The Giant Beastcast: Episode 291

Yay, Sam! Very excited to listen to this.

Samantha has always been a great guest, excited to listen!

My favorite GnR song is November Rain

Haven't listened yet, but, Rocket Queen followed by Estranged, are the two best Guns N' Roses songs. Use Your Illusions II is their best album, and Izzy Stradlin is the guitarist that matters in GNR.

Love Samantha! Keen to listen to this.

Genuinely inspirational to hear Samantha talk about how she pushed ahead during the pandemic and land a new role at Respawn while continuing her studies. You're amazing, Samantha!

Hey, there's a friendly face we haven't heard from ina while! That's awesome!

I totally agree with Alex on Cyberpunk. I am playing on PS5 so the bugs haven't been that bad, mainly crashes. I uninstalled the game after the start of Act 2 simply because I didn't like it. The story isn't that great. The open world is very empty. The NPCs you see in the world do nothing. They don't even talk to you. Traffic pathing AI is bad. The police wanted system is bad. Maybe the story gets better or the game is that much better on PC but it really didn't hook me at all. That being said, I did like Jackie.

Shout out to Jeff's 2 Minutes to Late Night shirt. Discovered the show through those bedroom (song) covers they've been putting out. Gwarsnio Hall showing up to his father's wedding in corpse paint is fantastic. Can't wait for season 2

@davidmycota: TMTLN is the shit.

Best/most underrated GnR track is Coma. Especially any live version.

My favorite Gun n' Roses songs just happen to be the rock ballads that caused Slash to leave the band. Those songs being November Rain, Estranged, among others. Axl Rose was and probably still is an asshole, but I did agree that the future of the band was in doing those ballads and leaving behind the cheesy rock songs Slash wanted keep doing, even though some of them were okay.

I'll listen to the Beastcast now ;)

Edit: I don't know who this Samantha is, but I respect her HD598 headphones. Got the 599s myself, same color.

If Sam wasn't busy being awesome and working in development, GOD she would be such a welcome part of GB.

Re: Wario not being a real name that exists in this plane. There's a new sandwich shop that opened up around me named Wario's, and I'm forever cursed to wonder if someone out there is actually named Wario or they just named the shop after the character.

Holy shit Sam is looking great.

Sam is such a great guest to have on. Like totally feels like one of the crew (I mean cause she kinda is but still!) love to see the GB family on pods.

Hell yeah Samantha! It's been a hot minute since she's been on any GB content. Dearly missed.

Edit: Don't Damn Me is the best GnR song. I mean there's only like 5 songs to pick from that are actually good so it's pretty small but hey. it is what it is. (Also this idea was expressed way better in the Pixies song Debaser)

Yayyy Samantha!

Keep Inviting Samantha on the show!!!

@lokar36:Fucking A!!!!!!

THE PEOPLE'S CHAMPION

I think part of the problem (and reason that people expect more than GTA) is that GTA 5 came out 7 years ago.

Also, <3 Samantha.

Happy to see Samantha! I can relate to making noise to decompress. I end up making all sorts of weird industrial tracks when I just sit down at Ableton after a long day.

Samantha is the bees knees! Looking forward to watching this.

Those Grading companies are totally a racket. You mostly will loose money getting things graded, unless happen to have a perfect 10.

@topcyclist: Yes, I enjoyed being able to talk to my neighbors in Shenmue. I also enjoy games like Yakuza a whole lot more than GTA or RDR because of their smaller scope. I still say that Bully is Rockstar's best game. All the students are unique characters with their own lines and look. You don't kill anyone and you live together with all these characters. Now that I think about it that makes it sound like RDR2, but like I said, I prefer the smaller scope.

Rocket League is another good game to talk to your friends while playing

THE PEOPLE'S CHAMPION HERSELF

@charltonheston: I think Cyberpunk has a lot of issues but RDR2 came out just last year and the open world situation there is still very much this. I’ve played a lot of these open world games over the years and the worlds get prettier but they haven’t gotten meaningfully deeper so I don’t think Cyberpunk sticks out in this sense. It’s the bad car pathing, stiff animations and a sleuth of cosmetic nitpicks that come together to bring the experience down as a whole, rather than some inherent lack of open world depth.

Samantha's fantastic. I really hope we'll get more guests on the podcasts in 2021!

Sam, yes!

@kr0gan_73: I do feel you. The problem for me might be RDR2. That game did NPC's and the world so well and realistically, that all open world games I've played since feel like nothing really. I'm sure I'll finish Cyberpunk. It's alright but nothing will top RDR2 in a while is what I feel like.

Yay, Samantha is back :) Miss seeing her on here.

With all the Cyberpunk talk, I feel like "Hottest Mess" will be the shortest conversation in Giant Bomb end-of-the-year wrap up history.

@gcg: I was just going to say that, except I think they decided to do away with tha category in the last few years. You know it's bad when the one award Cyberpunk definitely deserves isn't going to exist.

Sam's positivity is infectious

Vinny talking about people's reactions to CyberPunk: add Sony's take..."yeah, we're not going to keep selling this right now, and we will issue refunds for whoever wants it."

samantha!!! so cool that she's making tunes in Max and working on apex!

Love Samantha, so nice to see her on the site again 😊.

Great seeing Samantha again, always a breath of fresh air.

Nice Two Minutes shirt, @jeffbakalar! I can't believe that show isn't a bigger deal.

I annually remind Samantha that she is contractually obligated to make Sentris 3 "s3ntris" based on a very old animated gif I made which, coincidentally enough, is cyberpunk themed.

She has 15 more years to go!

(this is an animated gif but I don't think GB supports uploading gifs)

Funny enough looking at it now.. this looks very similar to Cyberpunk 2077.

Love to see Samantha joined for this episode! ^.^

I missed Samantha, this is great. \o/

1) Samantha is a great guest. Feels like forever since she has been on some GB content. Congrats on the cool new job!

2) That Shady Part of Me game sounds like a whole-cloth copy of Lost in Shadow for the Wii, even down to Vinny saying he liked the idea of the game, but the execution didn't really grab him (which is exactly how I felt about Lost in Shadow).

Jeff, you're killing me with the Mario schtick. You have never heard the non-you way to say Mario? He literally says his name in almost all of his games, and he definitely does not say MAREio. "It's a me, MARio." I've been a lurker too long on this issue, still love you though.