Giant Bombcast 578: Chrome-Ass GameCube

As the lord intended!

hey hey!

Thank you! :-)

I got Breach mixed up with Brink and was very confused for a minute there.

TORONTO

Jeff "I think it's $20", Brad "no it's $30", Ben "A value at any price point"

Yeah it's $30, no soundtrack unless Spotify Premium member, runs at 30fps on the base machines... I'm not seeing the value

Never attempt to argue against someone's nostalgia. :-P

Kiss is garbage fight me.

Didn't expect to see a giant Paul Stanley face when visiting Giant Bomb...

Because there is no issue with Epic Games or their store or the customer support (if you can call it that).

I don't trust or want to use their store - having a game permanently stuck there is not good for me. Timed stuff is less of an issue, because I don't mind waiting 6 months (a year is a little irritating).

PS - it is not racist to have issues with a company which has people from the Chinese Communist party on it's board investing in the store that's long term desire is clearly to replace Steam (no one does what they doing to have half of the money - the companies are never happy with anything less that "all" of it).

PPS - I can care about a lot things, but I dont know what those other issues I have, say with my own country, have to do with this. Plenty of face-palming to go around, and what is the average person suppose to do about these other things? If you want, you can find lots of chat about politics all across the web.

Hey here are some big end game spoilers for Division 2 relating to how "Non-political" it is

So the big bad, Black Tusk (a Private Military Company), is eventually found out to have been working with the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES to steal the anti-viral that you have been trying to get every since rescuing him, and the President intends to only give the anti-viral to the elite that are left in the United States. Not saying that it is directly related to real life politics, but I find it kinda funny that the President is a corrupt motherfucker no matter what. (Also the last president was assassinated by Secret Service, so that too)

Oh and @jeff an arcade racer to check out that came out recently is Xenon Racer. Heard good things about the beta, didn't get a chance to play it.

The Epic Game Store discussion rubs me the wrong way more and more.

The crew completely in the mentality that internet is bad and always "raging" when this "rage" was something invented by journalists for their hot headlines. And they [crew] blame people for "fearmongering propaganda" about China when they themselves expressing uneducated opinions a lot of times about a lot of things. Reducing people's arguments to simple "rage" is not helpful for customers, it's helpful for corporations.

I don't want to get into all possible reasons why one could be opposed to installing Epic Games store and PC games exclusivity topic, because this is an inflammatory topic to start. But I am baffled by the insults thrown on the whole swath of people, just because some people are being shitty on the internet.

Of course they are free to do and say whatever they want, this goes without saying.

I just wish they stop dunking on people they don't know with arguments they didn't listen and skip the topic entirely.

Ben, I'm pretty sure someone used the Break Music in their Giant Bomb song. If I was industrious enough to put it on a Cloud downloadable thing, I would, but I'm not. I do know that the dude who did it, his name escapes me at the moment, had a band called Fizzgig that is no longer a thing, unfortunately. After hearing the song, I ordered all his albums, and still have them on rotation to this day. Long story short, bring back Fizzgig. And also, I think he used the Break Music...

@keyboard_cat: There is definitely an issue of the media (as an entity) taking a handful of social media posts and blowing them out of proportion. I don't think that's the case here, though. The pushback against Borderlands 3 being a timed exclusive on the EGS isn't just four tweets on some small accounts. Steam isn't counting 4,000 recent reviews on Borderlands 2. One YouTuber with a very large following posted a video about this and called it "terrifying." The pushback is loud and vocal, although probably not financially significant.

On the Epic Game Store discussion:

I wonder if any disconnect between the staff and the audience on this issue is due, at least in part, to this being the staff's job and a focus on an optimistic long-term outlook.

The crew needs to play video games as a career. So, whether they like it or not, most of them will install the Epic Games Store for video game coverage. Also this is their job, and you put up with some degree of bullshit for your job. Certainly a significant degree more bullshit then if it was only for leisure.

Lastly, Epic Games Store being a new, disrupting force in the fabric of video games is not without precedent. Two examples on my mind are the original Xbox and Steam. Exclusivity deals were made and a new platform was forced. Over time, the buy-ins slowed, the platforms matured, and a new normal was established. And everything ends up being "fine." (Fair arguments can be made that the new normal was worse.) Maybe the staff is looking at how the Epic Games Store is a hassle now, and comfortably assuming it will all stabilize in to a familiar place in 2-3 years.

Hey, maybe EGS will break bad in some absurd way (just imitating the rest of reality). Then we can all say, "We told you so!" to those who weren't alarmist on EGS.

"Those accounts are free."

Yeah, so's a Facebook account. Money's only part of the equation.

So depressing to see even Giant Bomb staff completely miss the point why people don't like the Epic store. And only seeing them respond to people being shitty on the internet and putting them in the same pile as people who have actual, valid arguments.

GiantBomb misrepresenting the issues people have with the EGS again? They even use the famous “It’s just another launcher“ bullshit. Fuck right off with this disingenuous shit.

Brad, as of the latest price hike, Netlfix powered past $15 for the highest tier. I'm paying $16 a month now for four simultaneous streams at 4K.

