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High five.
Welcome back to Nerds Without Pants! It’s been almost a full month since the Pantsless Ones got together to record, and after the heavy topic of episode 65 they decide to keep things light. So that means two hours of meandering talk about video games, comics, blasphemy, and indie pro wrestling, among other things. Enjoy!
First Erika Szabo and now Liana. I need to move to Canada!
Welcome to an unintentionally bonus edition of Nerds Without Pants! Angelo hosts this episode, featuring special guest Liana Kerzer. Liana is a TV and internet personality who also writes about video games for Metaleater. The reason for Liana’s visit was to talk about mental health in relation to video games, but we had such a great time talking to her that the episode went beyond 3 hours. So we’ve decided to split the Consumption Junction and topic portions of the show into two. Please enjoy a lengthy Consumption Junction this week, and come back for our regular time next week as we discuss mental health and the healing power of video games.
“Sacred geometry.”
Every so often, I am lucky enough to play a game so delightful, so perfectly engineered for its platform, and so inspiring that I have to take a step back, stunned. While other arts such as literature and painting seem long in the tooth these days, clutching to cynicism and nihilism like a terminal patient clinging to the sheets in his bed, great games seem imbued with a sort of impossible optimism and generosity towards the human condition. Monument Valley, a game about redemption through sacred geometry, is one of those games.
Take these jobs and... discuss them.
A downloadable demo for the highly anticipated 3DS RPG, Bravely Default, hit the eShop last week and Travis, JD, and Julian put some hours into it before convening to discuss what they thought. Find out how we felt about the demo and what we now expect out of the full game in our roundtable discussion.
A perfectly fan-serviceable, but mindless brawler.
Despite the variety of games classified as brawlers, they typically fall into one of two camps: Those that have deep, complex mechanics and require thoughtful, strategic combat decisions and memorization of enemy tactics, and those that are simple, fun, and generally don’t require a whole lot of thought. These are games like Streets of Rage, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Musou games like Dynasty Warriors. Senran Kagura Burst falls squarely into this second camp, but that doesn't mean it’s not a unique experience. Senran Kagura Burst is probably the most Japanese game I've ever played, and that’s really saying quite a lot.
I bet this discussion could actually go somewhere if we'd all just stop acting like children.
There's been a lot of controversy just about everywhere these days regarding how women are portrayed in video games. Frankly, I'm glad to see it. Controversy has a way of exposing us to new perspectives and fresh opinions in a way few other things can. It's given many women a platform to discuss how things like this make them feel sexualized, marginalized, and mistreated. It's also given others the chance to promote the radical idea that perhaps the size of a woman's bust shouldn't dictate how we perceive them; that big boobs don't necessarily mean a shallow character with a tiny brain. It's also indirectly fed Jenn Frank's idea (which has since garnered international attention) for a BoobJam: A call for the creative souls among us whose coding Kung Fu is strong, to create games about boobs, with the caveat that the content show breasts from a more practical or biological angle as opposed to the typical straight male gaze, or sexually gratifying perspective.
Brought to you by your seventy dollars, a series of in-game transactions, and your agreement to watch the occasional sponsored advertisement between rounds of golf. Now, please… LOADING…LOADING…LOADING…enjoy this year’s edition of Tiger Woods PGA Tour!
Yeah, I’ve golfed. Once. Does that make me qualified to critique a modern realistic golf game? You betcha! My sole golf outing was in high school with several people who knew their way around the fairways. What started off fun and with a lot of potential quickly turned to a disaster as the hours wore on. Balls were lost, tempers flared, and the idiot driving the golf cart I was in crashed into a brick pillar throwing me forward, stopping only when my shins slammed into the sharp dashboard of the cart. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14: Masters Historic Edition has lots of similarities to that fateful golf outing, and I’m hoping to keep someone else from getting plowed into a brick column.
