Giant Bombcast 576: I Sometimes Play the Switch

Super fast upload! Thanks, Jan!

Are the video podcasts no longer for non premium members?

Hear hear!

What happened to Jason's eye?

Sekiro is so good just got past the GF (area) and for people who know what that means ohh boy.

No, Shang Tsung. It's mine so back off.

if y’all are having trouble with spear guy just spend time with the training guy and practice the counter, his training is very useful

PSindies with a silent P?

It's a shame that most people won't see how amazing the detail in Division 2's world is. People will rush trough, shoot some guys and that's it. This world is so amazing and exploring it is rewarding and the environmental storytelling is the best I've seen in years. Every single object and cable is placed in a way that makes sense. Unfortunately it's just a shooter, so who cars I guess? Can's wait for Watch_Dogs 3, if they do that in London with this amount of detail it will be awesome.

@outrager: he went full anime

Not sure I understand the utter disbelief by Ben when it was suggested someone might be interested in a Switch that just hooks up to a tv. Mine has been undocked just once so far when I un-boxed.

- XBox indies are already dubbed "XBLIGs" by the most official source.

- Acai tastes bitter and horrible.

- I would choose Tales of the Arabian Knights as the best pinball table ever.

- Good Brad gif material starting at 1:45:06.

Thus ends my random assortment of thoughts.

Get better, Jason!

One clarification on Rottentomatoes, they never allowed pre-release audience reviews. At best they had a poll question for users for whether or not they were interested in seeing an upcoming movie, which got listed as a raw % before a film's release. They removed this feature a couple weeks ago, explaining that the press kept mistaking it or misreporting it as a pre-release audience review feature.

Probably for the best, because at a glance the "audience interest score" looked a lot like the "audience aggregate review score"

It would be a stupid, useless thing to do, but I would really love at least one stereo podcast. They should position the mic in the middle, about 2 feet off the table, so it feels like you're sitting cross-legged in the middle of the table.

That press release for Cadence of Hyrule explicitly mentions "randomly generated overworld and dungeons" so not sure where Brad got that it was a straightforward thing.

In the Quick Look for Crypt of The NecroDancer, one of the first things Dan says is that Cadence looks like a female Link. Coincidence? Very much so, but not at all.

I'm really digging Jason's 'Pliskin' Snake eye patch. The rest of the crew should have mandated that he only speak in a raspy whisper for the whole of the podcast.

The Mirikiri counter in Sekiro doesn't require you to "hold up" to work, you just have to get the timing and distance right, it is a lot more generous than most other timings in the game. I find anytime during the thrust attack if you're close enough you can hit the counter and it'll pop sometimes way earlier in the attack animation than I would expect, as everything else requires you to react right as they're making contact, not before.

Personally I find thrust attack minibosses to be the easiest to fight because 90% the time they're just going only for the perilous attack and once you know what counters which of those it's a lot simpler than sitting there trying to anticipate all kinds of swings from different directions.

Side note, I found there is some measure of stat increase as you use skill points, I have a feeling it's based on how many skills you unlocked as I grinded out money and skill points right after the Horseman boss and bought like 3 or 4 skills very quickly and proceeded to notice that the regular enemies were doing far less damage than they had been just prior. I don't know the specifics but it's something I experienced.

My Switch is a console, so portability is not a thing that my Switch is capable of doing in its current huge size. It's basically the same as the PS4 and Xbox One next to it and those are generally more desirable platforms for the vast majority of its multiplatform games for me.

you can literally peel individual units off with the shuriken

Was there any mention of the switch vr toy con set?

For those playing Sekiro on PC I highly recommend watching Digital Foundry's PC port analysis. Seems there is a weird bug with HDR that is fixed if you alt+tab out once after starting the game.

If you have a choice, playing on PC does make the game a bit easier because of the 60fps and the precision needed for deflections. Normally, the input lag of playing wirelessly on PC doesn't bother me, but after switching to wired I can honestly say it made a huge difference. If you're having problems on PC and playing wirelessly maybe try plugging in. It made all the difference for me.

I will also just say that playing with stealth has made the game much easier for me. The AI is kinda stupid in that it will pretty quickly forget about you if you retreat and hide for a bit. This makes killing pretty much everyone with stealth a very powerful strategy. Even on Bosses, I've found that you can lure them away, hide, and then stealth attack them as they're walking back to their post.

