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? 

Raw Recap May 2nd, 2016 - THE POST-LEAGUE ERA

After a pretty good Payback PPV, the potentially unbearable Shane/Stephanie bickering era has begun, let's find out if it'll break the streak of good Raws!

Also it's The Rock's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROCKY

Segment #1 - Stephanie and Shane McMahon promo

For some reason I was thinking about the opening of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy where a motion captured David Cage teaches you how to play the game and how it's one of the most arrogant things I've ever seen in a videogame, and then I realised within the internal logic of the WWE product every single episode of Raw starts like that. So we kick off the new era with the same old crap with the Authority figures as Stephanie and Shane try to get along and then they get interrupted by a bunch of dudes who will be put into matches on the spot because apparently every week everyone turns up to work with no idea of what they're doing. 

Cesaro and Kevin Owens come out and both awkwardly demand Intercontinental title matches, Shane McMahon makes a match between them and says the winner will be the No 1 Contender...I should remember this better writing these every week but didn't this EXACT thing happen a few weeks ago?

Segment #2 - Kevin Owens Vs Cesaro

Miz is on commentary for this probably to establish we're not accidentally watching a rerun. Cesaro bursts out of the blocks knocking Owens around with uppercuts and flying all around ringside and the match keeps a much faster pace than this previous recent matches. Both these guys are like Create-a-Wrestlers with all the coolest looking moves mapped to every button but they don't do any damage due to low stats, it's especially absurd that Owens has never beaten anyone with his frog splash. 

Owens tries to hit Cesaro with the Intercontinental title near the announce table, Miz grabs it, Cesaro uppercuts both of them, goes for the giant swing on Owens in the ring and the match ends with Miz interfering. A three way brawl breaks out, Sami Zayn comes out and gets involved and fights off Miz and Owens and holds the Intercontinental title belt. Michael Cole clarifies there's still isn't a No 1 Contender.

Stephanie bumps into Dean Ambrose backstage, Dean says he doesn't buy her nice lady act, Stephanie says he'll appear on his talk show later on.

Tyler Breeze and R-Truth are hanging out for...some reason, Goldust gets jeal...HOW IS THIS STILL GOING I DON'T CARE I'M MOVING ON

AJ Styles is talking to Anderson and Gallows backstage about the title match, for some reason AJ doesn't seem to care either way about them interfering. Reigns bursts in and stares down all three of them, he says he has respect for AJ but not his boys, he challenges them to a six man tag match later on.

Segment #3 - Tyler Breeze and R-Truth Vs Goldust and Fandango

fuck you

Segment #4 - The New Day, Vaudevillains, Dudleys and Cass promo

The Vaudevillains have officially been awarded the tag tournament win so it's them vs New Day at Extreme Rules (I strongly suspect this wasn't the original plan but props to WWE for sticking to their stipulations for once.) The New Day come out and talk about Enzo's injury...and they keep it classy by replaying the incident once again, they show the Twitter picture of Enzo released from the hospital. As unfortunate as the Payback incident was it may end up endearing people to Enzo even more. 

The Vaudevillains come out and talk some smack on Enzo, the Dudleys come out and say they want a tag title shot, Cass comes out to full SAWFT music (which was a mistake because people were disappointed not to see Enzo) and starts brawling with the Vaudevillains...and New Day and Dudleys brawl with each other because why not. Horrifically overscripted segment, this was one of the lowest energy segment I've ever seen the New Day involved in.

Segment #5 - New Day and Big Cass Vs Dudleys and Vaudevillains

Shane McMahon made this match during the break, apparently his fresh ideas and new direction for the show is just to put guys who happen to be in the ring together in matches. 

*Vaudevillains refuse to tag in the Dudleys*

*D-Von tags himself into the match, Simon Gatch looks visibly annoyed*

Byron Saxton: Good continuity between the Dudleys and the Vaudevillains!!

Bubba doesn't shut up the whole match and it's great, Xavier gets worked over for a bit, then gets the tag to Kofi who becomes the real sacrificial lamb for the match. Big Cass gets the hot tag and starts running wild. The closing moments of this match was one of the most awkward endings I've seen to a big tag match in a while, the pacing was completely off and it seemed like everyone was out of position. Cass eventually gets the win on D-Von, pretty boring match to be honest.

Michael Cole recaps the Charlotte/Natalya controversy and they show clips from WCW 1999 of Charles Robinson wrestling as Lil Naitch. I hated the finish at Payback so much I genuinely wouldn't care if they never explained it and just moved on but this is so strange, I do love how WWE occasionally forget their own television from a few weeks ago but remember WCW from nearly 20 years ago.

Segment #6 - Becky Lynch Vs Emma

I thought Kalisto and Ryback was the most non-existent feud in the company but apparently there's another "rivalry" going on that's been getting even less television time. WWE need to remember not everyone reads their Twitters, I mean I'm on Twitter all the time and about as fat as you can seriously expect a fan to be yet I never see this stuff, what chance do the casuals have?

