The Nerd Next Door

  Recently I've been playing the 2020 indie hit Hades quite a bit. It takes me a while to get adjusted to a new game but I found the addictive groove of Hades ' rougelike and random design to my liking. It's also a great game on Steam Deck, when I've got 30 minutes to kill at work I power up the Deck and go for a quick playthrough.  But the more and more I played through Hades' story the more I began noticing similarities to another rougelike I've played, Returnal . With Hades II announced and the PC port of Returnal out I figured it would be a perfect time to talk about how the two master one thing very well, story integration. Namely how the two games integrate story into the design to tell two radically different tales in terms of tone. The first is Hades , casting the player as the titular lord of the dead's son, Zagreus, as he tries to escape his father's domain. Problem with that is he keeps dying; the good news is that as an immortal Zagreus just...

Id software, the beloved pioneers of blowing shit up while rocking out to heavy metal. For decades they've been a leader in the first person shooter market and have become a household icon of the industry. From their attempt to port Super Mario Bros. 3 to DOS to the heavy metal album that is DOOM Eternal; Id has always been pushing gaming forwards in some way whether through technology, gameplay, or artistry. But from 1993 to 1997 Id was at their A game; churning out monster hit after monster hit. So after finally getting through the original Quake duology I decided to rank my favorites from this era that I consider their Golden Age. Some of it may be a hot take and some of it may not, but either way none of these games are bad, so keep that in mind. Oh, and no Wolfenstein or the expansions for Doom and Quake. Wolfenstein is more of a maze game than what Doom and Quake are and it feels too different to properly rate. Also I feel adding the expansions takes away from the pacing of t...

  Ah DOOM 3 , the black sheep of the DOOM franchise, stripping away the speedy, fast, heavy metal action and going for a more slower, cramped and claustrophobic experience; DOOM 3 feels like a sore thumb compared to earlier and even later entries like DOOM 2016 and Eternal . From the outside looking in, DOOM 3 is a divisive game; it's an underrated horror masterpiece to some and a slow plodding mess to others. Some recommend the original PC version and some recommend the 2012 BFG re-release and other still would have you ignore it all together. So after beating 64 I decided to go straight into 3 and finish my own personal DOOM story that began in 2016 to see how it held up. DOOM 3 lays down what it wants to be in the first 10 minutes of the game, a horror themed Half-Life . After the introduction cut-scene you, a nameless space marine, are hurled into a Martian base to get acclimated, meet the people, enjoy some world building; ya know, like in Half-Life . But sure enough you h...

  Halo 3: ODST , one of my favorite games of all time, has finally received a proper PC port so I felt it was time to talk about what made it so special. ODST stood out in the Halo series for changing the formula; new gameplay ideas, new design, throwing what a Halo game was on it's head, and focusing on more personal stories about the world you're in as opposed to the big epic scales one got used to. Over the years however, I've noticed one game that does the same thing in it's own series and stands out for those same reasons as ODST , the Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask . Sure it's a different series and gameplay styles, but you'd be shocked at the common story these games share, right from inception. ODST and Majora's Mask both started out as other projects entirely, for ODST it was Halo: Chronicles , a failed project meant to be directed by Peter Jackson. When Jackson bailed however the team behind Chronicles were left with nothing to do. So, ...

So now we are at the end of the line, all the mainline Halo games have played and now the wait begins for Infinite and the MCC port on PC. A wait that honestly is taking longer than expected, but I can wait, I'm a patient lil sausage. But there is a path here, one I've seen over my journey through Halo , one that in my opinion can perfectly explain what the hell happened here and we can find out jsut what the hell happened to cause the rise and fall of Halo. In my opinion and in terms of single player, what made Halo stand out from games like DOOM, Quake, and Duke Nukem was it's ability to flawlessly switch from hallway style linear shooting to big outdoor arenas with lots of vehicles and weapons, all of which encouraged experimentation and approaching things how you want to. It also had a sense of humor about itself, the stakes were big, epic, and serious, but the tone of at least the human characters indicated that they were having a bit of fun with the wh...

Halo is in sort of a rocky place right now, the franchises entire hopes ride on a return to the classic style with Halo Infinite after the disaster that was Halo 5: Guardians . But Infinite won't be the first return to a classic style, as little more than a year after Halo 5 , Halo Wars 2 dropped on Xbox and PC. With a more simplified premise, a return to a classic world in the series, and a new villain, does Halo Wars 2 outshine the first one? Halo Wars 2 is set 28 years after Halo Wars and about 6 months after Halo 5:Guardians ; after being lost in space at the end of Halo Wars , Halo Wars 2 sees the crew of the UNSC Spirit of Fire being awoken in orbit around a restored Ark from Halo 3 . However, the crew quickly discovers a Brute dominated ex-Covenant faction called the Banished in possession of the Ark after slaughtering the scientific survey outpost and Spartan escort that previously occupied it.  The Spirit of Fire, along with a new AI named Isabel, finds itself a...