Another weekend, and another Geekly Review with just myself as Will is enjoying the high life in Las Vegas. He celebrated his 30th Birthday over there yesterday so Happy Birthday Will!
As for myself, well this weekend featured a lot more geek than last weekend, which is always a good thing.
If you weren’t aware there were 2 Beta’s available for PS4 users over the weekend. Street Fighter V Beta was finally playable. And Call of Duty Black Ops 3 Beta ran from the 20th to the 23rd. Activision and Treyarch felt so generous that the final day of the Beta was open to all PS4 players regardless if you pre-ordered the game or not, a nice move to get the experience out to more players.
Well I began my download of the Call of Duty 3 Beta on Thursday at 12:30 midday. I rushed home from work on my lunch break to begin the download, I had anticipated that I’d get to play it Thursday evening if it had all afternoon to download and install. But that wouldn’t be the case and it eventually finished it’s install on Friday morning. Not great as I had to work Friday.
So guess what I did Friday evening? Absolutely smashed the COD:Blops3 Beta. One of my friends who watches wrestling PPV’s with me also had the Beta so we got into a party and took to the game together. It was a rather hilarious few hours of multiplayer with plenty of swearing and laughing. My wife came up to check on me as she had heard more than the normal amount of swearing coming from me while gaming. I got to level 12 and thought I’d give that Beta a rest. As mentioned though, the Street Fighter V Beta was actually playable now. Seeing as I had it installed for weeks from it’s original launch, I gave it a small whirl. I’m not great at beat-em-up’s at all. And it was even more clear I sucked at them after my very few bouts on the Beta. Not picking up a single win. With the dismal SFV session I decided to call it a night for gaming. I then caught up with the latest episode of WWE NXT in preparation for NXT Takeover: Brooklyn approaching on Saturday night.
A little on Black Ops 3. I have to say it’s back to it’s best for sure. I’ve not enjoyed playing multiplayer Call of Duty so much since Black Ops 2. The parkour is very cool and while you have boost jumps, they don’t feel as crazy and annoying as the Advanced Warfare jumping. The levels that were on the Beta are all pretty fun, I wasn’t overly keen on Snowbound when that became available, but I’m sure i’ll get to like it when I get used to it. The weapons did seem a little overpowered so I assume they’ll be possibly touched up a little before release. I have to say playing Kill Confirmed, sliding into collect some dog tags feels awesome, and can only assume it looks awesome. Possibly not so good to see is sliding to collect tags only to be killed midslide before gathering the tags. All in all I’m actually excited for a Call of Duty game again. Something I’ve genuinely not felt since Modern Warfare 2. Just from 3 days of the Beta it’s evident that Treyarch are Call of Duty. Can’t wait to see the full range of maps and weapons to come.
Saturday I watched Manchester United vs Newcastle. I wish I hadn’t as it was a pretty stressful 90 minutes of Man Utd deserving to score, but just not managing it. After I wasted that 90 minutes I went back to Call of Duty Beta till just before 7pm as I was heading over to one of the chaps I watch wrestling with’s place to watch NXT Takeover: Brooklyn.
Before the event started we watched various different matches on the WWE Network, the majority of them featuring The Undertaker.
As for the NXT show itself, wow. It was one awesome PPV. Tyler Breeze vs Jushin Thunder Liger was an incredible way to start the show off and the crowd were hot from the first moment. The Tag Team title match got a great reaction from the crowd, and with “Blue Pants” introduction getting chants of “this is awesome” from the crowd. Apollo Crews made an impressive NXT debut and Samoa Joe got a great reaction despite it being probably the weakest match on the card. And onto the double main event. The NXT Women’s championship first between challenger Bayley and Champion Sasha Banks. Holy Shit…I can genuinely say that it’s a match of the year candidate. The crowd were simply incredible for this match with massive support for both of these talented ladies. The match had some insane spots with back and forth aggressive moves from both. The final moments and Bayley hitting her finisher for the win sent the Barclay’s Centre through the roof. One epic women division match. The final main event was the Ladder match for the NXT title between Finn Balor and Kevin Owens. The fans were hyped, but it had died down a little after the intensity of the women’s match before it. Some excellent spots involving the ladder and both guys put on a great performance. Finn Balor hitting the “coup de gras” from the top of the ladder onto Owens and then climbing for a successful title defense. SummerSlam had a lot to live up to. The show ran over by half hour, much to our disapproval as it was 4:30am and we had another late night ahead of us with SummerSlam to come.
As for Sunday I watched the Belgian Gran Prix. It was a little bit of a boring one considering Spa is one of the iconic circuits. Unfortunate for Vettel to get a tyre blow out one lap from the end of the race in 3rd place. Once that finished I had a small stint on the Black Ops 3 beta again, then took a 2 hour power nap to ensure I’d be able to get through all of SummerSlam. Plus not having Monday off work meant I’d be getting 3 hours sleep Sunday night before work on Monday morning.
So before SummerSlam we re-watched NXT Takeover Brooklyn because it was awesome. Then I was introduced to New Japan Pro Wrestling. I’ll try to get into it more as I’m appreciating Lucha Underground and how different it is to WWE, so willing to try some other Wrestling promotions and you only ever hear positives about NJPW.
SummerSlam itself was a mixture of good and bad. Orton vs Sheamus and Big Show vs Ryback vs Miz I couldn’t really care about. Fortunately they weren’t the longest matches. The Tag Team title match was absolutely incredible. A very fun match in which Lucha Dragons looked good for spells but also very amateur with some botches. Props to Los Matadores for seeing one botch and reacting quickly to save the spot. Titus O’Neil had to pretty much represent Prime Time Players himself as Big E effectively murdered Darren Young in and out of the ring. New day came out winners with some hilarious celebrations.
Seth Rollins vs John Cena, title for title match was awesome. While I’m not overly happy with the way Rollins got the win, It was still an incredible result and awesome to see Rollins as a double champion. The match was brilliant and Rollins was the MVP of the PPV due to constantly hitting big spots. He nailed the five star frog splash and was just on fire. The crowd were very appreciative.
Cesaro vs Owens was the 2nd to last match and the crowd were a little flat for this as the match prior was the divas tag match. It was still a good match though and Cesaro is incredibly over still. Owens needed this victory though after a downfall burial from his losses to Cena. He picked up the win after an impressive performance from both guys.
The main event. It was going so well and was shaping up to be a decent Taker vs Brock match, until the end. Undertaker apparently and evidently tapped out. The bell rang and Heyman was declaring Taker had tapped and Brock won. The ref didn’t see Taker tapping and reversed the decision with the match continuing. The final moments were Undertaker locking Brock into Hell’s Gate submission. As Brock was fading out he raised the middle finger to Undertaker before passing out giving Taker a controversial win. It was such a weird ending. It really did kill the mood and left a sour taste from what was a really rather enjoyable PPV. It’s probably a given then that this feud will stretch to at least one more PPV.
– Murr
EGX 2015 Competition
Yup, our competition to win 2 tickets to EGX 2015 in Birmingham is STILL ON! For your chance to win tickets check out our Competition Page
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