Giant Bombcast 678: A Horse Named PlayStation

Yeah Bombcast!

It's gonna be interesting to see how the Evo acquisition plays out in the long term. I know they've announced they're open to other platforms and Tekken 7 at Evo Online 2021 will be PC only, so that's reassuring. But I wonder if that's gonna hold forever and what they'll do when in-person events return?

I know there's plenty of logistical issues with using PC versions for live events, but what happens when an Xbox Series X version is clearly better than the PS5 version? Are they going to stick to what Evo has aspired to in the past and go with the best version, like when they switched from UMVC3 on PS3 to 360, or are they just gonna force people to use the PS version?

I have faith that they'll do the right thing in the beginning when a lot of the core Evo staff are still heavily involved, but what happens when those people leave/move up internally via promotion? Is this gonna be a scenario like Activision Blizzard where everything's peachy at first but over time the acquisition begins to have more and more overt influence. I hope not, but it's definitely something I worry about.

I support the new hire Bigger Jason

Amazing how you found a gamercard with the cheater zone.

The "Arm & Hammer/Armand Hammer" origin story is extremely contrived. The company name was established long before Armand was even born. He led an... interesting life, let's say, and was able to amass a fortune in oil money. Eventually, he got tired of all the jokes about his name and used all that oil money to buy out Arm & Hammer's parent company (because they apparently wouldn't sell it to him directly, at least not for his initial offerings).

The irony is not lost on anyone that his great-grandson turned out to be an absolute tool.

Oh my god Danny going for the throat on that joke in the opening almost made me spit my drink out. Everyone else tiptoed around the puddle and Danny jumped in it galosh-first.

Edit: I played 20 hours of Fallout 4 on Gamepass and I wish I could have it back. It was an empty, meaningless game that accomplished nothing interesting. Picking up desk fans and clipboards and animal hides to break down into components to make the numbers go up on guns that handle like garbage anyway is some of the least meaningful game I have ever played. The story sucks, the dialogue is mediocre at best, the UI is horrific and confusing. There is nothing in Fallout 4 that is worth being a part of. Unless you really like that a fork you put in someone's pocket is still there 20 hours later.

Audio for danny a bit off? he seems to be a few seconds behind...

I really appreciate the passion Jason has for MH, but his explanations just seems so rambling and off-point... it really feels like he needs someone to bounce his thoughts off of first.

Some thoughts:

• Isn't the food (the dango) capable of extending health and stamina just like the rest of the games, and the spiribirds are more like optional powerups to make the hunt easier if you wish?
• The multiplayer system won't be an issue since they separated out story quests and multiplayer quests again. The only reason it was cumbersome in World was because of the "story" cutscenes (which I feel that people should have been doing solo anyways).
• Yes, the MH series has multiple teams of devs. Rise started development before World even released, IIRC.
• Said this before, but no, Rise isn't a "mix of old and new MH". Pretty much every system that matters to gameplay is similar to World (aside from the completely new stuff of course), and the only thing that people can point out being "like the old MH games" is the graphics and cheerful aesthetics. The former is a hardware limitation, and the latter is merely an aesthetic choice.

Also an opinion, but the wirebugs being a shared resource is a perfectly fine decision. The "recovery" move after being knocked down is WAY too powerful of a tool for it to be always available, and the actual traversal uses won't be something you'd think about a lot during combat. Even if you do (like when shaking off Magnamalo's fire), it works to balance the risk and reward of that choice.

Insect glaive 4 lyfe

While I understand and personally rather have a game delayed if it means an overall better product, I'm bummed out Gotham Knights got delayed until next year. The trailer demo they showed look good for that game, unlike what happened with Halo Infinite. The problem might be online network related, and given what happened with Anthem and Avengers to name a few, Rocksteady might be trying to play it smart and get things ready out the gate instead of patches and excuses for future problems. At least I hope this is what the delay is for. I hope they take the extra time to release a PS5 update of Arkham Knight with unlocked framerate and 4K resolution. Silicon Knights should take advantage of this and fix their Avengers game, but I doubt they will. It seems like they enjoy making things more difficult for those group of players, the ones that are still left anyway.

As far as EVO... I'm glad Sony is trying to keep the tournament alive after the blowup and reveal that Mr. Wizard, one of the previous co-owners, was a pedo and a hypocrite. But given how Sony does things, I'm afraid it won't last long. Once problems start to occur, and they will, Sony might just cut their losses and abandon ship, then where will the fighting tournament be.

And like Jeff said, Nintendo and Microsoft might use the Mr. Wizard situation as an excuse to ditch the scene all together. Not a huge loss, but other developers like Arc System Works, Namco, and even Capcom might do the same, if word on the street is supporting EVO gives you negative press. The Smash Community seems to be slowly getting back on its feet, but members desperately tiring to get pedo, Nairo, unbanned might undo it, if Nintendo and Twitch agrees.

Regarding the VR controllers, as Jeff said, the rings are for positional tracking of the controllers. The plastic/paint would be IR transparent which allows IR LEDs underneath to shine through and be visible to a camera (either in the HMD itself, or with external cameras.)

Position and orientation tracking in VR all basically boils down to the same sort of 'dead reckoning' scheme where you're using an IMU chip (accelerometer and gyro) that samples very quickly (~1000hz), and then using another slower system (cameras) that can establish absolute position and correct for drift that naturally accumulates from just the IMU data. This is why with VR systems you may see subtle movement pulsing/shifting in your view -- the IMUs drift and the camera system is correcting the position. If the camera system is performing poorly then the amount of shifting will be more pronounced because those positional corrections are less accurate and/or less frequent.

