Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 05/23/2014

No video?

It's coming!

Saw the thumbnail and immediately felt home...

Giant Bomb International?

Hmm, they keep talking about Vinny living in NY a lot...I guess that means I was wrong about him moving back to Long Island or Jersey

Is Vinnie going to occasionally be on the AM 'cast after E3?

Was Patrick's video feed more blurry than usual for others?

If you ask someone across the Hudson in Jersey or someone who lives on Long Island, they'll say they're from NY. It's not a stretch to think he could live in those two places, if he's buying a house, he's better off in Jersey.

I would love to hear what Vinny thinks about wrestling after being forced to watch it for a month-or-so on the Powerbombcast.

It's weird how most of the GB staff have mentioned Transistor's slow start. I found it to be great from the get go and it has maintained so far.

@falcomadol: I hope more than occasionally.

Hope so, would be a fun combo, those three.

So glad Wolfenstein's good.

Year of the Coma.

Yeah, I noticed too. Probably his connection.

Yeah, I noticed too. Probably his connection.

Bombin the A.M. With Scoops and the

Wolf n Vinny?

@patrickklepek An "is" is missing after "Wolfenstein".

@re_player1 said:

The Bombcrew does tend to want games to get on with the action pretty quick. I think it may be due to their experience as game reviewers; when you've got a stack of video games to get into, you may not be super patient with deliberate or obfuscated narrative.

That or they on the drugs.

@dragonbomb: but Alex is a New Yorker now! If there's one thing us NYC'ers are good at, it's getting offended when people claim to be from New York City but really live in Jersey or LI.

Aww, Alex is so hyped. It warms my heart. I'm so curious to what they'll churn out once things get into motion.

It's Gareth Edwards NOT Garth Edwards!

Wolfenstein is fucking great and Patrick should stop being disappointed in what the video game industry isn't.

Wolfenstein is fucking great and Patrick should stop being disappointed in what the video game industry isn't.

Jesus, Patrick. Its a good game, it shouldn't matter if its from a long running series. I know its your job, but you've been really critical of everything lately, and usually only for the reason to be critical.

I agree. Especially when he says "it's almost more depressing since the game is pretty good" or something to that extent.

I love that @alex is now way into Hearthstone when a few weeks ago he was hemming and hawing about it when Patrick told him to play it.

I'm with these guys. To be honest the video-game industry's BRIMMING with new ideas and inventive takes on existing ideas thanks to the recent proliferation of indie games. What's wrong with finding enjoyment in something more comfortable and familiar, especially when it's done so well? It's worth noting that I say this as someone who spends most of his time focusing on the smaller, weirder games the industry's been pumping out of late.

Hell, working in music, my tastes in that tend to veer towards the experimental, noisy, uncomfortable, and generally, the new and uncharted, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a place for good, comfort-food style pop or hip-hop in that palate. It also doesn't mean that that comfort-food style music shouldn't be commended when it works within well-established frameworks to create something legitimately compelling and engrossing. I think the same applies to video games.

Obviously, the more time you spend with any medium, the less interest you'll take in more staid incarnations of it (you can only look at so many beautiful landscape paintings before wondering what else could be done if someone was willing to color outside the lines a bit), but it's worth it to recognize that and not get caught up in a sort of "only new is good" narrative, because that tends to limit your point of view pretty thoroughly, and cause you to be dismissive of things that aren't deserving of it.

You know what pushed Amplitude over the edge? Barkerville.

@mofoless said:

Bombin' the A.M. with Scoops, the Wolf, and Doc Italy

Good lord, Patrick. Long-running series exist in every single medium out there. Why are we telling ANOTHER Sherlock story? More Terminator movies?! Man, film hasn't moved on at all! They brought back Arrested Development?! TV is dead!

You're looking at it from the wrong angle, man. It seems like you're missing the point and trying to see some sort of industry commentary where there is none. Popular franchises get sequels. There is nothing depressing or sad about it. It's good business sense and the consumers like it. That's perfectly fine.

A new Wolfenstein does not mean we don't get games like Transistor or Starbound or Bravely Default or The Wolf Among Us or Year Walk or Vertiginous Golf or To The Moon or Surgeon Simulator or Gunpoint or The Swapper or Skulls of the Shogun or Rayman Origins/Legends (Man! More franchises? Those sequels sure are depressing!) or Prison Architect or Monaco or Super Meat Boy or Octodad or Mark of the Ninja or Legend of Grimrock or Kentucky Route Zero or Hawken or Fract OSC or Dust: An Elysian Tail or Dishonored or Dark Souls or Chroma or Call of Juarez Gunslinger (GODDAMN SEQUELS!) or Bastion or Antichamber or do I need to keep going?!