Loving it so far. If this keeps up definitely my favorite game of the year so far.

It kinda sounds like Brad is trying to counter spear thrusts with lb, which doesnt work. All you have to do is dodge towards the enemy to mirin counter.

I think Brad mentioned that eventually the Epic store will be able to rely on their better revenue split instead of having to buy all these exclusives. While i agree that this is how it will shake out, i have my doubts whether it truly will be financially beneficial for smaller games to be on the Epic store in the longhaul. People are not talking about the mandatory support-a-creator cut that Epic has put in place. Basically, this system lets creators share referral links with their viewers which gives them a piece of the pie on those games. The floor is at 5% but the devs can up this cut for their games at will.

Right now, there are only a few games on the epic store and discoverability is at a high. But as more & more games will appear on the store, Epic will let streamers do the promotion for these games and lead their viewers to the good stuff. Which games will streamers play? The big games that draws the biggest audience. Fortnite, Apex, League, Overwatch, Fifa, COD, Dota, CSGO you name it. Whenever these streamers play a smaller indie title, they will lose a bunch of their core audience. That doesn't only lose them donations & subscribers, but having 1% of your 20k audience buy into a game using your referral is often more valuable than getting 5% of your 3k audience to buy a smaller game. The past has learned us that when there's a direct monetary relationship between the streamer & the game they play, most streamers will choose for the option that makes them the most money. I point you to the rise & fall of Conan Exile & Reign of Kings that were the biggest games on Twitch for 1 or 2 days before falling back into obscurity.

Enter the variety streamer. Because the biggest games are oversaturated with streamers, there's a gap in the market to play smaller diverse games and set your channel apart. These streamers will be able to retain their audience across smaller games , which means that they can pick & choose between indie titles without huge fluctuations in views, donations & subs. This makes them able to hop from indie to indie game and truly choose for games they think are worthwhile of the spotlight. The issue arises when Indie A offers a 25% cut of the salesprice while indie B offers a 10% cut of the salesprice. Suddenly, there's a direct incentive for those streamers to get their viewers interested in indie A. I could see an issue arise where these indie titles are forced to up their streamer cuts to get a fair shot of exposure among those variety streamers. This could lead to a situation where the initial price to get on the EGS is lower, but the streamer revshare program might drive the cost up anyways.

As a streamer, why would you play 7$ Reprisal Universe if you could play 30$ Rust? Reprisal Universe would have to give a rediculous high cut to make financial sense for the streamer to spend time on. On top of that, the multiplayer aspect of Rust gives viewers an extra incentive to actually buy the game themselves and use the referral link. Like which viewer goes out there to watch a playthrough of Thimbleweed Park & then afterwards decides to buy that game to play through it themselves? Certainly not enough people to make it a sensible choice for a streamer to play over a multiplayer game.

TLDR: To get any stream exposure at all, indies on the EGS will eventually have to compete with eachother for the variety streamers through pricing. Not playing along means that your game won't get exposed by a variety streamer, which is one of the few affordable & attainable forms of marketing an indie dev can utilize currently. I believe this is worse than the current model, where variety streamers don't necessarily have a direct monetary reason to showcase one indie title over another & where the devs can set a pricepoint that they themselves are comfortable with, instead of a price that makes it attractive for streamers. Games that are less likely to be bought by an audience after watching a stream of it, say point & click adventure games or a linear storydriven game like Brothers or Vanishing of Ethan Carter will also make less sense to stream when you're making money off your viewers actually buying the games you play.

Brad you should do an Ubisoft Club Units shopping spree stream

Switch definitely doesn't have all Steam indie games "from the last 15 years", not even close.

As someone who only owns a Switch for Nintendo exclusives, it's been quite disappointing so far. It's just collecting dust until a proper Pokemon RPG or Animal Crossing come out.

Sekiro is great once you get past that initial jump and the game opens up. It’s one of the harshest beginnings to a from soft game. But if you stick with it, it’s about equal in difficulty to their other games. Anyway I’m in love with it, hope the crew sticks it out. Taking breaks helps!

Consuming the dragon stone/tear thing is just dumb. Both Emma and the text describing the item in your inventory 100% straight up says how to use it.

