Giant Bombcast 638: I Found Drugs in a Locker and I Did Them

Future Cop is really hard to get running well on PC, your best bet is to upscale the PS1 version, widescreen hacks work near flawlessly.

I would really love a Bloodborne with 60fps, although I would have to wait for the PS5 remaster for that.

Best use of Nuttela: as a late night snack, dipping a Nutter Butter cookie into it. You can only eat about 3 of them but boy is it good.

I played Dragon Age 2 two years ago and it was extremely enjoyable. I did not pause and played the fights as a kind of rts, this gave the fighting an added dimension. It stood up very well and I was not upset by either the size of the world or the repeatable arenas. DA2 is a good game, that didn't deserve most of the hate it got at the time of its release. I would recommend people play this game without any hesitation, disregarding the baggage of negative opinion that continues to weigh it down.

@curufinwe: To be fair P4 didn't age well either. Or P3. Or P5 for that matter...

Am I the only one who loves EA Access? Like they constantly sh!t on it when it first came out and now ignore it, and I don't get why. Actually I kind of do, they get games for free. Me, who has a limited games budget, loves the fact that I get lots of games to try that I wouldn't have spent the money on. Dead Cells and Slay the Spire and C&C Remastered and Superhot and Wreckfest and, etc. etc. I'm really happy it's coming to Steam so I can use my Steamlink with all the Origin games.

Fun Fact: My wife does about five to ten mini sneezes followed by a big one every time. The record is 14 currently.

@dolphin_tequila:

Disagree. after the first map of Inquisition I felt nothing but cheated. The story feels incomplete, the maps themselves feel incomplete, the npcs feel incomplete. That being said Origins and 2 are both very fun.

@roy42: Maybe I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt but I'm guessing it was a joke about Jeff's weird association with the names of Shulk and She-Hulk being similar looking.

I did like Jason's joke better though. When Jeff said the name Shulk reminds him of the name She-Hulk and Jason said "because he's green" lol. But yeah, Jeff specifically talking about that just adds to my thought that he was more talking about himself having a weird association with a different name, and it kinda came off as a negative joke which happens sometimes.

I remember on one of the Aftermath shows a similar thing happened. I don't remember the exact words so I'm gonna pretend it was something like "Juul Festival". They were taking about a thing and Jeff just blurted out both words in combination as a silly joke but, similar to what I made up, it came out as "Joostival" and they were both like "ehhhhh..." and then Jeff was like "After that came out I kinda regretted it". I think people just slip up when making jokes at times and don't always think of the implications. They're only human of course. Considering their history of being really progressive, especially if you follow their Twitter accounts, I don't think they wouldn't try something like that intentionally.

Edit: Lol this is so bizarre and I doubt anyone cares but I just stumbled on the part I mentioned and it was this Demo Derby at around 46:36. Can't believe I happened to watch the exact video by accident just now.

@theonewhoplays: The things Vinny says are 10 times worse than anything in the game, but it’s a lot easier to bash Atlus than your GB buddies I guess. The amount of times he “jokes” about Dojima sexually abusing Nanako is shocking.

Did someone say baby sharK?

Yea its too bad we have to open our economy back up. If only everyone had a job that entails playing video games in their bedroom.

@plinko:

Certainly, I know he wouldn't mean it in bad taste, especially since he explained it straight away. My issue is more with how he's repeatedly seen Shulk throughout the years, particularly when he would keep on joining the Smash quick looks (despite having no interest in them over and over) and seeing Shulk and making the same joke about "is he a Fire Emblem?" My hazy memory tells me he may even have made a similar "didn't realise Shulk was a guy" joke on one of those quick looks, I'll check later today to be sure.

It's just that for some reason, Xenoblade is and has always been a weird point of utter disinterest for the entire staff, even though on an academic level about the game's production and journey from Japan to Europe and America (Journey to the West, if you will) it's quite fascinating, whatever else you think of the game itself. I've always been surprised that none of them ever found it an interesting story to look into, about a game that was one of the last big titles for the Wii and got localised on the back of a fan campaign. Instead we get that reduced to "it's got those wacky British voices in it because America didn't localise it and I don't like how much they talk".

