No really, Dean Ambrose Vs Dolph Ziggler is a HORRIBLE match for Summerslam

So the first two weekly shows of the "New Era" are in the bag. Raw was pretty good, a little lazy in some places but there were good matches and more importantly it was fantastically paces making it one of the breeziest 3 hour Raw episodes ever. With the Monday show getting a big tick from most fans all eyes were on the now live Smackdown the next night to keep up the momentum and...sadly it wasn't very good.

WWE kept up their trend of boring debuts and call ups by having a conga line of women on the roster show up one by one and introduce themselves in about 15 seconds so none of them make an impression. Randy Orton continues to be in funny dad mode which is the worst form of Orton imaginable to put in the ring with Brock Lesnar, then his match with Miz was thrown out after 30 seconds when he took an awkward bump on the apron with his injured shoulder while getting tossed out between the ropes (of course, with the show being live they still had to fill time so Orton had to charge up the beefiest, not-outta-nowhere-at-all RKO for about two minutes to finish Miz off). And once again, the so called "creative" teams of WWE couldn't come up with anything more compelling to kickstart a title scene than throwing a bunch of dudes in the ring at once with a miss-and-hit battle royal and a boring six man pack challenge to decide Dean Ambrose's first challenger of the new roster for Summerslam.

The participants were John Cena, AJ Styles, Dolph Ziggler, Baron Corbin, Apollo Crews and Bray Wyatt. Cena and Styles are almost certainly going to have another match at Summerslam so they're out, Crews and Corbin may not be considered ready for this opportunity just yet, god knows what WWE are ever planning with Bray Wyatt so that leaves us with...oh no...

Dolph Ziggler.

Dolph. Ziggler.

Dolph Ziggler is competing for the WWE Championship at Summerslam.

I would like to say the reaction to this has been mixed but I'm not so sure about that. Some people are excited and others less so but the underlying response from most fans has been confusion. Maybe WWE will live to regret putting Finn Balor over Roman Reigns on his first night and sending him after the title immediately, especially if he's going to lose, but whether it works or not it's definitely an inspired choice that feels like a statement about the future of the brand. Ziggler on the other hand comes off as completely random.

After being initially annoyed at confused by Ziggler's win on the night, since then I've been playing this match in my night again and again and 48 hours later I am willing to stamp my snark onto the internet and declare this to be a TERRIBLE decision. At best, it's a waste of time for everyone involved, at worst it'll undermine the brand split, Smackdown, the championship and both participants at next year's Wrestlemania when the Smackdown title match is back to a midcard spot like the old days we'll look back on this as one of WWE's worst decisions of the year.

So what's wrong with it? Well first things first it's not a very interesting matchup where the strengths of both guys work against each other. Ambrose is only one month into his title reign, a title reign a lot of people were starting to think would never happen, it's viewed as a "glass ceiling" breaking moment by a lot of fans. If you want to make a statement about Dean Ambrose being the top dog of the newly established Smackdown roster the last thing you want to do is have his first challenger be a guy with zero momentum who has also been bouncing his head off the glass ceiling over the years, ESPECIALLY when it's a guy Ambose has already wrestled and beaten multiple times on free television this year. Since Dean Ambrose has not been cemented as a main event mainstay yet, this only drags him (and therefore the championship) down to Ziggler's level and not the other way round.

Then there's the age old issue of babyface vs babyface encounters being fundamentally the most boring matches. They can work when it's two top guys who rarely ever touch, or two incredibly popular guys who are the polar opposite of each other like John Cena Vs Daniel Bryan so there's still an interesting conflict without making either one a jerk, but Ambrose Vs Ziggler is a match we've seen plenty of times before and it's not exactly a clash of the titans. Not to mention, both are at their best when they're making emotional scrappy comebacks, but neither are prone to dominate matches so drawing people in to care about a match at this level is going to be an uphill climb at best. 

People will point out that the match itself will be pretty good, and yea it probably will be if pure craft is enough for you to enjoy a wrestling match (disclaimer: it's usually not for me), but who cares! There's good matches on free television pretty much every week now! Sure, it's good for a Pay-Per-View card to have some matches on the card where you know the guys are going to go out there and put on a good show, but traditionally we like to call those talents "midcarders". Still, as Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens just proved at Battleground, even those matches work much better when there's an interesting conflict. Forgetting the quality of the actual match though, I'd like to remind all of you that WWE have just performed a brand split and have established Smackdown as a live show on Tuesday with its own roster, and what is god's name is supposed to draw us into watching Smackdown with Ziggler Vs Ambrose? I can't wait for weeks of "I respect you but I'M GONNA FIGHT YOU FOR THIS" promos, maybe they'll even tag together against some heels and Ziggler will superkick him by accident! CAN'T WAIT MATE.

You may argue that the match was only announced recently and I shouldn't judge a storyline that hasn't got going yet, but no matter what they pull out I don't see how they can make this interesting. Dolph Ziggler has no momentum right now, he's done nothing of note this year other than a horrible feud with Baron Corbin and a completely forgettable Intercontinental title feud with Kevin Owens (you forgot about that until now didn't you? C'mon, be honest, you did). Ziggler also happens to be one of the worst babyfaces on the roster, it's not necessarily his fault but he's a guy who calls himself the Show Off and brags about how good he is and consistently loses in 5 minute matches on television. He's constantly made to look like a complete goof and a complete goof isn't exactly a compelling matchup for Ambrose's "unpredictable wildman" shtick. 

You might say they'll try to make Ziggler look more credible over the coming weeks, and I'll assume you having been watching wrestling very long. Seriously, in the dead talent pool years of 2009-2012 WWE tried this ALL THE TIME. They were so desperate for new stars they would take midcard guys and give them big wins or feuds out of nowhere (Legacy Vs DX, Wade Barrett Vs Randy Orton, Alex Riley Vs The Miz, R-Truth Vs Cena, Del Rio Vs Edge, Ziggler Vs lots of people, Jack Swagger's World Heavyweight Championship win (that title NEVER removed from that) and the list goes on and on) and it NEVER WORKED. WWE would get one or two low rated Pay-Per-Views out of them and then they'd flop back down to their midcard void within months.

Then there's the positioning of the match on the Summerslam card as a whole. The only justification for WWE going for an unconventional choice is they're figuring Orton Vs Lesnar, Finn Vs Seth and probably Cena Vs AJ are going to be the three top matches on the show and they have no need for a fourth main event worthy match. Once again, the obvious point there is IT'S NOT A MAIN EVENT WORTHY MATCH, which would be okay if Dean Ambrose's title reign hadn't only just begun on top of a brand new roster. But even if the thinking is the WWE title match doesn't matter wasting this slot on a currently irrelevant Ziggler is still a missed opportunity. Honestly, any one of the five other men in the six pack challenge would have been a better option, even Crews or Corbin. 

Imagine Ambrose Vs Corbin; it would have been a fresh interesting match, it wouldn't have taken shine away from the other top matches, it's a good contrast to Raw's main event, Corbin's and Ambrose's personalities would have clashed instantly, the match itself would let Corbin look strong while letting Ambrose do all his antics and establish himself as a fighting champion against a major physical threat, and it still would have kept in line with WWE's message of giving new talent opportunities. Whereas Dolph Ziggler Vs Dean Ambrose is a 3 and a half star match where the fans will chant "This is Awesome" because one of them will kick out of a finisher. Again, CAN'T WAIT MATE.

