WWE: Is the women's division ready for Ronda Rousey?

Cast your mind back to March 29^th 2015 - Wrestlemania 31 at Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara California. 76,976 fans going bananas as The Rock invites Ronda Rousey into the ring for a confrontation with Stephanie McMahon. Rousey - Olympic Gold Medalist in Judo; the highest paid fighter in UFC; the organisation’s current Women’s Bantamweight Champion; undefeated in her 12 professional fights and regarded by many to be the world’s deadliest woman.

 

Rousey was an imposing, confident presence at Wrestlemania, unaffected by the thousands in attendance at the greatest stage of them all. And why should she be? She legitimately beats people up for a living.

 

After an almighty stare down, Rousey judo throws Triple H and catches Stephanie in an arm lock, casting her out of the ring. The crowd lapped it up and the segment was over - but the speculation was just beginning.

 

Would Rousey make the jump from mixed martial arts to sports-entertainment, as Ken Shamrock had done before? The likes of Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar had taken all they had learned from amateur wrestling and gone on to amazing careers in the WWE. Could Ronda Rousey do the same? Did she want to?

 

She is known to be a big fan of the business, is quoted as saying she had way too much fun at Wrestlemania not to return and when asked outright if she’d pursue a career with WWE she said: “You never know”. With a simple, but thrilling tweet she sent out after her actions at Wrestlemania - “We’re just getting started” - it seems Ronda Rousey is ready for the WWE women’s division. The question now is whether the women’s division is ready for Ronda Rousey.

 

Although it is currently called the Divas Division for reasons known only unto Vince McMahon, womens’ wrestling in WWE has nevertheless come a long way since the bra and panties debacles from the likes of Stacey Keibler and Torrie Wilson. Ronda Rousey simply wouldn’t have fit into that dynamic. From several photoshoots she has done, the UFC champion enjoys her femininity, but to truly capitalise on the character she would be in WWE, it wouldn’t be believable for her to have been a part of that.

 

We all know the WWE is sports-entertainment, but the action lives and dies on our suspension of disbelief. We want to believe in these characters and the stories they are telling in the ring and to have had Rousey battling, say, The Kat and it being a fair fight - would that be believable? Of course not. But what about today? With an influx of hungry competitors from the developmental promotion of NXT, the Divas Division, in my opinion, has never been better and hark back to the pure wrestling of the days of The Fabulous Moolah, albeit quicker and with more frequent highspots for today’s shorter attention spans. Nikki Bella vs Charlotte at the recent Hell in a Cell pay-per-view very nearly stole the show and the crowd, while always being somewhat muted during women’s matches historically, are now very much behind the action.

Of course there’s still titillation there in some ring attire and during entrances, but it now comes across as “sexy, smart and powerful” as the Diva’s mantra has it, rather than leaving that uncomfortable taste in the mouth.

 

Brock Lesnar’s recent run in the business could be a great model for the company’s approach with Ronda Rousey’s character were she to make the jump. Lesnar is having the squash matches where he completely dominates, but he’s having the closer, more hard-fought matches too and they are protecting his character even when he loses - having his opponent’s cheat or win in some other controversial finish.

If handled well, with smart storytelling, Ronda Rousey would fit right in to the current womens’ division picture - Diva or not. So come on, Ronda, finish what you have to do at UFC and sign the dotted line - Let’s get rowdy.

EGX 2015

A lesson learned - Don’t go to EGX on a Saturday. Take a day off work and go on the Thursday or Friday.

 

This was my second EGX - the first being back in 2010 at Earl’s Court, London when it was still called the Eurogamer Expo. The longest queuing I did was 20 minutes or so for Medal of Honour. I was expecting the same again this year in Birmingham and was excited at the prospect of a day’s gaming on upcoming titles - some of them playable for the first time in the UK.

 

How wrong I turned out to be.

 

I had an 11am - 6pm day ticket. As I reached the arena, the traffic slowed to a crawl and that was followed by my first queue - for parking. After that, a long queue to actually get in. It was 11:40 by the time I was in the event area and heading straight for Star Wars Battlefront. I joined a queue that snaked back and forth. Not to worry, I thought. This game was 20 v 20 so getting rid of 40 people each time should get this queue moving pretty quickly. Just a couple of minutes into the wait and we were told by a member of staff that from where we were stood, we were looking at 3 hours. What? That’s going to wipe out the day?!

 

I left the queue and scouted around elsewhere - Mirror’s Edge Catalyst (on only ten consoles) - 3 hours. Rise of the Tomb Raider the same. Halo 5 the same. 2 hours + for Need for Speed. This wasn’t going well. I headed into the 18+ area where all the Ubisoft games could be found. The queue snaked for Assassin’s Creed. It was a 3 hour one again for The Division and Rainbow Six was looking at 2 hours +.

