If I could steal a hook from my man Willy Wonka for a moment:
Come with me
And you’ll be
In my world of pure indignation
Take a look
And you’ll see
My utter exasperation
I don’t know about you folks but I’m increasingly worn down by living within the shadows cast by these giant clouds of carcinogenic culture. Every day there some new bit of vile behavior in the news from toxic fans either harassing artists who dared to make a thing differently than how the “fans” felt it should have gone to absurd elitism amongst supposed social groups to the constant revelations that a beloved figure may actually be a monstrous scum-sack of a garbage person (and thats on top of the “regular” news that is consistently nightmare fuel).
Yes this is another podcast where I rant about toxicity but it’s also a podcast where I spend a sizable chunk babbling about what I view as proper nerd culture. Not gatekeeping, misogyny or elitism but rather unabashed, un-ironic love for stuff.
Also sprinkled in at the end I talk about Incredibles 2, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and a few other things before stealing a line from Bill and Ted (Preston and Logan NOT Cosby and Bundy).
I hope next week’s show will be free from conversations about toxic culture and/or behavior. At this point I’m planning on spending a couple of minutes talking about the WHO deciding Game Addiction is a thing but we’ll see where the upcoming week takes us.
Be sure to share the show and subscribe.
Also remember that there is an Ask PolyNerdic link at the top of the page that will let you drop me a line and join in the conversation.
Due to reasons out of my control I had to record this week’s podcast before E3 was finished so my impressions are limited entirely to what I was able to see from the press conferences and do not include much information from the various outlet’s “hands on” impressions.
So what blew my mind? What am I excited for? What left me with more questions than answers?
Give it a listen and let me know what you are most into from this year’s show.
Big surprise, little old not a member of the games media, regular unexciting job having me did not get to attend E3 this year and my E3 themed podcast is still a few days away from release.
But the guys at Giant Bomb have posted a couple of substantial conversations about their impressions for the first couple of “official” days of E3 so I’ll gladly share what they had to say in my place…you know since they are professionals and all.
I’ll likely return to this post and add the 3rd night once it goes up but for now here’s the first two installments of Giant Bomb’s editor check-ins.
Night 1:
Night 2: Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil 2, etc
Watching these drives home the point of how damn bad I wish I had their job instead of the one I have.
Stay tuned for the next video from them as they provide better coverage than I ever could and come back Saturday morning at 0800 to hear all about what I was most excited about from the E3 press conferences.
Kicking off year 2 of The OrNERDnary Podcast in ways I didn’t expect.
I wanted to make the episode about what I wanted to see at E3 but world events and a personal funk led to discussions about disgusting behavior in the the nerd world, a seller of games making a questionable decision on what they will and won’t sell, a brief re-introduction into why I do this show every week and a rant about the importance of kindness in a vile world.
Tucked in with all that is a brief talk about E3 and my hopes for it as well as my thoughts on a couple of trailers I managed to catch this week, some talk about what little bit of gaming I had time for and what I managed to watch in the last 7 days (here’s a hint, not a lot of either).
Since I forgot to say it during the recording: Rest in Peace Mr. Bourdain, you led a fascinating life and made an untold number of people happy while doing so.
Enjoy the show, even if it isn’t the beacon of positivity I had intended on making it this week.
Celebrate the end of our first year at The OrNERDnary Podcast with a completely regular episode where I talk about the things I’ve been up to the past week and various news bits from the worlds of video games and movies.
This week I discuss:
-The Five Pack of PolyNerdic Play Tests I put out for games like State of Decay 2, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, H1Z1 and more.
-Jason Momoa leaving the reboot of The Crow
-The next game in the Assassin’s Creed series suddenly announced
-The new Spawn has it’s lead
-Bluehole behaves like a sore loser and sues Epic
-Stephen King’s new book The Outsider is very, VERY good
-A new non-standard Fallout game is on the way
I had the opportunity and pleasure to take a look at a number of games this weekend, from an old Battle Royale game arriving on console for the first time, to a handful of indie games and the release of a new exclusive by Microsoft.
So I did what I always try to do when I have new(ish) games to play, I made content.
Please enjoy this five pack of PolyNerdic Play Tests.
Up first is the H1Z1 beta for PS4. Outside of this video I spent a fair bit of time with it and have to admit that it not only runs better than the Xbox version of PUBG. Ultimately I think I like the map (the one I’ve played) and pacing of PUBG better but the moment to moment action and gunplay of H1Z1 feels so much crisper. I’d like to mash the two games together to make a well rounded, fun Battle Royale game without Fortnite’s bullshit.
Next we have Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, a $10 throwback to NES Castlevania (with a slight sprinkling of SNES bosses). I’m a couple levels further in than what is shown here and the game remains a satisfying, nostalgia fueled blast to play.
I always loved side scrolling beat ’em ups growing up so I knew the moment I saw Streets of Red that I was going to have to try it. I’ve played a lot of the classic games in the genre in recent years on Xbox and what not and find that having an unlimited supply of “quarters” makes the games very short since the difficulty is nullified by the ability to always continue. Streets of Red negates this and brings me back to the arcades of my youth where you inevitably were going to see a game over screen as SoR has permadeath.
Death Road to Canada is this wonderful mashup of zombie survival and road trip sim with pixel art graphic and a killer soundtrack. You play as an individual or duo trying to make it to the safety of Canada in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. One part text based adventure, one part survival game and it’s a whole lot of fun.
Speaking of zombies, Microsoft unleashed its latest exclusive onto the world last week with State of Decay 2. I’ve put a fair bit of time with the game and have to admit that I actually quite like it. It’s not going to be for everyone as the scavenging and community management stuff coupled with simplistic combat heavy reliance on survival mechanics (weapon degradation, fatigue, stamina, etc) could turn a lot of people away. Also the multiplayer is apparently very broken as of this writing, but as someone who plays solo I haven’t seen near the amount of bugs that I’ve been reading about.
There you have it, five brand new PolyNerdic Play Tests.
I hope you saw something in there that looks fun to you.
The last couple of weeks have seen some surprising and frankly a few unsurprising announcements of upcoming games.
This got the gears turning in my head and I’ve come up with a handful of games and franchises that haven’t been seen in a number of years and I feel are ripe for revisiting either in reboots, remasters or outright sequels.
In this episode I also discuss:
-Deadpool 2
-My semi-final thoughts on God of War
-The Battlefield V reveal event
-Solo: A Star Wars story
-Punisher Season 2 Set News
-Yakuza games getting remastered in Japan but are they coming here?
-Upcoming videos from PolyNerdic.com
-My early thoughts on State of Decay 2
-Grand Admiral Thrawn possibly coming to Episode IX?
-Detroit: Becoming Human’s mixed reviews
