Rants from the Beyond Section

The often angry musings of a young man who just wants to be awesome (and also loved, but only every so often).

[hypherr]

Deku B U T JRPG style bc I have the urge to design outrageous armor for my fave show T7T

**Reblog, don’t repost!**

[theangryn3rd-blog]

Great drawing of an even greater character. More on this later.

[theangryn3rd-blog]

The Angry Nerd Would Like to Have a (One-Sided) Discussion

So here’s something you may not know: this is also going to be a music blog (sort of). I have kind of a broad and very mood-defined music tastes. There are, however, several pillars of my constantly evolving taste. By “pillars” I mean bands/artists that I will always love no matter what. One of these is a rock/alternative band known as Coheed and Cambria.

 I’ve been a fan of this band since my Freshman year of high school. For several years before this they were a kind of annoying presence in my life that a friend of mine played a lot when we hung out. Then one day he said, “You know they have a sci-fi story behind all of their albums right?” The week afterwards on a night when I was home alone, I sat at my kitchen table with my (then) hulking, old laptop and listened to all 4 albums they had out at the time while reading a summary of the story online while each album played. Nowadays, I have their entire discography, have seen them half-a-dozen times, and have spent more on their merch/comic books than I will ever care to admit. Their music, ambitious concept, and general love for what they do absolutely entranced me. In fact, they came out with a new song today and I’ve been listening to it almost non-stop since like noon.

But there has long been a pall over my beloved, awesome concept band. Many a time have I heard them described as “emo” or “pop punk” or even the dreaded “screamo”. It disheartens me to hear such things said for one simple reason: anybody who says that they are any of the above is MISSING THE FUCKING POINT OF THE BAND AND ITS MUSIC.

Screamo, and its kindred are about unleashing raw emotion. There’s very rarely any larger design to any of the kind of art that those bands produce. I’m not saying its bad music, and I’m sure a screamo band’s concert would be completely wild. However, to say that Coheed and Cambria, a band with a motherfucking classically trained frontman AND lead guitarist, that went from getting booed out of dives in New York and North Jersey to selling out venues all over the world while creating an incredible, grimdark space opera on the side is not the same as screaming one’s lungs out for the enjoyment of the masses. It’s true, they have toured with screamo bands and played events like Warped Tour, but my boy (the lead singer) Claudio Sanchez unleashes his screaming muscles very rarely, and usually tastefully. It’s just a tool for him, not his only one. Coheed and Cambria deserves to be mentioned with true rock bands like the Black Keys, Arctic Monkeys, and The Killers, even though their style is vastly different.

I know this post ain’t going to change shit really. Just had to explain why I get all indignant whenever somebody lumps in Coheed and Cambria with bands I’ve never seen any reason to associate them with. They’ll keep being misunderstood, I’ll keep loving the shit out of them, and hopefully, they get the gods-damned recognition they deserve.

[theangryn3rd-blog]

The Angry Nerd’s Review of Farcry 5

Once upon a time, there was a game called Farcry 3. It came from a little known, cult franchise (which I still loved) and completely changed what an open world fps could be. Yes, it lacked the Diablo-like loot and wasteland charm of Borderlands, but it took you from being a snobby white kid to a bonafide badass jungle predator in a few short hours and that’s an experience worth any gamer’s time.

The franchise continues without a lot of fuss for awhile. It became a cash cow in a similar vein to Assassin’s Creed (although this new ancient Greek one looks admittedly awesome) and that was fine for awhile. Then the gameplay trailer for Farcry 5 dropped last Summer, and I got absolutely hype. A game where you can annihilate redneck cultists in Trump’s America? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP! It was a game set to revitalize an aging franchise, deliver some awesome open-world action, and potentially make a political statement against the bat-shit craziness that my home country has become.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Farcry 5 is nothing more than watered down garbage. Its weapon choices are limited to the point of being laughable. Its vaunted “companion characters” have no personality and get killed by a stiff breeze (they don’t even level up or change at all). The main character, who I am sure plenty of voice actors would have fallen over themselves to play, is silent which is the biggest waste of a main character I have ever seen. I could go on, but then this post would take up pretty much this entire blog. All I wanted was an incredible rampage through redneckville and what I got was a massive, stinky shit on everything that makes gaming fun.