@unastrike to the left of that bridge is a graple branch on both sides of the water. So you can get behind them and stealthkill them. Almost every encounter in the game can be "cheesed"/played cleverly by using stealth to pick of guys and even free deathblows to the bosses.

@bicycle_repairman: Yeah seriously. You even only get it after she explicitly tells you to go get the blood from the lady with the bell, and that she'll make something to cure Dragonrot using that.

Also yes, the dodge is dodging into the spear thrust. The move is a stomp down on the spear, so it seemed pretty sensible to me that you'd dodge into the attack. It's also a lot more generous than it would appear.

Speculation - the new higher powered switch could have a 1080p screen and play games as if it were docked while portable.

@tacticaltruth: Still for non members but you have to toggle it to the non premium video in the overlay before the video

I'm someone who can't fathom never using the Switch undocked, but it's cool that it allows for that use flexibility of course. I'm kind of a switch hitter (double lol) when it comes to using it docked/undocked, about equal.

Do people not like Detroit? I thought it was fun.

Coke Life was discontinued in January 2019. :(

NMS VR was already a thing using vorpX, then their engine switch killed the openvr injection, so VR in NMS isn't really 'new' (it was pretty fun, as far back as 2017), but having proper integrated VR in a free update is good regardless. Like Payday 2 and unlike the Skyrim VR stuff, putting VR into an existing property is one way to move units- like 'it's also on switch' seems to sell systems for people.

@deadstar: That game sold pretty well. Many people think David Cage is a terrible writer or a terrible person that delivers the weakest aspect of those games and that's why you'll see a lot of 'ughhh..' expressions whenever it's brought up.

Coke Life is fucking good.

Sekiro PSA:

The training guy in your hub area is actually super helpful. I initially dismissed him, but as the game progresses his menu fills up with more tactics/skills.

I also didn't get how to use the spear counter when I first got it, which made that miniboss tougher. But a quick trip back to the hub, and he taught me how to use it pretty clearly and even got some practice with it in. Came back and took down the miniboss no problem.

If you're referring to that natural sugar coke then I concur. That thing is an amazing soda.

Weird hearing Ben and Brad (in the past) mention how poorly God of War ran on their base PS4's, I'm playing through it now and outside of the fan kicking in during cutscenes I've had no issues with it other than the combat being incredibly boring compared to the previous installments.

I didn't notice any problems with mine either. I played a digital copy though and my PS4 was just a month old when I played it. I do agree about the combat, it was OK but didn't blow me away. I'd also the same about the story which appears to be controversial. It was enjoyable but not some masterpiece of storytelling.

"What's up guys!" Jason's YouTuber voice is my favorite.

I love me some Tetris, but that emoji Tetris game just sounds awful and boring.

I've never undocked my Switch. I'm not really into handheld gaming but I like Nintendo. It's not that weird.

There was an Extreme Pizza near the college I went to. The pizza was acceptable, but the prices were ridiculous compared to other places. Not worth it.

My freshman and sophomore year of college, I lived in a dorm, and there were only two washers and two dryers per floor. So that's about 40 people all using these two machines. I would never take stuff out of the washer; I would just come check every 10 or so minutes until they hopefully took it out. But if it's in a dryer, I'd check to see what the clothes felt like - if they were still warm, then it meant they only recently finished, so I gave the person time. But if those clothes were cold, then fuck that, I put it on top of the dryer.

The last two years, I lived in a campus apartment with its own washer/dryer, so I didn't have to deal with a crowd. But only 1 of my 3 roommates was a friend; the other two were randoms. And they were the goddamn worst about laundry. They'd sometimes leave their shit in the machines for days at a time. Just no consideration whatsoever.

Well if you go back to 2018 Game of the Year Bombcasts, when Detroit came up if I remember correctly - no one else had really played it outside of that Quicklook, (and Abby seemed positive and said "it had some neat looking parts and was campy in a good way", and I think Vinnie played a little and just said "yeah"), but Alex really shat all over it, stood on a soapbox and basically said "fuck this game I hate David Cage". I feel like Alex should not review this guys games again, we know how he feels, its valid, but Id rather hear someone else now.
I enjoyed it, and I saw other game publications that had reviewers that put it in their top 10 (I did not, but didn't feel Alex's hate either). So I think it was a mixed bag of opinions...