Giant Bombcast 717: Scams and Flams

Videos coming soon.

Alternative titles:

• Rare Pickle
• Black Market Insulin
• MonRage
• Just Maids

Perfect timing, thanks Jan!

The word 'flimflam' was used during the mention of this title and we don't use it. Disappointing.

I would have gone with Ghostbusters Kidz Bop

Not the first time Bakalar's had "tip anxiety."

In addition to it only being possible to be given by a ghost, a hummer is a blowjob but the person/ghost hums while they do it to give extra vibration feeling

Hey @jeff the framey mess stuff you're seeing on your tv in Halo on PC is solely a Halo Infinite thing. I don't know why that game runs like that on PC but to me it feels like GSync just does not work in that game or the game has bad performance/frame pacing issues. If you don't lock that game down to 60fps it looks terrible. All other PC games I've played are silky smooth 120Hz on my LG CX with GSync and Vsync enabled in Nvidia Control Panel.

Some of my best friends are kids movies

I got to the second stage in the Ghostbusters game before giving up. The gameplay is insanely repetetive and all the actors sound half asleep while performing bad comedy.

Does the windows button + p not do what Jeffy B wants with regard to changing monitor settings on the fly?

I get weirded out whenever tip talk comes up. I had a service job for six years but we got a livable wage (I'm not American btw) and have always thought the tipping system is insane. If a company doesn't pay its employees they should be sued out of existance. The job is shitty enough without having to rely on handouts.

Jeff G is amazing and I always appreciate his input, but he could have tapped out of that Inscryption conversation by just noting his distaste instead of dominating the conversation about it. Just be like "I think it is one of those and I'm out, carry on if you're enjoying it."

The problem with GTA Online for new players isn't that it's confusing, it's that basically all of the content that is actually worth doing requires you to first buy something in the game that costs millions of dollars, which means that before you can even do anything remotely interesting, you have to do a bunch of boring jobs or competitive modes grinding for hours before you get enough money to buy/do anything interesting.

If you go into GTA Online and want to do anything remotely interesting, you have to either grind for tens of hours of doing boring shit, or spend a bunch of real money on their shark card microtransactions. Additionally, as far as I know, most of the new content is missions that require several people and can't be played solo, so either you also need to get someone else you know to play it with you or play it with random people, which is going to be terrible most of the time.

@jerf Take a look the app Display Fusion. You can setup profiles for whatever video and audio devices you want to use and can tie them to hotkeys.

Ahh, Americans cringing at the correct pronunciation of soldering. You guys bastardised the spelling of countless words, one wasn't soldering but you for some reason don't like to pronounce the L, that's strange.

It's probably because most of the videogame discussion content I listen to comes from Americans, but I notice they are very quick to point out when something sounds too Canadian or European. Which sucks.

Ultimately we all like to argue about the correct pronunciation of things, and I hope it's light hearted. Though I hate homophones so Solder as "sodder" is no good, because sodder is already a word.

@chronox: I'm American and I feel like I was manipulated for years with regards to aluminum/aluminum.

Having said that, it would be awesome if we could all stop being dicks about pronunciation. It always feels like Americans are leading that charge and it is exhausting.

I had some fucked up intermittent internet for a good long while. After about a year of "everything seems fine here" the next guys who showed up yanked the cable going to my house, not hard or anything, but it just came right out. The whole thing was rusted like crazy where it connected to the house, but not yet rusty enough to just snap.. When it got cold the cables got more tight and the internet sucked worse. When it was windy it got worse. Didn't even dawn on me that wind set it off until after they'd fixed it.

Finding fault with something that works most of the time is a fucking nightmare. So many mid-game disconnects in that year..

Nice to hear someone talking about Demeo. That game is rad.

@jeff s PC -> TV woes

It took me some work to get my PC to work right my TV. I bought 3 different "high speed 4k" HDMI cables before I got one that actually worked. They need the maxium HDMI 2.0 bitrate for 4k60HDR. (obviously I don't even have a 120Hz TV). Also I had to get 2x5m plus an HDMI repeater because you can't just use a 10m HDMI cable either.

