Unprofessional Fridays - 04/26/2013

@rorie look at this adorable thing, just look at it.

RORIE!!!!!

"The Netflix of Matt Rorie", it's the Netflix of lots of people!

@humanity said:

I could not agree more with this. The way the staff chooses to share information about the site and their activity never fails to blow my mind. The whole thing was treated as some sort of Friday-evening news dump. People should not have to be dedicated forum users or follow the staff offsite to get quick and reliable information about the site's development, there should've been a video and front page headline about a major staff shakeup.

They build this entire site in such a way as to appeal to the broadest amount of people possible. Mobile friendly, very heavy on pretty pictures, all that awful metro-esque style of page layout popular with the kids these days, and yet their attitude on dramatic staff changes including beloved members of the site is "eh just make a blog about it and within a month or so everyone will figure it out."

I love having Rorie back, and I understand Dave apparently didn't want some sort of huge going-away party or whatever, but for years now members of the site have been complaining about how awful the staff is at getting information out to their userbase on the site proper, so I don't understand why we still have these problems. This site is built on the appeal of their personalities and the warmth of community, but they handle site information so coldly.

So no QL of Poker Night 2 then, evidently...

@marokai: maybe dave just didn't want a huge deal being made about it? maybe he had his own personal reasons? i'm sure they'll have some tribute to him on the podcast. it's not like he died or anything.

Wow, that Star Wars game was NUTS.

@ripelivejam: Maybe, but it's still totally crazy that the departure of one of the core and most beloved members of the team that's been here from the beginning (hell, he was involved in all of this before Brad and Vinny) just sort of... happened. There's two cryptically titled blogs on the forums about it and if you religiously follow the twitter accounts of the staff you would've heard about it, but beyond that, you have to rely on your own resources to find information about a core staff development, which is banarnars.

There's still a tribute to Roger Ebert on the main News page from three weeks ago, there couldn't have been a news headline at least? I'm on this site every day and even I practically found out by accident.

Hilarious how the commenters seems to think they know what Dave wants/deserves more than Dave himself. He put out a pretty extensive blog (as did Rorie), and that seems to be all he wanted to do.

Also: Poker Night is, in fact $5 on Steam and that is a MUCH better price. Still think the duders were a little hard on it.

It's terrible. The AI is awful. It's legitimately a waste of $5... which should tell you how shitty it is.

@kalakov: I don't really blame him...

quite like patrick, really appreciate the levels so far that @rorie has gone to involve himself with the community. i haven't watched much of the material he's in when he was originally here but so far he's made a welcome return!

also thanks for some clarification on dave's departure, though i inferred the jist of it.

I'm actually playing Dark Messiah while I'm watching this. The kicking is pretty great.

@dexterkid: Same here. Don't really follow the site too heavily, but I had no clue until I started reading the comments here.

At the end of the day, it's their call. IF Dave didn't want to make a big deal out of it, then why should we be upset? He said he has already taken less responsibility with the site, due to him having a kid, so until he said something, no one really noticed.

It just seemed like a nice and clean way to announce, one guy leaving and a new person coming on.

It's called Acrophobia.

wtf ryan lol

The Star Wars game on the Famicom is never not an inadvertently incredible experience and I'm delighted to see it get randomly covered. That being said, it's altogether surreal experience entirely for different reasons if you speak Japanese and can read the dialogue. The Darth Vader fight in the beginning of the game is especially great:

Here is, honest to god, my personal translation of what's being said:

"I am Scorpion Vader! Your friends are further inside!" (Original Japanese: オレサマ　ハ　サソリベイダーダ。　オマエノ　ナカマハ　コノ　オクダ。 In proper kanji: 俺様はサソリベイダーだ。お前の仲間はこの奥だ。)

So to Japanese players, the fact that he's some mystical scorpion that's not even the actual Darth Vader is actually a known variable from the get-go, which just makes it that much more delightfully ludicrous. Basically what I'm trying to say is that Japanese Extended Universe fiction is amazing.

I want to see SPACE!!!

I do not get chat, but I appreciatted coming across that later on...

Vinny's Tower was amazing. SO CLOSE TO SPACE.

om yeah that is how the star wars soundtrack sounds like, 8 bits no more no less

time to enjoy myself

no patrick!

I do love the bomb crew a lot and I'm not saying this is a HUGE deal, but I have to agree with this. I mostly come to the site for the videos and bombcast, I very rarely even go into the forums and I had no idea what was going on. I didn't even realize Dave was gone until someone mentioned it in a video comment thread and was shocked and heartbroken because I loved that guy. Would have liked more of a send off to Dave and welcome back to Matt. Preferably in Video form. Or at least some sort of bigger announcement.

That's what she said! BOOM!

So uh, Screened.com, you guys.

Also saying "first" was the exact way NOT to get the quest...

