Dave Sandford/Getty Images
In what could be the best TNA iMPACT to date, we saw exactly what we were promised. For that I am extremely happy. TNA Wrestling has not impressed me over the last year, in fact, I didn't care too much for Hardcore Justice to be frank.
But when TNA said they were going to give a PPV quality show for FREE, I was all ears and had to see it for myself. So, I tuned in and wasn't disappointed. The first thing I noticed was the great move by management to remove the long ECW like ramp.
That ramp made it hard for us to see any high flying moves outside the ring, so matches weren't as exciting in knowing you weren't going to see any high spots like that. I prefer more high spots unless I can see incredible mat wrestling in the ring.
In any case, there were some matches that stood out to me from last night. I won't talk about the entire show, but what I felt made the show very good or made a difference.
The first match was something that got me excited. It pitted TNA TV Champion AJ Styles against the 1996 Olympic Gold Medalist, Kurt Angle.
First off, any match with either one in it is going to be good because of them. When you put them together, it's a wrestling purist's dream. The match didn't disappoint me what so ever. It was a four star match to me, and it was one hell of a back and forth between the two.
I'm not going to say it was the match of either man's career, cause it wasn't. But, if you have to start off a show, that is how to freakin do it. Excellent match to start off iMPACT! It was main event worthy, and it was the first match on the card. WOW!
That meant that every match that followed also had to be special, and live up to the match before it.
Now, the next few matches pretty much did that.
Angelina Love vs Madison Rayne for the TNA Knockout Title was one I felt I could take the ever popular pee break in. But, after watching it for a few minutes, I wasn't going to move. This was one of the best female matches in a long while.
Rayne and Love are two terrific workers and while Love usually gets a ton of attention for her work, Rayne is no slouch, which is something that should be noted.
Love wound up winning the match, but it was due to a little help from rival Velvet Sky who has had her issues with both Love and Rayne. It seems that she has had more of an issue with Rayne as of late, which is one of the main reasons I knew we'd see her be involved in the match in some way.
I highly doubt we will see the Beautiful People reform with Love and Sky, but you never know.
Love now has five reigns as the TNA Knockout Champion, which is a good thing for her because it puts her over well to have such a record.
The one thing most want to know however is who the masked woman is. For a break few seconds we saw the bottom of her face. It looked a lot like Daffney, somewhat even like Roxxi. But the thing that has thrown people off is the skin and breast size. Daffney is pale and she'd need a spray tan to pull of that tan the masked woman has.
If it's Roxxi, she's gotten bigger breasts. And while I usually don't discuss this type of thing in an article, it is pure analysis. So, sorry to my female readers. Who do you think the masked woman is?
The next match was the TNA Tag Team Title match with the Motor City Machine Guns vs Beer Money.
It was the final match in their best of five tag team series. Beer Money came in winning two as did the Guns. The Guns had to play catch up, because after losing the first two matches, another would cost them their newly won tag titles.
The Guns have been together four years now, and never held TNA Tag Gold. I was happier than most I knew when they won them finally, as I have been a fan of theirs for a while now.
This was, in my opinion, the best tag team match in a few years out of any company in the world that I have seen.
The WWE hasn't put on a better tag match than this in about six years. TNA hasn't put on anything close to this in about three years. This probably was the best tag series I've ever seen aswell.
It was a two out of three falls match, and lasted for a good 20 minutes. I haven't seen a tag match last longer than 10 in a while, so that was great to see. Beer Money won the first fall with a sick move, then the Guns won the second fall. After a nice back and forth, The Guns won the final fall to retain their titles.
It was a good ending for the series to me, and probably made me even more excited about tag team wrestling.
The last match was RVD/Abyss for the TNA World Title. This was a pretty good match and was quite hardcore. Abyss climbed the ladder to grab Janice, so we knew he was going to try to use it. This weapon is so dangerous though, he could never use it on TV. I hate the fact he has such a weapon that cannot really be used.
Everytime he uses it, it gets stuck in a turnbuckle. To me, it's a prop unneeded. Unless I actually see a person get hit with it, I won't think anything different about it.
Abyss lost Janice and once again fell on tacks and broken glass as he seems to do every match now. It's so funny, he gets them out and then they are used on him in the end. Before he'd get them out and use them on others.
Word of advice TNA, I know he is a heel, but put those tacks over for once. Don't have only one man fall on them. Only two guys have done it in a while, that being of course Abyss and Mick Foley the other. Until we get another large man out there, I don't see anyone other than Abyss falling on them.
