The Nerd Next Door

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...

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...

    Calling Metroid: Other M's story "bad" would be like calling being set on fire by fascists "slightly uncomfortable". Most people agree that the actual gameplay of Other M , while restrictive, is fine for an action game. But the actual story is seen as utterly rancid and bordering on character assassination for series protagonist Samus Aran. Metroid Other M is almost impressive in that it drew the hatred of both people who saw Samus as a feminist icon and those who despise anything "SJW." And having recently replayed Other M in the build up to Metroid Dread, I can firmly say that both groups are correct to hate this game's story and yet I can see how to fix it with one small change. For Those Just Joining Us Before I do tell you how I'd fix Other M , let's go over the plot and it's problems. Not long after failing to save the last Metroid and blowing up Planet Zebes during Super Metroid ; Samus Aran finds herself drawn to the Bot...

   Retro Shooters seem to be on the rise lately haven't they? Retro Shooters being fast paced shooters where if you either don't kill everything in the room or blaze out of there at 420mph you failed your ancestors. Six years ago the Retro Shooter was dead and buried; consigned to the dustbin of the 90's along with Jnco's and Vanilla Ice's career. But unlike those things Retro Shooters are back with a steel barreled vengeance. So what changed? Well to understand how the Retro Shooters came back, we have to understand their rise and fall. In 1992 id software released Wolfenstien 3D , the first mass market First Person Shooter; here the objective was to shoot your way out of a Nazi lair because fuck Nazi's. This however was less shooter and more maze game, you had about three types of enemy who did the same thing at varying speeds and your real concern was escaping their lairs, all 60 of them. This would change with id's follow up, Wolfenstien Spear of Desti- ...