Fuck yeah, Rorie!

Oh wow, they've printed off a load of that Bombcast art and put it up as posters in the background. Too cool. And the Megaman x GiantBomb from Fobwashed.

That's what she said.

and obi wan says konichi wa...?!

I LOVE you guys! :D

Another wonderful Unprofessional Fridays, thanx. And good to see Rorie again now that Screened.com is all but dead and gone. Need more Rorie and Alex in front of the camera whenever they can visit.

"Pippipi PiiPii" - R2D2

Typo's in the Star wars text scroll. Great!

Thank Christ we have someone with some kind of anti-Mac sentiment..... Rorieous! (Glorious!)

Puppies !!!

Who is this Rorie guy, is he working for Giantbomb now?

I would play WoW again if you could revert to previous versions.

I do agree I would have liked a little more send off for Dave, but reading his blog it sounds like that wouldn't have really worked. Me mentions that his last day has already come and gone and that they stayed quiet about it while they tried to get Rorie in. Sometimes that's just the way of things and I wouldn't be surprised if they brought him in later and did something big after the fact.

That said this casual Friday episode kinda bummed me out. It had its moments, Vinny going to space, Ryan fighting scorpion Darth Vader, and they even looked at a lot of stuff I enjoy. They were just so down on everything this week. I get that there will be things you like and things you don't like, but Jeff specifically seemed to want to actively throw down everything this episode.

You can do a lot worse than Poker Night 2 for $5. I've found the game legitimately funny, which is really hard to do for games. Shoot it even turned me around on Claptrap. I hated him through Border Lands 2, in this he might be my favorite character.

Same deal with WoW, not everyone's cup of tea, but a lot of people play it. Even more have played it. I don't think Rorie did the best job of showing it, but he wasn't given a lot. You can only ask "What should I show you?" and get nothing, but snark back so many times before you just sit at the character select screen.

Anyway as usual this is too long for a comment I just felt this show was a little rough and didn't show me much except how easy it is to crap on the other games people bring to the table. I love Giant Bomb and all its personalities, but we're dealing with games here. We could at least try and have fun.

I'll join the club in saying that they were way too harsh on Poker Night 2. I've played about 2 hours, and as far as AI poker goes it is pretty good. Add in the Telltale dialogue and conversation and it is quite enjoyable. Sure the characters aren't the best choices, and they do repeat their lines pretty often, but they make it sound like complete trash.

Honestly, I thought the Star Wars game looked pretty awesome. Controls looked good, graphics were fine, and it's Star Wars with Scorpion Vader.

This reminded me how much I've missed Rorie on-screen. Matt and Ryan interacting always makes me smile.

Fuck you Jeff, that's Winslow from Tales of Monkey Island.

Anyway, on a more straightforward note, I don't know about anyone else but I never really approached Poker Night as wanting or needing a good poker game. I feel the point of the game was always to just play poker in the background to hear the great banter between the cast.

Unless the poker system is somehow appealing to somebody, the game lives or dies on the banter and the cast which I found to be quite enjoyable last time around. As for this one, I feel like 2's cast is solid on average but that's because of its highs (Brock, Sam) and lows (Ash).

EDIT: Thinking about it, I felt like the Poker Night segment was completely unnecessary because it was just a short pseudo-QL with Jeff just shitting on it and moving on. So I guess skip to about 18:25 if you're interested.

As for Dave I don't think he didn't really need to have a send off per se since he did say he would still pop up in the offices and videos ala Gary Whitta-style with the Tested guys. Having a dramatic send-off would somewhat contradict what Dave is saying since a send off signals that he isn't going to go to the offices anymore where in fact he still plans on doing so though no longer as an employee but more as a friend like Dave Lang, Johnny V, Adam and all those other guys. Sure he is a big reason why we have GB but I think he himself wouldn't really want to have a dramatic send-off. Also personally, if they did do one or will do one, I'll even be more sad.

I would love to know what Alexis' belly button smells like

Wow that's pretty weird that Ryan mention Boogie Nights here, I was literally watching Boogie Nights on DVD as this live streamed.

Yeah, listen. Vinny's face said it all, he knows. When Vinny is that distant and bored the dice has already rolled.

You signed a contract to produce content. This don't cut it. Basil, leafs and water and Hoover Dam be damned.

You guys are lazy. Make your excuses, you're still way behind.

It's not a game anymore. Shelter all you want in Giant Bomb memorabilia, paste posters behind you. This is your careers. If you're not into your own happy planet you're not over-achieving anymore.

What the fuck happened.

That is what you guys were best at.

This.

Just in case anyone wanted a gif of Matthew Rorie smiling (or having a seizure...):

@fleck0:

I think becuase there is no multiplayer, that game looked made for multiplayer.

The Boatman is in the new Monkey Island games. His name is Captain Winslow.