August of this year will mark the 20th anniversary since Dragon Quest was introduced in the US. With 10 core sequels and many spin-offs since then, you’d think an RPG fan such as myself would be well-versed in the series by now. But in reality, my Dragon Quest knowledge over the years has only been cursory at best. I got started about eight years ago when I completed Dragon Warrior (the series’ name in the US until 2005), and I’m currently nearly halfway through the massive adventure that is Dragon Quest XI. My depth of familiarity with the series pretty much ends there. Or at least it did until I recently finished Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride- a Nintendo DS remake of the beloved Super Famicom original.
Welcome back to a thoughtful Nerds Without Pants! Patrick had a smarty pants Stage Select topic, so we enlisted the smartiest pants person we know: Mike Fallek of the Hackthought Podcast. What follows is comedy, heated debates, and the debut of the Patrick Leap? Listen and find out, Pantsless people!
Since Portal hit the scene around a decade ago, it’s inspired a variety of other games that have chosen to use the first person perspective for puzzle solving and storytelling, rather than the typical shooting. The Spectrum Retreat is one such game and it does well in both telling an interesting story and providing some great puzzles. However, these two elements rarely coalesce and more often feel like oil and water, separated naturally by the construct of the experience. Though it’s too bad the two don’t come together, what’s presented is still compelling thanks to ever evolving puzzle constructs and the gradual realization of what's going on in The Spectrum Retreat.
On this day, I played three different games on Xbox One and PS4. They were: Minecraft [XBO], Gears of War 4 [XBO] and Pinball FX3 [PS4]. They were all very enjoyable. Details are given below.
I got Agents of Mayhem as a rental today but it took a while to install so I played a few hours of Zombi and then got wrapped up in Army of Two and didn't stop until I had beaten it.
I've been playing Zelda of course, and have been very impressed with it. It's kind of the Zelda game you imagined you played, but it's real. I'm not very far in it, been doing little quests, but I have opened my first "memory" and am moving on from there. Mostly I'm exploring the world slowly and building myself up. It's actually a very neat game.
The gaming top 5 is something I am doing for NWP, but since '98 is also the year I started buying CDs, I'm going to include some musical favorites as well. Maybe movies, since I was always a huge movie buff.
Reading a discussion on another Pixlbit blog reminded me of a blog I wrote on 1UP 9 years ago. Shockingly, this May will mark my 10th anniversary as a member of the 1UP/Pixlbit community. Back then, I still played on my PS2 and Gamecube and hadn't joined 7th gen yet. Now I feel old.
It wasn't all fun today as I helped Mark (who's wheelchair bound btw) build some shelving and move some cabinetry around his apartment. But then it was all fun. Mostly the same as yesterday. Defense Grid 2 and Minecraft.
I keep trying to finish more games than I acquire, but I am weak of will...
There's been a cry, a crook is on the loose
You need to act, before he cooks your goose
Investigate, the where and why and who
Don't hesitate, you know what you must do
You've got to find the guilty party before the guilty party finds you
After playing a whole bunch of Dark Souls 3 and beating it a couple times, I decided that it was time to get back to Bloodborne. Back when I picked up my PS4, I did so specifically for Bloodborne. I'm kind of a Souls addict and couldn't help but buy the PS4 so I could keep feeding my addiction. Unfortunately, I was mid-development on PixlCross and didn't have much time for actually playing games. I reached Vicar Amelia and basically dropped the game. I had to get PixlCross done and couldn't keep wasting every night of the week playing the game.
As per usual, my plan to blog more often is thrwarted by a number of things: work, exhaustion, distractions, shitty weather, napping and high school basketball. None of these things are interesting (no matter how I try to prove otherwise) so I won't waste time with that. Instead, I'll talk about Dying Light, which has dominated my spare time in both its campaign and The Following DLC.
But I teach an Intro to Media class and am going to spend class time linking it to concepts like illegal downloading, music streaming, and the propensity for music to advance social justice in my class tomorrow, so here's the blog I'm writing anyway.