Giant Bomb Community Podcast Ep 14: The Cast of Us

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Featuring: @phatmac@nyxfe@reddenblack@alaska_gamer@atlas

In the first time in our short history I actually played The Last of Us while the podcast was going on. On this episode we discuss games like Siants Row The Third, Magic the Gathering 2014 Madden edition, Project X Zone, bad N64 games, and more. I must warn you that we discuss spoilers for The Last of Us and several other games which include The Walking Dead and Bioshock Infinite. Tune in for a long heated discussion on everything about The Last of Us!

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WATCH US PLAY CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY ONLINE! IT'S REALLY FUNNY.

http://www.twitch.tv/nyxfe/c/2497339

No Cosplay took place during the recording of this episode

@reddenblack said:

You don't know that. You couldn't know what I was up to while you guys were talking about N64 games.

I have more faith in you than that...

Me and some other duders did a community thing recently. I/we could talk about that on your fancy show that I've still not been on yet.

HEY KIDS, WANNA CHAT!?

I like Fattony's suggestion. The man was born to be on your casting pod!

Speaking of (sequels to) (pretty good) N64 games...

@fattony12000 said:

Speaking of (sequels to) (pretty good) N64 games...

Moments before you successfully spilled that shit everywhere.

The Cast of Us should have been the podcast name from the begining... It's perfect...

I'm down for it for sure.

The Giantbomb Community Podcast's award for Worst Game of 2013 goes to: The Last of Us!

Gotta say guys, I was super bummed out by this. I was excited to hear that you guys were going to be talking about the game, but it turned out to be like 40 minutes of just shitting on it.

@silentpredator: That was mainly because neither Ghost or I were on this week. I promise you next episode will be full of Last of Us love.

@silentpredator said:

Yeah, I do in a way regret how negative we were. The Last of Us is probably in my top 20, if not top 15, games of the generation. It's a fantastic game. The only game I've played this year that I liked more is BioShock Infinite.

It just so happened that the member of our crew who would have fought to defend that game the hardest couldn't join us this week, and myself, ReddenBlack, and Nyx ended up feeling fairly similarly about some of our frustrations. At the same time, though, I think one of the reasons why the podcast ended up working out this way is that you can go, it seems, literally anywhere else on the internet to hear people fawning over The Last of Us, and we clearly felt the need to, I dunno, push back a little against that.

Thanks for listening. Hopefully our TLoU rants haven't turned you off the notion of listening to the podcast again.

@silentpredator: If you want to hear some community duders praising The Last of Us, we over at the other (read: best) community podcast, The Lincolncast/The Scotchcast, did a spoilercast and comparison show over here.

but see, listening to plenty mins of just harping on the game though, at what point does that stop being entertaining and just is excessively critical?

but i guess its easy for me to be the guy in the back saying that, i do see where you are coming from though.

but hell, it definitely is a tough balancing act.

It's not that I want anyone to praise the game or fawn over it. I can't change how anyone feels about the game, nor do I want to. People are entitled to their opinions and I respect that. But you weren't being fair to the game, you weren't judging it on its own merits. Some people on the internet think the game is really good, so you guys resolved to be really negative about it. I don't see how that accomplishes anything. Too much of the internet is filled with negativity, so when something comes along that gets people talking in a positive way I get really excited. I think that's why I was so bummed.

I'm not trying to attack you all, but you put effort into making the podcast so the least I could do was give you some feedback.

@shinboy630: My point exactly. People don't need our dumb podcast to praise The Last of Us. There's plenty of others who have done that already. I've been meaning to listen to The Lincolncast/The Scotchcast, since you guys are our "competition", I suppose, but haven't gotten round to it yet.

@mrfluke: I think it's been hard for us - or at least for me - to reconcile the desire to be relaxed and honest and just shoot the shit with fellow duders, and the desire to try and bring some objectivity into it and act like we're recording these podcasts to be heard by other people. I like to think that we justified our criticisms by discussing examples and looking at it from multiple angles, as opposed to just spewing hatred randomly because "ugh why do people like this game more than we do?". If we succeeded, then I hope our criticisms were at least interesting to some people, but obviously it's more likely to alienate people who liked the game more than we did. If we failed in that, then we'll try better next time.

I would have to listen to the podcast to be sure, but I think maybe the problem was that we called it a spoilercast, and then spent more time talking about the mechanics than about the narrative; we actually had Phatmac join us immediately after finishing the game, and only spoke briefly about the ending.