I suppose this match could potentially be justified if the endgame is to have one of them turn heel, Ambrose is arguably more interesting as a heel and Ziggler's needed a character shakeup for a while, but again this doesn't feel like the venue for it. The timing's not great for Ambrose right now and Ziggler's not a big enough deal for a turn against him to have the required impact, and the fact Ziggler's not a big enough deal means if he is going to turn heel he has no business doing it in a WWE championship match. Even then, I can only see that heel turn working if he screws over Ambrose and wins the title, the two problems with that are 1) it involves putting the title on him (*shudder*) and 2) too many people would be genuinely excited for that to happen regardless of how it happens that it wouldn't work as a heel turn anyway. This is just one of the many reasons why pairing two "glass ceiling" guys up with each other right away is not a very good idea.

My final objection to this match stems from my biggest fear regarding this "New Era" in general. As genuinely intriguing as it was, I was concerned that Finn showing up on Raw, winning two matches including a clean win over Reigns to become No 1 Contender on his first night was blatant pandering to the vocal minority of the audience. With Smackdown pulling something similar with Ziggler the following night, I can't help but feel these two moves are a calculated attempt to get people screaming on Twitter for the sake of that sweet sweet social media traction baby. I worry that either this is a completely empty gesture to appease these people, or WWE are actually going with this and the show might start to suck real hard, and I fear if the show does start to suck real hard they'll blame these talents rather than their own lack of compelling storytelling.

In closing, I'm going to intentionally be a huge jerk for a paragraph or two. Hey wrestling fans, could you please get over yourselves just a little? Can you stop praising bad creative decisions because you perceive someone you like might be getting "pushed" or put "over" someone you don't like? Can you stop going nuts for matches where dudes pull out a couple of flashy moves in a row when there's zero reason to care about anything that's happening? If you're going to constantly be critical of "booking", can you at least remember that wrestling is an ongoing soap opera where talents need to have long term appeal and storylines need to remain functional for months, and not judge the writing entirely on a gut reaction to what is immediately in front of you? 

I'm so tired of people freaking out, positively or negatively, to a main event talent beating a midcarder clean or vice versa. WWE is a business, these matches do not take place in a vacuum, if Kalisto beat John Cena clean in the second match of Smackdown next week it wouldn't be compelling or interesting or excited it would be flat out bad business, and if you consider that comment to be a knock against Kalisto or his talent please call up your local government immediately and renounce your right to internet access. It was only a couple of years ago we were all hanging off the edge of our seats following the rise of Daniel Bryan, caring about everything he went through and hoping he would success. People used to care about wrestling, these performers and these stories used to mean something. Now, apparently it's "good enough" if WWE flops together a random meaningless title match as long as the guys in it are """getting a push""".

Sadly, Dean Ambrose Vs Dolph Ziggler may as well be taking place in a vacuum for all the intrigue it has, and I'm sorry but the fact it will be a "good match" at the potential expense of the talent, brand and credibility of the title is simply not good enough.

Raw Recap 20th June, 2016 - Welcome to the Asylum

After an amount of weeks I can't be bothered to look up break, the Raw Recap has returned! 

The show starts with the NEW WWE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION Dean Ambrose arriving at the arena and almost leaving the belt in his taxi. I fear that might be a less embarrassing way for him to lose the title than what they'll actually come up with.

Segment #1 - Dean Ambrose Opening Promo

I'm happy for Dean but it still feels like they missed their window of opportunity on this guy. Winning the title after Brock ate all his momentum and a feud with Dadicho that never got as heated as it needed to doesn't feel like best case scenario but at least they haven't left him to die as I feared. The crowd claws itself towards a "You Deserve It!" chant and gets there eventually. 

I don't know if there's ever been a Raw where I didn't complain about the opening segment being lazy but they have to be more creative than this when big angles go down. For over a year JBL has been screaming on commentary "Maggle can you imagine WHAT WOULD HAPPEN if that LUNATIC ended up with the WWE title?" and the night after he actually wins it...Raw starts the same way it always done with Ambrose cutting an in-ring promo for no apparent reason.

Ambrose celebrates his victory, Robo Reigns comes out and says last night was Ambrose's night and congratulates him. Ambrose says he would have cashed him on Roman, but the crowd doesn't care about that because they're too busy chanting "You Can't Wrestle!" at Roman. Seth storms down to the ring and says Ambrose stole the title and Roman needs to go to the back. Shane comes out and makes a match between Seth Vs Roman for the No 1 Contendership, Seth says he already beat Roman and has nothing to prove, he's got a point! Maybe Seth shouldn't have beaten Roman clean last night!

Segment #2 - Sami Zayn Vs Kevin Owens

I hope these guys get drafted to separate brands, it was logical for them to feud when they both made it to the main roster but we're getting into Dark Knight "destined to do this forever" territory now. Owens limps down to the ring but the announcers don't feel like the Michinoku Driver Zayn gave to him on the ladder is worth mentioning. 

It's hard to imagine these guys having a bad match but they're not given much time for this one. Zayn counters a Pop-Up Powerbomb attempt into a victory roll and gets a surprise pinfall. After the match KO tries to powerbomb Zayn off the stage but Zayn fights him off until referees break it up. I'm guessing they'll have a blow off match at the next Pay-Per-View and then head to separate brands.

After the commercial break Zayn and Owens are still brawling backstage, no amount of referees or security can keep them apart until Finlay gets involved. 

Segment #3 - John Laurinatis Promo

As part of the running gag of all the former General Managers coming back to promote the upcoming draft Mr Excitement himself shows up. For some reason JBL is really excited to see him even though he wasn't on the show when Johnny was around. I'll give Laurinatis credit I genuinely can't tell whether he's horrible on purpose any more, his run as Raw GM always felt like a backstage rib that got out of control. Shane McMahon interrupts him and says Johnny isn't going to run Smackdown because he is. SAWFT come out and Shane passes the torch of goofy entrance walk to Enzo. 

Segment #4 - SAWFT Vs Vaudevillains 

This seems like a throwaway match to have on Raw with no fanfare, but that seems to be a running theme for this show. It's as routine as you can get too, Enzo gets beaten up for two minutes, gets a "hot" tag and Cass instantly wins the match. I'm a big fan of their tag team finisher too where the little guy does a splash and the big guy pats him on the back on the way down in a "yayyyyyyy I'M HELPING" sort of way.

Segment #5 - The Club promo

AJ Styles talks about his tainted victory over Cena and how he should feel better about it, he calls out Anderson and Gallows for a public apology for their involvement. Anderson and Gallows comply but its obvious all three of them are taking the piss. A decade ago AJ was a short haired good Christian boy with no personality, it's kind of impressive how good he's got at being a dick. AJ says they also need to apologise to Cena who comes out on the ramp and says AJ broke the contract he signed where there would be no Club in the match.

The Club stick to their BS story, I love how Cena is more pissed off that AJ doesn't have any respect for THE WRESTLING than he is at what AJ did to him. AJ says Cena has wrestle anyone from the Club tonight, Cena's VENGEANCE BONER kicks in and he storms down to the ring wanting AJ, but AJ excludes himself. AJ says Anderson can beat Cena by himself so he and Gallows leave ringside.

Segment #6 - John Cena Vs Karl Anderson

This Raw probably has too much going on for its own good, but considering a couple of years ago your average three hour Raw had about 20 minutes of entertainment on it it's not the worst problem to have. The good news is WWE don't actually waste a match between Anderson and Cena on a random Raw, the bad news is Cena makes Anderson look like an absolute chump until Gallows and AJ interfere and start beating him down. The Club hit a Magic Killer and a Styles Clash on Cena and Byron gets really angsty about it on commentary.

Seth says he'll beat Roman. Yup.

Becky is interviewed about how another friend turned on her. Don't bother with them Becky! Keep your socialising on Twitter when you can be distant and in control. Natalya attacks her from behind.

