Giant Bombcast 687: John McClane's Feet

Really loving Jason growing into this Mike Stoklasa belly laugh.

It’s great how Bakalar immediately starts chuckling when Towers Unite is discussed. He was having so much fun on Friday lmao

Around here at Del Mar racetrack, the horses keep dying. Like, a full-on gross of horse deaths. It's wild.

Jeff G is basically describing Power Rangers Turbo at the 128 or so minute mark...

There was a cartoon back in the day where cars combined and turned into a giant mech called Megas XLR. I never watched it, but its considered today a cartoon classic.

Shout out to Jan knowing you need to dilute it three times.

Final Fantasy 1 was my introduction to RPGs.

I REALLY hope this "Dark Souls" type FF game ends up being a real thing, SUPER intrigued!

If there is space, on Jans list:

• Sudowoodo

I'm a huge Beatles fan but haven't listened to most of those boys solo works. For obvious reasons. Temporary Secretary was already a hilarious shock. I'm listening to All You Horse Riders now though and I feel like I'm getting punked. That shit is so stupid it's unreal...

Just a quick remark with regards to Danny's point about dog racing not being fixed or difficult to fix, it's an incredibly shady sport, a lot like horse racing albeit a little less corrupt, in order to fix a race a trainer will simply overfeed their dog before a race, no drugs or doping involved.

Hot tub streams should be on only fans or pornhub.

@mozzle: This feels like an insane leap in logic, and reads incredibly like you trying to put words in the crews' mouth to put them on blast.

I support the WWE and have been a fan for years. Does that automatically mean I support the years of shady shit they have done, and shady business they continue to do to this day? Hell no, opinions and support isn't binary like that, and I shouldn't have to openly preface every sentence that starts "I like the WWE...", with a caveat of "Oh, but here's all the things they've done that they shouldn't have done".

@savutano: sudowoodo isn’t a grass type believe it or not

That VF5 announcement is so incredibly weak, apparently the graphics have been rebuilt (but you can't really tell) and there's some new lobby stuff, but there's so much more they should be doing.
Why are they reintroducing an old game as a PS4 exclusive? Due to the age of the game surely you want as many people to bolster its community as possible? It needs amazing netcode, cross play, it needs to do absolutely everything right to reinsert VF after so long, instead it just looks like a simple port to PS4... it just seems extremely timid and limited...

I think they have a kinda bad take on the bathtub twitch thing. They try to be real but at the same time really dance around what the issue is here. I'm with them that people should be free to stream what they want but there is so much more to this.

Danny with the slick Knife/Bat reference, nice job getting that in under the radar.

Not a fan of this new giantbombcast crew. I miss Brad. I guess this show will never be the same for me again.

I think you guys are doing a great job, still love the bombcast. I also love Jan's Barber Jan voice.

@janman Just a heads-up that it seems like you skipped an episode number. Last one was 686, and this one currently titled up like 688.

@toxicantidote@janman: Yeah. Should be 687.

GTA Houston is a brilliant idea. The ingrained conservativism and rampant patriotism there are ripe for the type of shitty parody Rockstar does in GTA. Or, God willing, maybe their new style is the slightly less shitty parody they did in Red Dead 2. In which case, I'm still all for it.

@elby: I think some combo of Texas/Dallas/Houston would be rad and maybe a New Orleans, too. This just came to me: what about a GTA that was just the map from RDR2 in modern times? It's not like criming doesn't happen in the deserts and mountains and fake Louisiana.

In regards to the Die Hard and Rambo skins, I've literally never played Warzone but hearing that they added those skins and fucking Nakatomi in the game my friends and I all downloaded it and immediately bought them (before playing a single game mind you) because we're idiots.

Now I'm hooked on Warzone though so it's okay.

The overwatch 5v5 thing isn't just about pro players needing to "git gud". It affects anyone who enjoys playing OFFtanks at any rating. Roadhog and Zarya do not do the same things that Reinhardt and Orisa do. If blizzard does a poor job at significantly reworking how some of those "tanks" operate, it could mean having a really bad time playing them, at any level.

Missed opportunity to call this episode "Hot Tubby Custard".

What do you think should be part of a more complete discussion of the issue?

Also, I think it's kinda generous to even discuss the hot tub debacle on the Bombcast at all, given that it has less to due with game playing on Twitch and more to do with the ever-escalating meta of Twitch's Just Chatting section. I get why Grayson at Kotaku covers it since he's on the Twitch beat, but its connection to broader gaming news and culture is minimal.

I feel like the dichotomous system of classifying video game genres is becoming less and less helpful. What we really need is each game rated on spectra scored from 0 to 10 on various genres.

@CoinMatze said:

Yeah I had to look up what Jeff was talking about. All You Horse Riders has an incredible amount of "electronic cowbell" if there's even such a thing.

