...