Dang. Honestly I just don't like using the EGS and I want my digital licenses spread across as few launchers as possible. I'm already running into that problem with music I've purchased. Also I feel like I'm capable of waiting 6 months for the Steam release of Borderlands 3 and not going on a tirade online.

@raszagal: it actually is, just another launcher. I say this as someone that does not work in games media and has all the launchers.

@raszagal: So you're saying you agree with acting pitifully immature about it and review bombing years old established games? I think the real response is somewhere inbetween.

I LOVE the full length break song. It's so fucking jaunty! I heard you used it this time, and I hope you keep doing it. It cheers me up.

Falcon Age looks so damn lovely.

Now I can't stop thinking about an assassin doing the dive off a small, single story hut :) London seems a pretty good choice for Watchdogs 3 tbh, surveillance everywhere and nanny state control is extremely believable.

I'm really curious as to what the All-Digital Xbox will be. Is it meant to focus on streaming or digital downloads? As such, will they finally slap a 4TB drive in the thing or, if the aim is streaming, will they go with a smaller 500GB SSD to (hopefully) eliminate UI sluggishness? And, while it won't have a disc drive integrated, would anything stop them from supporting an external drive, like for those people who already have a library of physical games but need a new Xbox (assuming the All-Digital SKU is meant to replace the standard XB1 S SKU)?

Where the Epic store is concerned, while I have an issue with some of their policies and the lack of features, those are potentially things that can and may be addressed in the future. If I'm honest, my main objection is that I just don't want to deal with multiple launchers, multiple accounts, and spreading my library (not to mention my billing information) across them. So I don't mind waiting six months to a year. Ideally, Valve will step up their game and start pushing back. But even if they don't...my relationship with Steam is that of a dead marriage, where I'm no longer in love with them, but I'm content enough that I can accept the unpleasant reality that I'm too old and tired to deal with the bullshit of someone new.

And I am the only one who kept expecting to hear Paul Stanley scream, "Hey, listen...I do COCAINE!" Because all I could think about while listening to that was Dr. Rockso. "Anybody here like to get HIGH?! You know I like to get high, because I do COCAINE!"

@raszagal:So what are the totally reasonable arguments against the EGS?

Imagine a store opened where right underneath the product you could see what other buyers thought of it. Then another store opened claiming to be competition and decided to remove that feature because the manufacturers of their products don't like it. Would you trust the store to be credible competition? would you trust the people who put their product in that store instead of the original store to provide a quality product? I wouldn't.

as a console user it gives me great pleasure to see all these salty-ass PC gamers furious about being minorly inconvenienced

After seeing the thumbnail, I was very curious as to how any Giant Bomb conversation would turn to Paul Stanley and had to wait to the end to find out. Growing up listening to KISS, I have an understandable nostalgia for them even as I have aged out of listening to them much these days.

I have to say, after listening to Paul Stanley read his own autobiography "Face The Music" (which I highly recommend), I have a new respect for him as a person and even as a musician. Growing up and living with a serious disability, wanting to maintain a rock and roll band even as the other members' interest waned and pretty much putting up with Gene Simmons for over 40 years. Paul's alright. :)

Now it's time for a- Now it's time for a- Now it's time for a break.

It's the part when we go to breaaak, plus some ad reads we need to maaaaake.

Do not know for how loooong, so I'll just keep singing this sooong.

Use the restroom or grab a driiink, or just sit there and have a thiiink.

We'll be back from break soooon, just be sure that you're in the roooom.

That's the end of the- That's the end of the- That's the end of the break.

Best I could come up with in a few minutes....

Last week we had Jeff exclaiming that the only reason someone would disagree with his position on Souls games was because they were, and I quote, "shitty people." That struck me as odd because it's opinions all around and who cares. This week we're doing that about the Epic Games Store opinions, which is doubly odd, because this crew of characters here are ostensibly games journalists who might have more insight than referencing an article someone glanced over. I don't have a horse in either race but the levels of "curmudgeon" are higher than usual.

Jeff insinuating people don't want to support China because they are racist is laughable. I don't get what happened to him.

@spindini: Living in California is helluva drug.

I'm in California and I think Jeff came off as kind of an asshole this episode.

I'm willing to bet the e-mails they got re: Notch were quite venomous :(

The Epic store client spams me with popup ads when im playing other games, so it doesn't take racism to hate it. I don't install store clients for the purpose of having popups... Instead I don't install store clients over it.

Furthermore, Bioware is practically dead to me at this point. Press X to simulate unhealthy "romance" with NPC. One step away from "Mash X during sex scene for better ending". Let's romance some more war criminals, space racists, or young women exhibiting "little sister" behavior. Harder! Faster! Don't forget the tissues!

The Epic stuff doesn't really bother me. Well, it doesn't bother me any more than Steam does. Any service that requires you to run a proprietary client I just avoid. It does limit the games I play, but I don't have to worry about software running in the background doing whatever.

MiSTer is an interesting project. I'd love to see where it goes. There's some neat projects with some interesting work going into them. That said, though, I'm perfectly fine just running regular emulators on my HTPC for reliving some of those console memories.

lmao

@ripelivejam: a quick glance into that user's post and comment history tells you everything you need to know, and why they probably are okay with people acting pitifully immature about games.