Giant Bombcast 457: Everyone's a Robot

great to see Will back, always enjoy episodes when he's on.

POPPLIO THE BES!

WOOO!

this is 113% accurate

theme park dirtbags? planet coaster talk?

Come oooon audio version! Gotta get it for the workday starts.

Bam!

Just in time for lunch!

I'd play some super Russian Roulette...

That Vec9 project is awesome.

Brad mis-labeled it - It's 457 not 447.

Otherwise, thanks for the upload!

Edit: Fixed now! Thanks, Brad!

Whoa Will Smith looks different is that why he turned down Independence Day 2?

It's good hearing Brad having spent some time learning the ins and outs of Hitman's AI. The season of bumbling to victory has been hugely entertaining to watch but I imagine it must be incredibly satisfying for him to finally have somewhat of a solid handle on that stuff at last.

If you haven't already, be sure to experiment with trespassing. It's way more lenient than I expected - even in the most high-security areas they will usually just slowly escort you out of the restricted area if you play along - which can even be used to get guards out of position.

I think I finally figured out why people don't like Will: he's a futurist/technophile bordering on elitism.

Still, almost always a pleasure to have him on the podcast.

i dont understand how they can bash watchdogs 2 for its poor AI then praise hitman for the same thing?

I don't think any of the astronauts were hard core neocons but yes they did come back as more environmental in nature. And yes Regan fired all the air traffic controllers as they struck and it was beautiful. Market worked and he was easily able to hire more - and keep taxes low.

And it seems Drew is the one I should follow for games now that Austin is gone - as yeah stardew valley looks as boring as crap. If you like 6 FF Drew you should check out 7 FF - as well as persona 4. Would love to hear what you think of persona 4.

@hassun: Me too.... the cartridge is only like $40 or $50 but I don't have a NES/Zapper so the cost to entry would be way to high for me

Popplio season 1

As someone who was rightfully banned from the Hitman forum for being a complete jerk recently, I can attest to the capacity for being pathetic that hardcore fans like me can be capable of when small things like the ETs or their reward systems are messed with... That being said, Rory, there are plenty of ETs left for you to get everything and have the "full experience". You should give it a go and see what people are talking about.

Great to see him fill in. And his kickstarter deal looks... interesting?

Hmmm PC upgrade talk.

I just picked up a Dell 27inch 1440p 144hz G-Sync that's on sale at there website for $475. Seemed like a pretty good price for those specs although I was originally trying to hold out for a 21:9 monitor with those specs.

Also tried Google earth out this week. I didn't get the emotional response, but thought it was neat.

Will: "To make an omelet you have to break some eggs."

Rorie: "Or some poor people."

I got the joke, but I cannot conceive of disliking Will. He isn't a dick to anybody, and has interesting perspective. Share with you your sentiment.

DALE

Mass Effect 3, game of the generation!

I'm pretty sure that Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is the Source engine game the boys were thinking of. They were contractually obligated to not release it before Half-Life 2, but there wasn't ever going to be a contest in terms of looks or physics. Thanks to the realities of development cycles, they were working on a feature-incomplete version of the Source Engine and had to cobble together large chunks of code (including the lighting system (!!) ) on their own when they weren't sure that Valve could deliver things on time.

Couple weeks back Brad bashed buying cosmetic items in games, then a minute later talked about how awesome cosmetic items are in Dota. I was baffled then like you must be baffled now.

I'm calling it right here. Brad's GOTY will be Hitman.

@grimreefz: I think the difference lies in how much fun poor AI adds to the game. Watch Dogs 2 seems to suffer from a lack of dynamic or flexible enemy encounters that could have given the game more depth. The way it is now is more like sterile and simply dumb computers powerless under the wide array of powers the player possesses. Besides that, Jeff says the bad AI gives as much fun as it takes away.

With Hitman, the whole conversation is different, because Hitman is built as a stealth game, not as an open world with stealth mechanics. The robotic (or as you describe it, poor) nature of the AI seems to add to the enjoyment of the game, since the whole thing is about finding out what you can and cannot do, then exploiting the crap out of its predictibility and cackling evilly and/or nervously sweating upon doing whatever crazy thing you end up doing

Just my two cents.

Internet people's obsession about No Man's Sky has gotten absurd. It's been 3 months since it has been released; I know people that recovered from their mother's death faster than that. Heck, we got over Aliens: Colonial Marines faster than that, and that was (in my mind) a far more egregious offense. Is it because they were so hyped they can't let it go? Or is it because they're looking for someone to hate and punish? Take it as a cautionary tale about hype and pre-ordering and move on.

