The Giant Beastcast: Episode 300

Jeff! I have that same Other Half shirt, only its red white and blue! Congrats on 300 boys!

Keep it 300.

That's what the kids say now, right? RIGHT?!?

I'll have a wait a few episodes, because I'm quite partial to... ABOUT TREE-FITTY.

Edit: Did Alex miss the subtle MK theme, or did we watch different trailers?

wait i thought this was episode 299

@cristianarg: This is just a test 300, the real 300 happens next week.

Congrats on 300 Gents! Excited to see what is in store for y'all in a new place when that happens. I always listened to beast cast with my dog in the living room tv and we had to put him to sleep this past Friday, then my grandmother passed at almost the same time. its with a heavy broken heart I listen to 300 and thanking y'all for the distraction during this time.

@vinny your feelings on the cost of game emotes makes sense. It also takes artists and animators a lot of time and work to put those parts together. Does it justify costs when large devs and publishers charge that much? I couldn't say, but I do try to consider the number of people that it took to make it happen when seeing those listed in game stores.

Congrats on the 300!

That start was very confusing, well done.

love the crew but it's never more apparent to me that when they react to the announcement of classic jrpgs and visual novels getting hd remasters or localized for the first time ever with a shrug and a "alright" that giant bomb really lacks someone that cares about those types of games. i don't need everyone to be hyped for the same things I am but it's kind of a bummer that there isn't at least one member of the crew that had the knowledge or appreciation for these types of games.

Youtube not working yet? it says Private

Congrats on 300! Damn time has flown by. Still remember the heady days of the Austin/Vinny impromptu improv sketch XD

Heh. Lots of just meh this episode huh? Want to point out that the Xbox FPS boost is very cool and different from what they've been doing. As Vinny said, One X and PS4 Pro enhanced games are patched by devs for higher frames or resolutions. On top of that, series s/x and PS5 can automatically provide more consistent frames, faster loads, auto HDR, etc.

THIS is doubling the framerate in a 2014 open world game that never even got an X patch without any dev work, just as well as they did for a 2019 game (UFC). No changes to the game code, just publisher OK. That's significant IMO! I'd say a blog post and some interviews is reasonable haha.

Dragon Quest 5 has a particularly charming storybook feel. Instead of being about a specific adventure, it's a character's life from childhood (and having your dad help you in battles) to fatherhood (and helping your kid, the real hero, defeat the dark lord). I loved the DS remake, and if digging the DS out of storage isn't too inconvenient it's still what I'd recommend as a series entry point.

What I played of DQ11 was a nice, calming time too. Its Switch demo is huge; I was playing over five hours before it redirected me to the store.

Thanks for 300 episodes!

the audio version really fucked me up hahahaha

I really hate being the sort of person that posts feedback on a podcast, especially somewhat negative feedback for a podcast that I quite enjoy typically, when the feedback I'm giving is "Hey stop being so negative!" but here we go:

I'm a little surprised that they chose to talk about things that they're so eh on so frequently.

I'd rather hear about things you like and can go deep on than hearing "I have no idea what this is!" every five minutes. There are a million ways for people to consume this information, you don't need to feel the need to recap it if you don't care about it. Or do a little more digging into what one might be talking about to be able talk about it more thoroughly.

I would love to see Vinny play through all the mainline Dragon Quests. 5, 8 and 11 are all top tier JRPGs.

jeez Jeff thanks for showing up! it's a video game podcast

Stuff is so friggin crazy right now. So much what. Also, I'm mid thirties and realizing all the stuff they went back over this week; Listen:

I know this is a video games dot com kind of website, but I was CLEANING THE SHOWER BECAUSE that's an annoying thing that is fucking ironic when you think about it, and listening to this;

There are a thousand places, of a thousand places, including myself, bigtime, that I can find old codgering, but there is literally no source funnier, light hearted and more fun with the 10 years behind it + with alex, jeff and vinny when they do it, the beastcast rules, and everyone was seriously on point this week with the funny, despite all of everything in life being horrible, hahah. Put it in the webby userquotes.

oh, and, this is Sparta, blah blah, happy 300, I think i might literally die if this show were ever to stop. Thank you guys.

@braggie: this is amazing thank you

next part: TLDR; nobody had any fucking idea what skyward sword was supposed to be doing, or saying, or be even at the second, third, whatever-ith pass over, because it's obvious in the disconnect between some of their earliest marketing CG, and, weirdly, their most recent direct, which honestly shocked me a little, with the gall to try and sell us "LEARN HOW IT ALL BEGAN" again, and attach that to Skyward Sword, a game that pissed people off, because they said that the first time around in not such a small way.

For anyone not in the loop; years ago they crutch-hyped people up on this series-origin game people for 25 years had been painfully in some cases, waiting for that ida. That idea, in some of the script, makes sense, but that's 10% of the story. And, that 10% by general zelda standards, is very stupid. I could say "I mean I couldn't have hated it, I finished it"- no, I will instead say I was carrot and stick baited in disbelief to the ending, where I then got confused, and then distressed about what I had just experienced. (it's okay, it's just the bad 3D zelda, I have just had years to break down why, and BoTW iis literally new to me as of two weeks ago; that game owns, anyway-).

