Zack Attacking EVERY Century!

Like him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, buy the T-shirt, and take care, spike your hair.

Zack Ryder first got his big push into the WWE when he was an Edgehead along with Kurt Hawkins.  While Hawkins went into a tag team with Vance Archer on Superstars, Ryder had his own following when he was top dog on ECW before it was turned over to NXT.  Now he's mostly in tag matches with Primo and some singles on Superstars as well.  He also updates his YouTube weekly vlog, Z! True Long Island Story, which is a lot bigger than most of you will think.  As of today, it's 15 episodes in and making him get buzz on like crazy.

While he is now a self proclaimed Internet Champion, Ryder is continuing vlogs and spreading the professional wrestling word all over the web like Morrison and Miz did in their show, the Dirt Sheet.

Many fans have been following him and finding his stuff to be extremely entertaining, and a lot of his co working wrestlers know so, too.  Rumor did spread about John Cena going to the head of the business and asking for Ryder to get the push that he deserves.  And how could he not ask with all that's going on with this guy?  Here's a behind the fan's scene look of why Ryder is hotter than the center of the sun.

Fans can participate in his vlog by posting videos of why they should be Broski of the Week, but most importantly, they participate during aired events.  Have any of you wrestling geeks noticed the explosion of Ryder signs all over pay per views, RAW, and Smackdown?   Zack put it better himself; it's the rise of the Ryder Revolution.

This is probably one of the signs that started it all, and it didn't get unnoticed.  In one of Ryder's vlog episodes, he talked about people going mad about the story behind this sign: "Zack Ryder = Ratings".  Apparently it is rumored that this fan was asked to have his sign taken down, but it didn't stop Ryder's fan base.  It just kept bringing them in.

In his most recent vlog, Ryder shows a bunch of screen shots of his fans holding up Ryder signs.  "Seattle Loves Zack Ryder" was the one that was probably most seen at the latest pay per view, Over the Limit, on television.  And that's one out of six shown.

While his character was somewhat questioned and hated by many fans in the beginning of his heel angle, Ryder's broski swagger and lovable catchphrase "Woo woo woo you know it" has become part of the WWE Universe over time.  While a lot of people complain that he isn't on television as much as he should be, his huge fan base will not give up until the Ryder name is known to every man and woman on earth and he has won as many championships as his YouTube hits.

So while I am here to blog about the small stupid things I find in my favorite spot in pop culture, I am also here as a Ryder fan to spread the word.  Check out his YouTube account and subscribe if you like what you see.  And if you go to any events, throw in a Zack sign.  You won't regret it.

Wrestling in the 21st Century: Over the Limit 2011

One of probably the better Pay Per Views of the year not including Royal Rumble, Over the Limit wasn't exactly over the...limit, but it was at least something to watch.

R Truth vs. Mysterio was the first match and definitely didn't set the tone for the rest of the night.  Basically Truth stole the match brilliantly but it was very short lived compared to the build up that RAW was giving these two superstars.

Barret vs Jackson was also somewhat decent.  One hilarious highlight was Jackson Scoop Slamming Barret five times in a row.  Jackson wins via DQ with the Core interfering and Barret still retains the Intercontinental Championship.

Sin Cara vs Chavo was great until the botch at the end.  Because of what looked like a mix up, Chavo's body movement during Cara's finisher messed up the end of the match, but hey, everything else was pretty good and entertaining.

Then we have Brie Bella vs Kelly Kelly for the Diva's Championship.  Basically Kelly was beat on for a while, she got pissed and Hulked out, but Twin Magic screwed the outcome and Brie retained even if it was really Nikki.  Just when I thought Kharma was going to show up, she didn't.  That sucked.  It was the only thing that was tying this match together with my interest.  But whatever.  I'm not really a fan of either Divas anyway.

Tag Team Championship match Kane and Big Show vs Punk and Ryan was pretty good, but for some reason Del Rio showed up in the beginning and disappeared.  Kind of unnecessary especially since he didn't have any interference in the match at all.  Punk's face was hilariously displayed multiple times during the match.  The ending was good; I really enjoyed it.  Show and Kane retain, and there was no interference by the Nexus.

Best match of the night was Christian and Orton for the Heavyweight Championship.  If you haven't seen this match already, go look it up now.  A lot of thrill and twists and turns.  Best part of that match was definitely the numerous reversals on the finishers and Orton almost RKOing Christian from the top rope like he did in the last PPV.  While Christian was distort that he lost again, he was able to shake Orton's hand, but it is very possible for a heel turn from any of these guys in the near future.