(And I agree with Jeff on this one; there's nothing Hello Games could say right now, short of either releasing a massive update or disbanding its whole studio, that would please anyone.)

Twas a good podcast :D

With Will and Rorie filling in for Dan, and Drew has glasses on, this must be the smartest panel we had for this podcast room.

Drew doesn't like Stardew Valley. :(

Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel is being snubbed by the Game Awards? boycott!!!

It's hard out here for a crimp.

2016's GOTY, Hitman.

Great episode.

Popplio! Represent @jeff.

I bought hitman on the sale and that game is so much fun i just got 20/20 in paris!

One of the main things I had to learn then unlearn in Hitman was being afraid of the detection ring. Yeah, you can't stand in front of a suspicious guy for too long, but if you're brisk and know there's a way to break line of sight you can usually get away with it more often than not.

I've also found that Opportunities have evolved for me from a tutorial-style thing to a guaranteed way to mess with the clockwork of levels so I can get creative. As in, you don't necessarily have to perform a hit as instructed at the end of the breadcrumb trail, you can also go off and do your own cool thing while the AI routine is altered.

Am I crazy? I swear Dishonored 1 had a mechanic where when you were peaking around a corner or out of cover it would give you an indicator telling you if you could be seen? I understand there are other situations where you could get spotted where that indicator isn't available, but I remember thinking that mechanic helped with stealth a lot. Unless I'm totally remembering incorrectly.

Are you implying that Dan isn't as intelligent as Will and Rorie combined?

Any advice for someone who has never really been able to get into the game in terms of completing unlock challenges? Do you focus on one or plan to do several at a time?

Edit: After seeing your post and wanting to see how I could do in Paris I saw the elusive challenge. I spawned in the kitchen, picked up a cleaver, immediately became suspicious, threw it at the chef's head. Got the message "Target eliminated" guns started firing at me as I ran out of the kitchen and dodged bullets. I ran out the door as multiple security guards became suspicious and started yelling and pulling their weapons on me. I boarded the helicopter as two SMGs started firing at me. IT was probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Time bonus: 00:00:58 :)

I love this game! It deserves to be in a GOTY discussion for sure.

Thank you Rorie for the great Rick and Morty reference when talking about glitching. My man!

Also, thanks to Brad for the Elusive Target idea. I bought Hitman after UPF and did what Brad wanted Dan to do. I crouched, threw a mine, walked out and was done in 1 minute 40 seconds.

Rorie and Will were both excellent on this one. Good to see that Will is doing well also.

@mikelemmer: Its not about objective metrics like how long a game is in development or how good a game really is (NMS is a avarage game, 5/10, 3 Stars, whatever floats your boat). People enjoy ranting about NMS over at youtube for the youtube-dosh. Outrage Culture needs to be in full swing all the time because it generates money quick. People didn't realize that in 2013, but with outrage channels in full boom I don't see it stopping to be honest. Its save to assume that the hate on NMS will get worse as long as people rant and obsess about it.

People will stop talking about it however when the Youtube outrage cashcow goes dry and they're not on sites like Patreon.

No Man's Sky will definitely be my biggest gaming disappoint of 2016. Had they toned down the faux-survival nonsense it would be OK. The game itself, the mechanics, the interaction with other species, the "variety" was all just smoke and mirrors...they just didn't have the ability to hide much of that like most games can.

The Mako is garbage in ME1, from the movement to the combat. The planet "exploration" is garbage in ME1. The inventory system is garbage in ME1. The combat is even kind of bleh. The thing about ME1 that is great is the story and the characters...everything else around it is just meh, but when it was the first game it was all tolerable because we didn't really have anything else like it. ME2 was leaps and bounds better in my opinion and it doesn't do anything worse than ME1. All my opinion, obviously, but ME1 is so hard to go back to.

The Galactic Readiness stuff in ME3 was easy. I remember hearing people complain about it but by the time I got to the end of the game I was maxed out.

@rorie My town was featured in Iron Man 3 (Chattanooga, TN) and the only thing that was accurately portrayed were the police uniforms and cop cars. They filmed the scenes in North Carolina and a bunch of locals were pretty bummed they didn't just film here. They also talked about, in the film, how terrible the internet was here...I guess because "we're in the hickish south" or something, but we actually have amazing internet. I pay like $57 for 100mbps fiber to the door and have for like 6 years.

I love you, Will Smith... I love you...

I really liked Stardew Valley, but it honestly takes about 4 hours to get going, and that's a real issue.

@sammo21: I wouldn't even say the characters were very good in ME1. You go back to that game, and I'm pretty sure the ME1 companions have the least amount of dialogue of any Bioware game since. The only one that felt remotely connected to the plot was Liara, since her mother was one of the villain's cronies and she was there to help you parse the Prothean visions.

