Giant Bombcast 650: Strange Times!

Hey Jason you should go get tested for covid. You mentioned that you lost your sense of smell and that (along with losing taste) is a sign that you could be positive.

I hope Jason knows that losing taste and smell is one of the most common corona symptoms?! Doesn’t sound great, be safe and hopefully it’s just bad timing!

Staten joined Bungie post-Marathon/Myth and his first contribution was in Halo. He was a producer on a Myth 2 expansion but that was made by a third party map making group that Bungie officially supported.

We spent over two months covered in bushfire smoke last Dec to Feb here in Queanbeyan, Australia. It was one of the worst things in recent times I've experienced, then Covid srikes. So, l have total sympathy for you guys. I hope some of our Aussie fireman help you out, they are some of the best in the world.

Murder House 2: The Quickening!

glad the kid's sleeping better on the road

edit: Now I want a feature where Jason and Jan make AMVs

sunshine is totally fine as a game, please there are so many other games that are worse, I will never understand the hate for it. Especially since 64 to me has barely held up over the years.

I have a 1080 ti and will get a 3090. There was no way I would've bought the 2080 ti to replace the 1080 ti. Also, I just replaced my i7 7700k with an i9 10900k, it was a good swap. So, I believe the 3090 will pair well with the 10900k.

Not a fanboi of Intel or Nvidia. So, I am looking forward to what AMD do this year.

First thing that kicked covid off for me was losing taste and smell. I really hope Jason and family are safe and that's not it, just the fires. I never thought I'd say something like that.

I know multiple people have already said this, but I feel like it really needs to be echoed -- loss of smell and taste are some of the most common early symptoms of COVID. Jason, please get tested.

I'm definitely looking at that 3080. The 3090 just seems like overkill for 3440x1440 at this point.

I have a 2080 Ti (which i've had since it launched, built a new system right around then). Seems daft to upgrade that, especially given how expensive it was, but at some point I may well hand this system down to the kids and build a new one. Might give that 12-18 months though (so I guess I might wait until the 40 series) and look for an upgrade from 1440p to a high refresh 4K/HDR monitor at the same time too.

@rorie: I currently own an Acer Predator 34 inch ultrawide series A. I will upgrade this next year for games like Cyberpunk 2077 to a 34 inch ultrawide 4k. The 3090 will come in very useful with games like Cyberpunk going forward.

In addition, I just bought a shooter monitor: an Acer VG252QX 24.5inch Nitro IPS G-Sync 240Hz FHD Gaming Monitor, everything I have will be overkill with this little guy. :))

That might be the same model I have? Is it 100hz with an overclock to 120? I'm so happy with it I can't see upgrading anytime soon but a new vidcard sounds like it'll max this monitor out until I replace it in a few years!

@rorie: No you have the model after mine, (the series b?). Mine could be overclocked to 100hz, but is now only capable of 95hz (a common problem). It's also now over 4 and a half years old and time to upgrade to something with more hz.

I do agree with your comment.

Wtf is a skitcher?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skitching

Ah, that's a shame. I'd love to have something at way higher HZ but for now this seems to be fine by me. Man I love ultrawide!

@janman, I know your pain. I had my PS2 memory card erased by that same demo disc. They did have a form of compensation where you could get 1 of 3 games for free if you called a number. I don't remember all the choices but I got Hot Shots Golf Fore. RIP to my precious Blitzball hours.

@rorie: I have to say Rorie everything about that wiki seems made up. I know that it is probably real but the first sentence reads like songs on a scat album.

From an Australian who got to experience smoke blowing in from every single direction for months and AQI levels up to 800 back at the start of the year: stay safe, y'all.

if you were a ghost with all the poltergeisty abilities described in that email, and you haunted the white house, you could probably end the united states of america

Sometimes have to remind myself that the crew are pretty well off compared to where i’m at. All their calls over the years to “just build a pc” while being pretty pleased with $1500/$700 graphics cards really throws into stark contrast just how different our situations are.

Not a criticism, they work hard, they deserve it. But damn... cannot relate.

Joseph Staten also wrote what many consider to be the best Halo book. Based on behind the scenes footage, he seems like a good gameplay designer and writer.

Why didn't they tell Jason what he has is a sign of covid???

Man Brad, can you spot me some dime if you think $700 isn't that expensive lol.

@undeadkink: Right? Like, good on ‘em, they should be at a point where $700 is a reasonable amount. But that just ain’t me and I shouldn’t expect them to have the same relationship with money as I do.

w0w skipping over the actual biggest 2020 release in their rest of the year rundown

poor Trails of Cold Steel IV

I'm literally taking a week off of work for that.

Cool title, please say strange times one more time during the podcast. Cant wait for their takes on weed and aliens next week.

@onlineatron: Won't lie $700 isn't cheap but you're getting the equivalent of what used to be $1000+ (better than, actually) so relatively it's a steal. The mid and lower range cards should still be great bang for the buck though.

