The Nerd Next Door

With Halo: The Master Chief Collection nearing it's first test run on PC, I decided to take a look back at every Halo game as it was originally released... because I own all of them and can do that. First up is Halo Combat Evoilved on the original Xbox. Now this wasn't my first Halo, it was Halo 2, I got the Platinum Hits of Halo 1 for Easter 2005 when I was 8 because I had very lenient parents when it came to content. It was loaded with a Halo 2 teaser and Behind the Scenes disc and that's not important is it? No, what's important is does the original Halo hold up in 2019? Because I like beating a horse to the ground as I said the same thing about Jak and Daxter last week and that is also from 2001. I love Halo's story, it's a great tale both in terms of books and the games themselves, but we're not here to talk about the books. We're here to talk about Halo CE, which follows the crew of the United Nations Space Command starship Pillar of Autumn...

Ah Star Wars , I've loved this franchise since I was a boy, I saw Episode II when I was 5 and was enthralled by namely the final battle of the movie with the desert and all the lasers and the explosions and the starships. Movie has aged poorly now but it got my foot in the door to being a Star Wars fanatic, I played the Jedi Knight and Rogue Squadron games on Gamecube, the Battlefront and Republic Commando games on Xbox, and watched the Star Wars Clone Wars Animated series from 2003. Overtime though I fell out with the series, haven't read the new books, don't play the mobile game, only watched the 2008 The Clone Wars Animated Series. Just haven't been in love with Star Wars since at least 2010. So when Star Wars Battlefront II from EA dropped I just sorta slept on it, but in Winter 2018 it was $10 on Origin so I picked it up. I know this game has a lot of hate, I jumped on it too when it dropped at first; but I saw the new movies so I was interested in the...

With 3D Platformers coming back into vogue with Crash, Spyro, and Mario Odyssey, I decided to take a look at a Playstation 2 Platformer that my brother in law tries to get me to play, Jak and Daxter. Developed by Naughty Dog, the same team behind the original Crash Bandicoot games, this was actually their spiritual sequel to Crash after they finished Crash Team Racing on PS1. But that leads to a question, how does this spiritual sequel from 2001 hold up in 2019? Stand amongst the cream of the crop? Or is it just a dated relic of the times? The first thing to note is that Jak and Daxter has aged pretty well presentation wise. It's artstyle and graphics hold up pretty well, something I attribute to the cartoony style that Naughty Dog went for. Music is sort of a mixed bag, it does it's job but is just kind of forgettable, more atmospheric than head bopping with some exceptions, like the final boss theme. The environments are also nice and varied, from snowy peaks to boggy s...

With Avengers Edamame finally getting the spoiler curtain dropped I figured now was the time to bring up a question. What made the Avengers the smash hit of the 2010's? At the end of the day what makes the Avengers stand out compared to Justice League , the Raimi Spider Man films, and Fox's efforts (sans Deadpool )? A lot of people have dug into a lot things; Age of Ultron's fantastic afterparty, "I'm Always Angry," the alterations to Thanos, Tom Holland's Amazing Spider Man (pun intended), RDJ's Tony Stark. But for me the answer is not exactly mine, it's actually my father's answer when we got out of the theater after seeing Iron Man . I was exactly 12 when I saw Iron Man , I know that because I'm pretty sure my Dad took me and my brother to see it for my Birthday as my birthday was a few weeks after Iron Man came out. I thought it was great, it got me interested in Iron Man pretty well, but I can't remember why, I just reme...

Ah comics, once a medium jumping with creativity and passion, the heroes that lept from it's pages became larger than life, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Iron Man. They all have left their mark on pop culture, especially with the past 10 years of film. But the worst kept secret amongst nerd and fans of superheroes is that the comic industry, is fucked. Sales keep sinking lower and lower as time goes on and industry standards keep dropping in terms of those sales. Now I'm not here to speak about that, there are people far more qualified than me who can tell you about the clusterfuck that has pervaded comic books for decades. I want to talk about why I can't read comics, not that I dislike them, far from it, it's just that comics have been plagued by one consistent issue, one thing that has been, at least for me, ruining comic books. In my opinion this is a plague on the comics industry and the sooner it goes away the happier I'll ...

A few weeks ago, I talked about damsel's in distress and when they are particularly insulting. During that time I mentioned that the main hero of Sword Art Online, Kirito, was, and I quote myself, "the most boring character devised in anime." I still hold that opinion because he is, but the more I thought about it I asked what made him boring? Why did I hate this kid so much? Well the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he problem I have with Kirito can be applied to why a lot of old classic characters can be perceived as "boring." Simply put Kirito is flawless, he shows up, kills all of the bad guys, and gets all of the ladies without applying any charisma or effort into it. As far as I'm concerned you should have one of three essentials to make a good character: underdog, where we see the character rise from adversity; flawed, where a character is competent but struggles with a flaw that either affects their actions, destroys them, or ...