Why the unbridled hatred? Why do I rail so hard against a game that was probably destined for average obscurity from the start? Because this game had a chance to really do something special. It had a chance to put a combat-booted foot down and say “America’s neo-nazis have no place in the gaming world”. Instead, it introduced a bunch of villains who you barely see and fails to develop them in any meaningful way besides making them more and more pissed off that you’re killing their minions. Even though they are the oppressors of an entire county’s worth of people, all the inhabitants of said county pretty much become blissful and ignorant again as soon as you kill a few goons in their immediate area. There is no weight behind your actions. No exploration of the implications of a cult that wants to kill everyone who’s different from them. Not even a character I can point to and be like “this guy was alright”. Almost every piece of story content (except maybe the “God will not let you take me.” moment) pretty much fell flat, and was boring visually as well.

Though the gameplay starts out as a good time with the usual assortment of vehicles, weapons, and side-quests given by pedestrian NPCs but honestly? It took me 3 months to finish playing the damn thing because playing started to feel like another job. Aside from stealthily carving my way through entire outposts, there weren’t any quest-lines that I found myself going back to. No other activity (aside from the occasional Clutch Nixon mission for shits and giggles) that I wanted to be doing. And all the money and experience I got as rewards went towards skills that only made minimal changes to how I played and maybe the same 5 or 6 guns out of a selection of maybe 15 to 20. All the guns even have the exact same upgrades so you can’t even customize them in any meaningful way. It almost feels like a game that the developers forgot to add any sort of spice to, and the result is an experience only marginally more enjoyable than watching paint dry.

I wanted to like this game. I really fucking did. But Ubisoft churned out another garbage level effort to milk one of their cash cows and I’m not just mad: I’m heartbroken. All I want is for one god damn open-world shooting game to totally buck the system and do awesome shit like Dishonored, or Mass Effect 2, or just any game with something more to say than “Go here, and kill these dudes”. Maybe that day will never come, but Farcry 5 sure as shit will not be the game to bring about any sort of revolution. Go play something else.

[theangryn3rd-blog]

The Nerd of Wrath’s Review of Attack on Titan

Let me begin by saying I know how popular this anime is. I have several friends who enjoy it. I, on the other hand, have different thoughts on the matter:

Having now watched both of the seasons of this show all the way through, I gotta say that in spite of some incredible action scenes, I think this show is representative of all the reasons anime will never be as awesome as it was during the golden age of shows like Cowboy Bebop, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Rorouni Kenshin (though I also admit that none of those shows are my all-time favorite). The fact is Attack on Titan bills itself as a show about the unbreakable spirit of humanity when in fact it is nothing but a show about an extinction level event. Except in this case, that event is unnecessarily gruesome and more predictable than a Greek tragedy. For every tiny bit of ground the hapless, plucky humans gain on their implacable (and massive) enemies, they get slaughtered in droves. Even their heroes (Mikasa, Levi, and Erwin) pale in comparison to even one of the sexless giants that *spoiler alert* turn out to actually be made from humans in a plot twist that anyone with a half a brain could see coming from a mile away. Yes, it is somewhat awesome to watch the warriors of the Scout Regiment swing around on steel cables with twin blades in hand, but watching them get eaten all the fucking time is decidedly less so. For all of it’s grand music and ambitious battles, Attack on Titan never had enough in its 36 episodes to truly get me interested beyond wanting to watch Mikasa go on one of her rampages.

Then there are the characters themselves, who are mostly passable, aside from the most important one. Eren Jaeger is the worst protagonist in any story I have ever watched, read, made up, or heard from anyone else. He is reckless, a terrible fighter (in human AND “titan” form), and screams most of his dialogue like an angsty 13 year old who just broke their favorite toy. He is so insufferable, that I found myself skipping almost all of his monologues towards the end of my viewing. Eren is not a hero, he’s a child with anger issues who happened to get some crazy powers. Even nearly silent protagonists (Hiro Yui from Gundam Wing) or protagonists who are absolute losers (Arita Haruyuki from Accel World) are better than this brat of a demi-god. 

