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Nerds Without Pants   

Nerds Without Pants Episode 65: Chatting With Liana K

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.

4:05 A little bit about Liana; talking about her new book Wrestling With Gods: Tesseracts 18

11:45 Evolve; some of those issues with DLC

26:45 Game of Thrones beer (not really); Rogue Legacy; getting into Roguelikes

38:00 Patrick’s complicated relationship with Destiny; Fifty Shades of Grey is terrible

52:14 An update on Patrick’s Rocksmith journey; Thief; Hitman Absolution is better than you think

1:08:45 Julian’s epic first comic con experience; cosplay is awesome

1:24:52 Mighty Dungeons; Megaman X 2; Angelo introduces his boy to Metroid Prime

FEATURED MUSIC:

Katie Costello- Cassette Tape

The Rolling Stones- Under My Thumb

Nightwish- The Crow, The Owl and the Dove


 

Comments

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/15/2015 at 02:20 PM

Liana seems like cool people and I am very much looking forward to Part II. The book sounds like an interesting concept and I'm glad an atheist/agnostic section was included, though I don't consider my own lack of belief a "worldview" really. 

I see my friend playing Evolve all the time when I'm playing PS4. I might rent it. It seems my friends who I'd consider "mainstream" gamers don't complain much about the DLC, but then I haven't asked.

I've heard some people I know say that Fifty Shades of Gray is a horrible representation of BDSM. I wouldn't know, but apparently one of the biggest gripes is that 50 Shades involves rape in the form of the guy ignoring a safety word being used. I've also heard the writing is terrible, but that's a given. lol

I gotta get back to playing guitar. I don't know if I'd buy Rocksmith when tabs are pretty simple and easy to read and ultimate-guitar.com probably has a better selection, but I do love that they're actually making a game where you can legit learn guitar. In fact, despite what I just said it may be worth it once the price gets reduced to add that video game element to my guitar playing.

I actually remember X2 better than X from when I rented SNES games at Blockbuster. Angelo, how old is your kid? Because I was 12 when Prime released and I remember having not played a Metroid prior and being really confused about where to go even with hints on. Now I can start the game without hints and do just fine because I'm used to the Metroid concept, but the games I usually played were much more linear. 

I'll be listenin' next week for sure!

Julian Titus Senior Editor

02/15/2015 at 04:14 PM

It makes me happy that someone listened to this surprise episode on day one. Liana is very cool, and I hope we can have her on again. She was certainly not what I was expecting, in the best way possible.

Fifty Shades is a terrible representation of BDSM for a multitude of reasons. I saw the movie yesterday and didn't hate it as much as the book, but that is faint praise. One of the main issues is his lack of aftercare: meaning that after the scene is concluded there should be a rather lengthy period of comforting, soothing, and most importantly, talking.

I doubt they will be doing the other two books as films because the actors apparantly despise each other.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the next episode! It is unlike anything we have ever done.

Angelo Grant Staff Writer

02/16/2015 at 03:01 PM

Ah, my oldest is 14 so he's able to reason his way out of stuff like that. He's clearly stuck at the moment, but he keeps chipping away at it. I already told him I wont help him unless he absolutely needs it, or it's some sort of mechanical confusion on his part. So far I've been able to mostly keep quiet and just observe. It's really fascinating to see how his mind has improved in just a few short years, and to see how the designers hint at things without outright saying it.

Michael117

02/15/2015 at 05:07 PM

This was super good, Liana is an incredible addition to the conversation and she's perfect on this show. I can't wait for the second half next week.

Angelo just needs to play Thief already and stop beating around the bush lol. I beat the game a couple weeks ago and was really satisfied with it overall. I encouraged Travis from here at the site to play the game and he said he's enjoying it. The story is really bad and makes no sense but I don't care, so was Dishonored's story but I love that game.

