Giant Bombcast 597: Watering a Plastic Succulent

ok

Woof this is certainly a cast of folk I’ve never heard of but hey everyone is new once can’t wait to listen.

Digging the guests! They had a lovely enthusiasm. But I could've done with about half as much "What I dislike about Overwatch."

Why are George RR Martin and Jeff Bakalar in the thumbnail?

Even though I'm only plat in Overwatch, even I can tell these are kind of bad takes on the Overwatch meta. Reaper is not unkillable. Zarya is still top tier. Sigma's shield isn't even that strong.

I haven’t even listened to this one but I already know it’s going to be a good episode, Lucy and Tammor are awesome and content with the two of them together is usually fun. Happy to see them as guests on Giant Bomb!

Waiting on the video one to upload

@subscryber: Yeah. It's honestly pretty frustrating to listen to when the GB podcasts cover games that they clearly don't play enough to have informed opinions on.

EDIT: Ok so it wasn't one of the GB crew who were giving the "bad takes" so my earlier comment doesn't really relate to the discussion.

Boy, these Witcher takes are sure getting old from people who played on low difficulty settings, didn’t engage with the majority of the game’s unique mechanics, and then say that playing the game was the worst part of playing the game. Crafting potions and bombs and oils and using them properly is such a huge part of the essence of the game, to not engage with it is to have completely willingly chosen to not engage with a core mechanic.

And then it’s compared to Bloodborne, a game with ONE mechanic (combat), and no difficulty settings. You can’t play Bloodborne without meeting it on its level and engaging with its core mechanic in the way the developer intended, because there’s no way to dumb it down for yourself.

It’s such a dumb argument that I can’t believe are still making after all these years. Between that and the 35 minutes of coming to America stories and Overwatch griping, this one’s off to a rough start.

"Don't be upset, Jan, grow up"

Cracked me so much, could not stop laughing for a minute, love the new guys humor but I could have done with all the Overwatch talk.

I feel bad I kind of tuned out for a lot of this podcast.

Seriously, how great are Tamoor and Lucy!

@perkotreason: Have to agree, makes me wonder how much you can dial in Cyberpunk. Witcher 3 can be two different experiences depending on what you want to put into it.

Although this one has kind of lost me the first hour in so I could of drifted in and out of what they were saying during that conversation. Just heard Brad say the worst part of the game was playing it.

Wait, when did Lucy move over here? And pretty awesome to see Tamoor coming over the pond also. Hope to see him on more GB videos then! :D

I may have to wait until the end of my shift to listen. 30 Minutes of bad Overwatch meta takes sounds like a bad way to start a morning.

Sniping from across the map with Reaper? Wtf? Thought they were talking about Overwatch?

I liked both guests. And I love 'grow up'. I hope Lucy ends up on more GB stuff.

Can Lucy and Tamoor be regulars? Because I'd be into that.

Jan let the people know which decks you running.

Premium video has ads. :(

UK Represent!

@fishriot: You must love Quick Looks then...

@awkwardl0ser: you've never heard of pretty well-known GameSpot staff?

Agreed on the overwatch stuff. Didn't mind it but I pretty much didn't understand a word of it. Could have done with some layman language in there for people like me.

The moving to America stuff is actually always interesting and as a non-US person that was cool.

So I don't know where to talk about need for speed heat but holy C rap that is like game of the show at gamescom so far and NO micro transactions or loot iron maidens

The destruction and particles and sound effects and graphics and speed whar the he'll need for speed good since most wanted!

I was excited to hear the sorts of British slang they'd been introducing but then it was like... memes and in-jokes. That's not British slang.

I've never skipped so much of the podcast before...

Putting the GB in GB. Fun episode. Thanks Tamoor and Lucy for dropping by.

And here I thought there weren't more ways to pronounce Naruto's name wrong.

Desperately waiting for more "Unplugged" content.

Everyone's hair was on point!

Great podcast as always! I've found the guests are a little more willing to dive deep on games than the regular segments so that's been refreshing to hear, especially for games I'm not super familiar with. Thanks for stopping by, Lucy and Tamoor!

This was pretty...meandering? More Jan would have saved it.

I'm in the "bad takes" camp for sure. It's obviously fine to not like something, but presenting half-baked objective-sounding "justifications" for why it is bad is just wasting time (and will probably mostly serve to infuriate the "you're playing it wrong" crowd).

I am curious to know what people think about Boruto. Should I watch it, or am I better off just having watched Naruto and leaving it at that?

Tamoor just mentioned MGSV, Mark of the Ninja and Dishonored in the same sentence. I think I love you Tamoor.

EDIT: Def Jam. Love confirmed.

@tricerarock: The thing about quicklooks is that I typically don't know enough about the game being quicklooked to know if the information i'm getting is good. A game like Ovewatch however is something that I have hundreds of hours played in, and a pretty solid knowledge of the pro-scene, so "bad info" sticks out like a sore thumb to me.

It sometimes makes me wonder though, if uninformed opinions are being pushed as fact in one game, is that the case with every game they discuss?

@fishriot: I’ve had the same experience in regards to things said about PUBG in the past. I think there’s a lot of hearsay and personal anecdotes that get passed off as “facts”.

@fishriot: This is me but literally every time they talk about fighting games. I've been playing fighting games competitively for 10 years and have played most of them. Every time they talk about them it's wrong information being spewed left and right. You pretty much learn to ignore it.

I completely zoned out while listening to this one and it never pulled me back in. I just about made it through the living in America segment, but the Overwatch talk totally lost me. Constructive criticism for what it's worth: be clear, be (fairly) succinct and don't get lost in the weeds! It happens to everyone, but it's still hard to listen to as someone who hasn't touched Overwatch in over 2 years (?) I'll give it another go post-Overwatch talk based on comments. To be fair, Jeff, Ben and Jason can sometimes do this with fighting games - but 'Ranking of Fighters' has definitely helped me keep up with the terminology as someone with little-to-no interest in fighting games.

Also, as someone living in the UK (Scotland and northern England), I have never heard of rustled in a slang context - well, other than someone rustling something up in the kitchen, rustling paper, etc. Actually, come to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard anyone ever say 'rustled' other than cooking show hosts from southern England.

Broader 'UK slang' is stuff like 'quid', 'fiver' and other non-monetary words I'm sure ('naff' meaning a bit crap). A lot of slang is more from regional dialects and accents. For example, me and my partner are both from the same county in Scotland. While we know a lot of the same slang, there are words that she doesn't know that I use and words that she uses that I don't know. Our dialect and accents are slightly different - due to the two towns we lived in - yet we lived less than a 30 minutes' drive from each other as kids. It does seem that regional slang and dialect is vanishing here in this globalised, connected world though... it's quite dreich.

EDIT: Rest of podcast was totally fine once I got over the Overwatch hill.

Man what a bummer to hear them skip over the Humankind news so quickly, that game has all the ingredients to be incredible and give other 4X games a run for their money.

@subscryber: Agreed. And Zarya getting a buff from the beam changes too really helps

The Overwatch hatefest at the beginning of the show would have been unbearable if the criticisms weren't downright hilarious and exaggerated. Reaper shooting from the across the map and Mario Party shooter? Yikes.

@steveurkel: I also got super excited for that trailer!

That Death Stranding discussion was just...surreal.

Not to be rude to guests, but competitive smash is always 1v1. It's been that way for idk...a decade. Also, I'm kinda tired of the smash isn't a fighting game thing. It has footsies, zoning, guard, guard that can be broken (stun), frame data that matters, etc. It's a fighting game.