Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 11/21/2014

Maybe one day I'll be able to justify a WiiU for Bayonetta, one day.

I have yet to see the episode, but the image already confirms that it's a good one.

PS: You should play Bayonetta 2.

Bayonetta 2 has a strong chance of being my GotY. It's so good. So so good.

Bayonetta 2 leads into Bayonetta 1.

Bayonetta 2 is an absolutely fantastic game that more people should play.

Awesome that you both like the game. Can't wait to hear you talk about it in the goty casts.

Always a pleasure.

@mooseymcman: It is one of those situations where I'm sure many people want to play it, like myself, but then we have to buy a Wii U.

Then maybe you should buy a Wii U!

Bayonetta 2 is easily my Game of the Year unless one of the new games that just came out this week edges it out. It was the first game in fact all year I played that screamed Game of the Year material. Before that I was reluctantly going to say it was Mordor, but that game fell flat in some key areas. I think at this point there are enough games on the Wii U worth playing that most people could justify picking it. It's fairly easy to find around $250 with one or more games included.

@mooseymcman: I thought about buying a Wii U because there were finally enough games to justify a purchase, but then I saw the price (I figured it would have dropped by now). $350 USD is totally unacceptable considering that isn't even a bundle, and only comes with 32 gigs of storage! I'd have to buy the games, as well as a pro controller (another 50 dollars). So just to get the console and a controller worth playing on it's 400 bucks! Nintendo is totally dropping the ball on holiday deals and bundles, it isn't even competitive.

The Wii U honestly has the most quality exclusive games at the moment to justify owning it as a next gen console. Most of the XBONE/PS4 games of any note have superior / equivalent PC ports, so if you have a decent gaming PC and enjoy the PC gaming experience, why bother?

@gravytrain I'm pretty sure you can get a Bundle for $300/350 USD at this point.

@zorak: Even at $300 that's more than I'm willing to pay for a Wii U after you factor in the cost of the controller and games I'm interested in. As you said, with the PC being my main entertainment platform, I'm really hesitant to buy a console. That's a LOT of PC games, or a great PC upgrade that I could be buying instead.

Sweet NJPW shirt Alex.

Haven't had a single issue with my PC copy of Far Cry 4, sucks that you're having stuff like that, Patrick

Just signed up and subscribed, and wanted to say your twice-weekly podcast is a highlight of the site for me. Very excited to hear Alex and Vinny may podcast soon, too.

Maybe I am just crazy but Bayonetta's story makes sense to me and actually isn't that bad...yes the moment to moment actions of the characters are crazy but the overall arc between the first and second game is actually rather good and a step above a lot of other games.

Yes it is the gameplay and style that makes it my GOTY but I don't think the story should be so easily dismissed, Bayonetta as a character is a hell of a lot more nuanced than you would expect at first glance.

COLLUSION.

Far Cry 4 is a damn mess on PC. I had the same thing happen with getting stuck in the Jeep at the beginning and when the avalanche happened my frame rate went from 60 to like 12. Also the game just doesn't seem to be optimized great overall. I'm on a 980 and I'll get 60fps+ with all max and txaa2 or smaa but as soon as I start driving a vehicle or moving around fast on foot the frame rate will jump all over the place with no matter what graphic settings I put it on making the game jerky as a mofo.

Blinded by the boat stuff, revved up like a galleon in the middle of the night.

Bayonetta 2 is fucking incredible. I have one more chapter left, and still intend on replaying levels with better equipment to get some better ratings

@colourful_hippie: I believe a lot of that particular kind of nonsense that Patrick was experiencing with Farcry 4 is more prevalent with AMD cards.

Still terrible, either way.

As someone who owns a Wii U, I think Bayonetta 2 is super great and people should play it.

@patrickklepek I'd love to hear you guys give updates on Dragon Age 3 as you're both playing it.

Far Cry 4 works like a dream for me on PC. Haven't had a single technical issue yet.

I want to say that they out pre-sequeled Borderlands this year. Haha.

Trying to put my own top ten list. Remembering what came out this year is hard.

You guys said "boat stuff" like eight times rapid fire at one point and I heard "butt stuff" every single time, thanks to Community.

"The butt stuff is great."

