Giant Bombcast 663: Cooksies to Keepsies

Video versions are incoming!

@janman: thanks fella <3

Just in time for me to fall asleep to the dulcet tones of the giantbomb crew.

Demon's Souls has a lot of bs for modern Fromsoft games, but is par for the course if you've played Shadow Tower, Eternal Ring, or the King's Field games. Eternal Ring is probably the only one that holds up and is playable on PS4, KF 2 & 3 are alright, but Shadow Tower and King's Field 1 & 4 are all horseshit.

It may be strange for Californians, but theme parks around the world have been open for quite a while now.

USJ is going to have a reservation system for Super Nintendo World, so there's not going to be a thousand people crammed in the land or anything

Enjoying Yakuza right now hopefully that down turn later on is not that bad

With the PS5 haptics I can't tell if they're just being very unperceptive or if they really do want it as in your face as Astro's Playroom at all times. Like in demon's souls, the roll has a really satisfying haptics that starts from the center and works its way outward throughout the role, like you're feeling your hand hit the ground before your whole body hits the ground.

And in Sackboy, there's new haptics going off all the time, they just don't go all the way to obnoxiousness by putting it into literally every step like in Astro's. Sackboy is definitely my favorite game when it comes to haptic rumble. Single jolt hits are definitely a strong point of this new haptics over the old short rumbles, and Sackboy does something different and realistic feeling for a variety of single jolt haptics between hitting the enemy, rolling through and tearing a single sheet of paper, the noise poppers at the end score screen, and the click of a camera for the end level screenshot. It's extremely impressive.

I think haptic triggers are bound to be less varied outside of games with minigames because you can typically only have one action mapped to the triggers, and adding resistance to that action is almost always a hindrance to the gameplay.

Sackboy is interesting because it does add a little pressure to the triggers while holding stuff, but designers apparently thought it too much to apply it until after the trigger is all the way down, so you can only feel it if you let off a little and have to press down again to keep the hold. It would have been easy to just make that pressure be there for the initial button press, but I think it's telling the designers thought that'd be too in the way.

In relation to Jeff talking about the Xbox rumble - gotta say I like my Series X but that new pack-in controller feels very cheap in every way. The vibration especially feels very muted. Maybe this is because I've been using an Elite controller for a while now but when I play Series X games using the old Elite 1 controller the vibration is noticably stronger than the Series X pack-in. Really disappointing that after finally getting the console more or less right, now they're going to be behind in the controller department for the entire generation.

EDIT: I think there is a chance the Elite 3 - which surely they must be working on - will also have haptics. But kind of a shame that you will have to pay a premium price to maybe get the same experience a stock PS5 pad gives you.

@bathala: You know, I really enjoyed the game a lot. The things Ben said are all true to certain extenct, but I think Ben makes it sound much more negative than it actually is for podcasts purposes.

Huh. Kind of wondering about Jeff's take on Fenyx Rising's combat. He pretty much just says it's light attack and heavy attack and stamina doesn't matter, but most video reviews I've seen have adored stuff like air juggling enemies and all the crazy abilities you have.

It was enough to prompt me to try the Stadia demo, which is both somehow better and worse than I expected. It's very playable and the image quality is pretty good, but not so much that it feels anywhere like a native game on your PC. Combat seems dope, though. First thing I did was start air juggling, seems like there's some good combo potential. Will depend on how deep it gets, though, I'm sure.

to the phoenix isle of lesbos critisim, it is a real place

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbos

@ik2k3: I don't think their criticism of the isle in the game was because they didn't think it actually exists. Felt more like doubt that the game handles it well based on their opinion of the humor they've seen in game.

I got more of a oh of course they went for that low hanging fruit of a joke rather than oh of course they made something like that up.

@ik2k3: Yeah they know, their just talking about the dumbass lesbian-jokes in the game.

It looks like Sony once again outsmarted Microsoft in terms of this next console generation. They stated out the gate that their mission statement was to focus on short load times as they felt that was the future of gaming. And on top of that, they evolved their controller to the next level making games feel even more immersive. Microsoft, felt that just throwing horsepower at their new console would be enough, and I'm sure for most people it is.

