SGC 2015

But here's one more thing.

Here's a video from SGC 2015. In all honesty I was hoping to end the blog after SGC but the Picasa error forced my hand.

Review: The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures

AVGN Adventures wants to punish you for your hubris. All those years of playing your modern games and thinking "I'm invincible! Nothing can touch me! Bosses tremble at my might!" will be reduced down to you yelling obscenities at your screen like a twelve-year-old on Call of Duty.
A badly timed jump will end with you missing a health point (in this game's case, beer) or an instant death. It has no remorse for making you angry and for making you curse at it. Focusing your attention on avoiding a fireball might make you forget about the deathbeam or deathblock that's just after it. The game is full of the latter and makes you share in the Nerd's pain as you progress through a twisted and sinister game that's all about old-school platforming and shooting action. Its littered with curse words and references to the Nerd's videos and surroundings and fits perfectly among his mythos. Its best played with an Xbox 360 controller attached to your PC, but it can be played with a keyboard, just very carefully.

(THIS took me at least 20 tries to get right, all to get that key on the right.)

Its an 8-bit platformer in the vein of the Mega Man games and, much like those, you can switch between characters on the fly that have different abilities to suit the job needed. The only drawback is that the other characters are never necessary. While Mike Matei can jump higher and see hidden blocks, BS Man has a more powerful attack and double-jump, and Guitar Guy is faster, these variations are never really needed except to discover hidden areas and cameos. Power-ups consist of an SNES Super Scope, which is a more powerful shot that unfortunately goes away when hit once, to rocks that arc in a terrible way, a nod to one of the nerd's episodes. Also the game-"glitching" Glitch Gremlin which freezes enemies and causes things to go haywire for a few seconds, and Super Mecha Death Christ v 2.0 beta Edition, which clears enemies off the screen. These last two aren't needed to get through certain areas and can almost be ignored. Unlike many of the game's that the Nerd has played, this one is very solid. No (unintentional) glitches and a generous checkpoint system means you won't die from a game-breaking glitch. All deaths are your own fault.

Its frustrating, but rewarding: You rarely ever want to stop playing for the feeling of wanting to beat it, of wanting to prove you're better. It also wants to reward you for your patience. The game is filled to the brim with patterns both simple and not-so-much. Taking your time to understanding these is key to finishing each level, especially on the last where you may die a few times before reaching even the first checkpoint, which is close by. Hidden pathways, cameos, power-ups and even playable characters are your reward for exploring. Its also generous on lives; the 30 you get from the start might seem like too many, but they dwindle quickly. Also, if you're thinking of using a certain well-known old-school cheat code, you'll only end up with a good chuckle. Try it out anyway.
The cameos are from friends of James Rolfe, like Angry Joe, Keith Apicary, and Whiz and Boomstick from DEATHBATTLE. The hidden paths to get to them aren't terribly hard to traverse, and finding all of them only unlocks an achievement. That and the S#!t Pickle achievement. There's one for dying 1,000 times. That can get awfully frustrating.

The music is purely chiptunes, which is a throw back to the music you used to hear on old NES games. It changes up with each level and they're catchy. The soundtrack is also available to buy and if you're into chiptunes then its a must have. The various sound effects throughout the game are repeated, but never enough to the point of frustrating.

While the asking price of $15 seems a bit much, it is best to wait for it to go on sale. It was made with speed runs and twitch.tv streams in mind. It was made so you can become better at it with each playthrough. For some, particularly those get angry very easy, will be disappointed. Others who appreciate a good challenge or love old-school platformers will find something to be engrossed in for a few hours.

Keep Playing

SGC 2013

Without a doubt, SGC 2013 was the greatest weekend of my life. It was less like a game convention and more like a family reunion. A lot of g1s who have met before and have become friends through ScrewAttack were all gathered at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas. It was a convention of epic proportions with a lot of voices lost, a lot of money spent, and a lot of friendships made.

Due to some trolling that happened a couple of weeks ago after I posted the first video, I've had to disable embedding. Someone posted it to Reddit and while I did get almost 2,000 views, I also got 8 thumbs down and a troll comment. I'm sure someone meant well by sharing it but instead the plan backfired. I don't like Reddit, its pretty much a troll site where people can say what they want about a shared webpage or video, and some users seem to think that they can take it farther and use the page comments for feeding their own agenda. 
While you may hate having to click the link for the videos, there's nothing I can do about it. I can't personally embed my own videos. Go figure.

I undid the embedding. If I get a thousand troll thumbs down, I don't care. The videos aren't for them.

What I Did While ScrewAttack Was Down

A few weeks ago (as of writing this), the best website of all time went offline for some upgrades. I checked back every few hours only to be met with a filler page. SA hosted a contest asking for videos about what we did while the site was down. Some people showed off their comedic sides, others just talked, and since I'm not one to sit in front of a camera and ramble on, here's my funny.

Sonic Fan Film Teaser Trailer

From Eddie Lebron, the mind that brought us the live-action Mega Man fan film. Finally, my childhood hero of the SatAM cartoons makes the jump to the real world.

And yes, that is Jaleel White as Sonic.

And I nerdgasmed.