The Giant Beastcast: Episode 231

nice and early

ᴡᴏᴏꜰ
U・ᴥ・U

What will the last Film and 40s be?

Anyone else not see the episode in the RSS? I can only listen here.

@fnacypants: I see this but not the premium, if you're looking at that feed. assume it's not up yet.

So, what about the premium one?

Does Mike just work their now?

Why is the premium rss feed sometimes later than the free one? Not even asking for earlier or anything, but come on, at least be on time...

I love Skyward Sword. As a long time JRPG guy, the long opening never bothered me and I enjoyed all the motion control stuff. I'll agree Fi is bad, but in the grand scheme that's my only real problem with the game. Probably in my top 3 Zelda's.

@awkwardl0ser said:

Yeah, I've certainly got no objections to more Mike content, but surely it would be more efficient to just poach him by now, right?

I am so glad that the East crew can put up a great show even without Vinny, their main host. Much love to the crew.

@awkwardl0ser: Think of Mike like a substitute teacher. When someone is out he fills in. He’s substitute duder.

@ronald: I just hope his collegues don't get jealous of him hanging out with the hip crew.

I mean, Jeff Bakalar doesn't work there (@GB) either, but that's fine.

it is my birthday and there is no gift better than the beastcast. maybe money.

and I am stealing "Ganjour", yay thanks crew.

Oh fuck yes please have a pumpkin carving stream!!!!

Edit: oh god the way Abby completely fell apart talking about the dolphin appendage killed me. I knew where that sentence was going before it completely imploded. Please I hope this gets included on the clip channel.

Well they're getting a free personality and they don't have to pay him any amount of money, because he's already being paid. Seems pretty dang efficient to me.

Where's the premium feed 🙂

@fnacypants: Same

Could us premium peasants also get our version?

Yeah was hoping in the first 4 hours this was up we'd get the premium version... where's papa Vinny when you need him?

I'm jumping on the "why isn't the premium feed updated" train.

Umpteenth asker of "where's this in the premium feed?"

mike has been a shot in the arm for the east. love everyone, but it's great to mix things up and get new energy in.

Premium feed updated now.

@awkwardl0ser: I sincerely hope so!

@gnoltac: the premium trash garbage people can finally rejoice! We have our podcast!

WWE 2K20 is a perfect representation of WWE, it is a broken company that does everything based on money and does not care about the fans, yet fans watch no matter how bad it is. I wish more people would just stop watching WWE.

@epidehl: When criticizing Skyward Sword, GB always seems to focus on the slow start/Fi, but I think the game has other significant failings.

Namely, the game’s 6 or so dungeons feel well crafted, but the rest of the game felt extremely thin and it recycles areas in a disappointing way for a top-tier Nintendo game.

That said, I do think Skyward Sword does story pretty well, with an interesting origin story that isn’t *too* retconny. Good characters, especially Groose and original villain Ghirahim, though he goes sadly underexplained other than maybe he was some kind of minor demon trying to summon the demon king? Also, the game laid the groundwork of the Zelda team trying out new ideas like breakable equipment (shields), gathering crafting materials, stamina meter, etc,. which eventually helped Breath of the Wild make big changes. But things that Skyward Sword did real, real bad:

A) Honestly, the game has a lacking amount of towns/NPCs. There’s Skyloft, which is where pretty much all shops and NPC side quests are for the whole game. Outside of that, you meet some little kiwi/Korok motherfuckers (and Zoras) in the forest that briefly matter, you meet some Gorons in the fire zone that briefly matter, you meet some robots in the desert zone that briefly matter. But they’re all just kinda sprinkled inside an enemy combat zone and it feels like Nintendo just skipped giving any of them interesting settlements/culture/character. Mostly pretty generic. Contrast this with even Majora’s Mask, which has a focal point main human town, but also 4 zones that are pretty rich with NPCs and their own towns and little histories/personal stories.

B) The sky overworld is a complete joke. You have this bird, and then there is nothing to actually do in the sky. All you do 90% of the time is fly from Skyloft to one of the big holes in the clouds where you can drop down to explore an on-foot zone. There’s no sense of exploring the sky at all. The only non-Skyloft islands are one for a tavern, one for a mini game, one for another mini game, and one where Beedle lives. All the other ones are this unnecessary second step where you unlock a chest by hitting a cube on the ground, but then instead of the chest just being on the ground it corresponds to an immutable chest in the sky. The sky overworld feels so underdeveloped compared to all the time you could spend exploring and finding things in Wind Waker’s ocean, or Breath of the Wild’s wilderness.