@curufinwe: I wasn't trying to down play anything he said, but now that I read it again it does come across as whataboutism. Sorry about that. I am very happy to bash Atlus every chance I get though. 3 Persona games (and Catherine) in a row with pretty severe homophobic and/or transphobic content? Someone at Atlus has issues.

@curufinwe: Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't that video series 10 years ago? People change after a decade. They were all a lot more abrasive back then and I'm glad to see that they changed who they are for the better. When I go back and watch old Giant Bomb stuff, they make some jokes I cannot see them saying at all nowadays. It's still painful and it doesn't excuse what they said, but I mean, judging their current selves based on themselves from 10 years ago seems a bit excessive.

@roy42 I feel you on that but they have their opinions on things and that's fine. They constantly shit on Mario Party and Sunshine and I love both of those games a ton. They talk about Sunshine like it's the worst Mario game ever made and are usually pretty dismissive of it as well. They did that when the rumors of Sunshine getting remade or ported onto the Switch was going on earlier this year. I really disagree with them about Sunshine, but I think it's fine to disagree. All of the creators I follow tend to have some odd dislike for a game I thought was amazing but I still watch them and don't mind it because it's cool.

It seems only the Club Access for Trackmania @ $30usd/yr will allow you to hop in public and private servers (clubs). Looks like standard access ($10/yr) lets you see user content, but through the lens of a 'Track-of-the-Day' Campaign. So if you wanted to join the GB server, or any other server you currently enjoy, you wouldn't be able to with standard access. $30 ($40cad for me) isn't too bad, but we'll see how launch goes. I'm not going to shit all over them for trying this, I'm somewhat hopeful, as I have always had a blast with the series.

Kingdoms of Amalur?! Damn man, love that game.

The US did not try to buy Greenland. Trump was just babbling his usual nonsense.

@frytup: I mean, he is the president, his daily whims are official US business.

Monster Train on the go? Its on Geforce Now so you can just stream it to your Android phone (if you have one). :)

But not official policy.

the tribes song is a real fucking trip

i was just thinking about about how much I miss tribes.

Spinfusors man.

FYI Ben and Jan, the combat dialogue is them yelling their attacks so you know what attacks they are doing, and the dialogue changes based on who is in the party at the time and the level of their relationship. It becomes one of the most endearing things about the game once you have more party members and you get to see the awesome affinity system at play. Also, its the best story in a video game, period IMO, so would heartily recommend sticking with it till at least Gaur Plain, thats when most people seem to agree it really clicks.

@ape_dosmil: that woman is literally devaluing the existence of all trans people, and then doubling down on that

When an opinion is extremely and clearly hateful and therefore harmful, it deserves to get dunked.

When the person doubles down, they deserve it as well.

I feel like they had spot on remarks about Xenoblade Chronicles in my opinion. I love JRPGs, but I'm not a fan of the story, combat, or character design for those games.

GET

found the terf

@dolphin_tequila: Bit of a reverse rant, but I also want to throw some DA love.

As someone who also loves dragon age I'd like to mention that the first two have aged poorly. The first is still cool in that 3D jump while still retaining that infinity engine tactical system, but the story is the most generic save the world thing, and outside of the effect of your choices many of the stories(For example the save demon connor redcliff arc thing or the dwarven cave dlc) aren't that engaging, especially contrasting to modern questlines in say the Witcher 3 or Inquisition. The second one has some super cool stuff like the dialogue system building in a personality or Merrill(who is my favorite character of the whole series), but there's only one dungeon for each area and they reuse those same maps(with sections blocked off) for almost every mission in the game. Once you've seen generic town dungeon 15 times, you don't want to see it ever again. And while I understand the technical difficulty, having every exit out of an area lead to the world map instead of a connecting areas directly or using an open world for their single city is weird and pulls you out a bit when you go up the stairs to get lower in the city because the exit is closer. Not to mention having to check every area during both daytime and night to make sure you didn't miss everything. There's just a lot of tedium. And come on, the ending of Dragon Age 2 is just bad writing. Even the characters who don't have plot based insanity make ridiculous decisions and stuff happens there that doesn't really fit with the other lore on magic from DA1, Inquistion or the rest of 2.

