Giant Bombcast 688: America and Azeroth

Picked up Necromunda and that shit is HELLA fun! Running it on a new beefy rig and there is some micro stuttering, which makes me think it is probably something that can be fixed in a patch, but it hasn't been game breaking for me yet. Has some real sleeper hit vibes.

Trunk wife is my favorite Decemberists song.

If you need timestamps, check youtube comments. Assuming those are right anyhow.

On Biomutant: I am 16 hours in and having a blast. Sure, there are things I don't like. Sound seems to be lacking here and there, cutscenes have a weird jarring feel at times and the combat can be hit and miss. More hit after I tried all the weapon types, just had to find a combo I liked (doing Crushing melee and rifle). The patch that just hit fixed a lot as well. Also, it helped the atmosphere a lot just switching the narrator to Japanese.

On Necromunda: This is just awesome. Having some micro stuttering, no crashes yet after three missions. My brother did have a crash though, but it seemed he got put right where he was when he restarted. Weapons are cool, the customization is fun and they sound just like I wanted them to. I bet it helps if you are a WH fan, but my brother is not and is also having a blast.

Both of these games have been all over the scale on reviews, but I am really glad I got both.

Necromunda seems like a cool game, its def on my wishlist now

@bladededge: I don't get it...why does it seem so difficult for Giant Bomb to do this?

I listen to way smaller podcasts, on much tighter budgets, by much smaller teams and they have timestamps...

Word of warning on Necromunda if you play on Playstation or Xbox. It is a garbage port on the levels of Cyberpunk. Aiming is horrifically bad, and any camera movement leads to this headache-inducing judder that has been killing me. Seems like the PC was the lead platform and consoles were a complete afterthought, an FPS with broken aiming is a broken game.

Reminder to everyone that is not aware of the Necromunda/Warhammer universes. The whole gimmick is everyone is evil literally everyone... (except Ork's because Ork's are too stupid to be evil.)

If you plan to play Necromunda, get it on PC or wait for it to be patched on console. The Series X port is pretty bad with terrible camera judder anytime you pan around.

Blizzcon Air.

Jan's fridge is apparently haunted.

Glued-on shower panels on durock (cement board) is hell to get off.

Maybe another comment has covered this, but what is this revisionist bullshit at about 2 and a half hours where "Fallout 76 wasn't even that buggy"? Are you fucking KIDDING me?

I don't usually care too much about people being off about facts but this is absolutely untrue.

Sit your ass through this THREE HOUR video of *most* of the bugs encountered by Joseph Anderson in his single playthrough to review the game (this does not contain the review, it is ONLY bugs) and tell me it wasn't even that buggy, or that it was "online game" buggy. I played the game for a single hour at one point long after launch and had literally over a dozen major bugs, including shit like enemies getting health back over and over and dying randomly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6HdBplLmuU

Fallout 76 wasn't this normal launch that people put under a microscope, it was a busted piece of shit that wasn't beta tested properly and pretending it was anything else just lets publishers know that no matter how bad something is people will forget. This shit was atrocious, man.

Jeff, the 3080ti is extra bad because its trying and failing to be a 3090 with a 3080 cooling solution so the thing is fucking loud under load, too.

@unastrike The netcode for the new Virtua Fighter release, I believe, was based on what was called "Blitz" netcode, which was touted by the game Infinite Versus, and the result was not great. It is great that you guys are getting good matches, because it sounded like many people in the FGC were very down on the match quality. Infinite Versus had a mess of its own problems, so it is wild to hear some part of its legacy lives on. Woolie Versus (huge fighting game advocate) YouTube channel showed off the game in this video not too long ago.

@bladededge: It would be nice to have time stamps especially on a 3hr. podcast for sure.

Sonic CD U.S. soundtrack for life.

I'm not even kidding when I see it's one of the reasons I started playing guitar. That emotional solo during the credits! The cool backwards effect in Collision Chaos! The awesome riffing in Metallic Madness (Bad Future)! It's really quite good.

VGMpire did two episodes with Sega CD composer Spencer Nilsen that are highly recommended.

that Todd Howard goof was some funny shit

All this talk about Necromunda but nobody brings up that it was made by the studio behind E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy, a.k.a. the best co-op shlooter of the 2010s.

@xbob42: Even their NPCs ARE BACK Quick Look has game-impacting bugs at least once every ten minutes. Maybe it's perfect now, who is to say, but Fallout 76 has been broken as hell every time I've seen it played.