The reaction to people who have been critical of TLoU has been somwhat amusing, to me at least. Yahtzee's most recent Zero Punctuation video at The Escapist was about the game, and he criticised it quite extensively, and the comment section for that video was 75% people defending the game or calling Yahtzee a troll, or claiming he'd "missed the point", and 25% people thanking Yahtzee for helping to articulate their own dissatisfaction with the game. There's a lot of passion on both sides, and the game has certainly got people talking.

@silentpredator: You're right, and I hope I didn't come across as if I was dismissing your comment; I always appreciate feedback, and if anything I care about it a little too much. But it's worth saying that I don't have any anti-TLoU agenda here. I really wanted to love that game unconditionally, to embrace all its triumphs and feel totally absorbed in its world and its characters. I think the fact that I wanted to love the game but felt like I "couldn't" is another thing that made me come across as more hateful and critical than I probably intended.

It sure is.

The reason I (I won't speak for the others) didn't feel the need to harp on about the excellent points other than a mention is that I'm pretty sure everyone on the planet understands that TLOU is good. There is no value in talking about how it's good, we all know everyone enjoys it and why. What Reddenblack and I were focusing on (and a lesser extent Atlas) was the gameplay mechanics that are largely being overlooked because of the quality of the story and characters. Some of it is just downright poor: The shooting is competent at best, and I don't think anyone is going to argue that their favourite moment of TLOU is walking into an arena of waist-high fences and fighting sixteen dudes. The tense stealth, exploring the environments, the story revelations and meeting characters are all great, but there's little else to say about that hasn't been heard a hundred times.

I have to disagree that the criticism isn't fair. I think it's completely fair to judge a game on it's mechanics. The mechanics in The Last of Us are merely competent, and sometimes, not even that. The common dismissal of "Oh it's just a game" falls apart when this "game" spends such an immense focus on it's story, characters, and attempting to convey some sense of realism that it forgets to also be fun to play.

Some people on the internet think the game is really good, so you guys resolved to be really negative about it. I don't see how that accomplishes anything.

And we would accomplish more by repeating the same tired praise of a game people are too afraid to criticize (see: GTA4)? You are right to say that negativity is abundant everywhere, but I personally did not "resolve" to be negative about it, I just didn't find it to be analogous to the second coming of Christ. I think it's a fine game and well worth playing (esp. for the winter section), but it certainly isn't revolutionary even among it's own medium. I can also tell you the other members of the cast are not manufacturing negativity just to "be unique" or something.

Anyway, enough of my long-winded ranting. Thanks for listening to our show, and thanks for the feedback. While I might not agree with everything you said, It is always good to hear what people think, and myself and everyone else on the show appreciates it.

But you weren't being fair to the game, you weren't judging it on its own merits. Some people on the internet think the game is really good, so you guys resolved to be really negative about it.

Dude what podcast were you listening to? We ONLY discussed the game on its own merits. I can send you a copy of our discussion doc if you want. We didn't resolve to talk about it any kind of way positive or negative. We actually did say a lot of positive things about it. We just also happened to say a lot of negative things about it. That's what it means to judge it on its own merits

I love The Last of Us and tried defending it against the other 3 members of our podcast. Hopefully we'll have more people on that love it like I do. Sorry if it seemed overly negative in the podcast episode. Next episode will treat it with more love if we get the right members together.

Wow, really duder? Don't think I'd equate quality with this kind of remark.

As a person who firmly believes that TLoU is one of the greatest games of the generation, probably will take a spot in my top 5 favorite games of all time and probably will be my personal GOTY, I find the notion of people criticizing the rest of the podcast for having a discussion based on the game's flaws, merits and personal expectations to be fucking hilarious.

Seriously, the fact that some of my fellow podcast members actually apologized for it shows how utterly fucked the modern attitude towards discussion is. It's not a slight against them - they are simply much more negotiable and polite than I am - it's a slight against people who are offended about any sort of criticism or get offended in general at the slightest hint of a differing opinion or not universal praise/hate.

To the guy who said that they were "critical for the sake of criticism" or "because others were positive", I suggest to google the term "devil's advocate". Not the shit movie with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves. If you still don't get what a discussion means and entails, well, have fun in this brave new world.

This entire sentence is so eye-roll-inducing that even my balls happened to move involuntarily.

@ghostiet: @phatmac: Didnt mean to offend or steal your thunder, was just trying to give the guy another option to hear some GB community members discuss the game.

This is the dumbest/best part of this dumb thread.

Games have flaws, they're criticizing the game because of those flaws. Dismissing a criticism because you think it's negative just to be negative is pretty backwards.