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...

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...