Category: Commentaries

All my commentaries – written or video – collected under one parent category.

How Many Of EGM #100’s Top 100 Games Of All Time Have I Actually Played?

About a decade ago… but not quite a decade ago because 2016 was a leap year… I did a quick lookback at The 100 Best Games Of All Time from the 100th issue of esteemed publication Electronic Gaming Monthly. For those who want to read said lookback, click here.

Today, we’re doing something different and we’re going to list how many of these games I’ve actually played. A lot has happened in ten years and I’ve played slightly more games than I did originally, so… yeah, here we go.

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THE BITE COMMENTARIES #14 – The Malaise Of Modern Wrestling

So the Royal Rumble happened last month, emanating from the benevolent and progressive kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is the first time that WWE has held the Royal Rumble event outside of North America, where citizens of the benevolent and progressive kingdom of Saudi Arabia bore witness to the usual extravagant event that had already been paid for by the prince.

Normally, around this time, I would post some thoughts on the Rumble event under the Royal Ramble banner of this blog… but this year I’m going to do something a little bit different. See, a funny thing happened this year that I didn’t think would ever occur in all my years of watching wrestling. The Royal Rumble came and went… and I completely forgot about it.

Perhaps this had been due to the fact that last year’s event was held in February rather than its usual end of January slate, but the fact remained that I was rather busy that weekend and when I got on my computer late Sunday, I noticed that there were news bits on the Rumble and that’s when I went “Oh wait. That was today.” It’s not even a matter of forgetting it was taking place early (other side of the world, after all). It was a matter of forgetting that it was even a thing.

It was at this point that I realized… wow, I missed the Rumble. And I didn’t care.

What happened?

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THE BITE COMMENTARIES #13 – John Cena Gives Up

Yes, we’re talking about this a month after the fact. And yes, the dust has settled a bit. And yes, there will continue to be discourse surrounding the end of John Cena’s legendary WWE run. And I had not really planned on giving this subject matter much more thought than the one post I did last month… but a couple things occurred that caused me to give this more thought than necessary and this, along with a message that came my way a short while ago, sort of dawned this epiphany of sorts as it relates to this whole deal.

Unfortunately for those hoping for another voice in the “John Cena Shouldn’t Have Lost” or “John Cena Shouldn’t Have Given Up” camp, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. In fact, I’m going to highlight something that you folks SHOULD have figured from the very beginning of this whole Last Time business.

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THE BITE COMMENTARIES #11 – The Force Undead

So, if all goes according to plan, today’s post should publish on the very same day that, ten years ago, the first Star Wars film of the Disney ownership era as well as the start of a new Star Wars sequel trilogy – The Force Awakens – hit movie theaters to usher in a new era of Star Wars that is new and different… although you wouldn’t have been able to tell from watching the movie.

At the time of release, people considered it to be a return to form after the polarizing prequels. For some, it felt like Star Wars again… for others, it felt too much like Star Wars; to the point of almost being a carbon copy of the original film from 1977.

And then The Last Jedi came along and pretty much shat the bed that The Force Awakens set with its dogged insistence in subverting your expectations; something that has become a meme over the years in and of itself. Regardless of your opinion on the film – and I’ve made my feelings perfectly clear – the fact is that the second chapter of the new trilogy was a divisive film and brought about an air of uncertainty among the Star Wars faithful. And then Solo came along… and finally, The Rise Of Skywalker ended the sequels and any subsequent hope for further annual Star Wars feature films, relegating the franchise to limited series runs on Disney+.

What began as a sign that things were going to be okay… turned out to be anything but… and when one revisits The Force Awakens ten years removed from its initial release, with all these other films out there and everything that has happened, is the movie as good as it was? Has it aged poorly? Was it ever that good to begin with?

The answer is… complicated.

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THE BITE COMMENTAIES #10 – Sith At 20

This past May marked the 20th anniversary of the third Star Wars prequel film, Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith, which finally paid off its long-running story of how Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side and eventually became Darth Vader. And if you want to me to tell how I felt about the film at the time, I thought it was the only really good film out of the prequel since everyone died. And I wasn’t the only one who thought that because a bunch of people I went to see the film with thought it was the only really good prequel out of the bunch because everyone died.

Now we all know that statement is a bit of a fib. Not everyone died, obviously; this isn’t Rogue One, for cryin’ out loud. But the cast of characters that were introduced in prior prequel films were either killed off or cast aside to make way for the characters that people actually cared about to come along and have the adventures they had back in 77 and the circle would be complete or some deal like that.

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Why The Avengers Worked (And Nothing Else Does…)

A couple weeks ago, the new Thunderbolts movie came out. As per usual, I did not watch the film due to lack of interest. And then they did a thing for the sake of marketing because… I don’t know why. But they did it. I was still not compelled to watch the new movie in theaters.