"If you're really itching for some butt action"

just thought I'd share I guess

I picked up a Wii U thinking it would be the console I played the least of the big three, but it's currently on par with with my time spent on the Xbox. With Bayonetta 2 (which I just started), Smash Bros, Captain Toad and Yoshi's Woolly World I'm sorted for the near future. Plus I still have Mario 3D World and Tropical Freeze to go back to. Wii U is where it's at!

I'm glad Patrick publicly acknowledged his much deserved shame over heinously stabbing Alex in the back during last year's game of the year podcast! (one of my favorite moments from said podcast)

Though, sure, I think Papers, Please probably deserved to make the top 10.

I decided to look up what I had to say about that moment in the comments of the GotY podcast:

Oh man... If this GotY podcast were a reality tv show Vinny and Drew were the guys just trying to stay low key, Jeff and Brad were the bullies, Alex was the guy who was trying to play fair, and Patrick was the guy willing to make sneaky deals who stabbed Alex in the back.

@gravytrain: Gamestop has refurbished ones for 229. It's the 8gb model but really, if you're like most people who want to buy games digitally (IE almost everyone but me) you're gonna want to get a external hard drive for it no matter which one you get.

HELLO YEAH EVERYONE IS GONNA BE IN THE OFFICE! SHENANIGANS, SHENANIGANS, SHENANIGANS, SHENANIGANS!

dragon age is m m moe? :3

I am in full support of collusion to get Jazzpunk high on the GOTY list. Even if blood must be spilled!

Dragon Age Inquisition starts with the death of the fantasy pope at an attempted peaceful gathering of warring factions? So it starts like the Warriors?

I agree, the identity of the Lumen Sage and how it plays into the original Bayonetta is actually pretty clever. I was surprised how much I was engaged in the story, despite going in not really giving much of a shit.

Hmm, I should probably finish/start-then-finish some GOTY contenders from this year, so I have a dog in the GOTY fight. The past few years were so boring because I had to ignore most of the GOTY podcasts, having never gotten around to playing TLoU and TWD and Bioshock Infinite all that sort of stuff.

I agree with you. The story is the primary reason I care about Bayonetta. I love the characters and the universe it's set in. I think Bayonetta is one of the best female leads in video games today, she's such an interesting character than people give her credit for.

You should check out Wonderful 101 some time (IMO it was relatively underrated), and don't forget Pikmin 3.

@gravytrain: You can get a refurbished WiiU from nintendo's online shop for $200. https://store.nintendo.com/ng3/browse/productDetailColorSizePicker.jsp?productId=prod150200 From what I hear they're as good as new.

Mario Kart should be in the top three. Third to South Park and Bayonetta 2.

Walmart in Canada had a deal this week on their site where you could get the Super Mario 3D World or Mario Kart 8 Wii U Deluxe bundles, plus either Wind Waker HD or Tropical Freeze for $300. Now it says they're sold out haha. With that deal plus Smash Bros. coming out there was probably tons of Wii Us sold this week.

Jazzpunk. GOTY

So according to @patrickklepek, they're doing the GOTY stuff the first week of December.

Captain Toad releases on that Friday. I feel like that game looks pretty amazing. Not sure if it'd be GOTY material, but it seems rather unfortunate that they'd time their schedule in such a way as to seemingly ignore any December releases.

It's obviously a problem that's not unique to GB, but in the past, I'd somehow gotten the sense that they were more aware of it. Obviously, they could just throw it in with next year's batch of games to talk about, but I can't seriously think that anyone would talk about a 2014 game in 2015's GOTY sessions.

Anyone else think that any/all future GOTY nonsense would be best left to the start of next year? Clearly, there's not really any kind of big push of games in December, let alone possible GOTY contenders, but there's at least a couple notable ones this year that seem like they're bound to be left out:

• The Crew - 12/2
• Captain Toad - 12/5
• Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris - 12/9
• Guilty Gear Xrd Sign - 12/16

tl;dr - I'm a bit hyped for Captain Toad, and I'm bummed at the possibility of it being left out of potential (being a bit aspirational here) GOTY talk.

Is there a feed for premium users for Bombin the AM? It's not in either of the other two premium feeds.

@thedigitalistic: It is a sad fact that some things will be pushed aside do to timing. The GOTY stuff seems to be designed to have something up while the staff enjoys the holidays. Pushing it to next year just to cover s few games probably wouldn't work.

Mainly though, I am replying to point out Farcry 3 was extremely high on the staff list and was in contention for the top spot and that came out early December.