Segment #7 - Baron Corbin Vs Zack Ryder

Baron does one of the oldest heel tricks ever; pretending to have an eye injury so he can get a cheap shot, and the announcers seem utterly confused by it. For a 20 year announcing veteran and a former wrestler Cole and Byron do really good impression of people who have never seen wrestling before every week. It's a competitive match but that's about all Zack Ryder can hope for, after a couple of minutes Baron hits End of Days for the win.

Segment #8 - WOMEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP - Charlotte Vs Paige

Michael Cole starts calling the match as soon as the bell rings for the pre-championship match introductions, again, the impression is FLAWLESS. A minute into the match Dana Brooke pulls Charlotte out of Paige's grip right in front of the referee, then gets involved to give Charlotte an obvious advantage but doesn't get removed from ringside. For god's sake, last week Owens broke up a pinfall in a tag match and dragged his partner to the corner and tagged himself off, and now this, enforce your rules you chumps. 

Charlotte hits a moonsault on Paige and looks about ready to cry when she kicks out. After a brief exchange Paige hits the Rampaige near the ropes. Dana grabs Charlotte's foot and puts it on the rope, but she screws it up and ends up having to grapple the foot on the rope right in the front of the referee. Some awkwardness occurs, the ref throws Dana out while the FINISH is happening probably due to Vince screams in his ear and Charlotte wins. An okay match ruined by two really bad spots. I don't want to knock her personally but I do not understand why Dana Brooke is on the main roster, and any more gaffs like these she won't be around for too much longer.

After the match Charlotte and Dana beat down Paige, Sasha's music hits and she fights them off with Paige. Sasha holds up the women's title to Yes! chants.

Reigns does a terrible promo, the Wyatts show up for the first time in months...again...with little fanfare.

Segment #9 - Wyatt Family and New Day promo

The crowd is pumped to see the Wyatts, it doesn't take long for Bray to get interrupted by the New Day...for no real reason. Xavier locks eyes with Bray and gets caught in a trance, no idea what that's about. I can't say I'm not interested in this feud but WWE do crap like this all the time and it's the worst way to start a feud. It's like New Day checked the script and saw they were feuding with the Wyatts next so came out to declare their intention to start a feud. 

I'm guessing either one or both of these teams are getting broken up in the draft, or they'll end up on different shows and WWE don't want to miss their opportunity to do this so they're rushing into it. And let's face it, don't all good wrestling storylines start off like that?

No?

Another Backlund and Darren Young promo air, the fact WWE are playing these on Smackdown first makes me think they might not have that much faith in them. 

Segment #10 - Rusev Vs Titus O'Neil

God there is too much too fast on this show, we're still only three quarters of the way through it and I'm already burnt out. Now we go from a Lana introduction for Rusev, an entrance, then cut back to Renee Young to interview Titus, and now we have another rematch from a Pay-Per-View on the show.

Rusev plays some mind games running at Titus while he tries to get in the ring. Then a big beefy brawl breaks out before a bell rings. It's a clash of ideologies, the Ultimate American Dad Vs the Bulgarian who rejects the capitalist construct of "Dad". It's not exactly pretty or well coordinated but it's accompanied with a lot sweaty man flesh slaps. Rusev runs away after getting thrown over the guard rail.

Michael Cole talks about the draft on the first live Smackdown, he claims it brings up an interesting question, WHAT IF THE MIZ AND MARYSE WERE SPLIT UP? Yea that's clearly what's on everyone's mind. It's just an awkward segue into another Miz Facebook video from the set of the Marine 5. Y'know I like Miz with the title but if there's one guy on the roster who shouldn't disappear from the roster for weeks to record a movie it's the INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPION.

Dadicho gets in Shane McMahon's face backstage, he claims Shane didn't make him the No 1 Contender because he doesn't like him. He says he hopes he doesn't get drafted to the show Shane will run, Shane says he's gonna run both. Dadicho pulls a dad face.

Segment #11 - NO 1 CONTENDERSHIP - Seth Rollins Vs Roman Reigns

Deano the Dude is on commentary, Seth Rollins is a grump, Roman Reigns is met with "You Can't Wrestle!" "Yes He Can!" dueling chants, which isn't quite as impressive as "Let's Go Cena!" "Cena Sucks!" Dean gets much more intense whenever he thinks about either man trying to take his title around. Intense Ambrose is so much better than Kooky Ambrose and I hope he finds a better balance as this story builds.

This is Seth's first match on Raw since his injury, and this is Roman's first main event segment on Raw in I don't even know how long, it's kind of strange how little he was featured on the show while he was champion. The match itself is a strong performance by both men but I still think it's kind of scummy to do Pay-Per-View rematches on free TV the night after, especially one you promoted as WRESTLEMANIA MAIN EVENT WORTHY. 

Roman spears Rollins over the announce table and both men fail to make it back into the ring for a double count out. Shane McMahon says THAT'S NOT HOW WE DO IT, Dean says he'll just fight them both at Battleground, Shane makes a triple threat and that's that. Dean hits Dirty Deeds on Roman and Seth. If they continue this trend of Ambrose getting even nuttier whenever his title is threatened this could be a really great development for his character.

We're getting the Shield main event at Battleground, so god knows what they'll do for Summerslam, but no way these three guys will all end up on the same show so fair's fair.

Closing Thoughts

This is the kind of Raw that's mostly exhausting to watch. There were good things on it but outside of the main event very little of them were given time to breathe or mean anything. I'd expect the show to feel like this for the next couple of weeks, a lot of stuff is getting rushed together before the draft changes everything. Slightly too much happening is better than nothing happening.

RATING: Thumbs up and thumbs down I'LL TAKE EM BOTH

Raw Recap 23rd May, 2016 - Redesign, Rebuild, Reclaim

Just like Seth Rollins I have rushed back from injury to bring you the return of the RAW RECAP, let's get back into this jam:

Segment #1 - Seth Rollins promo

Rollins comes out covered in Mark Henry sweat to an overwhelming hero's welcome. He looks like he's going to play it up at first but quickly slides back into his old role and says the fans have never supported him and he doesn't need them...and he actually manages to get a heel reaction from it! When I first saw Seth as Tyler Black in Ring of Honor he could barely cut a promo at all, it's ridiculous how much he's improved over the course of his WWE run. He's that rare talent who is already world class but just won't stop getting even better.

Reigns comes down the ramp, Rollins takes off his jacket and looks ready to fight but bails when Reigns comes into the ring. Shane O'Mac comes down, gets a pop for no reason as usual, panders to the crowd then proceeds to recite the script like he's reading it off an imaginary autocue. Shane makes Reigns Vs Rollins for the title at Money In The Bank, good to get that set up early, Reigns holds up the title and gets booed. 

Sheamus is interviewed about his Money in the Bank qualifying match against Sami Zayn later on. Literally nothing to say about this so I'll go with "can you believe Sheamus was the WWE Champion six months ago???"

Segment #2 - MITB Qualifier - Sheamus Vs Sami Zayn

The crowd singing along with Zayn's music is one of my favourite parts of the show now and they keep cutting his entrances short, sad times. They also put the two gingers together in a qualifying match so they don't risk both of them getting in, bloody typical. 

Zayn's great because he's such an emotional performer even when he's fighting guys way bigger than him he can fire up with lariats and Michinoku drivers and you still believe it. He gets a clean win off Sheamus in a short but pretty good match, the announcers make a big deal about how he won Money in the Bank last year but didn't even qualify this year, which is the only reason he was involved at all.

Apollo Crews is interviewed about his qualifying match with Jericho, an angry Sheamus attacks him from behind and throws him around the backstage area. Apollo's already starting to float, not even getting consistent squash matches on television so at least he's getting into some kind of real feud.