 

With a slot booked for a demo of Project Morpheus at 1:40pm, I knew I couldn’t commit to any of these queues even if I was prepared to. I grabbed some lunch and re-evaluated my plan.

 

While Star Wars Battlefront was at the top of my list for trying out, the beta was just 2 weeks away, so I scratched it off. I’d already played the beta for Halo, so that went too. I was in the beta for Rainbow Six, so I ditched it. The rest, I’d take a look at after the VR demo and see if the queues had gone down any.

 

PlayStation VR - Project Morpheus demo

As I waited for my slot I watched a guy playing a game that combined the headset with the PlayStation Move controllers. He was the passenger in a vehicle, looking around with his head, grabbing a coffee off the dashboard and bringing it to his mouth etc - the coffee fell to the floor when he tried putting it back. Needless to say the car was then attacked by armoured cars and bikers and he had to shoot them out of the window. It looked fun, if a little dated and proof of concept-like.

 

  

My turn next and I got a normal controller, the headset and Battlezone - a remake of an 80s tank shoot em up effort. With about 100 degrees of view it was cool to look around the game space and it is certainly immersive with nothing between you and the game. It was also blurry as hell and within 5 minutes I was feeling sick as a dog.

 

This is supposed to release in the first half of 2016 and at this stage it feels like it needs work. Even then though I just can’t see people sat around at home with these headsets on, certainly not for any real length of time. And the thought of 2 hours watching a film on it (the likes of Netflix and Hulu have signed up), I just can’t imagine it being preferable to a TV or cinema screen.

 

Feeling a little ill and not necessarily walking in a straight line, I headed back to the event floor.

 

I’d spotted earlier that the queue for Homefront: The Revolution was manageable. It was still over 30 minutes, but I went for it. The game looks well and has a cool escalation mechanic where more enemies and friendlies arrive at your location if you get rumbled while on a mission. Sprinting though was unbelievably slow. Crushingly slow. I don’t know whether they were going for realism or not - considering you are playing a guerrilla resistance fighter rather than a trained soldier - but I could run faster than this and I’m not fighting for my life against some crazy Koreans.

 

Next up I wanted to get hands on with the Elite Controller. The controller looks and feels great and you can tell with the materials used, the finish and the weight, that this is a quality product. I was worried your fingers wouldn’t rest well on the paddles at the back, but they are well placed and you can have as many of them attached or unattached as you like anyway. No regrets on the pre-order from me.

 

I had a quick go on Forza Motorsport 6 while I was at the Xbox booth and if you haven’t already seen it, I recommend downloading the demo, it’s a beautiful game that plays great.

 

Tomb Raider wasn’t in the 18+ area and instead was behind an enclosed section at the Xbox stand, so I couldn’t see it over anyone’s shoulder. A shame, but we know it’ll be a winner anyway. I got to see Need for Speed, albeit from a distance and that is looking very pretty. I’ll definitely be trying out the EA Access trial.

 

Mirror’s Edge queues remained long and I didn’t get to play, but it is looking stunning and the gameplay looks smooth and more varied than the original.

Call of Duty Black Ops III queues were long enough to put me off, but certainly not as long as you’d expect from the once mighty franchise.

The Division was being played on the Xbox One and is looking great, though I still worry that anticipation for this has waned since the reveal blew us all away.

They’d obviously anticipated Battlefront being a big deal and so there was a big screen for people to watch it on, right next to a life-size Tie Fighter. The game looks amazing and I can’t wait to get on the beta (8^th to 12^th October).

 

Towards the end of the day I got to play Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. It looks every bit as visually stunning as we’ve come to expect from the franchise and the climbing mechanics are better than they were in Unity. The threat indicator that encircles your character wasn’t as distracting as I feared and the hand to hand combat is a lot more brutal than we’ve seen in the series before. Really good.

 

I’m glad I went as it was fun to be around it all and see these games in action, but it was a real shame I didn’t get to play more due to the queuing. I’d certainly go again, but I’d try a week day and an “early bird” ticket that gets me in at 9am.

JD's Videogame Awards 2014

It’s time for me to hand out my videogame awards for titles released in 2014.

 

Games like Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and GTA V are not eligible, as they are re-releases.

