Giant Bombcast 696: Cheech and Chong WAVs

Videos will be rolling along shortly!

@janman: you posted GrubbSnax by mistake, I think (for premium audio)

@permanentsigh: Well that's very embarrassing

Should be good now!

Something about the audio seems off, like Bakalar or Jeff B are slightly out of sync? Is it just me?

@depecheload: Pretty out of sync for me too! Something's up, or the crew is being extra awkward this week with these pregnant pauses.

@janman: in case you don't know, the audio is out of sync

The Vita UI is still better than the PS5 UI.

Fuck Activision and fuck Blizzard.

Never did get a vita, often kick myself for not jumping on the $100 sale on the OG version.

Switch has been mainly visual novels for me these several months anyways

I always confuse grubhub with grubsnax and ask myself why they're advertising their own show like that.

What I've heard is that Pokemon Unite is actually barely pay to win, it's easy to level up items to lvl 20 with the in-game currency, and for eg with the attack buff item, a lvl 30 upraded one is going to kill a creep one auto attack faster compared to a lvl 20 one, I think it's 3 autoattacks faster compared to an unupgraded item. It's only going to matter if you are playing at the absolute top end of the game, because all of that slight advantage is completely removed if your pokemon gets to level 5 while the others with fully upgraded items are level 4. You just quite literally cannot pay to win, you're still going to have be good at stuff for eg : winning the team fight to claim the middle creep to get more xp than the opposition early on.

@scylo: Any advantage, no matter how small, that players can gain by paying real money makes a game pay to win. It isn't a scale of "barely" and "badly" based on how that advantage works in practice. It's a case of how much you can buy straight away, and in Unite that is a lot of stuff. Just because paying the money doesn't inherently make you a better player, it has made your capacity to be better higher than somebody who hasn't paid for the same items. We aren't yet at the point with Unite where we are discussing relative power level of new expensive characters versus existing ones, but we will be soon.

Edit: It occurs to me that this discussion is highly subjective and the "problem point" will be different for everyone. Odd to stick up for a game's pay to win status when you don't play it, though.

I think I'm going to buy some Buckfast

this thumbnail is traumatizing

I recently jailbroke my VITA and it's a very good emulation machine. Also playing games over NVIDIA Shield from my Steam library is pretty cool.

It's a shame Danny never built a forum for Analysis: War. Or did he...?

Excessive frame rates on menus and elsewhere has been a problem since forever, i'm sure it's broken hardware before people just didn't realise, the GFX card should idealy protect itself but since making the connection between stupid high frame rates and heat generation i've used a frame rate limiter, there's really no need for excessive frames.

Can we get a new series where Jeff B. plays through Pokemon games with Jan guiding him through? I love Bakalar's enthusiasm.

WD-40 is not a lubricant! All it's going to do is dry out and your hinge will go right back to squeaking pretty quickly. Get some 3-in-1 or multipurpose oil.

This has been a PSA for the three people who might care.

I'm pretty sure WD 40 is a cleaner not a lubricant. I'm pretty sure that's going to dry out and leave it creaking worse than it was before..

Jeff is so wrong about slack threads man. When we don't use threads at work and there's several conversations going on at once it makes our channels a complete mess and it's impossible to follow any of it. I imagine it depends somewhat on your team size though.

@depecheload: Yes!! It’s driving me crazy!

Careful guys, you almost made capitalism sound like a good thing in that acquisitions conversation

I'm confused why so many people in games press have been hyping up the Playdate, a system focused on smaller games. Because it's fun to say "I'm gonna crank it" or something?

But the Amico, which is also about smaller focused games, gets shit on. At least on this site.

What's the deal?

Maybe it's because I grew up around forums and chats simultaneously, but threading is usually good and fine. I don't get why it's a bad thing.

I think what the Vita emailer is missing is that the Vita was the last of the "handheld market" devices. The recent handheld "craze" is not due to handhelds in the old sense - the Switch is not trying to be a handheld device. Rather, it's simply the Nintendo console, that happens to be capable of being handheld. The Vita was trying to be PlayStation but in handheld form with downgraded games because it's a handheld. If the Vita came out in exactly the same style as it did, but now, it would still end up being just as lackluster as it was the first go around.

The version of this podcast episode that made it to Apple podcasts is still the super wack audio sync version where Jeff Bakalar is several seconds out of sync.

I think it mostly comes down to Tallarico's delusional rants about their competitors, doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his product, also seems like some of the developers he namedrops aren't aware that they're supposedly involved in the project.

@csl316: For me personally its a difference in intent. The Playdate is a simple device that is targetted at a small group of people who would be interested in weird niche games by some big name indie games. Its targetted at people who are interested in games that you would find on places like Itch.io, as Jeff said its a toy.

Where as the Amico is trying to appeal to everyone, literally as games can only be rated E (or E10+), its a system that is trying to sell nostalgia of a time to people who dont really play games and we all saw how well that worked with the Wii (which I know sold well but the legacy of the Wii is nothing but shovelware), despite all the problems, the reasons why games can be updated, or added to with dlc is a positive thing and this weird thought of those things ruining games is an issue. All while this thing is being sold for 250 bucks (or 300 for the Gamestop purple one), which is most of the way to something like an Xbox Series S, or the lowest version of the Steam Deck.

Overall the Amico seems to be catering to people who may not even want to play games, all with a ton of restrictions that if I were a developer, may not want to deal with, when I could develop for PC, or Switch or console.

With Playdate, the games are restricted by the design of the hardware, but otherwise sounds like it's completely open. With the Amico, the company itself is restricting/micromanaging the games in nearly every detail. From all the press that Amico itself is presenting, the games look like pre-existing Android games, or poor-looking Wii bargain bin knockoffs. With Playdate, a flood of great indie devs have either already made games for it, or have expressed their intent to dig into the SDK and see what they can come up with.

Playdate appeals to me the same way Jeff talks about it, it's a premium toy seemingly inspired by the Game & Watch series, which I personally love. Amico, on the other hand, has no appeal to me whatsoever. I don't play games with a room full of people, and I don't want to revisit the bad part of the Wii's library. I also don't want anything to do with those Amico controllers.

Shout out to any of my old homies from IRC.OFTC.NET - #GAMER

If Fortnite were a person, it would be Will Smith but if he could only do lines from Shark Tale.

"not to gatekeep but" is Giant Bomb's "I'm no racist buuuut.."

@depecheload: Yes, makes it almost unlistenable. Shows rhe value of production.

I'm shocked no one mentionned how Danny pronounced WAV as wauve. Who pronounce it that way?!

Laughed out loud when I saw the title. Looking forward to this one.

@depecheload: I think his audio is out of sync. He's answering questions as they are being asked.

@ydross: it made me question whether I’ve been saying it wrong for years, and I’ve recorded and mixed music, etc. Crazy how one different pronunciation can knock you off your blocks like that!

holy crap, Danny mentioned Project I.G.I...I thought I would never hear another person mention that game in my life, and then Jeff jumped on it as I type this on my phone

holy shit, man

@neuroflare: Agreed, WD-40 is a solvent/temporary lubricant. 3 in 1 or nice lithium based grease are great lubricants.

@ydross: He pronounces it as wahfs, the same way I do, and my friends who are music producers do.

@alexph: always been “wave” files for me.

So many crank jokes to be had. Thank you Playdate.