The words don’t come easy sometimes, and other times they just flow out of you to the point where you can put the cork back in the bottle. The right words are even harder, and that is where the true work of writing rests. Even when the right words come easy, the writer’s brain can tell you a lie that they’re wrong, that it’s not conveying your thoughts and feelings in the way you imagine it in your mind. Sometimes this whole Books, Games, Wrestling project is that, like when a wrestler you love passes away, and you don’t know what exactly to say that’ll feel right. Sometimes you just gotta get to it, so let’s get to it.
Games – Big Walk and Onimusha
Big Walk
Since it came out, Big Walk has been a magical experience playing online with my friends. I honestly feel it has brought me closer to them, especially after playing Big Walk nearly every Thursday. It has been some of the hardest times I have laughed playing a video game, solving puzzles, chanting egg as we get the little red things that open up the towers, and uncovering the mysteries of the game. Big Walk is the definition of fun video game design, especially if you’re lucky enough to have a great group of friends like I do. It balances simplified character design
There are a lot of big games coming out between September and the end of the year, but I don’t know if any of them can compare to the experience of playing Big Walk with friends. I just enjoy hanging out in the game with them even if we aren’t making progress, just walking around, listening to the radio or the sounds of our weird bird/ant players walking. This game was on my radar the moment it was announced, and I knew it would be something special, but I didn’t think I’d have any idea how special it would be.
Based on the vibes I hear about the two endings, one for finishing it and one for 100%, it might make me very emotional when it’s all said and done (Edit: It did). If I were to put my analysis hat on, maybe it’s not just the game but the friends you choose to play it with. The game has a ton of personality, but part of that is the personality that you put into it. It’s the personality you can instill in your characters through simple gestures and the setting’s chill aesthetic that adds to what makes Big Walk special. Everything in it just feels good to do: pressing a button, kicking an item far away from you, picking up your friends, turning a light on and off, lifting your arms up and down while chanting egg when you unlock the red items you need to put in the towers.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword
Enter Onimusha: Way of the Sword, which has now dethroned Pokemon Pokopia for my number two spot on my Game of the Year list. The original Onimusha 1 and 2 were games I borrowed from a friend and thought, “Neat, Samurai Resident Evil,” and never gave it much thought beyond the fact that sucking up orbs was cool. This new Onimusha is still Samurai Resident Evil and sucking up orbs, but has thrown in what has made the RE Engine so good for Capcom games, along with the best flavors of Sekiro and other Soulslike games. When I tried the first demo when it came out, the game didn’t grab me like the earlier Capcom games this year, Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata, did, but the high praise the game was getting from certain reviews, the nostalgia I had for the second PS2 game, and a ten percent discount for a Steam keycode on Fanatical made me pull the trigger on buying it. I’m glad I did, because it has shot up to number two on my game-of-the-year list.
The versatility of the combat is stellar; choosing between parrying, blocking, deflecting, and dodging against enemies as you get your attacks in is a joy. With bosses, learning which one is best suited to use against them and which ones are best suited to use against certain attacks of theirs is so much. One boss will attack relentlessly with a weakness to deflection that makes that the best course of action, while another has you choosing between parrying and dodging to get your two meters up to take that boss’s quick slices and kicks. The common enemies start out simple at first, but as you progress and unlock new abilities, so do they, with more complex moves to use against you where button mashing just won’t cut it. The protagonist, Miyamoto Musashi, is my favorite Capcom protagonist, probably since Leon Kennedy, with a sort of Goku- or Luffy-like attitude of not really being in it for the heroics but is always looking for a good challenge to his swordman’s skills and wanting to be the best; that’s what’s fun for Musashi about being an Onimusha throughout the plot. Whoever decided or mocapped or designed Musashi’s facial expressions in this game should win awards, as he comes off sly, confident, with a roguish quality that reminds me of a Han Solo type. The main hub area of Kyoto reminds me of Komuracho in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games, with not so many mini-games to play but people to save, side missions to complete, and treasures to find while you travel to more linear locations when the plot demands it.
The feeling and flow of combat can be so important for games like this. The Leviathan Axe in God of War (2018) wouldn’t be the same if not for how great it felt swinging, throwing, and catching it was, and Onimusha is no different with the way swords clash and Musashi slides his enemies’ weapons down and away when parrying just right. When you unlock more abilities, it doesn’t feel like piling on system after system but new ways to turn your enemies’ strikes against them.
The final boss is the best boss of the year, hands down. I love shades of grey villains who think they’re doing what’s right, but sometimes I want a straight-up evil guy, and that is what Yoshitsune is. He’s just interested in drowning the world of Onimusha in blood, and you’re the only one standing in his way. Gameplay-wise, you have to use everything you have learned to beat him with a pattern that is the most difficult in the game but not unlearnable. I used Issen through Onimusha: Way of the Sword, but Yoshitsune really pushed me to learn to use it well, especially in Phase Two. The ending is satisfying but leaves it open for sequels, which I would love to get. An Onimusha 2 could really improve upon the sidequests and make the hub world a bit more interesting, plus I want more of Musashi as a character and more boss fights. Even though I’m finished with the game, I’ll boot it up just to replay the boss fights; they’re that fun.
Books – Green Lantern Comics
I’m not going to make a whole thing of it, but I was apprehensive about the Lanterns show on HBO Max, then decided to give it a shot. Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan may be one of the best superhero castings ever, and Aaron Pierre made John Stewart interesting to me in a way that the comics and other adaptations often failed to. The dynamic between Hal and John carried the show for me, where often I was craving more Green Lantern mythos and abilities in the show. I was willing to go where it was going, but ultimately the finale disappointed and the more I thought about it, pissed me off. It was a huge letdown, but it led me back to the Green Lantern comic books that got me through a traumatic experience I went through in 2005 and rediscovering my love for Green Lantern.