 

Best Graphics

Assassin’s Creed Unity

 

Best Gameplay

Titanfall

 

Best Story

Watch Dogs

Best Music / Score

Alien: Isolation

 

Best Sound

Alien: Isolation

 

Best Acting

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare

 

Most Innovative

Alien Isolation

 

Best Local Multiplayer

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare

 

Best Online Multiplayer

Titanfall

 

Favourite Game

Titanfall

 

Best Game

Alien Isolation

 

Games on my watchlist for 2015:

Tom Clancy’s The Division

Star Wars Battlefront

Mirror’s Edge

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt

Call of Duty

Battlefield Hardline

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Forza Motorsport 6

NHL 16

Madden NFL 16

Assassin’s Creed

 

What are you looking forward to?

JD's Film Awards 2014

It’s that time again for me to hand out my Film Awards. These are for films released in 2014 and that I saw either in the cinema or on DVD.

 

Best Actor

Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

 

Best Actress

Amy Adams (American Hustle)

 

Best Music / Score

Interstellar

 

Best Sound

Interstellar

 

Best Screenplay

The Wolf of Wall Street

  

Best Story

Two Faces of January

 

Best Special Effects

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

 

Best Director

Richard Linklater (Boyhood)

 

Best Film

Boyhood

I would have liked to have seen Exodus: Gods and Kings and I have a feeling it would have been up there for the Special Effects award if not more. But sadly, I just didn’t get chance.

 

Films on my radar for 2015:

Whiplash

American Sniper

Foxcatcher

The Theory of Everything

Spectre

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens

Fast and Furious 7

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Ant-Man

Terminator: Genisys

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

Big Hero 6

 

What will your next film be?

Come the Revolution: The many troubles of Homefront

Since its release in 2011, I have been a big supporter of Homefront, but it isn’t an IP that has made it easy for you to love.

 

Developed by Kaos Studios and released by THQ in 2011, Homefront is a first-person shooter telling the story of a united Korean republic invading a weakened United States in 2025.

 

The gameplay is your standard shooter fare, though the action is fun and explosive. The campaign is gritty and pushes the boundaries compared to the action movie-esque shenanigans of the likes of Call of Duty.

 

Review-wise the campaign was criticised for being too short. Now I don’t really mind this myself as life is busy and I like games that don’t take forever to get to the point, but at barely 4 hours long, I can see where the critics are coming from.

The multiplayer received the most praise on release and it really is brilliant – or should I say was (more on that shortly).

Large maps, a high player count and with satisfying gameplay the multiplayer, for me at least, was one of the strongest examples on store shelves at the time.

Its primary innovation was the Battle Points system. Traditionally, points earned in multiplayer matches can be used to upgrade your gear and abilities back in the lobby, but Homefront allowed points to be spent during the multiplayer games themselves. After gaining points from kills and capturing objectives, you could then choose to spend these points on the likes of weapons and drones or let them mount up in order to spend on larger assets like helicopters and tanks.

This system made for matches that started out fairly low-key, but by the end were chaotic with armoured vehicles rumbling around the field and choppers harassing your overhead.

 

The multiplayer was not without its problems though. Technical issues plagued the game from the start making partying up with friends almost impossible. These issues were eventually ironed out for the most part, but the game still had poor map rotation, few customization options and some connection issues still lingered.

 

Despite its problems Homefront had a small but loyal following. Not enough for THQ it seemed, as Kaos Studios was closed in June 2011, a mere 3 months after the game’s release. Nevertheless, the publisher announced strong sales for the game and that a sequel would be developed by Crytek UK.

 

Things were left unclear when THQ filed for bankruptcy in December 2012 which finally closed the door on Homefront’s multiplayer outside of private matches.

Crytek bought the rights to the franchise in January for $544,218 and announced they were co-developing Homefront: The Revolution with Deep Silver Studios.

 

Shifting the action from San Francisco, the game will be set two years after the events of Homefront and four years into Korea’s occupation. Following a new uprising in Philadelphia, the game promises to be much less linear than the original, with an open-world design, allowing for random events to occur in the world around you that you can choose to take part in, ignore, or use as distractions to your advantage.

 

Financial problems then hit Crytek with reports of missed wages and bonuses for staff. A number of employees filed grievances against the company and some left entirely – the Homefront director Hasit Zala amongst them.

 

By July 2014 Crytek had to admit to being in a “transitional phase” of restructuring which ultimately led to the Homefront property being sold to Koch Media, Deep Silver’s parent company.

 

Homefront: the Revolution would now be solely in the hands of Deep Silver Studios, though under British transfer laws, all Crytek UK employees would be moved over also, giving some cohesiveness to the project and the vision of the game.

 

Looking at the breakdown of the game on console I have concerns that the multiplayer aspect currently reads “co-op” only. Surely they haven’t ditched the strongest element of the original game have they?