After that I had to figure out the right Nvidia + Windows settings. You need to set it to 4k/60 and also 10bit / limited / 4:4:2 and activate HDR on Windows on the TV. You can check if it works at all by setting the resolution to 1080 first. It usually automatically set the refresh rate to 30 before I figured it out, which looked like Jeff described.

The last piece of the puzzle is called "Monitor Profile Switcher" which is a free tool that should be included with Windows. I set Hotkeys to ctrl-alt-f1 to f5 for "One Monitor", "Monitor and TV with TV as main desktop" etc. It saves ALL relevant display settings. I also use "SoundSwitch" to do the same for audio which switches from PC sound to my receiver for TV gaming.

It's some work once but now it works and I use my PC as much as my PS5 / Switch on my TV.

GTA Online is as bad as everyone says. It is very grindy game that is completely hostile towards new players. New players are dropped into lobby with a pistol (I think on PS3/Xbox360 you just got a bat) while others are armed with mini-guns, jets, flying bikes and orbital cannons. Low level players have less health points, can't buy better armor and have very limited access to weapons.

Now if you want to play the new mission, you basically need to own motorcycle club house or CEO office. Some editions of the game come with those, but otherwise it is about $1mil and that can take hours to get. Then there is level requirements and $2mil paywall. After that you have to tackle missions that cost you on ammo, armor and health items while using weapons not ideal for it (unless you for over $400k on a assault riffle).

If you are new player and want go the right way, do this:

• Get the edition that comes with CEO-office and MC Club House. You need to be CEO or MC leader to do most of the stuff.
• Play in Invite Only -lobby. This will make it so that you aren't constantly killed and no hackers can mess your game.
• Do collectibles (action figures, bounties, treasure hunts + their challenges, radio jammers etc.). This will give you good amount of money (1.75mil?) and boost you to over lvl 50.
• Do contact missions until you get enough money to buy the Kosatka submarine (contact missions pay OK, are short and there is lots of them).
• With the Kosatka you can launch the Cayo Perico heist. This is the best money making method in the game (lots of cars are ~4mil with the upgrades). You can net easily about 1.5mil in a hour. This is important because everything is expensive and you need reliable method to make cash quickly.
• Now you can start buying things you want, like the Agency for the new content and you can compare the price to how many Cayo heists it will cost.
• Realize that this game complete BS and do not play it. This is the best method of enjoying GTAO.

we put a basket of snacks, hand warmers, aspirin, drinks, ect. for the delivery people. That covers all the different groups and I've had notes left that it is appreciated since they are on a constant run all day.

Realizing nobody talks about that Telltale Guardians game, which was fantastic.

Is there some reason Jan cannot say the word shit?

Before "Red Dawn"

I think the answer to the fighting game question may be Chaos Code. Although it was made by a small Taiwanese team, they debuted straight in Japanese arcades so I don't think you would call it indie. Under Night In-Birth came out later than Chaos Code, but Eltnum previously existed in Melty Blood. All the other characters in the first UNIB are original though.

The console boxes are useful for storage!

All my old consoles are neatly tucked into their retail boxes and squirreled away for safe keeping!

For anyone having trouble getting into or making progress at the beginning of Inscryption:

You're supposed to fail, there are mechanics around dying and mechanics that unlock from dying. Compared to other deck builders synergy isn't as important, you can get by without a lean deck and once you have a handle on the different costs you can start getting more discerning about cards you grab.

I do think GTA Online has its charm, and it obviously has made its place in the world. But it is a damn shame that this content is being made only for that. I still never got to play more than the first two heists, because of all the damn hoops you have to jump through. I will forever be sad that we didn't get DLC on the same level of quality of GTA IV's DLC, but with V's character switching mechanic. And the online crap even infected RDR 2, so we didn't get an Undead Nightmare 2 (or whatever they would've done).

Jess has got to stop pronouncing it as Goat-ee. It kills me, in the bad way. I don't know if I can go through a whole GOTY cycle with her saying that.

Podcast chapters were brought up, and Jeff G kind of scoffs at it... really? There's no excuse to not be implementing them, honestly. Nextlander has done it since they began, and they're incredibly useful and nice to have. Sure, it's not effortless work, but it's not some insurmountable task either. Farming it out to your audience is not a good look. EDIT: Hah, ok, Nextlander started putting ads in their podcast in 2022 and it breaks chapters. But, they at least still try, and the paid version has them correctly. More than GB has ever done on that front.

