Giant Bombcast 557: Piranha Plant Did Nothing Wrong

Turtle! Turtle!

Congrats to everyone on a successful set of Extra Life streams.

The Master of Disguise is responsible for one of my past relationships.

Master of Disguise is my favorite bad movie

The Quiet Man can't be Square-Enix's worst game. Not with Chrono Cross still out there.

Jeff doing Jeff and railing against RDR hard ?

Personally I love it when he hates a game and gets so invested in hating them :)

I love Red Dead 2 soooooo much

Boy Jeff is determined not to like Red Dead

I'm going to need to hear this story. PM if necessary.

Wasn't the Quite Man made by Human Head in Madison Wisconsin? Doubt they are involved with or delaying Final Fantasy 7 remake.

Welcome!

I really appreciated Jeff's take on RDR2 here. It wasn't the nitpicking he did on the stream. He explained why he didn't like the game with a greater clarity than anyone on any podcast I listen to has explained why they actually do like it (most recently I listened to Brandon Jones simply refuse to listen to anything negative on Easy Allies and pretend it was the player's fault). In general the positive critics will list some anecdotes that they found meaningful without contextualizing them, and excuse any poor mechanics as something they just got used to without contrasting these hitches against an actual strength.

On today's podcast Jeff was clear that he thinks the scope and graphics are impressive, but that they don't work as a sum of their parts. Given between the Beast and Bombcasts we've now had about three hours of RDR2 talk, it'd be nice if anyone on either crew who's in love with it could explain why the sum of the parts works for them this well.

Not even taking a side on the game (I haven't played it, but hot takes on it are everywhere). It's just refreshing to hear Jeff drop the act and show how negative criticism should work. I'm tired of him slagging things he hates, but this wasn't that.

Done voted, yall! I gave America the D.

Quiet Man is good the same way "The Room" is good. I'd rather watch The Room over 98% of other movies.

Oh boy, let's just that Game of the Uear Delibrations will be very interesting.

Quiet Man Director: This is avant-garde Art. Too High Art for plebes to understand

@royalghost: oh my, going to be a bumpy goty discussion this year

Blizzard skipped Blizzcons when they thought the whole thing was just a PR event. Then they realized it's too good business to not do it. Also, with Overwatch and Hearthstone taking off the way they have the event is just as much about the championships these days.

I am assuming, from the Thumbnail and comments, that Jeff Gertsmann enjoyed the movie Master of Disguise more than Red Dead Redemption 2.

Eric the Swift.

Baleog the Fierce.

Olaf the Stout.

They should make a third Lost Vikings game.

Ugh, not a fan of using a pic of Mitch McConnell for the bombcast...

(Haven't listened yet so if this is referenced in the ep that's awesome. When ever i see that dudes head o always say "am i not turtley enough for the turtle club?")

Also, for Jeff - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WondrousLadiesRoom

i haven't played rdr2 but i like hearing jeff being a dissenting voice on a game because at least its hearing something different. listening to critics unanimously lavish praise on a video game is real tiring after a while, even if theyre not actually wrong. id rather jeff be harsh on a game than let shit slide because its the Hot New Rockstar Video Game. getting snippy about jeff criticising rdr2 is dumb as hell

could anyone be kind enough to provide time stamps for red dead talk? i'm so far behind and still trying to stay in the dark. thanks!

How is this podcast not titled "Wet Wario"?

Wow that title.

Jeff is 100% correct on literally everything he says about RDR2. The game is a fucking mess. That said, I love it, and can't stop playing.

There is a bidet water fountain joke in Baseketball

Wait, which Chinese based changes did Dota add to the international version of dota according to Ben? I haven't checked in the last few months, but Valve literally put more skeletons in the game as of 2017. Wraith King spawns them now. Note, this is long after they had a chinese low violence specific version, where skulls, skeletons & blood are modified.

here you can see the various differences between the versions

40 hours and still in Chapter 2? I hope Hitman 2 is the only big release that will steal Brad’s attention, because at that rate he might have to start hurrying up before their GOTY talks.

There is a scene in Crocodile Dundee where he gets confused about the bidet.

"Mine says average and I don't know if that's too much or too little." LOL

The collective Smash disappointment is pretty understandable to me. It's not like whenever fighting games come up, the main talking point isn't the roster(well, that or PR fiascos). I don't think SF3 or SFV for instance have ever been mentioned here without Jeff expressing his dissatisfaction at the weird characters in SF3 or how lame it is that V doesn't have Honda. Or how ugly G or Abigail look, for instance. So when everyone were gearing up for the final reveals and it was a recent pokemon, Ryu's echo fighter and a Piranha Plant, I think it's understandable that the people waiting decades for Isaac or Geno or whoever were a bit bummed out.

But I think you gotta take a step back and realize that there is literally no fighting game better than Smash Ultimate from a pure content standpoint. Over 70 characters, including everyone who's been in the past five games. What was it, three hundred stages? 800 music tracks from all over Nintendo and gaming as a whole's history? There isn't any other fighting game, ever, that even come close to accomplishing what Nintendo has done here. Look at how Street Fighter V has got 34 characters and 24 stages after three years of DLC. And that's one of the more fleshed out fighting games out there at this point.