Cole vs Lawler in a Kiss my Foot Match started out with Cole saying that he had a doctor's note that his foot was infected. He came out in a suit and read the note to the crowd so everyone knew he wasn't ready for the match.  But the ref just said "screw you" and ripped the note up anyway.  It goes back and forth for a while until Lawler gets him down.  He even pushed Cole into his "Colemine", and thank God because we wouldn't have to see that anymore.  Eve comes out, Moonsaults him, then JR pours his barbecue sauce all over Cole's face, and finally Bret Hart makes an appearance.  Cole is put into the Sharpshooters and Lawler shoves his foot into Cole's mouth.  Cole runs back towards the entrance ramp and says that he still  isn't a loser.  Blah blah blah, at least this horrible angle ended.

Last match of the night was Cena vs Miz in an "I Quit" Match with A Riley.  The ENTIRE match was Cena basically get beat on by Miz.  Miz did have a couple of times when he was at the mike, but Cena would just cuss him out.  Match ends with Miz's cellphone playing a recording of Cena saying "I quit!" during a different event and played over the microphone.  He gets the title until the ref finds the mike.  Cena then magically heals up and whips Miz with his belt and puts him in the STF.  Miz quits, Cena retains.

The ending was pretty cheap, but easily what made this PPV good was the Christian and Orton match.  Worth the watch.  I was disappointed in the lack of Jack Swagger showing up towards the end of the Cole and Lawler match and also the same thing what Kharma in the Diva's match.  Christian and Orton without a doubt have the best storyline upperhand because of a possible heel turn soon, but I would imagine this to be at the next PPV or on Smackdown.  Now if you excuse me, I'm going to watch that match again.

Awesome Games in the 21st Century: Alice Madness Returns

New screenshots, a new trailer, and some footage on some gameplay courtesy of IGN have been recently released for one of the most anticipated games Alice Madness Returns, available this summer.  Reservations have been available for a while, and fans are replaying the original American McGee's Alice while praying for the long awaited sequel will be just as good or even better.

If you read this blog regularly, then you'll for sure notice that I already covered how much I knew about the game.  But that was a while ago.  What I can talk about is what I have seen in the gameplay that was released.

So the toy weapons will be coming back, and they look like they have a better variety than they did in the original game.  But keeping in mind that this game was made so long ago, a lot of the themes probably won't be recycled.  Alice also has different costumes... apparently.  I'm not exactly sure if it is due to what weapon she uses or if she just changes into different outfits according to story, but in the gameplay she is wearing something red and black opposed to her original blue maidish outfit.

The Cheshire Cat comes back, and from what I believe also has the same voice actor.  In the original game, as well as this one, Cheshire Cat really just shows up to give advise whenever it's not a cutscene.  You can let him appear whenever you want to in the game to hear him talk, and actually I did that about a million times because I thought his voice actor was so smooth and worth the time to listen to.  This time he appears when you need a hint, and it seems that you have to wait a certain amount of time to summon him again.

Going back to the weapons just quickly, the only weapon that was seen in the original game that came back is her trademark knife.  All the other weapons seem to take forms of chess pieces like the knight in this picture and other toys.  A few of them are melee and a few are projectiles, they seem to be selected via menu or by D-pad.  Now if you have played the previous game, you will remember a few toys such as the Demonic Dice or the Ice Wand (that's probably not what it's called) used like a third person shooter.  A lot of the weapons in that game, too, were based on the 3rd person, but now there is a wider range of melee weapons, which I feel is more appropriate for today's platformer.

 I'm going to be expecting a lot of puzzles and more platforming versus the other game.  I have a feeling that this game might be short because it might have to do with how long it has been since the previous game was released.  I have been seeing that theme with a lot of games such as Spyro or Prince of Persia.  So far it doesn't look too hard from the known gameplay, but there could also be different levels of difficulty to select. 

I'm really looking forward to getting this and will hopefully do a more in depth review, but again, we have to wait until the summer to see.  I'm hardcopy, and I will see you May 22.

Its not fair to judge: Micheal Cera

Sup folks, time for a little something i like to call, "Its not fair to judge..." where i look into phenomenon that all people have an opinion on, today we look at everyones favorite (or not) awkward kid in a movie, Micheal Cera.

