The Giant Beastcast: Episode 231

Where is Vinny? Is he ok?

@therealporkins: Vinny is on a 2 week vacation (uncommon for him, I think he mentioned he hasn’t taken a vacation longer than a week in 15 years or so, other than when his kids were born which isn’t really a vacation). He should be back next week.

Alex, sounds like your the PSU is fried. I've never heard of a chip shorting out a motherboard.

Ok now I want a new deadly sins style feature but with all the GB staff living in a coed dorm.

I'm totally on board with Mike's opinion of Link's Awakening.

I had fun with it, but it's a simple game, has indie game production values and absolutely does not justify a $60 price point. It should have been $30 at most. I haven't felt so ripped off in a long time and I bought it digitally so I can't even trade it in :\

White claw is gluten-free malt liquor with seltzer water and flavoring. So It has grain based alcohol in common with beer, but it is not made from wheat like 99% of beer is.

I'm not going to try and ignore everything else you posted (it's probably valid, I admittedly haven't played it since it came out and I basically remember the positives + Fi's over-explanation sucking), but this is really the important part for me.

The things you mention it doing well (Dungeons, Story, Characters/Villains) matter WAYYYYY more to me than anything else. It'll probably be un-surprising to hear that I didn't like Breath of the Wild because I felt like it dropped the ball real hard in all those areas (except maybe characters, but even then there's only 2 I really liked and they're not in it much). I would rather go back to a handful of areas that I thought were cool and interesting than slog through the (in my opinion) pretty dull open world that BotW had. I'll also admit this is probably a "Me" thing as other games that people have infamously had issues with "recycled areas" and "backtracking" have never bothered me, because I liked other stuff about it enough (See: Devil May Cry 4).

Still, it bums me out to hear people so roundly shit on it when I thought it did a lot of stuff really well and is more than a "slow intro" which, like you said, is all anyone really seems to say and it just feels lazy at some point, which is honestly where more of my issues lie. I can definitely see where all of that other stuff brings it down for a lot of people, for instance.

As an aside: I believe Ghirahim is explained as basically being an equivalent to Fi for the villain, but with more autonomy I guess. Like I said, I haven't played it in a while so I don't remember a ton of specifics.

WWE 2K19 was such a good step in the right direction, it made the gameplay faster, it made the career mode not be a slog thanks to giving it a goofy dumb story, the towers mode was great for replayability, and the load times were a goddamn blessing. 2K20 being a gigantic step back is heartbreaking but also totally understandable given the dev process for that game.

WWE 2K20 is a shocking new low in a series that has been defined by lows.

Ring fit is totally legit, as someone who lost weight just boxing in VR with an oculus quest and works out on a consistent occasion, you really can work up a surprising amount of Sweat with Ring fit. seems like they finally nailed the concept of getting fit with a videogame.

Benefits of Gamespot and Giantbomb being under the same house, is free Mike Mahardy.

Easily their most natural guest that just blends right in on either podcast.

See I'm enjoying Link's Awakening more than I did with Link To The Past(which I know is great I just have a horrible relationship with because I would come to that game when I was tired and running on fumes). Everyone goes "it's the Twin Peaks Zelda" but I also feel like it does that mood really well with less. So many games try to pull Lynchian aspects but this is the one where I feel like it gets the Lynchian approach the most. And "The Dreamer" stuff in the game predates what Lynch does in Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Twin Peaks season 3. It's a very Dougie Jones version of Zelda.

Kudos on the Martyrs mention.

I hope they just hire Mike

If I could make one suggestion, during the news segment on Bethesda/fallout 76 subscription, the actual story or name of the game was never said. Dan brought up the story with a joke and everyone went off on reactions.

Being fairly plugged in to video game news I knew what they were talking about but for a news segment it lacked any information.

Still love the beast cast though and will never miss an episode.

Just wanted to chime in and give my approval of Mike on as much GBeast content as possible.

Hey, Mike’s fine, but if GB was going to hire new folk, I’d hope they’d get some more women and/or POC in. (Abby being the only woman in a staff of ~10 is not a great ratio.)

Its really and honestly baffling that Giantbomb and its community know so little about League. Everyone I know, including me, play and talk about League, its everywhere whenever gaming is brought up, and Worlds is breaking records for the viewing numbers and whatnot. Maybe its because I live in UK, and maybe its not big in America, but I feel like I am going crazy whenever Giantbomb staff talk about League.

Having said that, if you have never played League, there is absolutely 0 reason why you should care about it since its very much its own thing, so maybe I understand the community's reaction to it, but for a website that covers gaming, i expect a little better to keep up a bit on whats going on with one of the biggest games around.

On the subject of League, As a Support main, I am not looking forward to the new season since they are gimping the whole lane completely which saddens me :(

Alex is so right about Martyrs. That movie is still the most unsettling and just.. oppressively upsetting movie I've ever watched and I've watched a lot of horror movies.