The barbwire board was also used, pretty nice thing that we once again knew would only be used with Abyss.
I gotta hand it to Abyss, he is one tough SOB, but to give him a match of the year candidate, he needs another guy just as crazy and tough as him out there. That's why his matches with Foley were better than most thought they would be. Foley is nuts and will do anything for the fans like Abyss.
Once we get another young guy like Abyss out there doing what he does, we will see true hardcore greatness.
RVD put on a show though, so I have to give him credit. The match ended up pretty well, but the spots were you knew Abyss would be the victim was the only downfall of it as a whole.
RVD wound up winning the match to retain, which wasn't surprising. I didn't think TNA would want a World Title drop to happen on a taped show. Also, I think we're going to see some interesting things happen with Abyss in the future.
After the match, RVD stayed in the ring as Hulk Hogan came out to make an announcement. Hogan never really made an announcement, as he just brought out the EV2.0 guys out and talked about how good Hardcore Justice was. He gave Dreamer the mic, he thanked everyone for a few minutes.
Then, the lights went out and everyone thought former ECW Champion The Sandman was coming out, but instead Fortune was behind the EV2.0 crew. The end of the show was basically an all out assault on the EV2.0 group and continued until the show was over.
The highlight of it had Abyss come out and grab RVD to take him to the back, the camera went to Abyss at the end of the night being crazy looking happy while standing over a blooded RVD. This is obviously a way to take Van Dam off TV, but for what reason I'm not sure.
The attack was nothing special to me, more so late than anything else. We saw Nexus do the all out attack thing for months now, so it's nothing new and creative. Sure, it had more blood than the WWE had with their Nexus attacks, but the attack itself was nothing new.
It was a nice ending, but it didn't have me jumping up and down in excitement or anything.
Overall, the show was done well. Like I said, I picked out the matches that stood out to me. There were more of course. The show to me was four out of five star worthy, and I hope TNA gives me the same type of show every week. Why can't we see PPV quality every week? How is that a bad thing for business TNA?
Give me something like this every week, and you'll hear nothing bust pro TNA stuff from me. I still feel storylines need help there, but the wrestling is obviously what separates TNA from every other, and they proved that an entire wrestling show, with no promos can be awesome.
I understand adding in some promo stuff, so add it. But, give me matches like this all the time. It's what got me hooked on the business before! It's what TNA stands for, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling!
But what did you think of TNA last night? Out of five stars, what would you rate the show?
On a side note, I am putting together a team to do something special in the online wrestling journalism field. Something that could be really great. If you're interested, don't comment about it here, drop me a Private Message on B/R. I can only have so many people, so first come, first serve.
I decided that I would just let the in-game quests take me where they would — to follow more of a linear line than I normally would. While I could not resist exploring the map a bit, I pulled it back a notch and settled into helping local tribesmen and farmers with their menial tasks. Along the way I met incredibly nice community members (one even bought me a donkey mount!), discovered fun side-quests, and got pulled into chunks of mysterious lore.
Despite the small bugs that pop up occasionally, the game works very well on different set-ups. It also looks great, almost a combination of Ryzom, WoW and LotRO. The game throws you into an alien world, someplace that is familiar but very unusual. And while the character models could use some work, the mounts, monsters and wildlife look very nice.
Combat is a weaker point. The responsiveness is there but is a tad sluggish. Spell effects are still a bit lackluster, and mobs often run right through you, forcing you to turn around in order to face them. These are all things that can be fixed with small patches, and I have heard plans of possible character re-dos. With the release of the latest patch, my warrior class did receive a revamp and I noticed a step-up in power afterward.
Overall, Alganon's strong points:
- It's a beautiful game that runs well on many different setups.
- The game includes an in-game wiki that lists every single item, quest or bit of information that you would ever need. Ironically, its existence made me work harder to avoid using it, as some sort of challenge.
- There are a variety of quests, and there are quite a lot of them. You won't be bored for a long, long time.
- It has an amazing community. One player told me he enjoyed the “small community” feel to the game, and I couldn't agree more. I witnessed almost no useless or saucy chatter in the chat channels.
- It's free to download and try until level 30. After that, players will need to pay to unlock more features.
- Development seems to be ramping up, not the opposite. If this is a failing game, then I have no idea what failing means.
- The music in the game is top-notch, possibly some of the best I have ever heard. You can even download the music for free on the website.
Alganon will stay on my hard drive for a long time. I hope it continues to defy the nay-sayers and basement-ragers who take it too far in the comments. Here's my open message to the artists, musicians and coders who are working on this infamous game: keep it up. Forget what you read in the comments section. Not all of us wish you ill.