Finally, there is the plot itself. It starts out with a question at its core: What the fuck is in Dr. Jaeger’s basement? Which eventually leads to a much larger question: Where the fuck do these man-eating giants come from? This big question, though not answered right away, can be figured out by only the 2nd episode of season 2. The answer, that humans somehow become titans when the right magical bullshit is done to them, defeats the whole purpose of ANY KIND OF STRUGGLE. Honestly, all it would take is for one power hungry person (other than the main villain) to figure out how to make himself a titan army and humanity goes caput. Though I can understand wanting to try for that kind of knife-edge pressure in your story, it is undercut by the fact that none of the characters (other than Mikasa) warrant any kind of attachment from the viewer and the world inside humanity’s walls is pretty much garbage anyway. Its a meaningless game where all the choices are bad and the one kid who MIGHT be able to save everyone is humongous douche with no brain to understand his powers with. I’ve gotten better plotlines out of my baby cousins.

All in all, if you enjoy anime for the thinking person, or even just an anime with a smidgen of depth, don’t watch Attack on Titan. I know I’ll get a lot of hate, but I have run out of fucks to give, and if my not-so-humble opinion gets anyone to watch something else; that’s a win in my book.

[theangryn3rd-blog]

A Brief Incantation...

Many will no what this is from. It’s my version of a spell I happen to like. It goes like this:

I am the bone of my sword. I am unknown to death, yet have only caught a glimpse of life. My body is steel and my blood is fire that has been created over a thousand blades. My hands bleed from shaping fearsome steel, yet those hands shall hold nothing. And so to the Muse of Epics I pray; Unlimited Blade Works.

[theangryn3rd-blog]

Timeless Games Part I: Diablo 2

So I’m terrible at keeping up with this “regular” writing thing, but I am going to have to be better about it now as I have temporarily rejoined the ranks of the unemployed. I’m looking to start doing this twice a week and make it a habit.

Every so often, I want to do a post about a game that doesn’t age. A game that I started playing when I was tiny, and have kept playing ever since. The first, and possibly greatest of these immortal wonders is Diablo 2: the great grandfather of the dungeon crawler sub-genre.

It would be a waste of time to talk about plot here. Though Blizzard’s world of Sanctuary has a semi-deep and interesting lore, Diablo 2 is all about the non-stop action and how you get through it using each character class’s unique capabilities. You fight everything from mummies, to demons, to pissed off wildlife, and the methods at your disposal for getting rid of them are just as varied. Will you be a sorceress who controls the battlefield with status-inflicting spells or a paladin who hides behind heavy armor and shields while enhancing their own strikes through some divine intervention. Each of the five (seven with the expansion) classes feel as unique today as they did when the game released in 2000 and in my opinion should be a reference point for modern developers seeking to truly differentiate the classes of their RPGs.

The environments play into the experience as well as they are always partially procedurally generated. You don’t know what loot your going to find or where tough unique monsters will pop up without warning. Each “chapter” that you play through in the main story will see your character emerge with far different equipment across each playthrough; though chances are you will still be appropriately challenged by the scary main story bosses at the end of each segment. I can’t remember how many times I’ve played through and found items or monsters that I’ve never even heard of before.

All in all, if you haven’t played this PC gem, do it. It can be run by a crap computer and its more than worth your time. If you’re like me and still playing it, happy questing.   

[theangryn3rd-blog]

Post 1 - Part 2: The Bottom Five

Time to finish what I started yesterday. Without further ado, here are the five biggest pieces of shit the gaming industry tried to heap on us this year.

5. Gears of War 4 - I used to be a huge fan of this series. Then Gears of War 3 came out and ruined the whole damn thing. Judgement (the inevitable prequel that followed) just made everything worse and this most recent entry to the series? With fucking robot enemies? And the main character’s son replacing him? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. This title is a mockery of the brutal majesty that made the first two games the wondrous stories they were. Though I acknowledge that Microsoft has now tasked a new team of developers with the upkeep of this series, but honestly? Those fine people would be much better off telling Microsoft to fuck itself and working on a game franchise that isn’t already dead.

4. No Man’s Sky - As someone who loves books as much as games, I was ecstatic when I heard a game was coming out based on one of Asimov’s works. Asimov, though not very good at characters, is one of the best world builders to ever live so I was even more excited when I heard it was going to be a massive, open universe exploration game I was even more pumped. When I got my hands on this abomination it turned out to be not a universe, but a universally boring experience. Most of your time in this game is just spent in transit. If not in transit, your wandering around mostly barren planets with a weapon you never actually use. The game doesn’t even have anything resembling a story. Despite its long development cycle, No Man’s Sky was nothing but a disappointment and I hope any other developer inspired by Asimov comes out with a better effort than this.