C) They recycle areas so much. So, you do forest zone, fire zone, desert zone. Then, in the obligatory half-assed light world/dark world inclusion, you do a weird little challenge in each of forest/fire/desert zones where Link is in some spirit realm/silent realm thing with no weapon where you collect a bunch of orbs. Same geography, but let’s slap a visual filter on it and just make the player run around the same zone again for 15 minutes collecting orbs. All the laziness of the Twilight Realm in Twilight Princess, but not even a wolf form. This weapon less challenge unlocks an extension of the existing zone, but it feels like it extends the zone by about 25% at best. Like the forest zone, you unlock this smaller little river zone, talk to Zoras for 5 minutes, then do a dungeon. After all this, you come back one more time to forest/fire/desert zone, and do some task for each zone’s dragon, again doing something in and around the geography you’ve already seen. To the game’s credit, the second visit to the desert zone felt pretty different, but the other 2 zones are pretty weak overall. Altogether, the game only really has 3 zones, and it makes you visit them 3 times each, and I don’t think they made the revisits/mild expansion of each zone very interesting. Also in this category of recycling, they make you do that fight against the giant black Muppet like 3 or 4 times with only minor changes.

@someramguy: Isn't he tasked with building up a presence for GameSpot in NY? I don't know how well received it would be if he abandoned that. Plus, does Giant Bomb have the budget to have him on the payroll?

I feel so bad for The Outer Worlds, because I do really like it so far, but it feels...just a touch hollow after having just played Disco Elysium, which makes the traditional "X faction likes/hates you" system seem trite and shallow. Disco Elysium doesn't get everything right, but it feels like a drastic step forward for RPGs, while this seems very polished, fun, and a bit safe. Also not thrilled with lacking things other games in this space tend to have, like romance options, modding capabilities, etc. I don't know if I see a reason to ever play this again after my one playthrough.

Still, thanks to GamePass, it's free, and you can't beat that. Also, have to disagree with Mike on New Vegas; I played through that game six times, and might do so again.

While I agree the 2K games are generally disappointing wrestling titles, the core in-ring simulation focused gameplay...at least up until last year was great (I passed on 2K20). You wouldn't know that though from watching Dan play earlier this week as he treated it much like he has other Quick Looks (Horizon: The Frozen Wilds comes to mind) where he's far too stubborn to broaden his methods of attack spamming the same shit over and over until "winning" and then...at least in the case of this particular series, claim the gameplay "fucking sucks" because of it and the underlying fact he wants it to be more of an arcade style experience.

Those games exist, admit simulation isn't your jam, and go play one of those. I say this every year, but it wouldn't make sense to hate on Madden because it's not Blitz. That being said though, I would love to see him dive back into 2K19 and try to play a singles match on a higher difficulty with no reversal limit making use of the ring and ground attacks other than repeated stomps. He knows its not Here Comes The Pain, and no matter how much he tries to play it as such, it'll always be a horrible experience for him.

If there was one thing Visual Concepts did right the last several years is that they made the game more reversal heavy allowing awesome back and forth matches that finally resemble what we see on tv all while making use of a standard and familiar control scheme that's been in the mix for nearly two decades. Hopefully they keep that intact if they choose to rebuild this sucker from the ground up next year and finally include a tutorial for the people still trying get a Blitz like experience from a wrestling Madden.

Premium pod is now available, thanks.

And to balance the negativity: Mike is great on the shows.

Can we dial back the Mahardy. Please?

Mike is a national treasure and the pod has been continuously improved by his presence.

Please invite him to anything and everything.

Abby likes her sex jokes.

Ah, so that's why they dolphins are the thumbnail...

👏GLAMOUR👏IS👏END👏GAME👏

When Alex mentioned taking his PC in to get fixed i've come to realize i'm the Desktop PC version of the car guy who scoffs at people (like me) who use mechanics to do brake work.

The thing i've found with League/Fortnite is that they're kinda in the Madden camp. That is, there are a TON of people who play those, but don't cross into the venn diagram of people "following video games" very often. I think its a pretty common thing in online-only games where people will just have 'their game' and not really follow much else.

the Nvidia Shield device I cared about was a handheld, and I am sad they killed it.