Segment #3 - The New Day Vs Social Outcasts

New Day celebrate Raw's "birthday" because it's the 1200th episode and taunt the front row and announcers with a cake spot. Then the mercifully still together but Rose-less Social Outcasts attack them from behind. I was worried Heath Slater was going to lose another batch of companions like a rock n' roll Doctor Who.

There's a commercial break between the attack and the start of the match which is odd as it's basically a squash with New Day going over after about two minutes. Heath takes a bump into the cake, which is fair enough but seemed to be done for its own sake (hey they rhymed!) It's like Vince said "DAMMIT, cake spots are the funniest and we haven't done one in ages...where's Cody when you need him".

Segment #4 - MITB Qualifier - Cesaro Vs The Miz

Mike "Money" Mizanin and Maryse cut a promo about how he survived the fatal four way match at Extreme Rules, how he's on the roll of his life and he's going to win the Money in the Bank contract too. 

"Cesaro had the Miz tapping out but the referee didn't see it because of the CHAOS IN A FATAL FOUR WAY MATCH" You mean Maryse got dragged into the ring and distracted the referee? That seems worth mentioning!

Cesaro starts off the match with a huge flurry of offense, one problem with Cesaro is everything he does is so awesome it starts to become absurd that he hasn't already won...especially when he's in there with someone as "beatable" as The Miz. Miz manages to make a comeback by targeting Cesaro's shoulder...which he actually sells through the whole match even when he's back on offense and it actually affects how the match ends! Thanks Cesaro! Hope you uppercut a ladder in the MITB match.

Seth is interviewed backstage about his title match, he sees Stephanie and tries to greet her with a hug but she blows him off. Seth's relationship with the Authority was always so confusing I genuinely can't remember if they were getting along when he got hurt anyway.

Segment #5 - MITB Qualifier - Chris Jericho Vs Apollo Crews

Chris Jericho comes out with a major case of grump face and covered with tack holes, Apollo comes out smiley and jumping around and same as ever despite being attacked by Sheamus about an hour ago. I don't know whether to blame Apollo or the agents for this but this is absolutely absurd, why do angles if they're not going to mean anything. Then we cut to Sheamus watching the match on television, because for some reason he's really invested in some guy he attacked randomly in a hissy fit.

There wasn't that much to the match, the crowd mostly didn't care outside of some tepid duelling chants. The fact Apollo wasn't bothering to sell his attack from Sheamus and Jericho was visibly covered in wounds did Apollo no favours. There's an awkward spot near the end where Apollo kips up as Jericho goes for a lionsault and I think Crews was supposed to catch him but got kicked in the head instead. Whatever the finish was supposed to be, it probably wasn't an improvised Codebreaker out of nowhere.

This was bad, I'm genuinely baffled at what they were going for with it, the referee was talking to Apollo a lot during the match so it's possible Vince was going nuts on the headset. Jericho beats Apollo clean in a sloppy match where the beat up old man beat the star of tomorrow.

Another Darren Young and Bob Backlund promo airs, still don't get it.

Baron Corbin is interviewed by a nine year old girl. He gets heat with me because he says "he could care less" about what people think, which means he totally does care. Dolph Ziggler shows up and tries to be funny, Baron accepts another match for literally no reason...for NEXT WEEK. This feud has already gone on longer than it should of and now Corbin's 2-1 up why is this still going. 

Segment #6 - Big Cass Vs Bubba Ray Dudley

Big Cass comes out alone, then stops on the ramp to call out Enzo, who gets a nice pop as he runs around the set throwing his mic around. They milk their opening promo a little too much, Enzo sometimes waits for the crowd too much, Cass still looks slightly terrified.

This feud's got an uphill battle considering Cass has been beating up the Dudleys by himself without Enzo's help the past few weeks anyway. There's not much to the match, Cass doesn't feel ready for prime time as far as his singles matches go. Enzo gets a few licks on D-Von, Cass beats Bubba.

Segment #7 - State of the Women's Championship Address

It's fine when someone is being interviewed or addressing the public for whatever reason, but I cannot stand it when performers go down to the ring to act out a high school play in front of a crowd for no reason. Charlotte is getting better at promos, and Ric Flair is an all time great, but that doesn't mean either of them are good actors. 

The Flairs give their life stories, then Charlotte tells Flair to get out of her ring and tears into her dad. It gets better as it goes along when Ric turns on the waterworks and Charlotte starts to get into her groove. Charlotte says Ric is dead to her, forces him to leave the ring and even sings the Na Na Na song. This was cartoonish and came out of nowhere, but the Flairs put their all into it and got something out of this, Charlotte needed to get away from Ric at some point and there were worse ways to do it than this I suppose.

Segment #8 - MITB Qualifier - Dolph Ziggler Vs Dean Ambrose

This is one of those weird situations where you know the match is probably going to be pretty good but...who cares, the finish is obvious, we know exactly how this will go, we'll forget by the time the show ends. Ziggler might be able to put on a show on a good day but having zero momentum is a hard hurdle to overcome. 

It's a decent little match, Dean Ambrose beats Dolph as clean as you can get with Dirty Deeds with few near falls in between. Ambrose is my personal pick for winning the actual ladder match too.

Renee tries to get a word with Ric Flair as he leaves the arena but he's sad.

The Shining Stars cut a promo and I've seen better green screen effects in Byte Control.

Segment #9 - MITB Qualifier - AJ Styles Vs Kevin Owens

Before the match AJ cuts a promo on Roman Reigns and says he's one of the better men he's ever been in the ring with (and gets booed). AJ says could have had Reigns beat if it wasn't for dudes getting involved in the match. Notch lookalikes Anderson and Gallows are offended by that comment and come out to say that AJ has changed. AJ says that he wants to stay friends but professionally they need to separate. Fans want to see Bullet Club so that gets him booed too, should have thought this out more WWE!

There's a commercial break, WWE announce a Cesaro Vs Miz Intercontinental title match for Smackdown because Cesaro beat the champion, nice! Also Kalisto's US title rematch is on Smackdown this week too, I fear that might just to be to get his rematch out of the way before Cena comes back.

Kevin Owens finally hits the ring and he must have been waiting in the Gorilla position for about ten minutes while all this was going on. As much as I love seeing these guys work together it seems odd they keep throwing this away on Raw. There's a great spot early on where AJ misses his leapfrog dropkick and Owens sarcastically applauds him and then eats it anyway. Owens is getting better at getting his entertaining dickishness in without making his opponents look bad.

Another match where I couldn't stop thinking about how the "New Era" needs to include a new announce team, there was a point in the second half of the match where they weren't even trying to call moves. 

*move* "oOOOOOOOOOOO!" "how did he kick out of that!" *awkward silence*

Owens powerbombs AJ onto the steel steps, which isn't a DQ for some reason but it leads into the finish. AJ tries to make another comeback but Owens finishes him off with a Pop Up Powerbomb. A great main event for Raw, and the announcer got one thing right and kept talking about how beat up AJ must be from Extreme Rules so he didn't get hurt by Owens beating him (mostly) clean. I'm still picking Ambrose but if WWE aren't going to use the briefcase to transition him directly into a Shield feud then Owens is my second choice.

Closing Thoughts 

Solid matches kept this show's head above water, you can only expect so much from these "qualifier" episodes. Hey, at least it wasn't a Beat the Clock Challenge. Nothing was astounding but it's nice to see Rollins back, AJ and Kevin Owens had a pretty good match and Apollo Vs Jericho was the only segment that flat out didn't work at all. 