Considering this franchise’s turbulent history, nothing would surprise me at this point – except maybe the game getting a release date. At the time of writing, Homefront: The Revolution has no clear release window beyond “TBA 2015”.

 

Pre-orders are still being taken at retailers, however, so for those of us who have supported the property since 2011 and have campaigned and clamoured for its return – there is still hope.

 

Home is where the war is.

Slide....

I couldn't sleep. I lay there staring at the ceiling, listening to the house cool and settle. Something was bothering me and I knew what it was. I reached for the bedside table, grabbed my phone and without hesitation, deleted two apps....

I’m not sure exactly when it started, but it’s been growing for a while. Whenever I took my phone from my pocket or reached over to check it at work, there’d be a tiny pin prick of annoyance somewhere inside my head. A little niggle of frustration.
This feeling made me notice a few things about myself. How I’d take my phone with me to another room of the house if I was planning on spending some time in there, eg. from the kitchen while we were in there eating, to the Xbox while I’m playing games, to the lounge while I’m watching TV. How, whenever I found myself waiting for anything - in a queue, on a train platform, in a Doctors’ waiting room - I’d whip out the phone and be staring zombie-like into it until my train arrived or my name was called.

And I noticed the people around me doing the same. Every other person looking down at their phone. We used to watch the world go by, now it’s going by without us.
People come round to visit and ask for your wi-fi password and I’m not judging, because I’ve done the same. Everyone sat around the tv, a phone or tablet under-lighting their faces a pale deathly blue.

These devices are sold to us in adverts that show how full and joyous life can be with beautiful people and euphoric anthems. The reality is hunched over in the dark trying to get past level 312 on Candy Crush.

"The things you own end up owning you."

As these thoughts and observations grew in me and began to fester, several things happened that just hammered the point home.

The Look Up video was released. 

Parody it all you want on YouTube, if you don’t see yourself somewhere in this video, you’re probably lying or you have a bigger problem than you thought - one you can’t see.

Then this one - sincere and hitting all the right buttons.

Passenger - the great sing/songwriter Mike Rosenberg - released Scare Away the Dark with the line: “We should stare at the stars and not just at screens.”

The main character in my film of the year, Boyhood talks about the subject of phones and social media taking over our lives and experiences.

All these things clarified what I had already been feeling. They gave coherent words to my babbling thoughts.

So; what’s to be done about it? It isn’t my place of course to try to change anyone else, so these are just a few things I've come up with for myself.

One way would just be to ditch the phone and social media accounts, but here’s the thing - I’m not going all Tyler Durden on you here. This isn’t a tirade on technology. Technology is good. I enjoy talking about card games with a select few on Twitter and I enjoy sharing trailers and discussion on the videogame page I’ve created on Facebook. These things are not inherently bad; I just think we need to take a step back a bit. I don’t need the immediacy of Twitter news. I don’t need to know right then and there that a friend has announced something on their status. These things will wait. I’ll catch up.

I often check my phone for messages because I don’t like being late. I don’t like the idea that anyone is waiting on me to get back to them. I just need somehow to relax a little and realise that if it was urgent, if they needed an answer right away, they’d call.

So this is what I’m trying out:

I’ve deleted the Facebook and Twitter apps from my phone.
I have also deleted the app for an Xbox forum  I am a member of.
I found when at times I didn’t have a good enough mobile Internet reception to use Facebook or Twitter, I would look through my photos. So I am going to back these up on my computer and take them off the phone.

I will take 10 - 15 minutes each evening to open my tablet or laptop and check Facebook, Twitter, the Xbox Forum, my YouTube subscriptions and other websites to catch up on any news I’ve missed or things I might be interested in. Then it gets switched off.

I have set my text message tone to repeat 3 times if I don’t hear it the first time, so that I don’t feel inclined to keep checking my phone whenever I pass it.

At work, my phone is switched off. I will make sure that anyone who might need to get in touch with me urgently at work, has the details to do so.

When I’m at home, the phone gets put down somewhere and stays there until being used as an alarm for the morning.

When I’m leaving the house for something other than work, I’ll decide whether I need my phone. If I’m out with my fiancée somewhere we’re not likely to separate, I could simply ask my parent’s to call her if they need to reach me in a hurry.

Those are the ideas I’ve come up with so far and I’ll update you with how it goes and whether they’re enough, or whether I just need to dig out the Nokia 3310 and throw the “smart” phone in the bin.

He shoots! He scores! - Review: NHL 15

I was there. At the beginning. EA Hockey on the Sega Megadrive, 1991. Sure, there have been gaps since then. I got the follow-up, NHLPA ’93, but didn’t get another until NHL 2000 on the Playstation and then it was 2004 on the PS2. Being a fantastic game, it suited me just fine until a new console and the next big step up for the series in NHL 07. From then, I haven’t missed an entry.

