Immunity

I caught like 10 minutes of Pacific Rim and the dialogue and acting was so terrible that I knew immediately that the action scenes couldn't redeem it for me. And tacking on an actor who's hot right now doesn't excite me either. Feels like what they're trying to do with all the Game of Thrones actors.

I had a similar problem with the new Godzilla, there's this idea that you shouldn't see the monsters very much because it builds tension. I guess that's what they were going for, but that suspense only works if the things that aren't your monsters are good. There's about 15 seconds of that movie (Godzilla breathing down that monster's throat) that are any good and the other 2 hours are fucking boring.

Masters of Doom does indeed mention that Dolchteufel (German for Devil Dagger) was considered as a title for Wolfenstein 3-D. The Devil Daggers dev could have chosen this name all on his own and this is a total coincidence, but it definitely seems plausible that they read the book and chose the name because of it. Here's an excerpt from Masters of Doom which I highly recommend everyone read:

The title came after much brainstorming. At first they assumed they had to use something other than the Wolfenstein name, which had been created by Silas Warner at Muse Software. Tom banged out a list of options from the strained–The Fourth Reich or Deep in Germany–to the absurd–Castle Hasselhoff or Luger Me Now. He even played around with some Germantitles–Dolchteufel (Devil Dagger), Geruchschlecht (Bad Smell). To their surprise and relief, they discovered that Muse had gone bankrupt in the mid-1980s, and let the trademark on the Wolfenstein name lapse. It would be Wolfenstein 3-D.

I can't remember any game dropping that quickly. I suppose this may help get some more people in, but even with selling at the same price as Overwatch, I just can't see a good reason to get Battleborn instead.

From my perspective, the only thing that's going to save this game is F2P. People really love hating on Battleborn while talking about how much better Overwatch is. This price drop should help a bit, but I doubt it will be enough to turn around the negative word of mouth. This just seems like the first slide down a slippery slope for this game.

@robowitch: Switching regions is possible so you should be fine, as long as you're on PC. I'm not sure how the console versions do things. Here's the official article on it.

It's unfortunate, but by no means unmanageable.

Most people hate new things. They want stuff they've seen before and are comfortable with so they can chew popcorn and look at the pretty colors. When you tell them there's a new movie about those turtles they liked when they were kids, they start lining up and they bring their offspring with them so they can be subjected to the same shit they had when they were children.

The problem is that the film industry is scared of taking risks. New ideas are dangerous from a money making standpoint. You have to sell this brand new thing that nobody knows about to a bunch of people who have no interest in new things. That's hard to pull off. It's much easier to sell people something they're already aware of. They will show up simply to see the thing that they recognize and may have nostalgia for. In general I think it has more to do with recognizable names making for easier marketing than nostalgia, but that's just my take. A lot of people that aren't nostalgic for Star Trek went and saw those Star Trek movies because it's a name they recognize. That gets attention.

Were in a position where the film industry is just scouring for whatever existing IP they can scoop up in the hopes of making some easy money. It's worked many times before, so might as well keep doing it. It's way less risky in their eyes since they have the data and box office numbers to back up their decision. They're in the business of making money, not making art. There's a lot of new stuff out there too, just have to look a bit harder for it.

Yeah, I'd be on board for this. The voicemail call-ins made for some of the HotSpot's funniest moments. Of course that would require them to listen to all of them and edit them down for the bombcast, which might be more work than it's worth.

Live call-ins can be alright, but they can also be fucking terrible. Bit of a wash if you ask me and I could do with out them. Emails already do a decent job of allowing listener participation. You lose the back and forth between caller and crew, but again, that can go wrong just as much as it can go right.

The music is definitely not something I'm into, but it's cool that this exists for people who like it. You've done a good job breaking it down for someone like me who has very superficial knowledge about this stuff.

Knowing that there's some flesh and blood musicians on the stage helps this seem way less crazy. If people were just cheering on a lifeless hologram as someone behind the scenes hits play on an audio player I'd lose another piece of what's left of my hope for humanity.

Also, whenever I see these sorts of holograms I kind of don't believe they're real. Like, this is some kind of crazy future tech that we shouldn't have access to yet.

I haven't played Doom, but I look forward to picking it up on sale. Wolfenstein surprised the hell out of me with how good the story was. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did and the story went a long way for me. Doom seems to have way less of a story so I'm not sure I will enjoy it as much, but the gameplay looks fun as hell.

If you're big into stories in games I think Wolfenstein will be more enjoyable overall. If you're looking more for satisfying gameplay, then Doom might be up your alley.

They aren't "pro" gamers, so no. I would wager that the average gamer is just as bad if not worse than your average game journo. I could see how someone being bad at a game could negatively impact their enjoyment of it and result in a lower score or more negative review. In that case I would say it's a problem, but I figure that's something the reviewer would be aware of.

Complaining when someone isn't playing a game like a fucking e-sports rockstar is a level of stupid that I cannot even begin to comprehend. But hey, it's the internet, the bar for intelligence and understanding is pretty low.

I will say that the video in question is terrible and doesn't do a good job of showing off the gameplay, which is the whole point of a gameplay video. They should have scrapped it and had someone who can better show off the game record a new one.

The content has absolutely changed over the years. The team was split up and new people were hired. There's no way things could stay the same with so much about the website changing, for better or worse. I find myself agreeing with some of your arguments for sure, but they haven't become such a huge problem that I would consider unsubscribing.

I love the Giant Bomb guys and I'm happy to support them, but the change in content doesn't line up with a lot of stuff that I'm interested in, specifically the GB West stuff. I'm not a huge fan of fighting games or wrestling, and there's quite a bit of that stuff on the West end of things. The amount of wrestling talk especially is getting to be a bit grating for someone like me who couldn't care less, but I'm not expecting those guys to change themselves just for me.

The lack of preparedness isn't so much a problem for me, but I have noticed some problems with pacing especially in UPF. Not every game or segment is going to revolve around something I'm interested in and it doesn't need to. However, I do feel like some segments tend to drag on a bit too long. Rather than move on when a game starts to get a bit boring, they just kind of let it continue while they talk about whatever unrelated topic they can think of. Most of the time they just seem completely uninterested in the game being played and it causes the show to suffer.

The most recent Mario Party stream is probably the biggest example of their lack of interest and enjoyment of a game actually hurting the show they're trying to put on. Watching them suffer through the first few were good fun, but it's clear that the Mario Party well is all dried up. I wouldn't mind them abandoning that feature all together, but I imagine that's unlikely.

Giant Bomb hasn't gotten worse by any means, but it has changed. And not all those changes are going to be something I enjoy. I'm alright with that for now. There's a lot I still love about Giant Bomb and the content they put out. I'll continue to support them, but I think these kinds of discussions are good to have and may even be good feedback for the staff if they decide to read any of it. People trying to shit on the OP because he gave his very calm, mannered feedback are highly misguided, but I don't want to say much more about that.

Thanks for reading, if you got this far.