Giant Bombcast 584: Bend It Like Blevins

Yeah UHF!

Kim Fucking Kardashian?

My body is ready.

Anybody know when the Mario Maker talk is happening?

For me the worst part of E3 is the GBcast discussing the "future of E3" it happens every year is super bleak and for almost the last 6 years they have been saying the same thing and have always been wrong.

@zombie2011: Last six years? More like 11 years. I just listened to a Bombcast from 2008 where they had a lengthy discussion about how E3 is going to be "different" and whether E3 needs to exist.

They've been saying every year that it's going downhill, becoming less relevant and losing its focus. Which part of that isn't true?

The Mahatma!

[sees thumbnail]

“HEY BALDY!”

For the record, the "E3 format and/ or venue needs to change" isn't something the Giant Bomb folks pulled out of thin air, given that the former CEO of the Entertainment Software Association (the people who run E3) has said the same thing for years.

source: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-2017-attendance-revealed-future-in-la-uncertain/1100-6450995/

EDIT: Also, here's an expose on how the ESA may be slowly imploding in the wake of the aforementioned CEO's departure last year: https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/entertainment-software-association-mike-gallagher-e3-1203211280/

E3 needs to go away, it's useless. Seeing people talk about it's relevance these days is insane. Nintendo has perfected the way of communicating new things these days.

No more Mr. Passive Resistance.

Mario Mario is from Wrecking Crew.

If anybody wants an honest answer to the Gucci Mane EA tattoo question, he's from Atlanta and likely enjoyed using Michael Vick during the Madden 2004-2006 years, but more importantly, he is from East Atlanta, and that is why he got that tattoo.

As in, he really, really involved the logo in his marketing. The mixtape scene of 2002 - 2011 was a beautiful mess.

Social media is the worst and it's value is waay overstated.

Original Goldfish (no cheese) is possibly my all time favorite boxed/bagged carb. If I’m comparing cheese Goldfish with Cheez-Its, I’d have to go with Cheez-Its

@janman your soundboard game during the Kardashian rant had me rolling lol

Splinter Cell is a big deal?

The talk about the industry self-regulating its very profitable pseudo gambling practises seem a little bit naive. The primary goal of these companies is to make money. There is a reason why the casino and gambling business is regulated by the government.

I feel like E3 is important because it's big enough so that people who don't regularly follow gaming news hear about it. I have a few friends who play only a few games a year and their choice on what to buy is largely based on what impresses them during E3. I understand where Jeff's coming from but I think he is focusing too much on his point of view as a person who regularly follows gaming news. The main purpose of E3 is to create as much noise as possible so that people who otherwise don't follow gaming news/trailers would look up gaming news/trailers.

Listened to Mine Oddity, no regrets

@zoofame: Spoiler: It's just a turn of the wheel. "Learn from your mistakes, so that one day you may repeat them precisely."

E3 hasn't so much been going downhill so much as GB's coverage of it has. For at least two, maybe three years now there's been zero coverage from the floor. If you told me developers flew over to SF at night for the couch shows, I'd believe it.

Also God of War didn't have microtransactions. It had a cosmetic preorder bonus for your shield and Gamestop had an exp boost.

@liquiddragon: it has fallen off the radar because there haven’t been any new releases for years but yah it’s a pretty iconic franchise. A new Splinter Cell would be a big deal. I’m just worried they would try to turn it into a Wildlands/Odyssey type of deal. Typically I would be all for an open world Splinter Cell but not the way Odyssey and their latest games are - tons of inconsequential filler quests and a bunch of running around a pointless map.

Figure I'd post this for Brad's question: It is a walled garden for the Quest, at least officially. I mean, it's hardware, and people will find ways to do stuff with it eventually. But to start with, that thing is purely meant to be a convenient way to access a library of specific games that have been tested/designed to work on the Quest.

Brad is wrong :( I didn't get Kitana the first time I beat it MK11. I do agree with him on how the ending kind of making every emotional beat along the way irrelevant. I still really enjoyed it but I would have liked a more satisfying ending.

Time stamp for when they talk about twitch streamers?

Sorry Brad but you are 100% wrong about the MK ending thing. The triggers online must be incomplete but there are definitely different versions of it.

I don't want to put spoilers in the comments but suffice to say I beat that game and didn't know about some of the things you mention happening until days later when they came up online.

Unless they patched the ending, which is possible, you can get a final scene that only has the two characters in it.

That Kickstarter lightgun is the Sinden Lightgun.
Jeff is slightly incorrect you don't have to put tape around the edges of the screen, the gun is a PC device and you use software to place a white border around the edges, a camera inside the gun sees the border and uses math to translate its position into mouse movements, it effectively becomes your mouse and so is compatible with all PC lightgun game ports and emulators which have mouse solutions, it also means there is no calibration.
The creator has demonstrated the gun also working on a Raspberry Pi, and through it also has a solution which works on PS1 and 2 consoles, though the gun won't have official support for consoles at launch it is something he wants to do in the future.

The Mega Drive of Michael McGuillicutty

Ugh...I can't believe I'm saying this, but @benpack is the worst thing to happen to Giant Bomb since Ryan passed away. I really cannot deal with this imbecile anymore, he adds nothing of value, all his segments are unoriginal (Ben's lens is a rip-off of Lemon lens) and he's just annoying in every way - PLEASE for the love of god, just LEAVE!!

Also @jeff and @brad , GOD OF WAR DOES NOT HAVE MICRO-TRANSACTIONS!! Get your facts straight!!