It's probably a good thing I can't rationalize that kind of spending right now (though knowing me I'll slip up)

Please stop making "Oh it's just cosmetic it's not so bad" excuses for shit like Avengers. You're coming at this from the perspective of an adult, the sitation is way different if you're young. They know exactly what they're doing and how much cosmetics are not "just cosmetics", just like Nike and some no-name brand weren't "just shoes" when I was young.

https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/CCO-Gaming-the-System-2019.pdf

The ways in which children are treated by others in the game also informs whether they feel encouraged to spend money on in-game purchases. In the Fortnite group, children felt that they should spend money on skins to prevent being seen in the free default skin. The default skin is seen not only as making someone “uncool”, but is a marker of being a ‘poor kid’, and is therefore something to be avoided.

Mortal Shell is indeed very short, took me about 10 hours.

So for the Marvel Challenge Card things, it looks like if you spend your points right, you can get everything without spending a dime, albeit much slower than if you just paid for it. The rewards on the individual challenge cards are the same for every character (but specific to each character. So, for examle level 1 is an emote, level 2 is resources, level 3 is more challenge credits, etc).

By the time you finish acquiring all of the challenge card rewards for one character you've collected well over 1,000 credits (which is the currency used to buy challenge cards). Since the first 6 are free, assuming you never spend your credits, you could potentially end up with well over 6,000 credits by the time the first DLC character rolls around, and use those credits you saved up to buy the new heroes' challenge card...and then by the time you finish that heroes' challenge card you just make it all back again, and then some.

Again, it'll take you longer obviously than if you just outright bought everything, but for people who intend on playing this game for a long time it's totally doable, and I think those are the only people who really care about battle passes/challenge cards/etc. Anyone else just in it for the story or to play for a few days and never go back to it again probably doesn't care as much about battle passes.

Of course it's expensive in a vacuum, the point is that Nvidia's pricing has been trending upwards for a while because they don't have any real competition. Before the announcement I assumed the 3080 would be pushing a thousand dollars.

Sunshine has a lot of frustrating bits and those really stick in the mind.

I can't bloody wait to get a 3080. I have a 1080 and it was serving me well until I gave into the Rorie magic and bought an ultrawide. I need those frames!

I have an i7 6700k so I'm hoping I won't need to upgrade anything else. (Please God!)

I don’t think Nvidia is doing away with the Ti branding. The Ti cards are always the year after the release of the main line so we can still expect to see a 3080ti next year. What they did do is eliminate the titan branding and gave it a number instead.

I'm still playing Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate.

It's weird. I burned through over 100 hours of Monster Hunter World in the first couple weeks of it coming out and then burned out. Haven't been back for the expansion. But with Generations Ultimate on switch, I can more easily play a bit here and there. It's got more longevity for me even though I haven't even come close to the amount of hours as World.

the mario sunshine hate always hurts me lol

Thank you Jeff for the sensible response to the "delay the consoles" question. I'm getting tired of the concern and the panicking. I'm at the point where I don't even care if all the launch games are delayed. I just want to play my PS4 backlog (plus Yakuza 7) on better hardware with a new controller. I'm still using a launch PS4 with a 2014 controller that is just starting to have battery issues.

And, that fire situation sounds completely terrifying. I've never experienced a natural (or man-made) disaster where I live, aside from a very tiny earthquake, but with climate change who knows.

So glad I waited on an RTX card when I built my new PC earlier this year! That 3070 is looking like a mighty fine improvement over the cheap RX 570 I put in it. Still might wait until next year for the prices to drop, $500 is quite a lot when all I really want is good ray tracing performance in Minecraft XD

Brad, you're insane. Fresh oranges are amazing.

Agree with Brad! Down with the orange. Tangerine is the true king.

Sure are some insightful folx

@brad + @janman Just some fun info, strapping a hard drive to a graphics card actually has been a thing since like... 2016. Its for super pro (think insane CGI movie rendering machines etc etc) workloads that need tens of gigs of super fast memory on board + hundreds of gigs of 'slow' backup SSD cache. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/7/26/12285568/amd-radeon-pro-ssg-graphics-card-ssd

Keep in mind this is _NOT_ the tech that is coming to the new nvidia GPUs. That is just your normal hardrive where the game lives, and Windows going 'hey, heres access to the hard drive... dont bother me again'.

Climbing and traversal in Ghost is a blast. Every shrine is fun to get to the top of.

@onlineatron: These are the same guys who weren’t sure if people in 2013 still wanted consoles. Being in touch with the average gamer is not something you should expect from Giant Bomb. They live in their own bubble.

2 words. Sumo Tangerines.

Next week's will be very interesting regarding the Avenger's stuff, considering almost everyone is saying the retail game (after this podcast occurred) is WAY better than the beta, which has historically been pretty close to what the final game is. Price stuff aside, as that stuff will be what it is.