We’re kicking off the 2021 season of Nerds Without Pants with a comprehensive celebration of the music from the 8th console generation! This is our most ambitious music special to date, featuring 50 incredible tracks along with thoughtful commentary from the Pantsless Ones. Enjoy; this is a labor of love.
I've actually been playing a lot, thanks to the Genesis Mini (even booted up the SNES Mini to play Secret of Mana yesterday), GameFly, and Yakuza, so I'm just going to dump brief takes on all the games I've been playing.
Boring life update (you can skip, there's gaming stuff later/anyone else's keyboard type in the same letter a bunch of times when you hit it only once, especially on this site? Stupid $1000 ASUS ROG laptop, what the hell?!):
The first time, I was meant to be on to guest a regular episode, but the Skype update hated everyone, so Julian had to post a Digital Mystery Tour instead.
Wait, what's this? Two special episodes of Nerds Without Pants in a row? Yes, friends, it's true! Our...modified recording schedule led to some, er, confusion. Luckily, we had special guest and long time NWP commenter SuperStep on hand to pick up the slack. So buckle up for a non-spoiler, deep dive discussion about Yakuza Kiwami 2 and the Yakuza series as a whole.
Since Kiwami means Extreme, not really. It's a pretty mild problem; also one I only have the luxury of being entwined in because I'm still looking for gainful employment.
Welcome to a slapdash special edition of Nerds Without Pants! Scheduling and tech woes have kept us from recording a proper episode, but instead of leaving our wonderful audience high and dry, Julian has cobbled together this impromptu resurrection of Digital Mystery Tour, our failed video game music podcast from...4 years ago? Sheesh. Anyway, we hope you enjoy!
I consider myself a plugged in gamer. I take it as a matter of professional pride to keep tabs on all manner of games, even if I’m not personally interested in them. So imagine my surprise to learn that I’ve spent the last twelve years thinking the Yakuza series was just a low budget version of Grand Theft Auto, only to find out it’s actually a super deep roleplaying game. This was a pleasant surprise as I worked my way through Yakuza Kiwami 2, my first true foray into the franchise.
After playing the first chapter of God of War, it's going fine. The gameplay feels super standard, but it's ... ok. Just got done fighting The Stranger. I also do not have the same problems Julian does with the small boy. Sounds like a pretty good child voice actor to me so far. Then again, maybe he repeats himself more later on. We'll see.
The Garmin VivoSmart 3 smart watch I had my parents get me for my birthday was an $86 bust, but I'd waited more than a month to return it, so I could only get store credit yesterday.
Or so I've been telling everyone. What I've actually done is ask others if they've seen any offers and try to whittle down my grading pile while I'm still teaching.
So, while Yakuza 0 quickly became one of my favorite games of all time when I rented and eventually bought it last year, the remake of the original Yakuza game, subtitled Kiwami (meaning "extreme" in Japan) really brings attention to and intensifies some of the issues I had with the former game.
I came to my office to post midterm grades, but apparently the university's website is down for maintenance, so I guess it'll have to wait.
I started Yakuza Kiwami recently and I don't know if I like it as much as Yakuza 0. Part of it is I lived through 2005 and it's no 1988. Part of it is I haven't done near as many side missions/activities five chapters in as I did in 0 only two chapters in.