The Nerd Next Door

When I was a wee lad  Naruto was the hottest anime on the air, Linkin Park had just dropped their Minutes to Midnight album, Michael Bay was breaking the box office with Transformers , and Halo 3 was one of the hottest games released. This was actually the game that got my parents to set us up with Xbox Live, my brother, father, and I all got accounts to play Halo 3 .  A lot of things from Halo 3 are nostalgic for me, but what has recently come back to my mind is its lobby system, a system so good that even Call of Duty copied it. In this era of gaming, when you start playing matchmaking you get taken to a pre-game lobby where you can mingle with other players, vote on map and modes, and listen to slurs dropped by 12-year-olds. Outside of those slurs this system was great, it let you get a feel for who you were playing with or against, and let players choose which maps they actually want to play. After the match you got to choose whether to stick with those people or bail. ...

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...

I love Halo , but recently I've been realizing that Halo has a serious weapon sandbox issue. It's not that the guns aren't fun to use, far from it, the problem is that Halo has for so long diluted it's weapon sandbox. It's resulted in cases where either one weapon dominates the sandbox or every weapon except power weapons have their role in the sandbox left unclear to the player.  Unlike other games like Call of Duty , this is a major issue for Halo as it relies more on it's weapon sandbox than COD's loadout system. Halo is a series defined by it's weapon sandbox, how one approaches a situation with the tools at hand or has to dip until they can find better tools. But in terms of those tools no Halo has done it better than Halo 1 , every other game has been a steady downward spiral. Halo 1 is the game with the least amount of overlap and therefore dilution in it's weapon choice. You had your bullet weapons for tearing through flesh and plasma weapo...

   I could have done productive things this weekend, and I kinda did. But for the most part life  this weekend was two things, work and Halo Infinite . 343 put out the first technical flight for Infinite and that consumed my life from Thursday to Monday. But now it's over and it's time for some closure by talking about the flight and what I liked and what could be fixed.  I think we should talk about what's most important, Halo Infinite's gameplay which is so good. Infinite feels like a hybrid of Halo 5 and Halo 2 and the guns feel great to use. I mean for once the meta isn't just Battle Rifle which is nice, it's kind of an issue I've always had with Halo where the primary weapon is the Battle Rifle, Pistol, or you die. I actually found myself using the AR a lot which is viable at mid-range now but needs to be burst fired, which encourages variety in weaponry.   The new weapons slapped too, namely the Skewer which has some great feed back and serves as a...