That game is 100% for people who value slow, proper worldbuilding above everything. They set up this entire universe, let you walk around on the Citadel for hours doing quests and gathering/running into most of your party, and then you have episodic adventures on individual planets. By the end there are cool twists on what you thought you knew about the relays and you have a massive fight inside that hub you spent hours exploring. It's cool, but it takes ages to get started. The gameplay is only better if you really like your aiming to be done by dicerolls and not your own reticle. And if you like driving around on featureless planets less fantastical and varied than No Man's Sky's planets and have shootouts in the same four buildings. I wouldn't mind vehicle sections returning in the later games, though. They break up the cover shooting, it just needs to be a better car.

But ME2 isn't better in all aspects. Probing planets for minerals is about as fun as it sounds like. The changes in tone is kinda crazy. I'm pretty sure that in the entirety of ME1, almost everyone you kill is a robot drone. The amount of living, humanoid enemies you must kill has got to be somewhere around... Less than a dozen? In ME2, some of the enemies are drones, but you spend a large amount of time firing at human mercs and unfriendlies of other races, too. You work for the council, who are obstructive and dull but can be convinced with evidence. Your team is basically nice people. A couple of soldiers, a scientist, a teen pilgrim, a cop, a single hired merc. Then ME2 rolls around and you die immediately, killed by enemies that were never mentioned in the original and would have made Sovereign's plot quite a bit easier. You then live on as some kind of cyborg. The council refuses to believe that reapers exist after one literally sat on their roof in the last game, and instead you're picked up by a terrorist group from sidequests in ME1, human supremacists most known for experiments that only harm humans. You have no choice in the matter, and when confronted by Ashley/Kaiden, can't put forth an argument or an explanation.

You have a vague threat with no central antagonist(unlike Saren), targeting colonies you never get to see until they're all empty. A number of the party members are monsters. Mass murderers, assassins, a sterilization plague scientist, a "Lawful good" space paladin that will kill a regular police officer. Most of them will introduce themselves by killing someone. I think Thane slits someone's throat. Mordin put the heads of mercs outside his place. I might be misremembering, but I feel like Jack killed thousands of prisoners when she was released. The old returning party members have all had a personality and/or role change. Tali is completely in love with you, although she's not actually romancable for femsheps. Liara has gone from naive young archeologist and historian to badass information broker off-screen, in a tie-in comic. Garrus is The Punisher, regardless of whether you hardened him in ME1 or if you taught him revenge wasn't the way. Wrex is now a king at his planet. Kaiden/Ashley left you and is either a dick or the only reasonable person who won't let you work for terrorists, but you have no way of agreeing with them.

But what ME2 does better is to have the characters exhibit a lot more personality, the gameplay is much tighter, and the the focus is on the entertaining characters and not the main story. The main story is only something like three or four short missions. The main bulk is decent-to-great side stories with amazingly likeable people like Mordin or Tali(Or at least interesting mad murderers, like Samara, Morinth or Jack). The new Geth character is great, and Grunt is surprisingly pleasant for a newborn supersoldier. Even NPCs on the ship, like the engineer couple and Joker, have more personality. The main plot is awful, but it's not a big deal. ME2 hides its flaws and flaunts its strengths.

Then Mass Effect 3 has to wrap up the awful, awful plot they made and can't focus on the ME2 characters much because they could all be dead in that game's Suicide Mission. Of course it sucks. I played through that game last month for the first time, and while there is some good stuff in there(The Genophage plot, the Geth/Quarian plot, the Citadel DLC, seeing all your old favorite characters get a last stand/final farewell) the main plot is again just abysmal. I wish Cerberus never saw the light of day. They never figured out a good motivation for the reapers. The solution to the problem was some artifact that came out of nowhere that the races of the galaxy had been building for generations, somehow, with no idea what it does. They make Earth the center of the beginning and finale, despite you never having put your foot on Earth in either ME2 or ME3. ME3 is as bad as it is because ME2 is the way it is, and decided to set up fuck all.

So I guess what I'm really saying is that all of the Mass Effects are frustrating experiences because the first is a dull slog for the first 70% of the game, the second has an extreme tonal shift and tons of retcons and the third has by far the worst and most prominent plot. Not a single one of them could make anything but one or two choices matter(The geth/quarian and genophage conflict is hugely impacted by the events of ME2). But out of those, because it decided to not give a shit about the other games, ME2 stands on its own as the best.

I've said it before, but I enjoyed the first Watch Dogs for it's open world stealth approach.

@drewbert #TeamMako all the way!