There have been misteps along the way for sure. In NHL 08, while spoken of with reverence by myself and friends, it was - if we’re honest - a little too easy to score. NHL 09 went totally in the other direction, making it incredibly hard to hit the back of the net. NHL 10 balanced things out, but then 11 and 12 could be accused of treading water. But for the most part, EA’s NHL series has been an awesome ride through the years and NHL 13 and 14 came along and perfected the formula - Truly great hockey games and amongst the best sports games on the market.

With the arrival of new consoles I was particularly looking forward to NHL 15. Every year as a new entry in the series approaches, my mates and I always say “they’ll never beat this year’s.” But they always do.
Will we be able to say that next year before NHL 16 is released? Probably not actually, but that isn’t to say NHL 15 isn’t great. Let’s get into it….

Visuals:
NHL 13 and 14 looked the business, but the last gen consoles could only take things so far. NHL 15 is perhaps not the biggest jump visually as you might expect, at least not at first glance. But once you pay attention to the details, you’ll appreciate a lot more. On the ice the player’s faces look better than ever, more life-like and expressive. Around the rink you’ll see Ray Ferraro in his booth, TV crews and cameramen. Further back, a lot of attention has been paid to the arenas this year. They all look very distinctive and, I’m sure, as identical to their real-life counterparts as they could get. 

There are now over 9000 individual crowd models, which makes repetition hard to spot and the folks in the seats are animated and individual. You’ll see people in outfits for their team trying to get the crowd fired up; some fans remain seated even when their team scores; they bang on the glass when your players are against it fighting for the puck; they taunt visiting team players in the penalty box; you’ll find away fans dotted around the arena or grouped together in the cheap seats; security staff stand at the exits.

Gameplay:
When they switched fighting back to third person in NHL 14, that was it for me - there was nothing more I could think of that needed tweaking for gameplay - and NHL 15 hasn’t done a great deal. And that’s fine, because it plays like a dream. 

Commentary/Broadcast presentation:
The commentary has been a real sticking point for the series for some years now. They’ve basically been phoning it in each year. When they announced a deal with NBC and a whole new broadcast presentation and commentary team for NHL 15, I was excited to see the difference.

I don’t think the commentary is as good as it could have been, but as a whole, I’m enjoying the presentation.
Before each game you get a video of the home team’s stadium or city and then Mike Emrick and Ed Olczyk appear to open the broadcast. Their comments are quite generic, but as they are actually on camera at this point, you can understand it in this case. To their credit, some of the scenes do mention the home team and are specific to the city.
On the Ice, the commentators will talk about the starting goalies and any players to watch out for and when playing a season, Olczyk will often comment on a team’s progress so far.

The actual play by play is…..sufficient. It’s lively enough and does the job, but there are too many generic statements - “the player did this..” “he hit the opposing player…” and so on. Some of the statements are laughable: “We now have a scoreline other than zero-zero.” What?

I like the new broadcast presentation and I like the commentary team, but I think a lot of that comes from the fact we’ve had it the same for so long, so any change would have been welcome. When you play 2K’s NBA or baseball games, the commentary is truly remarkable - conversational and so varied you simply don’t notice any repetition. EA Sports have done a good job with NHL 15, but they aren’t quite there yet. The problem is, if the past is anything to go by, this will be the default commentary now for a good few years, so don’t expect much change next year.

Features:
Here’s the area responsible for some low review scores. As we approached release day, EA Sports admitted that some features would not be available in this year’s game. Strangely, some of the features would still be there in the last-gen versions, which puzzled everyone. EASHL is out, as is GM Connected and Be-A-Pro’s Live the Life, while continuing on last-gen versions, are not on the PS4 or Xbox One, leaving a very stripped down mode without even coach feedback or the ability to sim to your next shift.

Since launch, EA have added coach feedback back into to Be-A-Pro, 3 stars to the in-game menu, online play where every player on the ice can be user-controlled and other features, but for many, the fact that some fundamental options weren’t there to begin with has been jarring.

Personally, I didn’t play EASHL or GM Connected, so I wasn’t bothered by its absence and I don’t mind developers adding things post-launch, providing the core experience I came to the dance for is present, correct and awesome - which in NHL 15, it is.

The move to new consoles was bound to be a bumpy ride, but NHL 15 has far from derailed the series. If you want a realistic sports game that plays brilliantly and looks great, NHL 15 comes highly recommended.
All EA Sports has to do for NHL 16 is add a few bells and whistles and it’ll be back into everyone’s good graces.