The Nerd Next Door

Recently, I re-played The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword  on Switch, a game I hadn't played since it came out on Wii a decade ago (god I feel old). Overall, I enjoyed the frame rate boost and quality of life changes that the port makes over the Wii original. I also think playing through Breath of the Wild has given me an appreciation for the dungeon crawling of Skyward Sword . Motion controls were still a pain , but I did love that camera control the motion controls have now. But as I was playing, I remembered a criticism about Skyward Sword that I had as a kid, a lot happens emotionally but Link doesn't speak, at all. It's normal for Zelda games but feels weird in Skyward Sword because it puts a lot more effort into making the player care about what's happening. So, it seems weird that Link doesn't say anything when it feels like he should or when someone directly addresses him and it's only implied that he speaks back. I came to the realization however that,

 Isn't this an odd one, Nights Into Dreams . I had heard people praise this as Sonic Team's best non-Sonic work and one day it was around $2 on Steam so I figured why not. Of course if it's on this backlog dig it means I never played it. Is Nights as good as people claim and worth begging for a sequel to as so many have?  Nights' story follows Elliot and Claris, two children going through tough patches in their lives, as they're pulled into the Dream World of Nighttopia. There they discover that an evil wizard is trying to destroy Nightopia with nightmares and team up with Nights, a jester of unspecified gender but I like to think is a woman, to stop said wizard and save Nighttopia. The story of Nights is told non-verbally and barebones which I personally am torn on was a mistake or not. There's clearly more going on here with Nights and the bosses she fights, namely this identical jester who serves as the second to last boss, and it looks like an interesting w

After Dukey Nukey in the Third Dimension , I figured it was time to revisit a game I hadn't played in years, Tomb Raider . No, not the 1996 original, the 2013 reboot. I remember playing this on Xbox One and not being impressed by it. It just felt kind of forgettable to me. But that was 8 years ago and shockingly time and hindsight gave me new appreciation for this game I didn't have when I was younger. The story of Tomb Raider is an origin story, following famed gaming heroine Lara Croft's first adventure. Lara, fresh out of college, winds up marooned on a mysterious island while on an archeological expedition. It quickly turns out however that the island is full of crazed lunatics who worship a long dead Japanese queen and it's up to Lara to survive, rescue her shipmates, and learn if the long dead queen is truly the reason no one can leave. Now I'm skipping a lot of nuance but one thing about this story I actually really liked is Lara's own growth. Lara star

 After the kinda dark and dystopian Bioshock I had Resident Evil 4 next on the docket; but I was waiting for the HD pack mod, so I went with what was right next to it, Duke Nukem 3D . In terms of Boomer Shooters I had been wanting to do the Build Engine trinity of Duke Nukem 3D , Blood , and Shadow Warrior for a while. I have Blood , I have Duke , I still need Shadow Warrior though but that's beyond the point. The point is that we're here to ask the question, was Duke Nukem ever truly the king 90's gamers proclaimed him as? Well to start with we have the story, which is that aliens have invaded Los Angeles and are stealing Earth's women. The only person who can stop them is Duke Nukem; a perpetually horny steroid abuser with a penchant for murdering aliens. Shot down while returning to Earth after his alien killing side scrolling adventures; Duke must kill his way through LA, the Moon, and LA again in order to save the day. If that description wasn't obvious, Du

After the magical world of Spyro I decided I needed things to get dark, so I decided to get into Bioshock Remastered . Now I had played Bioshock on the Xbox 360 as an easter gift from my parents, because my parents were awesome like that. But that was fourteen years ago in 2008, when I was 12. I was also young and stupid as a child, so how does it hold up now that I'm older and slightly less dumb than usual? Well first up is the actual Remaster job which was fine. I know some bemoaned the lack of graphical options but it's a remaster of a game from 2007, it can probably run on a toaster. Ran like butter for me at least so I have nothing but praise for this Remaster, which boosts the frame rate beyond the original 30fps. Now I didn't notice any big graphical changes, but I last played Bioshock in 2008 so I'm not a good position to judge. Frankly I much prefer Bioshock Infinite to Bioshock  even if it is a sloppier game, but I'll get into that one day, for now, our fe

Welcome to part one of my attempt to dig through my Steam Library, sometimes I find my thoughts on these games too big to put into a tweet so we're kicking it to the blog. First on the docket, Spyro Reignited Trilogy.  Now I'm not comfortable with giving Activision my money given the... everything going on. But the fun thing about your Steam Backlog is that a game could spend ten years in the library before you touch it. In Spyro's case I bought this in 2020 so I feel less icky about it now. Now three games sounds like a lot, and I was concerned about that as well. But it turns out I shouldn't worry though as there isn't much meat on these bones and only one of the games truly engrossed me. What helped me get through Spyro Reignited easily is that it's like Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy in that the core mechanics don't change between games. Spyro is a Mario 64 style platformer with a glide for traversal, fire breath for attack, and charge for speed and

As part of my attempt to clear my Steam backlog I've gone back and replayed Bioshock as I purchased the remaster a while back but never played it (though I did play the original in 2008). A lot of people have written both in praise and derision of Bioshock so a lot of what I say about it is largely going to be the same; gameplay and story are great with incredible world building. However, the morality system doesn't work so well; with the only tangible difference from the morality system is the FMV that plays at the very end. With that said as I replayed Bioshock , I noticed that there is an opportunity no one brings up to fix the morality. To understand what the fix is, we need to go over the plot and morality system that run through Bioshock , just in case you haven't played it before. In Bioshock you play as a man who winds up in Rapture; an undersea city gone amok. In order to escape you're forced to survive crazed gene splicers, gene harvesting little girls called

I've been thinking lately about Call of Duty's  "advanced movement" phase.  When from 2014 to 2016 Call of Duty gave everyone jet thrusters in an attempt at advanced mobility. This era is generally regarded fairly poorly by the COD fandom. Most of the issues behind it have been talked into the ground, about how weapon balance got thrown off, how map design got ruined, and how futuristic movement doesn't belong in a series like COD . But I think this era is vital, as it can teach people about why momentum in a game is so important. Now, for those not in the know; Momentum is what allows the player to carry movement energy from one action to the next. If I'm running and jumping my movement doesn't dead stop when I hit the ground, I'll keep going a little more than expected. The best games with speed usually allow the player to carry their momentum from action to action using the resources the game has given them. For example, in Classic Sonic the Hedgeh

Hey, I'm back! Sorry for being gone so long, I'm working on getting my bookkeeper certification and my classes ate my writing time. Also, there were a lot of great games to play so I was playing those instead. In fact, seeing as how 2021 is over let's talk about my Top Games of the 2021. This won't be a Top 10, those are boring, and I save that for Twitter. Instead, we'll be going by category, categories that I largely make up, it'll be fun. And remember, it's not just the games that released this year. Best Surprise Game When it comes to games that drop out of nowhere there's two tacts to it; one is the company doesn't want people to spend too long hyping it up in order to avoid a Final Fantasy XV scenario. Alternatively, it's because the game is trash, and the company would rather you not think too much of it. For that last category a great example is GTA The Definitive Trilogy , an absolutely trash remaster of three PS2 classics. However, the