So I’ve been reading all my Green Lantern comics I managed to save from the house fire, from Green Lantern Rebirth to Blackest Night. I originally stopped reading after Geoff Johns’ final arc, finding Robert Venditti’s run on the series afterwards disappointing and generally just running out of money for comics. Now I want to go to my local comic book store and finish my collection of the Geoff John’s runs, as well as try for the first time Grant Morrison’s run on the book, which I know is very different but Liam Sharp’s artwork looks incredible. I lost all my Peter J. Tomasi run on Green Lantern Corps, so I’d love to read those again somehow. Al Ewing is a comic book writer I’ve come to really enjoy over the last couple of years, so I want to check out Absolute Green Lantern also since most of the Absolute run of DC Comics I’ve really enjoyed, especially Wonder Woman.
I don’t know what’s going on in the current run of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps, but what I’ve seen of Jeremy Adam’s run doesn’t look terrible but doesn’t look too appealing either. I think I will wait before diving back in.
Wrestling – Remembering Ben Satterly aka The Bastard PAC.
It’s weird when a public figure you admire passes away, and you’re left sad about a person you don’t really know, especially with wrestlers that comes with this veneer of kayfabe separating you from that person even further. It has probably been the hardest a public figure’s passing has hit me since Robin Williams. Since the announcement of his passing on the 27th, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship fans have to wrestlers. I didn’t really know Ben Satterly; I only knew The Bastard PAC, a character he played, and yet there is this sadness I feel not seeing him on my screen on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and eventually future PPVs. I started writing this around the time I saw a tweet from Will Washington, someone who worked at AEW who went from knowing The Bastard PAC to knowing Ben Satterly. The Tribute to PAC episode of AEW Dynamite might be their best AEW Dynamite ever, with everyone putting their heart and soul into their matches in dedication to their friend, but it was also the hardest episode to watch, seeing the grief on the faces of all the roster. I want to watch it again, and yet I can’t; it’s too much. One day I will. I’ve had these same words Will Washington wrote on my mind since his passing, he’s not supposed to be gone.
There was a time I gave up wrestling, and what got me back was watching certain matches on YouTube that I think were recommended to me on Twitter or Reddit. I don’t remember which it was, but what was included that I sought out was Samoa Joe vs. Kenta Kobashi, any Young Bucks vs. The Briscoes match, the rise of Daniel Brian in WWE, CM Punk’s pipebomb, and The Bastard PAC in Dragongate.
When AEW was announced, and PAC showed up in full gear saying he was going to be the first AEW World Champion, I believed him, because I was not fully bought into Hangman Adam Page yet. When he beat Kenny Omega at All Out 2019, it was a shock victory that propelled PAC further up the ranks in my mind as being a future world champion. It was PAC, along with Jon Moxley, that started the Kenny Omega and Hangman Page tag team that would be the driving catalyst for Hangman’s character with the Elite, and it was Hangman’s feud with PAC in the early days of AEW Dynamite that not only gave us Cowboy Shit but made Hangman Page one of my favorite wrestlers in the company. For the longest time, if you asked me what the best matches ever were in AEW alongside Hangman/Kenny vs. Young Bucks, I would say the iron man match between Kenny Omega and the Bastard PAC that happened just the week before. If you were to ask me what match I’d show a person to get into AEW or to get into wrestling in general, it would always be The Bastard PAC vs. Orange Cassidy from Revolution 2020.
In 2020 during the height of the pandemic, I remember Tony Khan promising a huge surprise for Dynamite and fans online being disappointed when it turned out to just be the return of PAC. For me, though, I was thrilled to see PAC return after what felt like forever in lockdown without seeing him wrestle on my screen. I much prefer a 1v1 match on pay-per-view for the world title, as WWE had kinda soured my view on three-ways, but The Bastard PAC vs. Kenny Omega vs. Orange Cassidy was for a while the best three-way match I had seen in wrestling for many years. When Hangman finally won the world championship at Full Gear 2021, PAC was someone I fantasy booked having a feud with him as a return to their earlier feud in 2019 and possibly a potential winner against Page, but it was not to be. What was to be, when PAC became the All-Atlantic Champion, was returning to a feud with Orange Cassidy, in which I saw their match live at AEW Grand Slam 2022 at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Trios Best of Seven with The Elite, finally getting his Wembley moment, winning the trios titles with Claudio and Wheeler Yuta, doing a sneak hurricanrana on Will Ospreay to set up their match at All Out, one final match with Orange Cassidy at their old stomping grounds in Jacksonville, Florida. It was incredible to see PAC and Darby duke it out on a golf course.
Maybe it’s because of the relationship I have with watching AEW closely during the pandemic, but it feels wrong that, after seven years that he’s gone and now we just have to move on with our lives. It’s a strange feeling, being sad about a guy I watched on a screen being gone, knowing his friends and coworkers are suffering even more. I didn’t know Ben Satterly, and based on the testimonials of his friends, family, and coworkers, I’m the worst off for it, but I knew The Bastard PAC. This section was the hardest to write out of a confusion of feelings about what the right words were. I finished Onimusha the day his death was announced, an announcement that came out while I was in the middle of watching Lanterns on HBO Max with a friend that led me down getting my Green Lantern comics out. I ended up just trying to write the memories that stand out to me of what he did in AEW that I watched and was there for. It’ll never feel like the right words, because I don’t know what the right words are, but I have an 8×10 photo of PAC on my wall, an autographed trading card in a fireproof container, and lots of good memories watching his performances together, performances he always put his all in. The memories might grow dimmer over the years, but I’ll remember the Bastard PAC. That’s all from me for now, until next time.