@topcyclist: The problem with the all female Ghostbusters movie has honestly nothing to do with the fact it's an all female cast. Of the decisions they made, doing an all female cast was actually one of the better ones.

The real problem is that is is just not at all a Ghostbusters film in its comedy. The original Ghostbusters film was a really well written, expertly delivered comedic vehicle for a story about a bunch of schlubby dudes trying to start a ghost extermination business. The Ghostbusters aren't even heroes, really, they're just a bunch of weirdos who more or less stumble into saving the world. Hell, Peter Vankman is a fucking con man and womanizer who is more or less an anti-hero. The comedic timing is fucking perfect, the jokes are understated and clever, and it's the absolute definition of lightning in a bottle. It was the perfect amalgamation of comedic talent at the right time.

The all female Ghostbusters is, instead, nothing but poorly done improv that subsequently lacks all comedic timing. You can literally see how the director just told the actresses to keep talking and try to be as funny as possible and it shows. Jokes aren't allowed to breath, you just have to keep talking. Keep talking and make sure to throw in jokes about queefing, farting, and how the ectoplasm got into your holes. And of course the proton packs are used as much as possible and in the most action way possible, despite them being used like 3 times in the original movie.

It just completely misses the point of what made the original film great, but so does this new one just in a different way. The new one just tries to nostalgia mine as much as possible while having this incredibly reverential attitude towards the original films and characters despite Ghostbusters being such an irreverent comedy. It's so tactically engineered to target the guys in their late 30s and early 40s who grew up with Ghostbusters that it's actually kind of gross and manipulative. It's like if you took Some Like It Hot or Young Frankenstein and did some dramatic sequel that aimed to pull on your heart strings and treat the original with such reverence it might make you cry 40 years after the fact. It's just shallow and shows that Sony fundamentally does not understand Ghostbusters. They're just throwing it in whatever direction hoping it sticks and makes them loads of cash.

I've kept my PS4 Pro as a streaming box as the PS5 doesn't have all the same media apps yet. Otherwise, it would end up a box and in storage.

the weird thing about inscryption, to me, is that it didn't really feel like a deck building game, like its designed to be easily broken and the matches feel more like unique puzzles to crack open and less like a strategic deck builder like Slay the Spire.

I mean I loved the game but its not something I would be interested in going back into to play random matches or something.

@dantronlesotho: Oh yeah baby tell me more.

@sethmode said:

You're so manipulated that you couldn't even bring yourself to write aluminium and just wrote aluminum twice.

@kamasamak: Dammit that is autocorrect!

@topcyclist: @topcyclist: 2016 Ghostbusters was a nearly shot for shot remake of the first film, so I'm not sure how you mean it is maligned by fans of the original for "ruining their nostalgia." It's a bad film. They pointed a camera, said "say something funny!" then edited it all together. It's an unfinny mess.

I worked at Waste Management and we would get tips (I did recycle). My bosses would keep all the tips and every 2 weeks we would just get a pepperoni pizza lol.

I feel very stupid for not realising that PT stood for playable teaser

On one hand, wow.. that's incredibly kind of you to do this! I'll be honest, i don't think i personally would even think about going to such lengths to help others.

On the other hand, wow.. It's insane to me that the worksituation for delivery people is so low quality that you felt the need to support them with this basket o goods.

Yes the trash can scam is illegal, you can be charged for Theft by Deception in NJ if you are caught. Thing is if would require a significant amount of money lost in order to get a Data warrant.

I very much agree. I think the part that bugged me the most was when he brought up Glittermitten Grove. He said he thought the text adventure part was fine purely because he liked it, while bashing Inscryption, by saying it is bad because the entire card game system is for one joke, and he personally doesn't like card games. In GG, the text adventure part is literally just for a joke, in Inscryption, the card game is an important part of the whole story of the game. I get he may be overly reactive because he probably gets a lot of people telling him "n0 U just d0nt understandz!!!!!", but the dominating dismissal was very off-putting.

It actually fits nicely into the gatekeeping discussion (maybe from the following week). Not every game is for everyone, so we shouldn't dismiss others' opinions for liking something that we don't.