The Giant Beastcast: Episode 204

They should start giving these names like the Bomcast "mmm thats what i call Potassium"

I'd like to see a premium video series of Dan Ryckert's Book Club.

Well lucky for you Phil Spencer said to Jeff on the couch at E3 that the next gen for him was focusing on just that, CPU upgrades to make framerate the priority and I don't see any reason why Sony wouldn't do the same.

arent the halo books the ones where it turns out the suit itself is actually pleasuring him sexually

@jondo: Sadly that excerpt is some fake Twitter shit where somebody made up a convincing fake screenshot. It is very funny, though.

Someone gets it. Thanks for pinpointing this for me: I always felt like there was something off about some of Abby's comments. I'm guessing that more experience will allow her to critically evaluate a piece of media that she may not be personally invested in, similar to how Dan has grown in that regard.

Good God that was a baaaaaaad Halo take.

trashy af.

Vinny really couldn’t remember his last PS2 game? Maybe he could look at the This Day in Giant Bomb history tab and get a reminder.

Came here for the Halo fire, not disappointed. Man. When Abby compared it to Destiny I nearly lost it. They're not even in the same zip code when it comes to game categories. It's like saying "in a post-Destiny world, what does Doom bring to the table?"

That's rich. That's good stuff.

Honestly I'm not even questioning why Abby thinks that. My question is where were Vinny and Alex on that one to set her straight? I mean, DAN had to be the voice of reason here.

Halo doesn't exactly have top level story or anything, but it does have a lot of heart. Bungie did a great job at making it feel like an epic journey with memorable characters. A lot of that has to do with the combination of fantastic music, tight gameplay, memorable setpiece moments and fun multiplayer.

It's kind of dumb, but I'll be damned if it isn't a majestic kind of dumb. No other game series really comes close to it.

Halo has run it's course, as well as Call of Duty IMO.

Time for some new IPs.

Dan takes a real hard turn into Paul at the phone segment. Hoo boy.

Edit: Extremely on Vinny's side with the pizza. Just leave it out and eat it in the morning.

Sony literally has a super successful TV division that will want to sell you 8k TVs in 3 years.

Xbox Ultimate Game Pass -- Why was the Bombcrew so happy and up on this service on this podcast!? Just curious. Do you not see the forest through the trees?

Its the only bundle Ive ever heard of that was announced with fanfare and a press release that doesn't save you a single penny for bundling them. Why do you think this exists guys?
I mean when i got Spotify and Hulu bundled together it was like saving me $5 a month... And when Hulu dropped their price $2, the bundle price dropped $2 too!
Yet there is honestly no single positive for the consumer in the Ultimate Pass announcement... Why are you happy about it? I'm just curious. To me its obviously just a way for Microsoft to bundle Gold Live (and $5 a month) to everyone using their Gamepass service, (which is rumored to be going out to every device imaginable soon including Switch*), sneak Gold into GamePass for everyone to pay for without even realizing - where as right now an actual Xbox user would be the only one paying for $5 a month Gold.

Its a $5 a month money train they dont want to lose (understandably). Corporations never do anything in your best interest... How can I get everyone to pay that then? Hmmmm
I don't want Gold, so Id rather have cheaper GamePass. And its not being forced right now, yet; but you know on the next Xbox or if this comes to Switch, the Ultimate Game Pass will be the only way to buy Game Pass...

*I will still be very surprised to see it on Switch, but thats the internet rumor I keep hearing.

@jehull: I do generally like Abby well enough. But the significant gap in age between her and the rest of GB can be pretty apparent in how they behave in discussions (such as GOTY) and sometimes incredibly hard to listen to.

Same goes for Ben but only occasionally, though it sounds like he was involved with GB in the past before he joined the crew, so I guess he has that advantage.

Would we call it super successful? I think maybe just say they have a TV division and leave it at that...

Abby’s great, but there was definitely some old Dan being channeled through in that Halo segment.

Oh man, that Halo talk. Look, I know the beastcast doesn't keep up with every game and franchise, and they shouldn't but you guys sounded dismissive of everything Halo. Abby, love ya but come on. Destiny and Halo are 2 very different things. You like Call of Duty of crying out loud. You know what an FPS could bring to the table.

If that thumbnail is any indication, this is gonna be a good beastcast.

@caffeinatedking: Isn't the statement "Destiny is literally just glorified Halo leftovers" reductive?

@plinko: You're right, the term I probably should have used in my first post was "dismissive". Because one of these series revolutionized First Person Shooters as a genre completely. The other was a decently playing online shooter MMO that was never quite where it needed to be.

So it seems pretty clear that there is quite the difference in importance between how much these two things matter when you look at the overall history of video games.

@caffeinatedking: Yeah I agree, Halo did a lot and there's a ton of good reasons that people still come back to that series.

I laughed at Dan's rather dumb answers of cheesy and garlic bread, but he's not wrong. They're both great. Can't believe sourdough was only mentioned as something Abby doesn't like; that would've been mine. Also, I'm on the room temperature pizza leftovers train with Vinny. I actually prefer it to straight-up cold pizza. I don't heat any of it up regardless.