Giant Bombcast 739: FULL BALL CONTROL

Shit... Wayne was the first youtuber

I maintain to this day that the only good game Kojima was involved in making is Penguin Adventure for MSX, and I'm 100% fucking serious.

1:16:48

Space is about the stars you don't play.

@janman@voidburger @jerf

@janman re: Jason Alexander, may I recommend the Brandy/Whitney/Whoopi/Jason Alexander Cinderella TV movie musical? They wanted Whitney to be Cinderella, but it was in development hell for 5-7 years so she refused because she wanted a younger actress and chose Brandy. Whitney is the fairy godmother.

I had that Simpsons donut last month. Jess is accurate.

This week’s episode played a local ad over top of the Death Stranding 2 talk. This was on IOS.

here's hoping jeff G never stops doubling down on being wrong about death stranding/MGS in general, A+ bit for fantastic games

Damn, Jeff G went in during the Death Stranding 2 segment. Clearly he doesn't buy the "Kojima is a game creating genius" narrative that most people do. I personally don't think Death Stranding is a terrible game, but definitely a downgrade compared to the MGS series. Which is funny, considering that the whole point of the game was to get as far away from the MGS series as possible. And I believe Reemus about the sequel. Kojima seems to be quite fond of him.

This might be the 1st time I disagree about a hot game take from Jeff.

I was curious about game to cutscenes in the MGS series and I decided to take cutscene movies times from youtube and subtracted those from howlongtobeat times and got:

MGS1 - 7.5 hours game, 4 hours cutscenes

MGS2 - 7.5 hours game, 5 hours cutscenes

MGS3 - 11.5 hours game, 4.5 hours cutscenes

MGS4 - 10.5 hours game, 8 hours cutscenes

I decided to look up another popular cutscene game series Uncharted:

Uncharted 1 - 6 hours game, 2 hours cutscenes

Uncharted 2 - 7 hours game, 3.5 hours cutscenes

Uncharted 3 - 6 hours game, 3 hours cutscenes

Uncharted 4 - 8.5 hours game, 6.5 hours cutscenes

I personally don't mind if 1/3 of the game is cutscenes. MGS4 pushed it a big far though imo.

Just giving a heads up that every other area in RL2 is more traditional, that second one is the singular "linear-ish" area. (and is pretty great for farming gold on high gold bonus characters it turns out) That game slaps.

MGSV has around 5 hours of cutscenes (plus a couple of hours of tapes you can listen to during gameplay). Considering how long that game is that's pretty decent.

A big difference with Uncharted cutscenes is that they are generally more numerous but shorter than in MGS, so you don't have to spend an entire game session looking at a single cutscene.

@goosemunch: Is that including MSX Metal Gear, Policenauts, and SNATCHER?

League of Legends has franchised teams in their american and i think their european leagues.

Had to edit given i may be giving away plot even hinting at story elements. Best to curit on the safe side before i ruin someone's enjoyment.

One day I'll have to try Chrono trigger but the cartridge costs sooo much. Might try the ds version instead! @voidburger are you playing on snes or on emulator?

@kingnarwhal: emulated!

As a huge Kojima fan, I respect Jeff's general dislike of his work. However, Giant Bomb's general dislike of the game just destroyed any shred of respect I had for Dan Ryckert.

My guess for Death Stranding 2 will be the same basic gameplay loop, but now on the moon. Just let me build infrastructure in a game and I'm happy.

@adrainwolfe: The truth I wasn't ready to hear

Twin Snakes is what Metal Gear Solid SHOULD be. They IMPROVED it.

On games getting ruined by esportsification, I think the other mid-2010s Blizzard joint, Heroes of the Storm, was way more disappointing. I overcame my bad memories of DOTA/League because the weird heroes like Abathur, Murky, and The Lost Vikings were super compelling to me. I had a really good time with it that diminished as the years went on and they rebalanced it to better fit an esports model (by having no new heroes that would risk competitive imbalance). It’d be nice if they somehow get a sequel post-acquisition but I highly doubt people would care enough to make it worth it.

That ad being thrown in mid-sentence was really jarring and disruptive to the discussion. I hope that was just a mistake.

Oh boy, this is another "Jeff has OPINIONS" episode.

@roundabout: it totally is. Although most have been the last couple years.

the answer to straws and plastic lids is to put the cup up to your mouth and drink it analog baby

It’s always fascinating to me which games from the 90s and early 2000s Jeff has opinions on which wildly differ from the general gaming population.

I see Jeff’s point about MGS1 being emblematic of the cutscene-ification of PS1 games. I guess that was an issue if you were a reviewer playing dozens of PS1 games, but to the average PS1 player who owned like 5-25 PS1 games in their entire life it likely didn’t register as a major issue at all.

The other one I recall is Super Metroid, which I think Jeff liked but complained that you could beat it in an afternoon/weekend because the map made it too clear on where you could go or something. Again, at the time, maybe that complaint made sense amongst his peers, but “having a map” is a pretty basic quality of life feature that all games of that genre generally had from that point onward. If anything, Metroid 1’s lack of map and all the corridors being samey makes that game borderline unplayable by 90s and 2000s standards.

Happy to hear any discussion of this kind of review score stuff between Jeff and Jess. It pushes Jeff to explain his opinions of that era more than he usually does, but also brings to light how different their experiences were with the same games given that one person was playing them professionally while another was playing them like a normal kid for fun.

The energy on this Bombcast was immaculate. Chef's kiss

People who complain about paper straws must be drinking slow as hell. They work fine for me. Paper straws for everyone!!!!

@d9000: Paper straws do kinda suck if you get some kind of iced drink, and you keep the cup for a while as the last 10-20% of the drink melts. Fine with plastic straw, but paper straws get kinda whack after a while.

@bisonhero: You know, I never considered slush type drinks. I don't really drink anything like that.

I guess that messes things up. Maybe slushies should just be drunk with a reusable spoon.

Jeff mimicking the How Bizarre voice was hilarious.

Jeff's tweet about the Xbox running old PlayStation games better was fucking weird with how idiot console war fanboys swarmed the replies. Like, why *that* tweet? I don't get it. One guy even asked "how did this kid get verified" (directed at Jeff) and it's like lmao you don't even know who Jeff is yet you're bitching in his replies, who is actually the "kid" here?

League of Legends has been a franchised esport with off-seasons longer than OWL has. Additionally, the CoD League is set up almost identically to the OWL, since it's the same parent company.

I don't know what they can do to fix it but I am so sick of them interrupting each other and talking over each other, it is really making this unlistenable.

@jeff this is prolly way late and you may have cleared it or dropped the game, but the way I did the linear part was by buying the teleport of the area after and then walking back to the end of the last area. The boss spot is always there and has a teleport itself, which you can then get to by the teleport in the newer area.

I hope that was vague enough to not be spoilers, I'm apparently a 32 year old grandpa who doesn't know how to spoiler comments!!

Or @ people I guess

Wow, Jeff predicted the Thursday State of Play. But he got the PS VR2 part wrong.

I liked Death Stranding more than MGS V.

Jeff's final Bombcast I guess lol

@slamduncan: I came back to this episode to see if I missed this announcement.

It does break my heart that the send off was as quiet as it was, but he seemed to feel really good about his decision over on his stream today so I'm really happy to see that.

I'm gonna miss Jeff on the bombcasts. Hopefully he guests now and then.