Well anyway, an already so-so St Louis crowd cares about this match as much as you can expect to care them to care about a blood feud that only exists on social media, which is a shame since both these gals are great. Becky still manages to get a good comeback going to the sound of excited murmurs, Emma pokes her in the "injured eye" (thanks for establishing that beforehand announcers, you literally had ONE JOB here) and gets the win.

Segment #7 - Stephanie McMahon on the Ambrose Asylum

One thing I've noticed about Stephanie is she's like the only person in the company who actually responds to people organically on the microphone rather than waiting for her turn or flapping her gums for no reason. 

Dean Ambrose riles Stephanie up about Shane being given control and everyone liking him more despite all the work she put in. Eventually he breaks her facade and she cancels the Ambrose Asylum and brings back the Highlight Reel, Jericho attacks Ambrose and smashes the potted plant Mitch over Ambrose's head as the announcers make Guardians of the Galaxy jokes over what's supposed to be an angle. After giggling about it for a bit Byron Saxton remembers what his job is and shouts "HOW LOW CAN JERICHO GO?" to which JBL responds "It's a potted plant!" I guess you're right JBL...I guess you're right...

For god's sake, if one of your feuds is over a TALK SHOW maybe try and jump away from that not double down on it.

Segment #8 - Battle Royal for United States Championship No 1 Contendership

WAIT, I didn't watch Smackdown, they ended the League of Nations???? RUSEV IS FREE?!?! And Titus O'Neil is back? The United States hasn't meant this much to me in months.

Apollo Crews and Baron Corbin get eliminated bizarrely early to the point where you wonder why they were even in it...Corbin and Ziggler is apparently going to keep going. Del Rio seems to have found a way to make his stomp finisher less crap by doing it faster off the second rope...still kind of wish he would just drop it. Final four comes down to Sheamus, Rusev, Del Rio and Ryder...who hilariously is getting trodden on by Sheamus during the FINAL FOUR STAREDOWN shot. Sheamus tries to get the League to work together again to eliminate the undefeatable Zack Ryder. As silly and nonsensical as it was it did at least get the crowd behind Ryder when he starting fighting back after the League started fighting each other.

It comes down to Rusev and Ryder and the crowd actually wakes up in a wave of WOO WOO WOOs. Ryder gets a long string of offence on Rusev but gets reserved when going for the elimination and is thrown out. Rusev Vs Kalisto sounds like a GREAT matchup, surprisingly fun segment.

Segment #9 - Charlotte address CONTROVERSY 

Michael Cole - "Charles Robinson was once the official memory for the Four Horsemen did you forget that?" MOST OF YOUR AUDIENCE CAN'T FORGET THAT BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T BORN WHEN IT HAPPENED.

Charles Robinson comes out and denies all the accusations and says Natalya gave up and leaves, I guess that's going to be the end of that. Natalya comes out and gets in Ric's face and fights Charlotte out of the ring. Ric takes off his jacket but mercifully not his shirt, Natalya slaps him and scoops him up for the sharpshooter. Charlotte celebrates with his Rolex and Hall of Fame rings. This segment felt like a formality, like "well we did that awful finish now this has to go to the next PPV goddamnit why don't we ever think."

Backstage Stephanie talks to the Flairs, she puts Charlotte in a submission match at Extreme Rules...which Charlotte is fine with for some reason even though the whole angle is Natalya never actually gave up. Stephanie also bans Ric from ringside and he gives her the crazy eyes, still keeps his shirt on though.

Segment #10 - AJ Styles, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows Vs Roman Reigns and The Usos

I said a few weeks ago I was really looking forward to this inevitable match, I didn't think it'd come so soon though. According to the Raw graphics the WWE World Heavyweight Champion is "Roman Reigns and The Usos", I think Jimmy's been screeching "FREEBIRD RULE!!!" at him since Wrestlemania.

Putting Reigns back in a six man tag match where he cleans up at the end makes it easier to remember why so many people used to really like him. It was fun match but you kind of wish it had gone a little longer. Anderson and Gallows take out Reigns with a Boot of Doom on top of the guard rail outside and AJ takes out one of the Usos in the ring for the win, good to see these guys get their first win together to establish how strong they are together. 

After the match Anderson and Gallows beat down Reigns and offer a steel chair to AJ, AJ refuses to hit a helpless Reigns, the Usos hit AJ with a chair instead and fight off Anderson and Gallows, AJ snaps and hits them with a chair, which causes Reigns to lose it and destroy AJ.

Great sequence to put over the Extreme Rules match, establishing AJ as a nice guy but someone who's capable of snapping, while escalating the feud between them without making either one of them look like too much of a dick. Can't wait for this match.

Closing Thoughts

A not so great Raw with a couple of highlights here and there...just like the old days. Although in fairness the show wasn't worse because of convoluted Shane/Stephanie stuff, it just felt a lot more uncomfortably scripted than previous weeks. Although looking back over the report...two of the segments I didn't like could have come off a thousand times better if the announcers didn't suck at their jobs so much.

Ah well, the Intercontinental title has stuff going on, the United States Championship has a match I want to see, Extreme Rules has a strong main event and best of all NO MORE LEAGUE OF NATIONS so no point being too pessimistic. 

RATING: Both thumbs sideways twiddling with each other in general indifference.