If it wasn't for the great work GB East is doing, I would stop coming to the site - all the West Coast content is tainted.

the occulus stuff sounds cool. I'm still sitting on an original vive and waiting on knuckles controllers, which I have kind of sworn off VR until arrival. I like that the options for VR are widening and the gaps between accessibility and feature focused all-in-one packaging are narrowing; but it's going to take likely a few more years before I even consider the idea of upgrading from the first shipping vive model (by which point maybe this headset will have enough wear and tear to validate that). The wireless/stationless prospect is very, very appealing, but more than that, the thinner and lighter and higher fidelity/FOV not to mention IPD range scale of headsets need to advance further before I can get excited for 'newer' VR.

I am one of the fewer VR people who got in early and feel as though it was worth it just to watch the tech develop, as well as using it as a (surprisingly) helpful tool for artwork and production and I am the wiser for my time spent- but the software aspect also has to come a long way for me to look at VR as a serious gaming platform, minus a few exceptions, and the third party software(s) like VorpX that injects OVR into UE3/frostbite/etc engines and having much more fun with existing games that can project Direct 3D vr. Dragon's Dogma in VR was amazing, as was/is GTA V, chivalry, Prey; etc, there's a very long list of games you can inject VR into and it automatically begs the question 'this looks amazing, why is the steam VR section filled with 'experiences' and gallery shooters. I have enjoyed this disconnect from an experimental and developmental end on an academic level, but on a practical and typical use case context- I am surprised at how much one CAN do if they know how, but how much one can't if they don't know certain ways to manipulate the technology to do any of the above. In the end the regular buyer, in fact I suspect even Jeff, does not know much about the VR development outside the main-space offerings, and injecting VR into other software to make basically any game into a full 3D head tracked VR experience, minus the physical control, except in cases like Doom 3 BFG, which does support roomscale and controls with a mod. Minus the controls, some games like GTAV, Stalker with VorpX even support head tilt and other stuff. Customizing the fidelity of image through third party software is no small thing either, so it's cool this stuff exists already- but again, one has to go looking for it to be aware of the other half equivalent of what you can do with current headsets on PC, and games already in your library.

Unlike Skyrim and Fallout VR, Payday 2 and The Forest, and hopefully No Man's Sky, utilize the capabilities of scale-built-for-VR in a way that does actually serve as examples of how the ideal VR game can work; a full video game already fleshed out with controls that lend themselves to both VR and game's strengths- software like VorpX is probably the half step in the technically-deep realm, and Occulus quest the half step in the ease-of use arena. VR is very interesting and for sure it would be silly, despite valid growing pains, to write VR off in any way shape or form- and there is good reason for Valve and other parties to continue forward with hardware development, even if the customer pool is only very slowly getting wider. We're getting there, and a lot less linearly than most are aware of. It's cool, never thought I'd see VR at all in my lifetime, but here we are...

Can you guys please add timestamps for full-blown spoilers? It's hard to know when the discussion ends without them.

I am crying at the Kim K comments, go off Jeff ?

@vinny I can't access the premium video.

Free video seems to be down as well. :(

The game that came right after Mad Max was Just Cause 3 (both JC3 and Mad Max came out in 2015), not Just Cause 2 (2010). Just to clarify, Jeff and Brad misremembered. @benpack

Does no one understand the ending for MK11 is not a victory, Kronika wins by rewinding time, the victories of Kitana becoming Kahn and Kotal going through stuff are supposed to feel good and all of that is undone by Kronika you're supposed to feel uneasy about the ending the only good thing about is Liu Kang and Kitana getting together

Anyway pretty good so far

This is a deeply awful thing to say, and if you are even capable of shame, you should feel it.

Ben's great. I want more Ben, not less.

Falcom is doing deep and well-crafted lore with Trails.

Ben hate is lame and I don't get it. I've been here from the start of the site and, like a lot of people, Ben rubbed me the wrong way in the first couple weeks he joined. He was understandably nervous and trying to find his voice. Over time, he's become one of my favorites and Ben & Jeff duo is my fav. GB duo of all-time which is saying something. He has the best comedic chops (if you enjoy his deadpan humor) and seems to cover areas other staff don't. He's gone from "it'd be a bummer if he left" to "I can't imagine this site existing without Ben".

I'm sure Ben knows he has fans but felt a need to share that in the face of negative comments.

Why anyone would talk shit about Ben I'll never know. Jack offs, I guess.

It seems I've had a crazy different experience with Rage 2 on Nightmare. Jeff mentions none of the weapons, abilities or upgrades being necessary, but it would be absolutely impossible to do anything except the level 2-4 encampments without constant use of abilities on Nightmare. That mode forces you to constantly be moving and chaining abilities, and some of the later encounters would be practically impossible without the rocket launcher and railgun. It's not just a numbers tweak, the AI becomes more aggressive and are better shots.

I implore anyone who is going to play Rage 2 to give Nightmare a shot. It really changes the way you play the game in a dramatic way, for the better in my opinion.

Ben is okay, not the greatest, but there is always room to improve

It’s great that Ben has his supporters, but as a Giantbomb fan for years I’m one of the ones who does not care for his humor or his contributions to the Bombcast.

I feel as though he disrupts the flow of conversation by constantly interjecting with jokes, which in my opinion are rarely funny. He either interrupts by whispering something or shouts wildly and then cackles to himself for 5 minutes.

More importantly he’s often completely wrong about basic things when talking about games. Look no further than the Shakedown Hawaii and Mordhau quicklooks when he got THE NAME OF THE GAME and the developer wrong respectively. These inaccuracies make me question his credibility when it comes to other topics like his soapbox rants on worker’s rights in the gaming industry.

@lonelyspacepanda: deadpan humor? I’ve literally never heard anyone laugh louder or longer at their own jokes than Ben. He is the polar opposite of “Deadpan”.

Ben is.. not that great. Sorry. I wholeheartedly agree with him interrupting good talk or disrupting the flow. East saves the site a lot.