But now people are realizing the benefit of short load times and are making it a big deal. I, myself, have a hard time going back to games on my PC, because all my games are on HDD, and even thought it has 16GB of ram, the load times compared to the PS5 is like a turtle moving in some cases. And the power of the PS5 isn't that far behind the Series X 10 TFLOPS compared to 12 TFLOPS isn't that much of a gap.

Which is why Digital Foundry and other framerate based channels, when doing comparison videos, is seeing the same graphical performance on both consoles, with load times and control integration being better on the PS5.

But we are in the beginning stages of this console cycle, only time will tell how it will all go down 5 years from now.

As it relates to Ben asking about Marvel interest.

There is still plenty of interest in the Marvel cinematic universe going forward even with Endgame closing the book on characters like Iron Man and Captain America. Disney + coming with series taking place in universe, this next phase seeming to want to focus on the multiverse which is rumored to be bringing all other Marvel franchises outside of Marvel Studios into cannon, as well as Marvel getting the rights back to the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and the Netflix characters.

The hype level did certainly dip after Endgame, but it's been rising back up recently as more previews of Wandavision release, rumors of Sony's previous Spider-Men showing up in Doctor Strange or the 3rd Tom Holland film, as well as various rumblings of when the X-Men or Mutants in general may start to become known in the MCU.

The track record for films is still incredibly strong for Marvel Studios and until that starts to falter I don't see the excitement going away. It May rise and dip, but it's definitely not on its last legs

I feel like the modern equivalent to those B-games Jeff mentions are the many Souls wannabes, your Surges, your Hellpoints, your Mortal Shells, your Code Veins, ...

I'm glad Ben is still with ring fit. I've rolled credits twice, have about 200 in game hours in it, and absolutely love it.

@bathala: There is indeed a pretty steep spike in difficulty towards the back third of the game, and it's not from additional battle system complexities/strategies but more so just sheer level differences. I was mostly breezing through the game, and then suddenly I hit a wall at the boss fight in chapter 12 due to a massive level discrepancy that the game in no way prepares you for.

I then had to grind out levels for 7-10 hours as well as grind out money in the business management minigame to craft better gear.

What's funny is that you unlock a battle arena mode shortly before all of this occurs. It's as if the developers are intentionally introducing this level spike just to force you to engage with the game's battle arena. While it's appreciated to create an area that makes grinding 'faster'/'easier'...at the end of the day it went on for far too long in my opinion.

Still, it's a great game despite some issues I had with the final chapters of the game (both in gameplay as discussed above and narratively). I definitely still recommend checking the game out though. It's in my top 5 games of the year for sure.

I have watched most of the DF comparisons regarding load times for the XSX and PS5, I think. And while I might be mis-remembering, I do not remember there being significant differences between 3rd party games. In fact, going by this article on Gamespot, it appears that for at least PS4/Xone back compat games, the XSX loads faster.

I agree with you about the controller. I do not have a PS5, however going by similar comments I have seen, Sony seems to have innovated the controller.

The Monumental stuff is pretty funny. In the PS3 version, every time you loaded in you'd get a character portrait along with a name for them. Wasn't guaranteed, but the Monumental showed up there for me early on. I remember that was how I first knew who that was.

I really liked everything in Yakuza that wasn't the Dragon Quest-ass battle system, I've always disliked the squishy, vague style of Dragon Quest, so them adopting so much of it kinda bummed me out, plus like Ben mentioned, I don't just think they put a nasty grind at the end, it actually feels like the end of the game isn't balanced; some regular enemies who were no danger to my party have massive health pools, requiring me to do tens of thousands of damage to them while they do 5-6 to me.

Hard disagree about the story though, they somehow are able to constantly oneup the twisty melodrama from game to game to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if the Tojo clan became like the Fast an Furious crew, running international spy missions, I love it

Most Yakuza games fall flat at the end? Who are these "Yakuza fans"??? There have been so many epic finishes.

Re Universal Studios Japan Donkey Kong Land area, a concept model of the area actually leaked some time ago.

It's based on Donkey Kong Country yall. Includes a minecart ride.

The Isle of Lesbos? The fuck did I just hear?

Some of my best friends are B-games!

did i really skip over the ring fit spoiler part. what is wrong with me

Hmm just as a PSA, the PS5 version of Genshin Impact DID get a patch. It's nothing revolutionary, but it does make the game run at steady 60 and load A LOT faster. It's still probably the worst place to play tho, due to the account situation.