I hope we get some interesting developments in Reigns Vs Rollins and The Club situation going forward because the show is going to need that for intrigue going into Money in the Bank. Building the MITB participants out of established feuds is a smart move but it doesn't hide the fact we all know we're going to be getting a lot of meaningless tag matches in the coming weeks.

Also Cena's back next week! I sincerely hope they haven't just put the US title on Rusev so he can lose it back to Cena again but on the other hand I have zero issue with them making Cena the US champ again so whatever. Cena is at his best when he's with fresh guys and I'm genuinely excited to see who he's going to be working with!

All in all, fine Raw, it's established The Club aren't a thing, Rollins is back and the No 1 Contender, Cena's coming back, Charlotte's on her own and most of the Money in the Bank participants are now known, so there's a lot of pieces in place for the coming weeks. But for the love of god, find something for New Day to do already.

RATING: HEADLOCK MASTER

Raw Recap 9th May, 2016 - WHERE'S DEAN AMBROSE?

It's my birthday so I don't have to think of a real intro! 

Segment #1 - Chris Jericho's Highlight Reel

Dadicho is still on his best run in years and proves it by kicking off Raw and getting the crowd to chant for a dead potted plant. Jericho rants and raves about Dean Ambrose and how he's a loser like all the fans and he can't relate to that. SAWFT's music hits, and Big Cass walks out by himself, the delay between the music hitting and the actual entrance keeps getting people excited to see Enzo again, he should get a pretty sweet pop whenever he does come back.

Cass has been holding up well in these segments considering he doesn't necessarily seem to be a natural on the mic and he's leant on Enzo to hold these things together for years. He challenges Jericho to a match, Jericho walks away, Cass does his SAWFT catchphrase (no member of the roster is allowed near a microphone unless they say at least 3 things that could potentially be put on a T-Shirt) Jericho runs back towards and ring and eats a big boot for it.

Nice to see the show started with wrestlers pushing their own angles, as opposed to momma or pappa McMahon generically talking about how "big" the show's going to be and throwing random matches together between whoever interrupts them.

Jericho talks to Stephanie backstage, these two always have great chemistry. Stephanie puts Jericho in a match with Cass and tells him not to try and cause drama between her and Shane.

Segment #2 - Baron Corbin Vs Dolph Ziggler

This feud needs to be wrapped up pretty soon, not that it's been awful, but extended feuds with Dolph Ziggler are never exactly momentum builders. 

JBL: "Dolph Ziggler has fought them all and BEAT them all!!" ????

There's a great spot where Ziggler sandbags Corbin and appears to be hurt just enough to draw concerned silence from the crowd, only for him to leap up and hit a Fame Asser for a big pop. Then Ziggler takes the DAMNEST Deep Six you'll ever seen and it looks so disgusting it was borderline criminal that he kicked out of it. Corbin gets the win anyway off the End of Days. Good match between these two, pretty much what it needed to be...although I hope we don't see more of it for now.

Backstage Charlotte and Ric are sucking up to Shane McMahon to try and reverse Stephanie's Extreme Rules decision. Shane says it stands AND bans Ric from ringside for tonight. Ric looks like he wants blood...although in fairness I can't imagine he has that much left.

"THE CLUB" are interviewed by Jojo, I guess WWE don't want to risk infringing New Japan's trademarks so they're taking Sega's. AJ says THE CLUB is officially back together again.

Segment #3 - R-Truth Vs Fandango

again

fuck you

Backstage, Kevin Owens, Miz and Cesaro are bickering to Shane and Stephanie about the Intercontinental Championship. Stephanie says it'll be a triple threat at Extreme Rules, Sami Zayn says he has a problem with that. Shane makes a match between Miz and Sami, if Sami wins it's a fatal four way.

Segment #4 - Charlotte Vs Paige

Kind of a shame Paige has probably been the biggest casualty of all the new DIvas introduced to the main roster. Natalya is on commentary and does a miserable job at it, making bad jokes, ignoring questions asking about her potentially losing to Charlotte, talking about having respect while coming off extremely arrogant and talking about her famous uncle Bret. If you hadn't seen a Raw in a few months and heard her performance as she talks smack about Ric Flair you'd definitely assume she was heel.

Charlotte tries to cheat in the match, Natalya hops up on the apron, I think she was supposed to throw Charlotte's feet off the ropes but they screwed up on the timing. Ric comes out, Shane comes out (with music, because it's really important to get rid of Ric so there's no distractions) with referees to escort him away. In the commotion Paige rolls up Charlotte for the win. A decent match and a decent finish idea but it fell apart in execution somewhat.

Segment #5 - Sami Zayn Vs The Miz

Here's your mandatory Smackdown rematch of the week, Sami is dominant for much of the early portion of the match but dumps Zayn over the top rope face first onto the steps to gain the advantage. That leads us into QUICK CUTS to Kevin Owens and Cesaro watching different TVs in different rooms, so I guess the Raw backstage team have two separate crews dedicated to "DUDES WATCHING TV AT A WEIRD ANGLE" cams.

It's weird to me Miz still uses the figure four leg lock now he's back in full "Hollywood douche" mode, he first started using that move in 2012 when he was a workhorse babyfa...HAHAHAHAHAHA oh yea they actually tried that with him.

Miz is underrated but you know he's working with someone great when his matches start kicking off "This is Awesome" chants. Sami brings so much energy and emotion to his matches he made beating Miz in a non-title match feel like a moment. We now have a fatal four way for the title at Extreme Rules.

Becky Lynch is interviewed about her match with Emma last week, Emma gets in her face and tells Becky to watch her back as Becky is attacked by...Dana Brooke? Surprised she's getting called up of all people. 

They replay the Darren Young/Bob Backlund promo from Smackdown, maybe they played it on Smackdown first to see what the reaction would be because it...sure is an idea. 

New Day, Sasha Banks and Dolph Ziggler jerk off over some pizza together.

Zack Ryder is talking to Shane McMahon until Kevin Owens interrupts him (again). I wonder if a Shane Vs Owens match is on an idea blackboard buried in Titan Towers somewhere. Shane makes a match between Ryder and Owens with the winner getting the spot at Extreme Rules. I still hate this trope of the owners throwing together random matches on the fly every single week, but at least these segments are taking place backstage where they belong and not in the same identical opening promo

The Usos and Reigns are interviewed...CHRIST...is this TNA Impact 2010? Why are there so many non-wrestling segments in a row. Reigns says he'll eliminate AJ in the tag match later.

Segment #6 - Sin Cara Vs Rusev

Crowd chants "We Want Lana" when she's right there, because wrestling fans.

Rusev is so great, he has the best facial expressions and is the perfect mix of "Saturday Morning Cartoon villain" and a real hyper masculine dude. Sin Cara gets the win via interference from Kalisto, which felt a little too easy but they're letting Kalisto get his licks in now since I suspect he may be killed to death at the Pay-Per-View.

Segment #7 - ELIMINATION TAG: Roman Reigns and The Usos Vs Styles, Gallows and Anderson

When you put this at the end of the second hour to leave the main event spot to Chris Jericho Vs Big Cass you may as well just paste DEAN AMBROSE IS COMING BACK AND A THING WILL HAPPEN on the titantron.

Jey Uso is first to be eliminated, he gets rolled up off an illegal right hand by Gallows, Anderson pulls the tights to try make it look less silly to be pinned off a single thrust but Jey sells it like he's been KOed anyway. Reigns fires up and soon after Anderson gets caught by a rollup to make it 2 vs 2. The other Uso gets eliminated during the break.

Reigns pins Gallows clean off a Superman Punch which should be banned, that crap is only justifiable as a setup signature move. That leaves us to Reigns and AJ, which is the main event of the next PPV but not the main event of Raw because DEAN AMBROSE IS DEFINITELY NOT SHOWING UP TONIGHT.