Take it easy, man. Games are doing better than they have EVER been doing, by leaps and bounds. The variety, the volume, the creativity and (for many genres, not all) the quality is at the best it has ever been. You don't have the powerful veil of childhood to idolize any game and think that anything is possible, but that was just your brain, not the games themselves.

Found it unfair that they where talking about how videogames are not evolving because of how Wolfenstein is. It's a pulpy almost grindhouse-ish game, and that's what it was meant to be. You go to that kind of game for that kind of gameplay and visceral feel. It's like going to watch Machete and complaining about how movies are just gore and sex, it's just silly. There is nothing wrong with wanting some easily digested pulpy action, with great heroes and even better villains once in a while. This post got longer then I wanted it too be, but Patrick's comment on it rubbed me the wrong way. I get what he is trying to say, but there is plenty of diversity in games these days, maybe more than ever. Games have come a long way, from art pieces too indie, through story driven epics and blockbuster triple A's, it is actually pretty good right now.

Long Island is in NY...

Scoops and the Wolf, brought to you by Vinco.

Damn I beat Transistor on my PC in one sitting in what felt like 3-4 hours and had no technical issues whatsoever. Really enjoyed it.

Absolutely no technical issues during my PC play-through. However, it did take about 2 hours before the game really grabbed me in a big way and now I'm hooked. The story really is a slow burn, but I think its very interesting once it starts to develop and I love the coding/computer motif throughout. And I know this is going to be heresy, but I think I might like Logan Cunningham's character in this game a little more than Rucks in Bastion. Rucks is amazing, no doubt, but it was just a "reading the script in a badass way" sort of part while the emotional swings his character has in Transistor are a bit more interesting to me (even if it is less badass).

Can Patrick's arm normally lift a 1lb weight?

@deadeye007: sorry, meant to clarify, New York City.

FUCK YEAH PHANTOM DUST!

I prefer "two-pens"

What? Dude no, that's a pretty fuckin stupid response by that twitter person to the Blazkowicz picture. It's like when you ask someone "why?" and they oh so cleverly say "why not?", but then you think about it for a second and realize "no, that's silly".

22 years since Wolf 3D and we're getting another Wolfenstein game; the sixth since that first id game. Variety and depth have very obviously come a long way since, and that we can have another FPS game called Wolfenstein fits just fine within that variety.

Nevermind that using a comparison picture of two decades apart renderings of a character to somehow extract a reflection of the industry's supposed lack of development as a whole is an astonishingly ridiculous endeavour. I can appreciate a clever line that, while maybe not so solid under examination, can still make you think about something differently, but that's just over the cliff dumb.

Anyways, that Outlast DLC totally had some good parts towards the end there! Wasn't that into the first foray, but that second stream was great. The buzzsaw scene wasn't so bad, but yeah, with an Oculus? NOTHANKS. Ending was great too.

I agree with the whole mental illness as a villain thing, but the asylum in the game was fucking up the patients, so it wasn't really a mental illness thing. I suppose it was more of an "evil corporation and the monsters they made" sort of thing.

If it is the case that Machine Games cut out story and character beats to get players into the action faster, it would be due to the feedback they got from Rage. Everyone I know who has played Rage has said that they hate the parts where you're in town or wandering around (or at least, dislike or tolerate those parts), and love the parts where you're in a shooting gallery killing bad guys.

I found the Wolfenstein criticism to be a bit navel-gazey at times. There were valid points regarding a few shortcomings. But I don't understand the point of view of "if only this game were not held back by the Wolfenstein name".

This game is great because it's a Wolfenstein game. Not only is it a run and gun, hip firing gib fest, but it also has tight, well designed environments to explore and fight in. It is an extremely well made single player FPS campaign, one of the finest I've played in quite a while. It is for these reasons why the Wolfenstein name is not a hinderance, but rather entirely crucial to the game they made. They told you what they were going for up front and they nailed it.

The fact that it even has a semblance of story telling and great characters is icing on the cake. It feels alien to me to fault the gameplay because it sometimes steps on the toes of whatever deep complex story that could have been. That's a minor quibble in an otherwise fantastic game, something you spend a few sentences mentioning instead of the majority of the conversation.

The tonal difference in Wolfenstein reminds me of Necrovision which equally tried to show the horrors of WW1 while also letting you dual wield heavy machine guns, kicking people around and using dark magic with one of the later levels actually having you fly a f###ing DRAGON!