Nothing specific to point out, just want to show my support and say I still love the Bombcast.

Jeff Bakalar, when you laugh, the world laughs, and the god of weed smiles uponeth

Here's what Jan was thinking of, it was Charmeleon cutting an Arbok in half. I guess that stuff coming out of it in the smaller panel might be blood?

I know Jeff B was mainly joking, but the beach addition to the Pools & Hot Tubs category is not random. There have been plenty of people who stream from beaches. Lots of streamers have mobile backpack setups (or something similar) that enables them to stream on the go, and often they do it when they're on vacation. Which includes a beach, sometimes.

I'm with Jeff, I don't get the stigma against jean shorts. It seemed to come out of nowhere. I still wear them, because I don't give a shit when it comes to what is considered to be "cool" or not in clothing. I mean, I wouldn't be cool regardless of what I wear, so why bother.

Man, I disagree super hard on that Twitch stuff. There's been plenty of streamers being temp/perm banned for less (a bit to much cleavage, a game having an explicit scene, or doing an art stream, etc..) people can just sit in a kiddy pool and be a-ok instead. Outside of that, the Twitch ToS has guidelines about sexually suggestive stuff and how that isn't ok. When your stream title has emojis that range from the peach, eggplant, and sweat drops all while you're also advertising your onlyfans and similar stuff in the descriptions along with doing actual camsite things outside of the actual nudity (and even that is almost there with some of the swimsuits, if it's not actually just underwear and lingerie) I can't help but feel it's very obvious what the actual intention is. My main thinking is, there's sites for that kind of stuff and if you want to do that you should go to the appropriate places for it and Twitch isn't (or shouldn't?) be one of them.

@mozzle: I got your point and deleted my comment. I just got overly mean so I'd appreciate just removing this whole thing. You were obviously questioning things in good faith. Bad take on my part. XD Thou my rant was answering your question addressing you, the rest was ranting against companies and people who ridicule girls on twitch. Sorry that it came off like I was hating you since that would take tons of assuming on my part. The metaphor was a silly light-hearted jab. It didn't make sense on purpose to showcase bad takes and inequivalent arguments used on the net. XD.

PS: for your last part, I had no idea that was a thing so im ignorant. If I knew that, i can't blame you for your original questioning. Again, I was off base here. Thanks.

@murlin: They eat and have normal fish as well. Pokemon deep lore states the diety of their world is a pokemon, WHICH YOU CAN CATCH AND USE IN BATTLES TALK ABOUT UNFAIR ADVANTAGE, and said diety said stop eating pokemon or something. Pokemon is one of those Pixar things where adults are in it for the deep possibilities for lore cause the expansive world all the while it sticks to the normal story. The amount of people going ape crap till today cause pokemon black and white had a main villain that wanted to stop pokemon from fighting dog fights cause he thought it's best they're liberated from human abuse, was surprising. The lore could go so much deeper, and people fine-tooth it like dark souls lore, but in reality...its always just a kids show, and lore contradicts itself, and its all just some adults implanting what they think is cool while an exec overlooks them or tells them to make the pokemon cuter to sell toys. Whatever happens to that one pokemon that wears the skull of its dead parent, Charizard dying if the flame goes out, Pikachu not supposed to be able to beat legendaries as all pokemon have a level cap. etc. That said, like most adults, I haven't seen the show since I was a kid and ash had like just lost his first league thingy and I dipped out since that was where the videogames ended. I played the games and for all the hate pokemon gets for being popular and money-making, the games are still quality. Good on em to still try given the games could sell like sports games with minor changes and no story.

@shiro2809: So twitch must remain pure? Why? For the children? Just have a buuton that confirms your 18 to watch adult streams.

CRPGs get released all the time for the crowdfunding...er...crowd.

Like today's Solasta

Did Jeff really ask who even makes crpg's any more when Solasta literally came out today, Baldur's Gate 3 is in early access and Wasteland 3 was on a bunch of game of the year lists posted on giantbomb? and those are just the really recent big names. There are tons of crpgs coming out all the time, everyone who worked at giantbomb always said they were "too busy" to play them and they've ignored them for so long that apparently Jeff doesn't believe they exist anymore.

THPS4 is so good, it was challenging, had good levels, and the goal-based structure was refreshing at the time. My favorite one when I was a kid (besides THUG1). Plus, the spine transfer is part of the mechanics in the first remake pack, so why not if they do 3? Never understood Jeff's distaste for it, but the idea of skipping it altogether and going straight to THUG is craaaaazy.

Eating a grass type Pokémon is still eating meet. There are trees and plants in the Pokémon world they can eat that if they want vegan food.

Loved the shoutout to QuarterToThree!

I've never realised how dark this Pokémon stuff can get. I'm learning so much here. Thank you Jan and the guys. I think I've got to dig deeper into this.

My actual name is Derek. This was a tough episode for me 8'(