Also, just a doubt, what did Jason mean with "the Island of LESBOS" as a bad thing about Immortals. I mean, it is a real place, and it inspired the term LESBIAN, and it has become a sort of global attraction for lesbians... Just wasn't sure what he meant.

B - GAMES

And for anyone who cares, Warframe also a got PS5 version last week which makes the game run at a smooth 60 frames, shorten loading times between sessions and 4K resolution. You have to actually delete the PS4 version to download the PS5 version of the game. The update also made use of the adaptive triggers so there is feed back when using the weapons.

This is what my Heaven looks like.

@themasterds said:

Re Universal Studios Japan Donkey Kong Land area, a concept model of the area actually leaked some time ago.

It's based on Donkey Kong Country yall. Includes a minecart ride.

I'm with Jason, I practically missed this whole generation and only got a ps4 for monster hunter.

Man it sucks every Bombcast starts with Jeff talking for a long time about the new game he hates.

Brad would never get close to finishing Yakuza LAD. He should go back to FF7 remake which is a much shorter game, that he’s already started.

To this day the friendliest, nicest game community I was ever in was the Football Manager Live community. For those who don't remember, this was the slightly more MMO-style online version of Football Manager. You'd expect it to be kind of awful given how a lot of sports communities are, but it was genuinely the nicest group of folks I ever played games with. The individual servers were fairly small which I think helped. Even as a woman playing the game, which is its own landmine in sports games, they were incredibly welcoming and friendly. I miss that game all the time.

I appreciate it when he tells the Bombcast exactly what he doesn't like about the games, because it lets me avoid the games that I finally have the money to pay for, but no longer have the time to play. Having Jeff waste his time with something that I might be interested in, only to find out it sucks shit is a valuable service to me in my early 30's.

@topcyclist: were you replying to someone else?

I'm always a little suspicious when someone claims there's a spot where you have to grind in a JRPG, no offense meant to Ben. I've been playing JRPG's since the original NES when Grinding is what JRPGs were. I've never seen a JRPG where you had to grind since Final Fantasy II/4 on the SNES, which is where they figured out how to balance XP to keep you from having to grind to progress through the main story.

Optional bosses? Side content? Yes, you might need to grind a little, or a lot, for those. But I can't think of a single JRPG in over 25 years where main story progression was locked behind a grind. I've seen lots of people *claim* that grinding was needed, usually because they were missing out on a basic mechanic that was kicking their butt and assumed it was because they were under leveled. It's such a go-to but ultimately baseless attack on JRPG's that they require grinding that I usually assume the person making it is just missing something. Not saying that's what's happening here, but I wonder if there's a mechanic or tick that Ben's missing that's causing this difficulty spike.

Start on the towel, finish on the shirt. New GB shirt incoming!

@bobtoad1: Nope, there's a big sudden spike on the critical path. If you don't do the optional battle arena beforehand (which may itself take a little bit of either xp or gear grinding), you're facing a real uphill battle.

I could swear we already heard that bath towel ettiquette email. Right?

If you don't think rally is extreme, watch the xgames clip of Colin McRae recovering from a huge car rollover, and proceeding to still be only seconds down from the winning time.

re: Avatar 3D - I can't see most 3D in movies. Something about my eyes and brain just don't see most movies in 3D. I've been to multiple 3D movies and the only one that worked was Dredd. I've tried the glasses, the 3DS, layered...it just doesn't display to me for some reason. It just gives me a headache. When I've tried games like Elite: Dangerous with an Oculus, I just get motion-sick and everything is blurry.

Does anyone else have that happen with 3D multimedia?

@humanity: you are saying it's a shame to something that is hypothetical. Something that doesn't even exist. Maybe they'll release a regular non-elite controller that has it. Who knows. But weird to say its a shame that they WILL go that route will zero indication they will.

@iggnight: and then after crapping all over it, says "it's fine"

The thing that's extra dumb about EA games on Steam and the Origin "Thin" client, is that even if you have the full 100% version of Origin open ahead of time, and then go launch an EA Steam game, it closes Origin and then opens the Thin client. It will open the full client back up again when you've closed the Steam game. It's so dumb.

I've seen those Avengers patch ads Jeff talked about basically since the game came out.