However I do think the comparison of the first DA to KOTOR is apt, both are small area based pause-able RPGs that pack those areas with content and have similar acting quality. Neither is up to the standard of today, but both were top notch RPGs of their day.

Inquisition has it's own problems, mostly technical. The fact that there's a skill that just crashes the game (Lunge and Slash if you plan to play) that was never patched is ridiculous. The game does try to appear way deeper than it is, but damn if it's not one of the best RPGs about being a ruler that exists. Eat your heart out Fable 3. Plus the amount of choices that affect things is like mass effect 3 level, it's so dope. But god, there's a lot of little problems, and the inventory limit is so tedious unless you mod it out. For example not many people want to use a character creator in the middle of a playthrough. But more than anything else the worst thing about dragon age inquisition is what it did to the company. Just google "Bioware Magic" to find articles like this, that talk about how inquisition was used as proof that as long as they crunched super hard at the end, the finished game could and would be both a finished product AND successful. After Inquisition, those team members were moved onto Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda, the latter team mostly ending up working on Anthem too. You can ready plenty of articles about the burnout, overwork and other issues that plague Bioware.

Also I agree about the future as both Mike Laidlaw AND David Gaider have both left Bioware in the last few years. Not to say someone else from the writer's room couldn't be promoted, but it's not a good sign when both your lead writers have left. Big shoes and all that, esp when your narrative decisions decide the work of hundreds of people over many years. My only direct request would be that the major decision of the game should not be between templars and magicians. Witcher series did way better after they abandoned the Scoiatel/Order of the Rose/Neutral choice for more complex narrative.

It reflects big business. Less of a creative vision, and more of a product meant to appeal to as broad a market as they can within the genre. Which isn't necessarily bad, I just hope the company doesn't either shut down it's studios or turn into the eternal content pump of Ubisoft. In an ideal world, they'd just make more games like Inquisition and ME2 with better graphics and a couple new mechanics every few years. Here's hoping.

You clearly don't understand cancel culture. Way too nuanced of a take, you're probably one of them.

@north6: Sorry, one of who?

Man listening to those takes on Xenoblade Chronicles was rough. Their comments were incredibly reductive. Calling it a single player MMO is a huge discredit to all of the interesting affinity mechanics and the vastly different playstyles of each party member. The timed battle mechanics and constant management of buffs and debuffs keep battles actively engaging. Such battle mechanics are also present in many other non-MMO RPGs, but sure, let's be reductive to make it sound bad.

I find the party banter fun, and calling out the attacks is useful telegraphing that gives the player the opportunity to react to the situation. And what the hell is wrong with the voice acting? XC is often praised for having a great localization and generally great voice acting, and I tend to agree with those sentiments. Is it bad because it is British? Also, repeating lines is very much a video game thing, especially in JRPGs. Even western games like Skyrim and The Witcher have dialogue that has become a meme because of how many times it is repeated when you pass by a villager. I don't really see that as a valid criticism, especially when you can just turn it off if it bothers you that much.

This is simply a case where they should say "not for me", put the game down, and move on. If you're not going to give the game a fair shot, don't bother trying to critique it.

I felt they did Xenoblade justice.

@xpgamer7: You make some really good points and I'd be lying if I said I didn't agree with them. It feels really good to see honest critiques from other fans for this series, the future seemed so bright back in 2010!

this horrible video games song talk reminds me of till all are one, stan bush's thrilling sequel to his hit song the touch, that showed up at the credits of the war for cybertron game. i suppose it's more just an honorable mention since it evidently wasn't made for the game, and is also a banger, but i need more people to know about this one