But you know what I did watch? The Avengers. The first movie from 2012. Sweet Sassy Molassy, that’s a great movie. And it still holds up. But more than anything, as I was watching this movie, it just sort of clicked that they tried a thing with this movie and it worked. It simply worked. To the point where others have tried similar things and those didn’t quite work.

And I got to thinking… why? Well, here’s my thought on that.

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THE BITE COMMENTARIES #09 – Mortality, Crohn’s, And Crud

A little over a year ago, I revived the Bite commentary series, which was a thing I did back in the old DTM Webstation days and a bit further in the old DTM Blog. We’ve done eight of these in 2024 and I haven’t really had the urge to do another one until fairly recently. Not due to lack of interest, but I generally reserve the Bite commentaries for stuff that require a deep more thought and introspection than the usual fluff that I post around here. Unlike the old commentaries where I just talk about random stuff, I usually want to focus on one single thing and gather a bunch of thoughts on that.

Up until now, there hadn’t been much to bring up in that regard… but now I found something to talk about… and it’s something that I probably should have touched on a long time ago. But it is also something that I very rarely touch on around these parts because it falls outside the purview of this little web space, which is focusing on stuff that either amuse me or annoy me. For the most part, I try to keep things light here and rarely have a need to get truly serious about things.

So a couple words of warning; the obvious being that there might be some disturbing subject matter being touched on and discretion is strongly advised… but also, there’s a lot of copy and pasting being done from prior posts sort of being melded together to give you a fuller picture of my mental state because I simply don’t have the heart to retype the same words over and over again… and I simply want to focus on the healing from hereon out.

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When Did You Sour On Dwayne?

Once upon a time, there was a fellow named Dwayne Johnson, who trained to be a wrestler and would be the most electrifying man in sports entertainment. And then he decided to begin a Hollywood career that would span many hits and misses. Every so often, he’d come back to the place that first gained him his celebrity and do a couple token appearances saying a few token catchphrases… and people were into it because it’s the Rock.

And then something happened…

Dwayne decided he wanted to do a little more and all of a sudden, people weren’t liking him as much. Why was this? How did this happen? I couldn’t begin to tell you because some people still like Dwayne while others have long since soured on him. The question of when did someone sour on Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson over the years really has no answer save for the one that’s relevant to you.

So it’s no secret that I don’t hold Dwayne in such high regard these days, but there used to be a time when I was a fan of his. Rock had charisma, he had a gift for gab, he had limmericks that… good luck trying to get that stuff over in modern times, but the point was I dug what the guy was doing. And even when he was in Hollywood and he would come back for the occasional one-off, the guy still had it.

You can go back and read the old blog posts of back in the day when Rock vs. Cena was going to be a thing and let me tell you – while the story wanted you to root for John Cena because he was the full-timer who wouldn’t ditch WWE for Hollywood aspirations (spoiler: of course, he would), I was on Team Rock because now we’ve got a professional working their magic while everyone else was amateur hour. And when Rock beat Cena at Wrestlemania that year, it made me very happy.

But then something happened along the way… Rock came back and decided that he was going after the WWE Championship. Okay, cool… except said championship was currrently in the hands of one CM Punk, who was riding a wave of popularity that, despite a few hiccups, resulted in him getting a year-plus long reign with the WWE Championship. And the people who have been following this man was hoping that he would hold onto that title until Wrestlemania, where he’d presumably main event by virtue of being the champion.

Alas, it was not to be.

And so, at the Royal Rumble, The Rock defeated CM Punk to win the WWE Championship. And all of this was to set up the rematch between Rock and John Cena – the match that was billed as Once In A Lifetime turned out to be Twice In A Lifetime. While I knew that was going to happen, I was really hoping that someone would see sense and not go this route… but yeah, Rock became champion at the expense of CM Punk and that’s when I soured on  ol’ Dwayne.

Don’t get me wrong. The guy can cut great promos. He still has that gift for gab. But I wasn’t into his schtick anymore. Probably because I prefer Classic Rock, who was more crass and vulgar without having to be more vulgar in his wording.

I’ve only seen a handful of his movies. The last one I watched was probably Black Adam. From what I hear, a lot of his movies aren’t all that great unless it’s Moana or whatever it’s called. His ego has been called into question. Maybe that’s why he bought some stake in TKO, so he can manipulate WWE creative in ways that make no sense, but he can say that we’re twenty steps ahead and just enjoy the ride.

Which usually tells me they have no fucking clue what they’re doing and they’re just making shit up as they go along. Whatever pieces happen to fit is more by chance rather than by design.

So yes, whenever Dwayne shows up on screen at a WWE show, my first question is almost always going to be “What did he fuck up this time?” What was once a highlight on WWE programming has now become a harbinger of dread… okay, maybe not that extreme… but I’m still gonna ask, “What did Dwayne fuck up this time?”

So… yeah… that’s the story of Rock going sour.

On a final note… fuck off, Dwayne.

Later.