3. Farcry: Primal - I’m a man who believes that sometimes you have to go back to go forward; this time it isn’t the case. Farcry is usually a game about a misplaced tourist becoming a huge badass via a gun-filled romp through an exotic locale. Primal decided to change this formula by sending the player back to the stone age. Although this sounds like a cool, novel idea, it takes away all the variety associated with the game’s normally massive arsenal and varied tactical situations.While riding a sabertooth tiger is empowering, doing it over, and over, and over again isn’t. Trading out a heavy machine gun with a scope for a spear with a stone tip is quite frankly asinine and I’m of the opinion this game is the product of developer’s running out of ideas and saying “fuck it”. I think even the publisher thought this regression in time was a wrong move considering the fact Farcry is no longer a yearly title. Whatever the next Farcry game is, I hope it gives me more options than spears, bows, and pissed off wildlife.

2. All of the fucking Telltale games that came out this year - When Telltale started up with that cute little Walking Dead series, it was a novelty. A lot of people got attached to the central figures and it cemented Telltale as one of the darlings of the gaming community. I have always been against them, but NEVER more than this particular year. Their Batman series was an absolute joke that held not even a match to the venerable “Arkham” series. The Walking Dead: Michonne was nothing but fan service for those of you attached to that show (she’s better in the comics guys). Minecraft: Story Mode is the worst atrocity as it defeats the entire purpose of Minecraft, which is organic. fucking. storytelling. These episodic games are scams, designed to get you to pay more for a game that ends the same way no matter what choices you make during the episodes. I know that there will never be a day when gamers stopped being scammed by Telltale’s gimmick, but I’ll always be vocally against them and I’d rather sit down and watch some episodes of an actual show than play through Telltale’s meaningless bullshit.

1. Ratchet and Clank - I’m devastated that I have to put this on this list. Back in the early 2000′s Insomniac came out with a trilogy of games that were fun as all hell while changing the landscape of third person shooters for all time. This year, someone decided it was a great idea to reboot the franchise and come out with a cg feature film to accompany the game. Where the original game had engaging action, hilarious dialogue, and a truly creative arsenal, this new game plays like somebody wanted to make call of duty in a slightly more whimsical universe. I want to do an in depth rant about just how shitty this game is, and I most likely will, but just suffice it to say this: when I played this game, I felt as though my childhood was violated; as though the developers took a great big shit on everything I used to love about this franchise, and anyone who thinks this game has any value at all should go back and experience the original instead of wasting their time.

That’s all I got right now. If the gods move me to write more this week, I will. I don’t have any regular updates planned at the moment but I’ll figure that shit out as I go along. Until then, have a grand New Year, and don’t play shitty games.   

[theangryn3rd-blog]

My 1st Rant: The Best and Worst Games of 2016

Hello dear reader, welcome to my humble blog.

This blog is going to be comprised of my musings about three things that I am very passionate about: video games, books, and table top games. That seems like a hodge podge of random shit to most people, but there are interconnections between them that I see and this blog will help me make those connections clear to others, as well as share my own (positive and negative) thoughts about them. For my first musing, I thought I’d share what I thought were the best and worst video games that came out this year and why.

Top 5

5. Rise of the Tomb Raider - I know this came out in 2015, but the PS4 version didn’t show up until this year, so I’m including it anyway. Though the Tomb Raider franchise has a legacy (and gameplay formula) spanning back to the 90′s, SquareEnix’s recent revival has changed the game from a puzzle-platformer with some occasional shooting to a third person shooter with stealth, puzzle, and platforming elements. While the most recent installment featured a story that was likely written by six-year old children on a sugar high who had just seen Indiana Jones for the first time, the gameplay here has never been more varied and enjoyable. Special ammunition for weapons and various explosives can all be crafted in the heat of battle and the materials to do so are plentiful. Encounters can be approached in any way from going in guns blazing to sneaking around and taking out squads of enemies without them even knowing you’re there. It’s a really empowering experience that, if the main and side quests were better crafted, would occupy a much higher spot on this list. Rise of the Tomb Raider is far from perfect but its a fluid, flexible experience that really makes fighting a one woman guerrilla war feel as awesome as it sounds.