AJ is getting a lot more aggressive and beats down Reigns inside the ring, and then sets up the announce table to repay the favour from last week but gets LAUNCHED over the table into one of the announcer's chairs. Reigns is about to powerbomb AJ through the table again but Anderson and Gallows hit Reigns with a chair for the DQ. The Usos come back too but get fought off. Reigns comes back and spears both of them. Reigns looks like he's about to go nuts on both of them with a chair but gets kicked by AJ. AJ attempts to Style Clash Roman on a chair...bad choice but NO WAY in hell is that ever happening.

Roman tosses AJ over the top rope and they stare down each other, Roman offers the chair to AJ, AJ kicks it back, AJ misses a phenomenal forearm and rolls out of the ring...which gets him booed, it was a great segment apart from that. I love how this is escalating every week, two groups of guys who just want to fight each other all the time. A lot of these segments are even ending with a 50/50 crowd split between AJ and Reigns, it's making both guys look like stars.

Segment #8 - Zack Ryder Vs Kevin Owens

The crowd were too burned out from all the six man excitement to get into Ryder like they did last week, Ryder gets a short rally but it's shut down after a couple of minutes by a pop up powerbomb. Owens gets the win, retains his spot in the match, and mouths off at Cole for a bit.

For literally no reason they replay Enzo's injury from Payback, someone in the truck must love watching wrestlers getting hurt.

Cass is interviewed, Renee Young can barely hold the microphone high enough to reach his face.

Segment #9 - The New Day Vs Dudley Boyz

JBL dates himself even more than usual by talking about wrestling matches from 1917.

I'm slightly worried the New Day might be losing their momentum a little bit, their shtick is still entertaining but they've had little to work with for the last few months (they're victims of the League).

Gatch and English attack Xavier Woods on the outside which causes enough of a distraction for Kofi to get pinned by D-Von by a clothesline. Vaudevillains finish their beatdown and leave. Match was fun while it lasted, otherwise standard segment to build towards a Pay-Per-View match.

Segment #10 - Big Cass Vs Chris Jericho

Jericho is standing on the titantron making his entrance in the darkness...when SOMEONE attacks him and SOMEONE steals his jacket...I wonder who it could possibly be?!

OH MY GOD.

IT'S DEAN AMBROSE.

I said earlier that Rusev has the best facial expressions but Ambrose and Jericho are gunning for that spot in this segment. Ambrose starts ripping up the jacket and pulling out the wiring...which I'm surprised Jericho was actually willing to do since he really did pay $15,000 of his own money for that thing, I guess WWE must have reimbursed him for that.

Ambrose gets into a brawl and gets his ass handed to him AGAIN, fighting is supposed to be his entire thing WWE, I know Jericho "cheated" by raking his eyes but Ambrose still shouldn't keep coming up short in brawls. Jericho tries to leave with the remains of his jacket, but Cass cuts him off, Jericho slaps him and throws him back into the ring for Ambrose to hit Dirty Deeds and finish off his jacket.

This segment didn't really click, especially not as a main event segment, the expense of that jacket seems to be the only justification for putting this on last. Cass looked like a nerd waiting around on the outside while all this was going on, Ambrose looked like a chump and the crowd didn't care THAT much about Jericho's jacket. 

Stephanie and Shane talk about how well they got along tonight, they show slow motion replays of Ambrose ripping up the jacket...but only once because it's not as entertaining as Enzo getting a concussion. The show goes off the air.

Closing Thoughts

Mostly a collection of competently put together segments which you've got to do when you're putting together a Pay-Per-View with only three weeks of build. Reigns Vs AJ continues to be strong, Ambrose Vs Jericho continues to feel not as good as it should be, and everything else is trucking along fairly. Not too much to say about this one, nothing horrible and nothing amazing either, perhaps a little too much fluff and filler in the middle of the show, but otherwise passable.

RATING: I'm 24 today!

Sleeping Dogs is fun, but it's a bad open world game

I like Grand Theft Auto IV. 

That might seem like a strange sentence to start a piece about a game that is not Grand Theft Auto IV, but in this case it almost seems like it's required for the sake of "Full Disclosure". Even with my humble 420 (nice) Follower count on Twitter and my humbler by the day Following count it's pretty difficult to participate in any conversation about a recent open world game without someone chiming in something to the effect of "Grand Theft Auto IV blows, man!" 

GTAIV presented you with Niko Bellic, an immigrant with a shady past who came to America looking for a fresh start, but lack of options for a person like him soon get him caught up with the criminal underworld. It's a great setup with all kinds of opportunities for character drama and culture commentary that opens up Liberty City to extensive roleplaying especially when outside of missions. Would you interpret Niko as too damaged to reintegrate into society and make him prone to violent outbursts? Maybe you would not kill people or steal cars at all and make your way around the city exclusively in taxis, maybe even attempt to connect with characters in the story by going bowling with them. Or you could just not care about this in the slightest and do whatever you feel like, the game is bursting with spots that make great spots for organic endless survival modes, my favourite's the hospital! 

All three of these approaches to play were equally viable in GTAIV. It felt like the first genuine attempt to contextualise the violence in a Grand Theft Auto title, as well as pulling enough narrative strings to potentially encourage the player to behave in a certain way even outside of story missions. The vision was bold; here's a huge breathing world where you're free to do whatever you want, but you may end up getting so lost in it that you'll realise on your own that there's things you shouldn't do in it. 

GTAIV did not stick the landing. There was still too much violence, it was perhaps too intentionally miserable for its satire to have any punch, and maybe the story didn't have enough strong enough legs to not buckle under all the weight it was being given to hold up. It was an incredible first attempt though, one that surely would leave everyone optimistic about what was to come? Well...no, despite near perfect initial reviews "gamers" grew to hate Grand Theft Auto IV, and now it's difficult to find a copy of it that isn't encased in three inches of hardened spit.

It doesn't annoy me that people don't like GTAIV, it does somewhat bother me how loud the disapproval for it was. Not only did Rockstar hear you, everyone heard you, and for better or for worse open world games have been running in the opposite direction of GTAIV ever since. 

It's own direct sequel, Grand Theft Auto V, is perhaps the biggest and most cowardly of offenders. The game presents you with a choice of three psychopathic jerks, with the logic being if the characters are psychopaths who act incoherently on their every whim, then everything the player does outside of missions is technically roleplaying! What it leaves you with is three jerks being jerks in a jerk world exclusively inhabited by jerks, where everything has equal consequences so therefore nothing matters. Outside of a few hot sparks here and there it's a miserable, cynical game littered with nasty sub-South Park "satire" which crawls further up my list of "Least Favourite Things" every time I think about it.

I sure did buy it twice and play it for about a hundred hours though. What can I say? Unlike Rockstar I haven't given up on the dream yet.

The more obvious example of digression is the increasingly "wacky" Saints Row games, which started off as a fairly pitiful GTA clone but transcended that into becoming it's own wonderful little thing. I find the Saints Row games fun but not enthralling, I've enjoyed the couple of hours I've spent screwing around in each one but haven't been driven to finish any of them. That reflects my attitude to these games in general, "fun" burns out fast, especially if you're essentially doing the same mediocre (when compared to specialised games) mechanics over and over again, whereas "worlds" can be endlessly fascinating and frictive. 

You could say that the bile for GTAIV has built up and maintained over the last decade is a hangover from the "GAMES ARE ONLY ABOUT FUN" mentality from the mid-2000s that didn't understand how to digest what Rockstar were trying to do. OH NO. That sounds needlessly confrontational, it's a good thing I'm Definitely Not Saying That.

