Excellent! It's been 15 months since that jaw-dropping gameplay video at E3 '18. Would be great if the game came out before the end of the year now suddenly, but it's more likely to be Q1/19.

I surprised myself and ended up buying Sayonara Wild Hearts from PS Store after only watching its magnificent trailer there. The game took only about an hour to finish and sadly it didn't quite manage to offer the euphoria I was hoping for after being mesmerized by the trailer. A bunch of cool ideas and visuals still in there. A really fast game, basically a rail-shooter of sorts when it comes to how it's actually played. And a game can't be bad if it has Debussy's "Clair de lune".

Here's the launch trailer.
Youtube Video

State of Play next Tuesday September 24th, 1 PM Pacific.

Kubica leaves Williams at the end of the season.

Haas keeps their pair for 2020.

This means things aren't looking too good for Hülkenberg. There's only one seat left at Williams and Alfa at the moment. (Red Bull and Toro Rosso will surely place their "own men" on their seats.)

Completely finished the Discovery Tour now. All the tours and all the Discovery Sites around Greece. Took me over a week even with pretty solid hours per day journeying around that world listening, reading and watching all those historical facts and stories and mythological tales etc. Beautifully done again, this whole thing. They took the base from Origins's DT and built more upon it (Sites, quizzes etc.). I particularly liked the tours about famous battles like those of Marathon and Thermopylai (and there was a clear continuation between those two specifically). Fascinating stuff, about both everyday life and legendary figures. Men and gods. A minor downside was that Aspasia wasn't a playable avatar. (Not actually a downside.)

But yeah. I've done everything the game has to offer now. Almost a year later. I just really love this series.

There was some pretty neat destruction at the end of SmackDown. When Rowan threw that piece of ring protection across the ring it really looked like it landed in the audience. The crowd even made that noise, like oooooooooh, it's coming.

Lesnar's return to SmackDown came as a surprise. Not my first choice to compete with Kofi, but there we have it.

SmackDown moving to FOX and to Friday nights forces WWE to actually split the roster, hence the upcoming draft. I read that there's like some real legal contract reasons that the people can't jump from one show and channel to another one anymore after that October change. So people will be more "locked" into their shows from that point forwards.

First time I had to actually click that Wikipedia link.

Bitterest of Rivals! - Mysterious Monsters Trivia Game Show Ep. 6
Youtube Video

I'm a big fan of the AC series, played them all. In this case the year just offered narrowly eight other games I'd rather return to right now. Connor's tomahawk was a cool weapon to use, and the game introduced the naval missions to the series with the Aquila. There's been no going back after that, and mostly that's been a nice decision. Eventually, though, the American Revolution just wasn't one of my favourite eras the series has concentrated on. Still glad the game made it to the list.

Clash of Champions came and went. The night had its moments, some thoughts follow.

• Women's tag match was pretty good, I liked both the pairs. I did hope it would have been Mandy and Sonya's time now as Alexa and Nikki have been kind of quiet lately, but nope, not yet. The Harley Quinn costume was very nice.
• The Becky vs. Sasha match worked well, it felt like a big match as it should. I was hoping for Sasha to take the title, but the time wasn't now in the end. I was a bit disappointed with the ending, but I think in the long run this'll work better as the feud will get more time and steam to develop. That mustard on the back was nasty, nonetheless.
• Orton didn't win after all, nice! I really thought so, but this is way better. I mean I'm not really that excited about Kofi (anymore), but having Orton as the top dog would have been blaargh. Now we just need some great new contender to win it all.
• LUKE HARPER! The hell is this!? Yes! I mean the man stated in April he'd be leaving WWE entirely, what has happened? What a great moment, Harper's one of my favourites along with Cesaro. And now he returns into a Reigns storyline, into headlights like this. The match itself was pretty nice as well, like suitably rough and tough. I think this is a cool enough change to bring someone like Rowan up front for a while, at least.
• I guess Strowman will never win the top belt. The crowd was even turning on Rollins in the end with their unsatisfied mood towards the outcome. I was actually a little terrified seeing Strowman up on those ropes like he was gonna stumble and fall any moment. I liked the pin attempts when Braun powered Seth off even before one count etc., hehee. Wyatt arrived after everything, looks like he'll head to a title match next. Which I'm fine with.