What makes everyone hate this kid? The most common answer is that he plays the same role in every one of his movies, the awkward kid. To be fair, Cera has been playing the same character he started his career as, the lovable dork, George Micheal Bluth in the greatest show you never watched, Arrested Development. In which he played the son of Micheal Bluth (played by Jason Bateman, who had such roles since the end of the show as that announcer dude in Dodgeball, seemingly playing the same character he played in AD as well), strugging with his feelings to his cousin, growing up in the shadow of Steve Holt, and just trying to do the right thing for his family. This role brought Cera into the spotlight, whatever short it was at the time, as the show ended its run after three seasons in 2006. Since then, he was cast in movies where a lovable dork was needed. Hes at the top of the list. Cera has just been playing this character. I can only wonder with the pending Arrested Development movie, will people say he was playing his normal character or George Micheal. When i look at it, i see that he only knows how to play George Micheal, nothing less.

Folks, Micheal Cera can only be George Micheal, he tries to be something different, but he cant and will fail at it if he strays away from that. So many people forget how he started and that goes hand in hand with the future.

Moral of the story here, let Cera be himself, George Micheal.

New Games in the 21st Century: Devil May Cry

Hey, this is hardcopy, and I want to know what's with all these new remakes/reboots gaming companies are doing?  Well luckily, the DmC Devil May Cry coming out God knows when isn't exactly that; yet Ninja Theory remade the ENTIRE CHARACTER and worse of all...it's an...origin story.

So...let me get this straight.  We have 1, then 2, then 3 (which is a prequel to 1), and then 4, which is kind of a time skip from 2 with a different main character added into this mess.  Thanks, Capcom.  I love you and all, but you're really making this into a new screwed up Zelda timeline without musical themes.

So this is what Dante looks like.  Really scrawny compared to the manly man Dante in 4 and, sadly, also just as scrawny compared to Dante in 3.  *sigh*  Well here's the new trailer if you want to check it out.  And yeah, there's robots, too.  Just thought you would like to know.
We have been disappointed before in the second Devil May Cry.  The character changed from witty and funny to a very silent loner, just like Cloud in FFVII.  But when 3 came out, the game was awesome as hell so it did help redeem the series after that particular crawl.  I haven't heard a lot of great reviews on 4, but it still carries an interesting aspect between Dante's character and Nero's.

Personally I have nothing wrong against companies remaking their characters, but when you make Dante look so damn different and still have this game as part of the storyline, then there's gotta be the biggest twist of my life coming up at the end to make it make sense because right now it doesn't.  He's cute and all, but what's with the British flag arm band?  And...where's his white hair?

If you haven't took a wild guess already, there are a lot of fans suggesting that because of the experimentation that Dante is most likely under, he looks very different compared to the original character design.  And yes, he is under some sort of experimentation; don't tell me I'm blowing it out of my ass.  The trailer tells all.

Now again with the whole character redesign thing I was mentioning earlier, don't you dare think that the new Lara Croft is going to be the same as this piece of controversy right here.  At least she looks very similar and the game is taking a whole different direction rather than just hinging itself onto the storyline somehow like DmC is doing.  By the way that's a weird name, isn't?  DmC Devil May Cry?  This is going to make my conversations more awkward.

Alright alright, I  know I shouldn't be so nit-picky about something that isn't even out yet, but besides all of my peeps also saying that the trailer is a huge disappointment (and by peeps, I mean people on 4chan), I know this will go downhill  somehow, depending on how you look at it, because there are robots in the game and in the trailer.  Why are there robots in a Devil May Cry game?!  I don't understand.  I thought this was more about demon hunting and pizza and rocking and rolling without shirts on!  Seriously they better be freaking possessed or have a damn good excuse why there are so freaking many of them in the trailer or else the entire plot is screwed.  Screwed like John Cena in a Nexus convention (yeah that's a far out one, but you can call on Wiki for the assist).

Also he has an ax like weapon in the trailer; the ax, which we can all tell, is definitely not Rebellion.  Maybe in the storyline here he doesn't get the sword until a lot later.  Who knows?  Or if it is his sword, then damn, it could transform more than the CM Punk's facial hair (seriously I gotta stop doing this somehow...).  Later in the trailer, you see him use it as a grapple hook of some kind to latch onto a car and fling it around like a half ass yo yo.