Nintendo's final direct was maybe a bit of a hype deflation for a lot of viewers(it sure was for me, although I still loved Guile's assist trophy, the Piranha Plant and the story mode trailer). They opened with the showstopper Ridley, and there wasn't an announcement here that matched that. But I think it's worth looking at what you're getting and reflecting on how much a Lloyd or a Banjo-Kazooie would really improve it all for you.

Also look at this cutie. When the Grinch "leak" was going around, while I thought that was a collection of characters that would make a lot of people happy, I still said I'd be more hype for say, a normal Goomba at this point. I'm happy one Mario enemy made it.

Until Ben fixed his mistake, "Bomberman: Act Zero is good" is the hottest take I'd ever heard in my life.

great to have some giant bomb and hopefully move on from politics for a while. glad this can be a 'haven' of sorts for distraction

love the pic for this episode. I still have memories of these commercials when this movie came out and just thinking how god damn awful it looked.

Alright I have to chime in on the red dead controls discussion for the cast with what I think helps the game pace and cinematic aspects at the same time-

First, set every prompt to Hold. Then set the deadzone all the way down, accelleration to medium, then turn lock on sensitivity to 'wide' and sort of pick your favorite weapons/items and the wheel stuff actually becomes pretty snappy (maybe that's a bit much, but I have the item wheel control stuff down, and only equip certain items so I don't have to sift much). This stuff can take a little while to dial in, but is so worth doing, and I am very surprised at how weird the default feels- that said, they do allow you to dial it all in, which like the rest of this game, is all about how much you're willing to sink into it for the best time playing the game.

The biggest change in controls that improved the game for me was to set auto aim to wide; I think in the grand scheme of what the game is, this improves the experience of cinematic slow pacing and buildup and the combat becomes more item-tactics, and allows you to have more fun with it overall. While less about accuracy as you rely almost entirely on auto aim here - making the shooting very easy makes the shootouts of a different kind of fun, allowing you much more dead eye time and shots that aren't frustrating, and won't break your momentum when the big shootout happens. Also this game is so GD long, that to fail a mission is incredibly frustrating and immersion breaking even with the checkpoint system, so being able to ace it like a boss on the first run with maximum auto aim is so much more satisfying.

I don't like some other pace-relative control aspects of Red Dead 2, but to jeff's general baffle-ment over Arthur's walking pace- I just got to Saint Denis, after probably 50 hours of relatively similar acting towns, (i spent a lot of time in chapter 2,3) the effect and shift in the game and gameplay is immense, and so damn detailed that the slow walk begins to make sense. Valentine and Rhodes are cool, and populated but very western themed, and big, such that 'moseying' felt just too slow for the environment, and over-done to me; however by comparison Saint Denis sprawl is so different, dense and detailed and alive that Arthur's molasses mosey suddenly makes sense, and feels appropriate and immersive in a way that open expanse towns didn't after a while.

All that said, I am also hopping between games and Red Dead is a meaty, weighty game and between the long, long stretch sessions of playing that, I am very glad that Red Dead did it, and it works, but also very glad that other video games are not of the same pacing.

Ben wore the same shirt last bombcast. Now thats commitment.

Jeff got a mission failure and quit out? It would have loaded you right outside the town.

Like the eating in RDR2? It takes fucking forever to lose or gain weight. Its not even a thing, and its a bullshit con.

I also never notice the movement in this game. Takes Arthur half a second to start sprinting a direction

Ready for these GOTY talks lmao, gonna be so interesting to hear.

If Ben Pack is going to call an entire group of actual real people who like tonic water assholes does that mean it is open season to start pointing out his obvious faults?

@slatkin said:

Partisans of mildly carbonated water, rise up.

Am I not looking in the right place or has nobody on staff talked about the Fallout 76 beta?

Only if you're a walking, talking, animated bottle of tonic water.

@re_player1: Giantbomb does not care about that game.

The only good thing about tonic water is its use in Gin and Tonics.

Nothing crazy, getting friendly with a girl, decided to watch a movie, the first thing you should know about me and my DVD collection is that it's 99% action and martial arts movies and The Master of Disguise :P, so it was either that or Enter the Dragon.

I respect that everyone has their take, but I really can't relate to these RDR2 complaints. I just can't. The game is so important to me.

Ben, your old colleague didnt invent squat. That cake strat is a well known maths puzzle thing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBU9N35ZHIw

Its also complete balls because on a frosted cake you dont preserve the frosting per serving ratio. Either you are an edge person or not and you are getting stiffed. Cut radially like a sane person, and everyone gets the same sugary goodness.

@tonybaloni:

Have you played it? Dont get me wrong, I've been playing it non stop and love it, but everything Jeff said about it is objectively correct. The controls are fucking terrible, for one. More the settings than the controls themselves, but even when adjusted none it feels "good". To top it off, the game uses the same button for multiple actions. For example, did you know that Triangle/Y are the Accept/Get on Horse/Strangle whoever's near you button? And that L2/LT is the Focus/Pull gun button?

Then there's the animations which make Arthur take 1+ seconds to do any single action. You ever try robbing a store? Arthur's literally the slowest thief! He picks up EVERY SINGLE ITEM off the shelf and carefully examimes EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE before putting it in his bag. That's not "realism". Realism would be him shoving everyhting in as quickly as possible because the cops are on their fucking way.

Thats not even mentioning the numerous bugs and glitches like say... 4 camp members literally going missing.

I believe this is the "Breath of the Wild" of this year. The game has a LOT of issues, but they can mostly be overlooked/you get used to them because the rest of the game is so fucking good.