One thing I am going to be confrontational about is that everyone is a bunch of nubs for not embracing GTAIV's cell phone, which might be one of the most subtly innovative contributions to game design in the last decade. Here was a new way to reach out into the world, one that establishes that a space is only as meaningful as the characters that inhabit it, and here's your way to reach out to them (if you want to). It was also a way for those characters to reach out to you; one of my personal all time "Most Memorable Moments" in games was when I was going about my business in Liberty City and the final boss to called me up to punk me out. 

But that's not why the phone gets snarked about so much is it? It's because, hilariously, your cousin calls you up to go bowling. As you're doing your as understated-as-possible-to-not-sound-racist Roman impression, may I ask what is exactly so eye-rolling about this? Why not hang out with one of the major characters in the game to find out more about them? Why not embrace the part of Niko's character where he aches for a peaceful, normal existence? (Note: the answer is because doing this is not "Fun").

Let's not talk about though, let's talk about Sleeping Dogs! Sleeping Dogs has an awful phone in it. The phone is what made me realise I didn't appreciate Sleeping Dogs as an open world game.

Okay maybe we shouldn't talk about that either for now.

Sleeping Dogs is the open world game perhaps most similar to GTAIV in terms of structure and narrative intentions. You play as an undercover police officer Wei Shen who is tasked with infiltrating the triads, he also has a shady past where he is suspected of previously infiltrating and murdering another gang back in America for causing the death of his sister. Wei's allegiance to both the triads and the cops is put under scrutiny throughout the game, and what side the "real" Wei Shen feels more at home with is something you're feel to interpret yourself as you play the game.

I'm not going to talk too much about the actual story, so here's two quick points about it:

1) It regularly swings from being heavy-handed and meandering, somewhat inevitable for open world games that can't control what order the player goes through missions or how much time they leave in between them.

2) In the grand scheme of things, it's perfectly serviceable and not worth dwelling on.

Mercifully, the game is smart enough not to commit the greatest crime a narrative designer can make by presenting aligning with the cops or the triads as a binary moral choice system. Unfortunately, it does commit the second greatest crime by opting to go for a levelling up system instead. As you complete missions the game will keep score, you start off with a complete Cop Meter and an empty Triad meter, hurting innocent people and damaging property will deduct Cop Coins, doing cool stuff will raise your Triad Tokens. At the end of the mission your points for each side are converted into experience, gain enough experience and you'll level up to unlock some new Cop or Triad related skills.

So what side did my playthrough of Wei Shen lean towards? I...have no idea, I could turn on my PlayStation 4 to check, but I'd have to move and it's really hot today. I know I ranked them both up enough to unlock most of the stuff, but I don't know the details. What does this concept hope to achieve ultimately, but make the player aim for both maximum Cop AND Triad points (which is not only possible, but also encouraged through mission replays). There's no struggle here whatsoever, both systems exist entirely separate from each other, as long as you can manage to drive to the mission objective without ploughing through the marketplace you should be fine on the Cop points, and as you're gaining Triad points there's no penalty on the other side for say, burning dudes alive in an open furnace. 

This is where you start to see it, the shadow of GTAIV and its legacy haunting the production. The Cop/Triad thing can't be too thoughtful or critical of the player's actions because that would compromise "the fun factor". Not only that, everything you do must result in some kind of reward, because nothing is its own reward in these games. From the second you start exploring Hong Kong "Social Hub" prompts will clog up the bottom right corner of the screen (you can turn these off, although it took me several hours and a Google search to figure out how) to constantly keep score of how long your wheelies or how long you can drive without knocking into anything. 

I despise it when games insist on turning everything you can do into a feature, it seems to imply no AAA developer values the visceral joy in doing things for their own sake. It makes me think of Sonic 2 and playing around with the spindash. You hold down on the D-Pad to crouch, you mash one of the buttons, Sonic revs up, you let it go, Sonic shoots off to the right, it feels great. Later on in the game you screw up and lose your momentum in front of a steep incline, you crouch and mash the button even faster to SUPER SPINDASH. Later on, or possibly even several playthroughs later, it occurs to you "does mashing the button actually make Sonic go any faster?" After a quick experiment, you discover the answer is "sort of" and that it maxes out after a few hits, but that sure doesn't stop you from mashing that button twice as long as you'll ever need to!

AAA game design seems utterly terrified of such a concept, if Sonic 2 was released today by a major publisher they would definitely have a trophy for hitting the button 100 times on one spindash, plus a visible counter on screen to assure you that you hit the button more times than any of your friends. Everything must have a purpose, everything must indicate some kind of process, everything must have an reward, never let the player feel like any action they perform is superfluous or a waste of time.

The sum total effect of making everything the player character is capable of an acknowledged "thing" in the game is making everything left in between feel hollow. I'm the sort of person who can accidentally get distracted on route to a new mission in GTAV and go hiking in the mountains for two hours, yet if I go more than five minutes without starting a new mission in Sleeping Dogs I feel like I'm playing it wrong.

There's multiple reasons for this, and I'm afraid to say the first one because it's going to make me sound like that guy, but Sleeping Dogs is detrimentally unpolished. It's rendition of Hong Kong is a wonderful aesthetic choice but unfortunately aesthetics is about as far as it goes. Citizen AI is borderline non-existent, occasionally looking horrified or running away as you cause havoc, but they'll forget about you in seconds even if they're walking over a dead body. This is unfortunate, but the game had well documented development issues and no-one has the money to throw around that Rockstar does so I guess you can only expect so much.

However, the generally poor design of the city is less forgiveable. Outside of some token environmental attack objects thrown around it feels like a place designed before anyone on the developmental team knew what the mechanics of the game were going to be. This became distressing when I received a wanted level and was chased by the cops on foot. I thought this would a wonderful opportunity to improvise an organic escape, utilising Wei's rather fun parkour abilities, but to my dismay I couldn't find anywhere to use them. I ran mashing the X button around block after block for about ten minutes with the police failing to gain or lose distance on me, desperately looking for something that wasn't just a sidewalk or a featureless flat alley. Even on spots where there was staircases or some other kind of verticality there was zero options to take any kind of fancy shortcut. It's a frustrating oversight.

More so than any other open world game I've played (Note: I haven't played an Assassin's Creed game in years) Sleeping Dogs gives me major Waypoint Syndrome. The first hour of the game is nothing but following waypoints, and considering how unappealing the city is without a goal and the amount of icons on the map at any one time indicating a new "Thing" for you to do you could argue the entire game is nothing but following waypoints. Waypoints (complete with magical glowing Burnout arrows in the street) are often described as "good design", and although I'm not against them in theory at all it should be pointed out that "good design" in this case actually means "more convenient". 

The danger of encouraging the regular use of waypoints in open world design is you're constantly reducing the space to a destination. Even after playing the game for 20+ hours, I have zero familiarity with the city. Pausing to look at the map once I noticed the city is broken up into three main areas, not that I could tell you which one was which or what happened there, hell I couldn't even tell you which one you start the game in. When a mission ended that dropped me off in a new unfamiliar place, I would look around bemused, maybe throw a few dudes down the stairs for the #banter, then click the L3 to set the waypoint for the next "Thing" to do.

Oh the Things, so many Things. For the retro Banjo Kazooie loving Things fan there are good ol' collectible Things thrown all over the city. For the modern gamer, you have you standard races, side missions, optional story missions, optional melee segments and DRUG BUSTS. You can fight the drug dealers in the city by beating up thugs in a certain area, hacking a camera and returning home to arrest the local drug dealer via the camera feed. Which functionally translates into, doing the same melee combat you're forced to do throughout the game, doing the same minigame every time, and then driving back to your home to look at a camera feed to address the dealer who is always the same guy so you can pick him out immediately. What is this? Aside from something an IGN reviewer would credit as "Strong Side Content" as a plus point in their write up? Does this even count as "extra content"? This is making you do three repetitive and not inherently interesting things for the sake of wiping some icons off a map, or in other words, Doing A Thing to win the prize of Having Done The Thing. This is some extra work you have to do for 100% completion. 