4.   XCOM 2 - Although I have not played nearly as much of this game as I would have liked (thanks shitty computer), XCOM 2 is high in the running for best strategy game ever made. The player takes the role of a recently liberated commander of a resistance movement fighting against earth’s new alien overlords. From there, everything basically goes more insane then it already is. You have to split your time between researching new technologies, upgrading your soldiers, and gathering key resources. In between, you have to fight against increasingly varied and dangerous groups of aliens that all have unique abilities tailored to murdering your brave soldiers with gruesome efficiency. It’s one of the few modern games outside of the “Souls” franchise that doesn’t shy away from ramping up its difficulty to a point where a player can feel overwhelmed. It’s certainly daunting, but performing well gives you a phenomenal feeling of satisfaction, especially when you’re taking down giant mechanical artillery pieces with ease. It’s an experience that at once makes you feel under pressure and incredibly smart at the same time. As an added bonus, there’s also a huge modding community for the game so you can add pretty much anything you want from multitudes of cosmetic options to new soldier classes, and even new enemies.

3.  Titanfall 2 - When the first Titanfall made its debut back at E3 2013, I leaned over to my friend while watching the gameplay reveal and said, “I can’t wait to see what they do with the sequels”. Titanfall 2 lived up to my expectations for the future of this franchise in almost every single way. While the first game only had a multiplayer mode, the inclusion of a single player campaign and the drastic expansion of the multiplayer has transformed Titanfall from an intriguing curiosity to an incredibly fast, fun, and exciting experience rivaling even the “big guns” of the shooter genre like Battlefield and Call of Duty. The story of the campaign is essentially a buddy-cop movie where one of the buddies happens to be a giant robot. It’s pretty much one of Michael Bay’s Transformer’s movies if it was actually good. The multiplayer has so much depth to it that I could probably be playing it for the entirety of the next year and still not have unlocked everything. The six new titan classes are all unique and balanced (with the exception of Tone, but I’ll rant about that later) and the weapons have a cool science-fiction feel to them without being totally unfamiliar. If it weren’t for the brevity of the campaign, this might be my favorite shooter of all time. I very much look forward to seeing what Respawn will do with the final entry in the series and am happy to have this gem to enjoy in the meantime.

2. Final Fantasy XV - Though I am of the opinion that the Final Fantasy franchise has somewhat outstayed its welcome, this latest entry in the series has entranced me in a way that I never thought a Final Fantasy game would after the masterpiece that was FFX. The story follows a dispossessed prince and his four friends on a fateful road trip to kick ass, take names, and find the prince’s bride. This journey takes you and your party through a beautifully crafted (if sometimes difficult to navigate) open world filled with tough, dynamic enemies and plenty of secrets to discover. The game also does its best to simulate a real road trip by urging you to settle down at night due to the VERY tough monsters that materialize randomly and encourages you to eat regularly to give your party powerful bonuses that can turn the tide of battle. Speaking of battle, the combat is now entirely real time and feels something like a mix between Kingdom Hearts and God of War. The magic system too has been entirely revamped through a kind of crafting system where you can taylor-make spells for use against particular enemies. Learning the new and in-depth systems of this very different take on Final Fantasy has been a joy. Despite some very bland repeated dialogue and story that could use some exposition, Final Fantasy XV has certainly made the franchise relevant (but not revolutionary) again and I certainly hope any future entries to the franchise maintain the quality of this game.

1. Dishonored 2 - Back in 2012, I played through my favorite game of all time: Dishonored. I played that game so much that I still have all nine levels of the main campaign and the six of the DLC memorized. I was able to sneak through most of them without alerting anyone and combine the game’s supernatural powers to flat-out amazing effect. I full on fell in love with the game and it’s world and now Arkane Studios has given me that same joy again with Dishonored 2. This sequel takes the players outside of the dreary streets of Dunwall to the exotic Karnaca, a city surrounded by deep jungle built at the base of a massive mountain. It’s buildings are massive and far more varied in design than the previous games. The choice of playing as the last game’s protagonist or the new character: the young Empress Emily Kaldwin, gives you a massive amount of variation in gameplay style as they both have their own unique sets of supernatural abilities. The levels in and of themselves are much longer, and have more varied objectives than the simple “go here and kill this person” formula of the last game. The developers also expanded options for both lethal and non-lethal gameplay to insure that player has a different experience every playthrough. All in all, the Dishonored 2 is an expanded, in-depth experience that not only tops its predecessor but pretty much every other first person action game on the market right now. If you haven’t played it, you should.

That’s all I got in me for the moment, I’ll be back tomorrow with my bottom 5. Brace yourselves, it’s about to get cuttingly sarcastic up in here.