Thief is a satisfying stealth game with its own charm. And it's not the action game Angelo feared it would be. The combat is awful and extremely difficult, and you don't need to engage in it, so just sneak and focus on stealing. You can kill people if you want to but you need to be a predator about it stay unseen. I spent most of the missions being a ghost and leaving people unharmed. It's a pretty fine game, just play it. It'll be a while till Dishonored 2 so just play Thief.

Julian would make a great Agent 47, and if Angelo dressed as Garrett it would leave me to dress as Sam Fisher. I never cosplayed before but I'll take any excuse to pretend to be Sam Fisher.

Angelo Grant Staff Writer

02/16/2015 at 02:57 PM

Actually Thief combat is supposed to be difficult. It's the game's way of encouraging you to use stealth. That's encouraging. I do plan on getting it, like I said, but I need a PS4 first...

Michael117

02/16/2015 at 04:35 PM

I played it on 360 and it was great. I played a couple hours on PS4 and the only difference is the visuals. The load times are longer on next gen as well. It was just fine on 360 and there's only one disc so nothing about it is a hassle thankfully.

Nick DiMola Director

02/15/2015 at 05:30 PM

I think Liana might be Chessa's long-lost sister. It's so funny how similar their opinions are on things. Some of the stuff Liana said could've come right out of Chessa's mouth. I think the world might implode if those two managed to get together on a show!

Anyway, great episode, looking forward to part 2! 

Julian Titus Senior Editor

02/16/2015 at 01:04 AM

I would be bedlam, Nick. Bedlam! I don't think I say one word in the next part for at least 45 minutes because Liana is a force of conversational nature.

Angelo Grant Staff Writer

02/16/2015 at 02:56 PM

Heh, the Rollers guys were from Canada too. Too bad it's so cold up there...

Jamie Alston Staff Writer

02/24/2015 at 09:33 AM

Okay, a few things.  First, about 10 mintues into the show, I decided that Liana is freak'n awesome. One of my favorite parts was when she piggy backed on the subject of the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey and mentioned how annoying it is when people jump on the "geek" and "nerd" bandwagon for nerd cred.  So fake.  I was just glad it finally got mentioned (albiet briefly) on the show.  Julian...make an episode about fake geeks!!  LOL.

Angelo, I loved the Mega Man X trilogy on the SNES.  One of my best memories from that time.  MM X2 was defintely everything a sequel should be. I my ears perked up when you went in-depth a bit about thought process that goes into trying to figure out which Maverick is the easiest to defeat.

You brought back memories of my older brother and I systematically going through each stage, finally making it to the Maverick Reploid (after dying countless times in the stage itself), just to get our butts handed to us during the boss fight. I also found it interesting that, as someone playing the game for the first time, you found Crystal Snail to be the easiest one to take out with the X Buster.  We always had the hardest time beating him with only the X Buster back in the day.  Maybe I just thrashed around too much back then. Part of the key of defeating him is timing and patience.  For us, it was Wire Sponge was always the first guy we'd defeat because it was easy to hit him with the X Buster...even beter if you could get off a charged shot.

And finally, I enjoyed Angelo's other point about Metroid Prime.  Dude, you hit the nail on head when you mentioned how at first you get completely stuck.  Then you start trying any and everything to get past an obstacle. I loved it when I'd stumble upon a path I overlooked which would lead to a new door i hadn't opened yet. Even if it was just a missle or energy capsule, I still felt encouraged that i found something new and it reinvigorated my motivation and hope of eventually getting to where I needed to go.

And yeah-- it's one of the few games where, at times, I just had to turn it off and go do something else, only to come racing back to play it again later in the evening because I had been brainstorming a few ideas of how to reach that destination on the map finally. ever since it's inclusion in Super Metroid series has made good use of a map because it often indicated where to go, but not necesarily how to get there.  It took sometime, but it also made sense one you figured out what to do.

Anyway, really enjoyed that part of the show in particular. But I had a great time listening to this episode overall.  There wise quite a zen vibe with you guys and Liana.  Get her back on the show at some point!

And now, on episode 65.5...

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