The language surrounding the re-release was baffling man. This is literally the language that, on top of a bad game, is why you never ever make anything the genesis of a generation's understanding of Zelda, starting largely with OoT (listen, I know, shut up, I'm mid thirties and my parents said no games until I was ten). So when you tell the zelda crazies it was the beginning of the myth, the sword, the shield, the legend. Except they didn't do any of that shit, they softballed it so hard they forgot the gosh hecking ball at home, -and by the grace of Breath of The Wild, I am here typing this PSA- they in skyward then got SUPER weird and started lying to everyone in the GAME by saying, no, this game's great, in this last two hours, ...well nothing really comes together well, but all that promising we did we are legally barely including enough of to say the thing that isn't actually the rest of the game. Let me correct myself, it's like the characters/game are in on the charade because they too snap to attention and get real relevant in that last two hours where before it was whole lot of...I can't even remember. SUSS

Nintendo, unlike the wonderment of ?'s that IS breath of the wild's compelling world, you over-talked us on how important things and symbolisms were, but instead of focusing on it, just put yes to every essay answer, aka, F-'s'd up the handling of the boxes, and the checking, and to bring a proper pencil, and you're late, and you lied, this is not good! Then, it shifts into a very contained story, mid way through, and yeah they hint at little future-knowns, but like, suddenly, sky whale is here, and also, fuck it, here's the hylian shield whatever, and then its over, credits, everyone's time middled, because Nintendo whiffed so hard and then doubled down on the nostalgia factor without delivering anything even sensible, much less relevant and or sensible). That's Skyward Sword.

It's just funny, Skyward Sword, I've been mad at you for years for being worse than you needed to by lack of cohesion in just about any aspect other than the art-I'll give you that the zelda theme backwards is neat that it's listenable, but god why was that necessary over an original, good score...so much.

Breath of The Wild though..., now that's some Zelda- and at the time of this comment, having just left noob-glider island, uh, series redeemed in what is ostensibly just one big scattered land mass dungeon tutorial, has brought the love back and hyped me back up for that series, and the rest of the game I'm playing by itself.

I think it's only four ish hours in where I am but holy fun by comparison, skyward sword was telling you to wear a wrist strap around this length of playtime.

So yeah, I'll re-fucking buy Skyward Sword, I'm a moron. Yes.

@knoxt: Haha you're welcome, for some reason this is all I could think about when he referred to the release being a surprise.

Episode Zero

Never Forget

Vinny "Bung Valve Flex" Caravella!

@cyrribrae: I felt they had a pretty lazy, dismissive, and uninformed reaction to a really cool new initiative from Xbox to further enhance their already great backwards compatibility feature set.

Amazing stuff. Rando aches and pains day by day not so fun.

Also appreciate Vinny pointing out how weird and horny everyone is in the desert level of DragonQuest Builders 2. Like, more power to the dad supporting his daughter but he's way too stoked about everyone being all horny over her all the time.

"Don't make me laugh, it makes my good eye water"

Here I was thinking that the random completely unnecessary disgusting convos about eye puss and shit would stop when Dan left.

Wow, I didn't realize Alex had a deep hatred of crypto, lol. So weird.

Does Bakalar forget that teasers (and even gameplay) were being shown for BOTW literally YEARS before it came out?

daaaaamn @alex that e-kit is fucking sick... I was looking into an alesis nitro mesh for awhile becaue my acoustic skins scare my kitty way too much for me to be able to play them...ever..

I just have to say, as a southern person currently dealing with the crazy ( for us) winter storm shutting down my entire state, it cracked me up to here Vinny accidentally play the corrections music when mentioning how terrible Texas is right now. I needed that laugh.

Persona 5: Strikers is excellent and continues the story of P5 in a way I reaaaaaally wasn't ready for. Some stuff looks wonky, the character models are obviously meant to be viewed in the gameplay mode and so look..."off" in the downtime/social times, but otherwise the continuity of tone and character voices is perfect.

These licensed musou games are turning out to be incredibly lovingly crafted rather than the basic, simple cash-ins I think a lot of people(myself included) were afraid they'd turn out to be.

@larmer:I mean it's literally doing massive damage to the planet for basically no reason. At least cow farts provide us with beef.

Literally everything about human societies is doing massive damage to the planet. That's pretty much our specialty as a species. crypto is providing a useful function. One could say that all the energy spent developing, distributing, and playing video games is also for "basically no reason".

"Uh oh, what did it tweet? Should we unfollow it?" made me bust out laughing

Imagine thinking Wind Waker was better than Skyward Sword. LOL

@itsahme: wait, is this a parody account.

Who thinks SS is any good, let alone better than WW?

Played the room 1 earlier this year. That first game already has the mystical lens-stuff in it too.