Next week we will be looking at Global Agenda, a shooter-style MMO that brings back memories of Tribes, late night sessions, and pizza boxes. I will predict right now that I will die — a lot. I am under the name of BeauHindman. Come join me in the new Sonoran Desert and we can pwn some faces together.
Each week Rise and Shiny asks you to download and try a different free-to-play, indie or unusual game, chosen by me, Beau Hindman. Some of the games will be far out of your gaming comfort zone, and some will pleasantly surprise you. We will meet each Tuesday and Friday night at 9 p.m. EDT (8 p.m. CDT), followed by this column the Sunday after. I welcome any suggestions for games, either in the comments or at beau@massively.com, Twitter me @Beau_Hindman or follow me on Raptr!
Despite launching four new games, video game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. continued to see a pair of older titles account for most of its business in its most recent quarter.
Digital downloads and subscriptions for military action series Call of Duty and online fantasy game World of Warcraft provided some of the best news for the Santa Monica-based video game publisher, which saw its revenue decline 7% to $967 million and its net income grow 12% to $219 million.
The new racing title Blur, which launched in May, and action game Singularity, which debuted in late June, were both disappointments for the publisher. They sold 110,000 and 31,000 copies, respectively, in the U.S. through the end of June, according to the NPD Group. June's video game based on "Shrek Forever After" was also a flop, selling just 54,000 units. A new Transformers game title, War for Cybertron, debuted in June to a decent 219,000 units.
At the same time, Activision sold more than 5 million downloads of new content for last November's blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for $15 each. Chief Operating Officer Thomas Tippl said on a conference call with analysts that revenue from Call of Duty downloadable content in the U.S. and Europe was high enough to rank it among the top five titles sold at retail, which has traditionally been a much more lucrative outlet for video games than the Internet.
"These products not only drive meaningful levels of high margin revenue, they maintain the franchise's stickiness and keep consumers from selling their games in the used market," Tippl said.
Digital platforms generated the majority of Activision Blizzard's revenue for the first time last quarter, demonstrating the growth of the market and also the weakness of the company's new titles released in retail stores.
Following the firing of two key creators of Call of Duty — who along with 45 current and former former developers are now enmeshed in litigation with Activision — the publisher has been reorganizing its resources to maintain and grow the franchise.
On the call, Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Bobby Kotick said that this November's Call of Duty: Black Ops, created by Santa Monica-based developer Treyarch, will receive "the biggest investment we have ever made in the launch of a title."
Activision moved the planned release of True Crime: Hong Kong from later this year into 2011, but maintained its guidance of $4.2 billion in revenue and 49 cents per share in net income for the year based on growing expectations for Black Ops.
Blizzard Entertainment, which focuses on online games, launched its first title in nine years that was not related to World of Warcraft last week with Starcraft II, a sequel to the 1999 game that has proved particularly popular in South Korea. The strategy game sold 1.5 million units worldwide in its first two days alone and has yet to launch in Korea, where it is currently being offered for free during a trial period.
Activision Blizzard shares were down 6% in after-hours trading Thursday as the company's results and guidance fell short of investors' high expectations. Before its financial results were released, the company's stock closed at $11.75, off less than 1%.
–Ben Fritz
Photo: A scene from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Related:
Activision hires advertising veteran as chief executive of publishing
Activision's modern warfare
Activision lands next game from Halo development studio
Activision sued for up to $125 million by current, former Infinity Ward employees
Activision quietly restructures senior management and internal organization
My dumb phone woke me up at 4:13am this morning, with a suspicious looking e-mail from “WoW Expansion Beta” causing the ringer to go off. I guess I forgot to turn the phone off. My mistake. The e-mail, entitled “New World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta Client Available” talked about how Blizzard had developed a new WoW beta client, one that would, via a new Launcher, implement some new sort of streaming technology that would make downloading and applying patches easier for everyone. It turns out, yeah, that was a legitimate e-mail, as a Blue post on the forum confirmed first thing in the morning.
I’ve taken the liberty to take a quick video of the new Launcher in action. You can see how the game streams data from its servers to your computer.
The gist is that you’re now able to partially download an update or patch, and begin playing almost immediately—certainly faster than you otherwise would be able to.
This particular instance shows a patch less than halfway completed, but I’m able to log into the game and play.
Oh, also: the Worgen, Zorres, is messed up because Blizzard updated the Worgen textures after I created him, so you get those weird splotches. The joys of beta testing!
Woo!
