Giant Bombcast 719: Volunteer Spirit

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Alternative Episode titles were:

• HO (Comma)
• That's MY Wheel of Fortune
• G4 Situation
• Corrosive Bubble Thing
• A Baby's Whisper of Hope
• The Swine Flu Year
• Let's Blame Minecraft
• Where is Gex?
• I've Snucked Enough

Now 2022 has truly begun.

What happened to Danny?

Re: top Gameboy Color games -- I'm not much of a Metal Gear fan, but the GBC game was really fantastic. It's literally the only one in the franchise I ever completely beat.

It plays like the NES one, but not shitty, more like the MSX version of Metal Gear 2.

VR is effectively dead to me. After HL: Alyx nothing is exciting anymore. It was as good as it was ever gonna get.

@f1rev2: I haven't listened yet, but on Twitter he recently said he was taken some time off from contract work/GB stuff because of some personal stuff.

Jess is rad. That is all.

2022-Factor

Is it against the rules to respectfully mention how pretty and cool Jess is?

Leaning into Jess’s mention of “British game shows,” there’s a new one called “I Literally Just Told You” and the hook is half or so of the questions are written live based on things that have happened or been said as part of the show. It’s an interesting hook, and the first three episodes (available on YouTube) seem to have something for everyone:

Episode 1: How this was probably envisioned when played by people of varied, but basically competent, attention spans.

Episode 2: An absolute shitshow that had me in tears and laughing so hard I damn near made myself sick multiple times.

Episode 3: More like episode 1, but done for charity with celebrity contestants including 2 former Taskmaster participants and Taskmaster Admin Assistant Little Alex Horne.

I’m hooked so far.

The quiz from that observant emailer is very fun.

Hearing that studio space won't be coming back isn't a surprise, but it certainly is a bummer. One of the things the pandemic years have taught me is that I'm significantly less interested in watching Giant Bomb content when no one is in the same room. It just doesn't feel the same.

OMG DID THEY FIRE DANNY AND REFUSE TO LET HIM BACK UNTIL HE CHANGES HIS NAME TO JANNY?

It might have been nice to know about the studio before I bought a year premium, but it may well have been a more sudden decision than that.

No office makes sense but at the same time - those were THE GOLDEN years of Giant Bomb - GB West and GB East. Pandemic took it away from us.

Will always listen to the Bombcast at least :)

Yup, it's a really sad thing to hear. Definitely takes away some of the character and energy of it all.

Ah yes, other peoples opinions, fuck em

Where is the desk, is it ok, is it safe?

@women40581: You created an alt just for this?

Good job, hero. You really told 'em.

@women40581: lol who would give Fox News even an ounce of credit for literally anything when they've been railing against masks and vaccinations for 2 years now?

@janman: Not "Nicotine for Your Ass?"

Jeffs right - reddit people are fucking morons

I would have thought Jeff G. would have known they are making a new Earthworm Jim for Amico.

No more office, that's a dagger in the heart.

I'm surprised that anyone is surprised by the office news. I felt that was obviously going to be the outcome as early as mid-2020.

While no more physical office (in the near future at least) is a bummer, it’s pretty insane that this site had studios in two of the most expensive real estate markets in the US for as long as it did. And office renovations have gotten way more expensive in the last year or so (with the forecast continuing to climb), so downscaling is really the only sensible option. Yet another thing the pandemic has taken away from us, I guess.

As for Wordle, I’ve been using the PENIS Method for as long as I’ve played (just this week), and it has yet to steer me wrong.

EDIT: I scored 6/12 on the quiz at the end of the episode

Re: Mastermind/Wordle, this was a really wonderful essay about it: https://www.vice.com/en/article/884k54/permalink-mastermind-board-game-50th-anniversary-origins-fallout-cybersecurity

Starts with Fallout 3 in context, but is mostly about the boardgame and its history.

I feel like the wind down of vr game output is mostly due to sony announcing some time ago "they had no plans" for vr, while at the same time being the most successful in the market. they announced they would have a succesor to their helmet months later, but that statement really shook the industry I believe. Especially when the alternative was oculus, which was being rendered less and less appealing the more it got absorbed by facebook.

Hopefully the Playstation VR 2 and facebook/meta's announcement that quests would cease to require facebook accounts to work will re-incentivize development, but it sure seems like that original comment from sony set it back for a while

Jeff should revisit that first Legacy of Kain game.

Is there fanart of Jeff G as Jack Frost? That seems like a no brainer.

Man hearing about Teardown again makes me really still want to play it but my computer cannot seem to run it above 30fps and I have a pretty good rig. Maybe performance has gotten better since then and I should give it another shot.

There are some Gerstmann-ass rants in this episode. I love the energy!

Jason moved across the country to Atlanta and Jeff G moved to an undisclosed location that is somewhere not Petaluma/SF. (From various context clues over the past few months it seems like it's somewhere in northern Cali, but that's kind of vague. Regardless, not near SF.) It was inevitable that there would be no studio. But it's still sad.

I'm glad to find out what the hell Wordle is finally. There's literally no context in the tweets, and I refused to look it up on principle. In my eyes, the lack of a link or info was less of a bad advertising move and more of a calculated attempt to make people go "what the hell is this?" and look it up. If it provided a link, most people would ignore it; but curiosity can compel people to take further steps.

Thought this was a no-brainer as well. Guess not.

Jeff straight-up says he wants to get a physical location going again eventually if it ever becomes viable. The dream is alive...

@kcin: Where would it even be? Only two people are left in SF

Army Men RTS!

Am I insane or did Jeffy B tell the "only eat weed" doctor story last podcast too?

Can ye do a watchover of that Player vs Pain episode?

This episode sure aged poorly.

I think the correct answer to the AEW hair question is Adam Cole BAY BAY, but I'd accept Kenny Omega

Getting a Dreamcast to output to HDMI isn't very hard and you don't need to mod the console. There's several different cables out there that works quite well at just outputting directly to HDMI. I have one I've been using for a year or two that works great. I'm sure if you do an actual hardware mod that is better but the cables work great if you are just wanting to play your Dreamcast on a newer TV.

Do none of them know what a biome is? Just look it up, it's like a grassland or a tundra. Multiple levels can be one biome and it has nothing to do with procedural generation. It matters because if the biome is the same throughout the game lacks variety in it's setting.

Who is complaining about Jess swearing? If somebody from the East Coast doesn’t swear like a sailor I’m already suspicious most of the time.

I can’t believe the shade thrown on Timesplitters and then right after oh yeah I’d like a new Mercenaries. Just Cause is pretty much that. I’d like both mind you but just because TS was a different thing doesn’t mean it can’t be good again. Look at Ratchet and Clank.