Also I just can't jive with sentiment that this year was weak or not as exciting as 2017 or even 2018. KH3, RE2, DMC5, Sekiro, Borderlands 3, Fire Emblem, Mario Maker 2, The Outer Worlds, Bloodstained, Astral Chain, Wargroove, Goose Game, Link's Awakening, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, and we still got Pokemon, Death Stranding, and Luigi's Mansion 3 coming out. Not saying anyone is wrong, but hot damn I loved 2019's game output and just felt the need to express that!

I found it way easier to side with the Board than most people it seems. I dunno. Edgewater was a clear, cut case for me that the town needed power.

I have to agree with the person who e-mailed in about that scene in Eraserhead. That whole movie honestly is unnerving and unsettling.

Jotaro does not approve of all the anti dolphin talk on this weeks show.

@tgjessie: Don’t worry, they’re not hiring anyone, but if they do I would hope it would be to fill a specific role, but hey I’ve been proven wrong before.

BlitzFox over on YouTube summed up perfectly why Dan isn't the best person to listen to when it comes to the quality of 2K's (core in-ring) gameplay...

" (Dan in 2K20's Quick Look) "Ugh they give me this objective but I have to turn her to face this way and now she's on the corner and if I hit her she's still there and now I have to wait."

Just do a fucking move, like they would in a match. Boom , out of the corner.

The game's not perfect. You don't have to fight to make it look worse. "

Exactly. Things like that have been a standard gameplay scenario in most wrestling games including the Smackdown legacy series for two decades or more. For the amount of time he's said he's sank into this genre it's weird he gets tripped up over such a basic situation.

But then again....it's Dan.

How have we not heard Dan's take on Mortal Kombat's Terminator yet? Seems like the perfect IP high-five for him.

@faridmon: It's a combination of them living in their comfort bubble, Brad and his friends preferring Dota2 and the game being much, much smaller in North America. They mostly hear about League in direct reference to Dota2, so they probably simply assume it's this small offshoot of the genre.

For instance, they hear about The International's 30 million dollar prize pools compared to Worlds' 2+ million and one of those numbers is clearly much larger, but ignores the 5-7 figure annual salaries players are getting.

Giant Bomb also doesn't deal with gaming news outside of podcast segments, so I doubt anyone on Staff actually does research on anything they don't care about unless it flies into their hands.

lol Mahardy seems to get weirder and weirder every podcast.

Not complaining, just pointing it out. What a weird dude!

Abby killed it in the host chair! I was walking down a busy street during the dolphin talk and it was very good.

You're welcome ;)

Shhhhhhh, we got a good thing going with him there, lets not wreck it. ;-)

You guys are getting a busy schedule with your pinball & bowling content plans :P

While it sucks to have a PC blow up & having to spend money on it, at least it's a good excuse to do the CPU + Mobo + RAM upgrade now that 2 of these things need to be replaced regardless. the Ram prices are in a pretty good spot!

Regarding Fallout , yes people might have asked for private server access, but it's also pretty clear that the game was a failure and now Bethesda has to be more agressive towards the smaller-than-expected playerbase trying to extract as much money from them as possible to get closer to that breakeven point.

I agree with Mike on Fallout 3 & NV. While NV's story is probably wayyy ahead of Fallout 3's, i played F3 for that experience of seeing a nuclear wasteland in full 3d for the first time and that was a great experience. While the quest of nuking Megaton wasn't anywhere near shades of grey, I did think it was awesome how your action had a huge consequence to the world. Doing it a 2nd time around in New Vegas just didn't have that wow factor anymore. It also lacked many moments that really stuck with me (only one i can remember is seeing that village that got massacred by Caesar's troops). I gave that game like 3 tries on ps3 & pc, unmodded & heavily modded, but after 60 hours of not really enjoying myself i stopped. This might be a Bethesda sandbox thing though, i also prefer Oblivion over Skyrim, with Oblivion being my first 3d sandbox game.

Thank god 'egging' is not a thing here.

We have a whole radioshow dedicated to songs that sound like they're suddenly slipping a dutch word or sentence in. My mom has been listening to this awful James Blunt version of Sacrifice - Elton John and the way he pronounces 'Cold Cold Heart' makes it sound like he's saying Coca Co-laa

Dota comes across as bigger to you guys because if you're a game critic and you're looking for exciting game design and interesting ideas, Dota is a sexier proposition with it's laning & stacking mechanics, crazy blackholes, mines, fissures and chronospheres. If your life doesn't fully revolve around games and you need a game to play with your friends, you probably go with a choice that's the easiest for a group of people to get into together. If you have put any time into Dota, it never made sense to me that this game is somehow super popular and mainstream. Like that doesn't fit the mountain of knowledge & skill you need to build up to become somewhat decent at it and know what you should be doing during a game. Don't get me wrong, Dota 2 is a top 3 game for me and despite not playing it anymore, i still look back on that game thinking it's one of the best made games i've ever seen, but it's not a game for a group of people to grab & be decent at within a few evenings.