Finger tracking for this PSVR2 is likely the same as Oculus Touch and Index which have capacitive touch sensors inside them. With Oculus Touch there's individual sensors in the buttons to detect whether your fingers are contacting them or not, and with Index there's an array of sensors inside the grip https://i.imgur.com/8W5qETk.jpeg so it's able to detect all the fingers and how much grip for each.

"2 inches of snow every day"

*laughs in Canadian*

Just a heads-up for the audio version. Danny's audio track sounds off sync and he is talked over a bit throughout. Tested on the premium audio mix.

@brad I went through LITERALLY the exact same thing that you did over Armie Hammer. I felt like my brain was just shattering mid conversation with my wife about it as she was explaining it to me, thinking I could never trust her again if it was all a trick.

I also came here to say that Danny's audio seems to be synced a couple of seconds ahead. For an example, see 45:40 where he starts responding before Brad asks him and then there's a gap of silence afterward.

Monster Hunter Rise coming to PC is so weird to me. I can't see them putting in the money to bring it up to Monster Hunter World's level graphically and I don't think it looks particularly good for a Switch game, let alone in comparison to World. It's not super stylised like a Breath of the Wild where the fidelity gives way to art direction. Perhaps that's why there's no news of it coming to PS5 and Xbox? Just dump it on PC and don't bother with getting it on the new consoles where it'll hardly look "next-gen" or something?

Um Jason Um Oestreicher Um.... Um

The dreaded audio-drift strikes again!

@vamperial said:

Came here to say the same thing. His audio is a few seconds off.

wasn't Johnny Depp exonerated?

Glad Brad is coming around on Doom Eternal. That game is outstanding.

Also came here to say this.

I am also reporting phantom Danny.

I just can't get into Judgment. The combat feels like walking through molasses, the MC has so many unnecessary movements and the hits have no impact compared to the Y games. The story feels even more meandering than any Y game's, having to unlock side stories SUCK, and overall I'm having a miserable time with it. So I'm skipping the upgrade.

@theonewhoplays: I've played every Yakuza game as it came out, and I didn't enjoy Judgment very much. I even liked Fist of the North Star, but Judgment felt off all the way through.

The audio sync in the audio version of the show seems unbearably bad this week.

episode title shoulda been "Slim Jim Skin"

I thought I was going nuts with Danny's audio. It's definitely right on the edge of unlistenable.

Toys R Us is only closed in the USA.
I was just in one here in Toronto a few weeks back, so take that gift card and come to Canada when it's safe. :D

OMG Jason's little zombie just walking into frame, I laughed for a full 2 minutes

@sethmode: Your intuition was correct. Both you and @brad were tricked. Armand Hammer was an oil tycoon who later in life bought a large stake in Church & Dwight, the company that manufactures Arm & Hammer.

Casually hoping Danny becomes the west coast Bakalar

@kamasamak: hah, to be fair to my wife, she wasn't trying to tell me Arm & Hammer was named after Armand Hammer, just that Armie Hammer was named for his grandfather (or something) and that his family owned Arm & Hammer and that is was just insane.

My brain melted more at the sheer coincidence of it.

Fallout 4 is pretty good. The settlement stuff is dumb but you can just ignore it and the leveling up system is pretty fun, as is the crafting system. I wish there were more games like bethesda games where you get a map filled with dungeons and you can go into any of them at any time. No one else does that really, I guess because it would take to much work to create so many interiors.

Also here's an article about some revealing audio featuring Johnny Depp: https://globalnews.ca/news/6499297/amber-heard-johnny-depp-recording/

Hasn't gotten much mainstream coverage though.

@sethmode: Got it! His great-grandfather buying that large stake apparently wasn't coincidence, but rather because of the name connection. So you can understand why he goes by "Armie" because of that. When you find out how many connections there are with celebrities, it becomes not particularly surprising. But interesting nonetheless.

It's time for another "skim past Jason's fumbles describing MH" episode.

Also fuck Rise, shit sucks

This podcast episode disappeared off Spotify. Was there last night, then it disappeared and still hasn't returned. Mysterious.

i dunno, i'm looking forward to rise, enough over Generations, and i was led to believe there were two teams? I find it hard to believe MHW2 is not in the works as we speak, that thing is a cash machine, to not repeat it is highly illogical. I am pretty sure there's a mobile team and a world team, likely some crossover, but iirc the history of monster hunter development forked at some point, I'll have to look that up again.

I've noticed this as well. I literally had the podcast open on spotify, paused so I could get back to it, then when I returned to listen to it some more, it was gone.

The world's first non-fungible podcast. I've got it downloaded, starting bid is $69 million.

Disappeared off Google Podcasts for me as well. I'll assume they're working on fixing the audio!

@judgementkazzy:

I never miss an episode but $69 million is a bit rich for my blood. Bombcast and Beastcast are brilliant podcast, I tend to listen to them several times while playing a chilled game. This week it has be My Time at Portia. (Inspired by Vinny's recent look at harvest moon and story of seasons) Hopefully he will be feeling better soon.

I will forever be confused by the GB hate for 3D All-Stars.

Yeah, the timed thing is dumb, but what is wrong with the release itself? It's the 3 earliest staple 3D games in one package? How are they not "doing right by the games"?

Am I missing something? Should I be angrier? What's happening?

Jason is insane! Monster Hunter the movie is one of the very best from 2020.

I don't know I love playing Galaxy and Sunshine on my Switch. Where the fuck is Galaxy 2 though?

If you open an envelope with anything other than your finger I just don't know about you..