Wait, the generation is ending already?!
It’s the final Nerds Without Pants of the year, and that means it’s time to take a look back at 2019, a look back at the 8th generation, and a look forward to the 9th generation. It’s a short episode that quickly balloons into a normal sized episode for…reasons!
Holy crap, it's Ryan Scott!
Welcome to the last episode of Nerds Without Pants for 2018! It’s been a heck of a year, and we’re closing things out with our biggest guest to date: none other than Ryan Scott of The Geekbox and The Comedy Button! So strap in, because it’s time for our annual breakdown of the video game industry that we like to call the State of the Generation podcast.
We all have such big hands for playing games. The biggest hands you've ever seen.
Welcome, welcome, welcome, to the final Nerds Without Pants of 2017! We’re coming at you a bit late, but hopefully early enough for us to accompany you on any holiday traveling you’re about to do. So grab some nog and take your pants off, because it’s time for our annual look at the state of the gaming generation!
Remember when E3 started on Tuesdays? I do...
Welcome to the first Nerds Without Pants E3 special of the year! It's just Julian and Patrick tonight, and we've got a lot to say about the EA, Microsoft, and Bethesda press conferences!
Those sure are some pretty looking games...
There is no doubt that Microsoft has had a rough, uphill battle since they first showed the Xbox One at E3 2013. Between a misguided push towards an all-digital future and a higher launch price point than the PlayStation 4, the market penetration that MS had with the Xbox 360 seemed to vanish in just a couple short years. With Sony continuing to win with their console and so much positive feedback on the Nintendo Switch, all eyes were on Microsoft for their E3 2017 press conference. Would their widely hyped Project Scorpio hardware be enough to put them back into competition? Only history will tell, but for now, it may be a case of too little, too late.
F**k 2016.
It’s the last Nerds Without Pants of the year, and in one last screw you from 2016, we’re a man down. Worry not, because we recruited Mike Fallek from the Go to Hell Podcast to chime in on the state of the gaming generation for 2016. So let’s jump right in!
Or: NWP rates the 8th generation.
Welcome to the last Nerds Without Pants of the year! Hopefully you are getting to listen to this on your way to some holiday destination, or as you set up your shiny new PS4, Xbox One, or Wii U. Enjoy as the Pantsless Ones talk candidly about their feelings on the current generation of consoles. Now that the crew has access to all three machines we can finally evaluate the generation as a whole. While Patrick is still super stoked about his PS4 the bloom has started to come off of the rose a bit for Julian and Angelo.
Swan Song
In 2011, I said that Batman: Arkham City was one of the best superhero games ever made. A few years before that, I said that Arkham Asylum was the new standard that licensed games should live up to. Since then, few series have done so. Yet somehow, every Arkham game rises above the rest. Arkham Knight is no exception. It takes some of the best of what was established in the past games and puts it all together to form one of the most gripping games I’ve played in quite a while.
Barry’s back! Tell a friend!
I think that Capcom is on to something with the Revelations spin-off series for Resident Evil. I enjoyed the first game a lot because of how it blended the feel of the traditional, horror based Resident Evil games with the action packed nature of the more recent games. After being disappointed by Resident Evil 6, I was down on the series but I still couldn’t help but be excited when I heard that a sequel to Revelations was in the works. And to my delight, Revelations 2 delivers.
A promising new beginning.
If there is anything I’ve learned from being a DBZ game fan over the years, it’s that an anime fighter/simulation sequel is nearly always better than the original. They usually clean up the formula the second time, as in the case of 2002’s Dragonball Z Budokai, which was followed up by sequels with enhanced graphics and tightened gameplay. 2005’s Budokai Tenkaichi provided a blueprint for its sequels to later refine the gameplay and expand to one of the biggest and most diverse rosters in the series. If you ask me, it’s a safe bet Dragonball Xenoverse 2 will probably be an amazing game. Of course, that is not too helpful to us at the moment. Right now, we have Dragonball Xenoverse, which leaves me wishing they could’ve done it right the first time.