I understand Danny's pain. My oma was from Northeast Scotland, opposite Orkney. Scotland didn't make it in the game! I understand that it was full of hostile Picts at the time, but man!

@xbob42: You're maybe a little more fired up about it than I am, but I agree with you. That game was Bethesda broken several times over and online game broken. It was unacceptable to be sold as a completed product. They should have just slapped "Early Access" on it and fixed it as they have.

I hope the next Bethesda entry will be a much cleaner release, and I expect the reaction to Fallout 76 is one of the reasons this development cycle is taking much longer than their previous ones. I'd love to say I'm giving them one more chance, but Bethesda will never not have my loyalty because they make games like no one else does.

@leviathan_dive: That is why I mentioned it mostly.

Without Brad's style of keeping things more on track/Jeff's style of Hosting in general I think usually leads to these longer podcasts. I don't think any of us are complaining about the length at all, but I knew I wasn't gonna listen to this all in one sitting. I found something to help me with that, so I mentioned it.

Jeff's "Fight, Flight, or Hang 10" reflexes saves the day again!

Jan: Warhammer 40K goes places. Dark, comedic places.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Orks

Orks lack individual psychic power, being denied such abilities by the Old Ones. However, they do have a sort of collaborative, collective psychic ability, meaning that if enough Orks believe something is true, then it will actually become so, brought into being in realspace through the power of the Immaterium by their gestalt psychic ability.

For example, Ork rockets painted yellow create bigger explosions, simply because the vast majority of Orks believe they do.

This is also why much of the Orks' seemingly ramshackle technology will do terrible damage in the hands of Orks, but will cease to function when used by other intelligent races.

@cyrusraven: I enjoyed this comment

@bladededge: Yeah defiantly didn't want it to go to a negative place I know what you are saying though.

Necromunda is really fun but it runs like ass on the series x

Sonic CD JP soundtrack 4 life!

As to the "even just katakana" comment don't let your dreams stay dreams. You can learn katakana in less than a week, I would argue you could do it in an afternoon but you're going to need a bit more practice than that for it to stick.

The Witcher 3 already released a collected Game of the Year edition years ago that includes the DLC.

No Jeff Bakalar? But he needs his weekly dose of pokèmoneducation!

Love ya Jan, thanks for the Pride shout-out. Great ep.

Did the crew forget that they already held an online Blizzcon in 2020 and they used the name Blizzconline for that? They were acting like it was a new thing.

Listening to this after Tuesday and hearing Jeff talk about his soon-to-be-arriving PC was a bit funny and sad, knowing how it turned out. (Video card was DOA)

I also repeated years of Spanish - I took 4 years of it in middle school + high school, and then in college I was supposed to take a placement test, but I was lazy and just signed up for Spanish 101. Which was entry level stuff again. Probably not a good use of my money and time, but I ended up needing credits anyways, so *shrug*. I was super disappointed that my university didn't offer Japanese. Like I said, I needed credits, so I was looking for anything to take. Japanese would've actually been semi-useful and cool to take, but nope, not an option.

In reference to accidentally leaving notifications on when you stream - oh, you mean like how people bombarded Alex's final drum stream with friend requests just last month because they thought it was cute? Yeah, that shit's always been annoying.

i miss ranking of fighters so much

“Fallout 76 wasn’t even that buggy”?! “It wasn’t even Bethesda-buggy”?! What?! Did they completely forgot how that game launched or something?

Fallout 76 was an absolute mess and maybe one of the most broken AAA releases in recent years. It was so buggy some people couldn’t even play it and for a long time every new patch was only introducing more bugs.

Even Cyberpunk on PC with just the day one patch was more stable than Fallout 76 after multiple patches.

And we’re just talking about the bugs, let’s not forget all the other problems the game had and add that to all the bugs Fallout 4 also had that were still present on 76. 76 even had bugs that came from the Oblivion days!

Did @janmanJan get a PS5?!

Necromunda: Hired Gun is pretty amazing. Its problems stem from things that can be patched rather than being design problems. 85% of your arsenal causes enemies to explode. Wallrunning is an excellent way to fight enemies and as you upgrade your biotics it increases your chances of not getting hit while doing it and increases the range of your auto-aim while running so you don't have to worry about trying to line up shots while running: just hold down the trigger and get them enemies.

The powers are fun too. Again, they exist to cause groups of enemies to explode. The atmosphere in it is superb and the soundtrack is nothing but excellent rock anthems mixed with synth. If you like the recent DOOM games it's basically Eurojank DOOM and I mean that in a good way. You can't go wrong with the game.