Maybe this says more about my personality than it does about open worlds, but I cannot stand this trend of content obsession in these things. When the main campaign is a collection of set pieces and story elements broken up with various mechanics, taking one of those mechanics out of the equation and giving me the opportunity to do again and again ad nauseam is just adding more potential time not-having-fun to my experience. It might be worth mentioning that one game I did complete all the sidequests for was Deadly Premonition, which is a RIDICULOUS endeavour by the way and I don't recommend it in the slightest. Even though the extra missions weren't "fun" almost all of them rewarded you with more story about Greenvale and the people who live in it. In that game, the story was the town and the town was the story, so exploring the side content felt like genuine part of the experience and fulfilling the character role. In games like Sleeping Dogs, Saints Row or basically anything Ubisoft puts out these days, it's more stuff for you just in case there's a bomb attached to your console that'll go off if you stop playing the game.

Sleeping Dogs sealed its impression on me as a "collection of content" as opposed to a "a story ingrained into a breathing world" as soon as I started paying more attention to its phone.

I hate the phone so much.

You can access the phone at any time during the game by pressing up on the D-Pad (same as GTAIV), although you're unlikely to notice it unless you're on a mission. While on missions a character or an on-screen notice will instruct you to text or call a certain character. Instructions in hand, the game pops a huge pulsating D-Pad icon on the part of the screen the phone occupies with a white arrow pointing to the "Up" button in case you've forgotten how to access the phone. Pressing a button to go to Contacts, the phone will only display the person you need to call or text, if it's a text a press of a button will automatically write out a text, pressing the button again will send it and you'll instantaneously receive a reply...often in near perfect grammar. 

It really struck me how terrified the Sleeping Dogs team must have been of their audience, that they couldn't even be bothered to pretend the phone in this game might actually function as a phone. They probably sat shivering in the corner of their office late into the night during crunch hours, horrified at the possibility that forcing the player to wait a few seconds for a text would cause them to jettison their console out the window in a fit of boredom-induced rage, or that someone's dad might walk past the television when there's textspeak on the screen and start ranting about millennials. This reduces the phone from a fresh way to interact with the world and the characters to an hideous addition to the UI where the only purpose is to tell you the next Thing to do; where the game instructs you to do something with the phone, throws up the button prompt of how to use the phone, and then by hitting the X button a couple of times the phone will do what it needs to do as quickly as possible.
  
In Sleeping Dogs, even when you're on the phone, you're still just following the waypoints.

Of course, the phone can be accessed outside of story missions too, where you can call up characters you've met in the story. Dudes will give you a mission of some variety, gals will go on a date with you. Early on in the game you meet a woman called Tiffany in a club, after performing some karaoke for her you have the option to date her. So I did. Soon, you meet another woman who is only known to you as "Not Ping", I had completely forgotten why but I noticed she had shown up in my contacts list, so I called her to hang out with her which led to a quick side mission involving hacking a camera. Doing this unlocks a new side mission, where you have to track Tiffany as one of your gang members informs you she's been cheating, confronting her she will tell you she did it because you were cheating with "Not Ping"...and Wei admits it immediately.

I don't know what the designers were going for here, perhaps they were trying to create their own little version of Persona 4's Valentine's Day scene. Well unfortunately for them, I happen to have played Persona 4, so I went into the dating thinking maybe I would have to hang out with them a couple of times to learn more about them before anything major would happen. I have unfortunately, also existed within the realms of real life, I didn't assume that continuing to speak to a woman was confirmation of romantic conquest. I was so confused here, I wasn't under the impression I was either character's "boyfriend", I didn't even think the Not Ping hangout was anything other than platonic. Perhaps it's this mentality that leads me to hurt these people so badly. 

Sloppy design aside, there's something even more sinister at work. After this little masterpiece of theirs played out, both characters disappeared from my phone contacts forever. I figured maybe this was because "I screwed up" so they had both cut ties with me. Later on in the game I tried dating two more characters; Stuntcast Emmastone and Fastdriving Lady, after hanging out with both of them exactly once, both of them also disappeared from my contacts list. So there we go, there's no "dating" in Sleeping Dogs whatsoever, the phone is just another mission select screen. These characters are your gateways to more precious content, and once you've extracted it from them, the game cannot even be bothered to acknowledge their existence any more. There are no more Things to do, no more rewards to be gained, no fresh parts of the game left to be found here, therefore these characters serve no purpose. 

Basically they took an idea from GTAIV, recreated the action and look of it, but failed to understand its purpose. In the circles I run in we refer to this process as "WayForwardisation" (Disclaimer: nobody actually calls it that (they should though!))

It occurs to me I've mostly been negative about the Sleepy Dogs so far, which is odd because in all honesty I don't actually dislike the game. Most of its mechanics can be described as "like X but less polished" but all of them serve the game's main campaign well, and I do appreciate little touches like the focus on melee combat and the jumping from car to car ability. But it's presentation of itself and its depiction of Hong Kong, as beautiful as it is, only leaves me cold. 

The game is tightly designed, but in a way that makes you wonder why they bothered. For example, there's health shrines all over the city, finding a certain amount of them will earn you health upgrades. Most of the shrines are planted along the paths of the mandatory missions so there's no way you can miss a lot of them. The same thing can be said of the missing statues, all of which earn you a new melee attack, the only thing stopping you from progressing precisely as the campaign designers want you to is whether or not you can bothered to commute back to the dojo to return the statue each time. Even the levelling up has seeds of mostly pointless progression built into it, for example one of the triad abilities you can unlock will increase your damage...but by the time you can unlock that the game has doubled the amount of enemies you'll fight in one spot anyway. None of this is "bad", it's certainly not "bad design", but it only serves to make the openness of the world feel more artificial and token. Even the stuff that's not a waypoint is subtly hidden right next to one.

Perhaps that's my secret frustration with Sleeping Dogs, I found it mostly enjoyable if unspectacular as a linear set of missions, but the open world feels like a lie, an elaborate Peach's Castle with somehow even less to do in it. Sleeping Dogs feels more like a story of a man's job than a man's life, maybe that's why I don't find the bits in between the missions interesting. Maybe if it haven't bothered with the sandbox shtick at all I would have enjoyed it a lot more, they could have spent the time they used building the city to make the mission set pieces actually functional for one thing! 

I don't want to rag on Sleeping Dogs either way; it had its struggles in development, it still tried really hard and even came up with a few genuinely great ideas. It's worth noting for the record that I did have a much better time with it than either Grand Theft Auto V or Metal Gear Solid V, it definitely wasn't as exhausting as those games. It merely fails to reflect anything I value in these kinds of games, but maybe I'm weird.

When it comes to open worlds, I want to exist in a place not be constantly performing a job. "Sandbox" should imply "play as you'd like" not "keep ticking boxes until there are none left to tick, but hey, there sure are a lot of boxes!" I don't need Things To Do, I need Places to Go, and I shouldn't be compelled to go to places because of a magic glowing icon, I should be making discoveries as I wander. Make a solid 8-15 action-adventure game or make a place that harbours a story, when you walk the line between them like Sleeping Dogs does stretching a basic game over a huge map you're 1) creating a lot more work for yourself and 2) adding a lot of fluff and dead space to your game.

I understand wanting to run away from GTAIV's reaction, maybe even its execution, but can we please stop running away from it's vision?