What I can conclude from this is that even though it is still way too early to tell if I will get this game or not, I'm sure that I'm either going to enjoy this as a separate game itself, by just being something else instead of part of the series, or hate this game for being a prequel's prequel.   Usually when it comes to remade characters, I rage very easily.  When I saw what Claire Redfield will look like in the Dark Side Chronicles, I couldn't bring myself to play the game for months.  Why would she wear cowboy boots-whatever, I'm not even going to get started on that one.  Only time will time, but so far, it's not looking good.

Wii HD

Greetings programs. So it seems that after all this time Nintendo has finally decided it was time for the HD upgrade. Unfortunately we’re not going to be hearing much until E3 but until then rumors will be flying around the internet. I’m going to comment on some of them as well as give my thoughts on the whole thing.

First is the machine itself. Its boasting power greater then that of the 360 and the PS3. With that you might think the machine would be a beast and be bigger then the PS3 but I think it will still be a small machine. Historically Nintendo machines haven’t been that big so we won’t have to worry about storing anywhere. As far as the specs why shouldn’t it be more powerful? They’ve seen what both Sony and Microsoft have done so why wouldn’t they make a machine with greater power? I’m not sure what more we can see with greater power machines because the things we’re seeing are more impressive then ever so I would be interested in seeing what kind of games this machine can produce. Supposedly we only have to wait until E3 to find out.

Now with machines this powerful that means we can get ports of games like Call of Duty for example but if you already are playing that on one of the other next gen consoles or on the computer why would you care to play it on the Wii 2 or get one for that matter. The answer is simple, first party content. The though of Zelda or Metroid in a HD world makes me wish I could turn a car into a Time Machine and travel to the future just to see it in action if not be able to play it. However I am also a little worried. Since Nintendo has no experience in the HD world how long would it take them to master it? After all if you like at the first few years of the 360 and PS3 the games just looked like prettier PS2 games. It hasn’t been until recent years that the games have started to impress. Gamers don’t want to wait until the second Wii HD Zelda game to see the true power of the machine so I’m a little worried that they might have waited far too long to jump into the HD game.

The second reason one might buy this system is the rumored controller. It said to be more of a standard controller with a LED touch screen on it. No I don’t think Nintendo is selling out by not making another motion controller. Someone must have really liked the idea of the screen and I’m sorry but you’re not putting a touch screen on a controller you wave around. Anyway, I think this screen is to give that DS experience on the home console which I say bring it on. I mean imagine playing Zelda and having your items right there on the touch screen. You press the item and BAM there it is on the screen. We’ll get to experience this first hand on Ocarina 3D this summer. The other possibilities are great, health meter in a game, rearview mirror in a racing game or a map in another. Yes Sega failed when they tried this themselves on the Dreamcast but I think with Nintendo minds behind it they can really make something that will once again change the way we play games.

As you might have been able to tell I’m pretty excited and hope that we get much information at this years E3. It is time to Nintendo made that jump to HD however they have a lot of catching up to do. They have to be smart about this and can’t turn into Sony thinking that people will just buy there system because they’re Nintendo and the number spot this generation. Hopefully the games will be good and there will be many surprises as to what this system can do. Oh and Nintendo, make with the Hard Drive using blocks to count storage space is so 2001. End of Line.

3DS Repost

It makes me laugh how this 3D topic is never going to die in this blog.  But believe me when I say that I would never play this system.  At least not in 3D.

I was at work the other day and a kid who is about 7 or 8 was holding his 3DS out so I could see it.  I looked at his parents and immediately wanted to slap them for being so stupid.  Here's why:

The instruction booklet in the 3DS clearly says that younger children ages six and under shouldn't play in 3D.  Well what makes you think that a 7 year old is any better?  And do not trust them to play this in 2D whenever you're not around.  Maybe a handful of kids will be really mature about it, but I highly doubt that you can trust most of them to play in 2D all the time.

I did hear something about parents putting in a PIN so it limits time for their kids, but honestly, what password could a child not get?  When I was 8 I figured out all the passwords to my parents' accounts on the computer...and let me tell you, I truly regret some of the things that I saw on there.  But nonetheless, kids find out everything.

But really I guess this all I have an issue with; just kids who shouldn't be playing it in 3D...playing it in 3D.  So far the gameplay looks fun, but the 3D is pretty unnecessary for me.  The new Ocarina of Time remake is coming out soon, and so far from what I saw of this game, everything looks promising.  Still I would prefer my hacked PS3 account over a 3D hand held.  

Oh Boy!

Achievement Unlocked