Giant Bombcast 728: Loan Wolves

VIDEOS STILL ENCODING

ALTERNATIVE TITLES WERE:

• Spice Up Tuesday
• White Mystery
• Coke Discourse
• Dude Flavored Vodka
• Zone of Appletini
• Rag Time
• Jeff Kratos

Man, I really hope Atari doesn't fuck with Mobygames. It's the closest thing to the "IMDB of video games" we have. Giant Bomb's wiki is an *extremely* poor substitute. GB sometimes have more info on just-released titles, but Mobygames has complete credits (apart from rare cases Jeff mentioned in the podcast) and wealth of more info, scans, promos, and screengrabs of various ports you simply can't find anywhere else. Crowdsourced wiki is only as good as the community that contributes to it and Mobygames has everyone else beat. It's a one-of-a-kind resource (to the point where I think it should be non-profit and be part of Video Game History foundation or ESA or something).

New theme song is too wonky. I'm all about change, don't think this is necessarily a good one.

Its cotton candy. The "space" flavor tastes like cotton candy. Actually seems to work real good for Coke Zero.

@l1fef0rm: I agree with you 100%. I wasn't going to comment on it as I always just skip it, but it just sounds like noise to me.

As a counterpoint, I love the glitchy theme. I've always been a bit of a fan of microtonal music and dissonance. There was a bit of that in the previous theme too actually. Also a fan of Vektroid to to put all my cards on the table.

Just can't dig the theme. The old theme was tired, but I don't think it split the community like this one. I know Jeff G likes it, and Vektroid worked really hard on it, but man... I'm already so sick of it. In other news, rest of the podcast was good.

Start Elden Ring as a Wretch if you are familiar with how Souls games work. Thats what I do, and I am not a doctor.

Getting back into the Bombcast!

Jan's pun game is the new true threat.

The new theme isn't going anywhere. You can skip it if you don't like it, and I do. To me it just sounds like dissonant noise, not anything even remotely lyrical or melodic.

But that's just me and it's easy enough for me to avoid so on with my life I go.

Elden Ring baby. Let's go!

I do not doubt that reviewing games on a deadline is hard work, but it was hard to hear Tamoor throw any type of blame at publishers when he admitted he was in charge of those review policies. If he’s the managing editor, maybe he should make more policies about not pooping your pants to play a game.

@l1fef0rm: No no, coke starlight is totally raspberry flavored. I think the marketing idea for it is based on some space research or whatever that came out like 10 years ago. Sagittarius B2 is a molecular cloud of dust and gas in space. They discovered a dust cloud contained ethyl formate which is an organic molecule that smells like alcohol and tastes like raspberries apparently. I've never been a huge fan of flavored cokes besides cherry and the occasional vanilla but I weirdly love starlight. It tastes like normal coke with a hint of raspberry and a sort of burnt or smoky after taste thing. (astronauts have also described space as smelling like seared steak or burnt almond cookies)

In Elden Ring, I've beaten quite a few bosses, like many of the catacomb bosses and the Tree Sentinel in front of the church. But I've yet to beat Migit because he seems so overpowered. I'd figured he was a fake out boss, meaning a boss you're not meant to face at first.

Edit: Just beat Migit. Was surprisingly easy with Summon and Jellyfish, and a level of 27.

@bladededge: @greased_ltng: @l1fef0rm: Yep, it ain't a good one.

@aeravon: the idea of anyone working hard on *that* is hilarious and worrying.

@sambatime: on their website they basically say it’s Smores plus berries. I hated it so much.

The Tony's Chocolonely with the popping candy in it is a life changing chocolate.

Noticed this was the third bombcast in a row that was streamed to Twitch. Livestream going free/not premium or still just dealing with tech issues?

@av_gamer: Yeah, much like most RPG's you can level properly and beat bosses pretty easily. You get a strategy its not even all just cheesing a boss. Something about souls drives people crazy and they forget how games work in that you just go with what you got, get tested, learn and succeed. I still see statements online that the game is insurmountable and all fans are annoying cause they tell you to play the game on its terms and try switch armor or something. Many state the game should tell you much more stuff but this game seems almost too hand-holding with the constant pop-ups opposed to usual souls games. Also, people keep spreading that the game has no lore or story. A lot of baffling stuff, like people missing the tutorial section due to ignoring an NPC cause they didn't directly say go here for the tutorial. A lot of stuff in other games people make fun of getting jabbed at ER for not doing. I think overall some are coming in really trying to not like the game or the game was not right for them at this time. There are tutorials online to max up to level like 40 in say 40 minutes and streamline through the game without even attacking people. I just don't get some criticisms, I did before release but a bunch of hearsay on the game has been debunked. That said this is the smallest minority of people who dislike a AAA 2020s game that has such a high score I've ever seen so again negatives seem louder than praise.

Can you please add chapters to the podcast. A 3 hour episode and I dont know where I want to skip to even if you provide a list of games. Maybe I want to just hear the talk on Forspoken and now I skip around trying to find something that sounds like it. It's insane.

About 33 minutes in for the WWE 2k22 talk.

I'm appreciating Jeff's shift into saying "this game seems good, but it's not for me." It feels like he used to default to "I don't like it, here's why you're wrong for liking it."

Makes the show way more fun to listen to.

Coke Starlight definitely tastes like toasted marshmallows, maybe not all the way to s'mores.

Tony's Chocolonely is indeed fantastic. And I'm glad that they're branching out, I can even find them at Target nowadays.

I'm convinced he's meant as a tutorial on summoning, there's an NPC summon right next to the fog gate and the parts after him are fairly low level so you're probably supposed to beat him relatively early. I consistently got him down to like 25% health just with the Jellyfish and NPC summon before I even started strategizing. Sure, as a Vagabond I'm somewhat tough but a magic user might be able to use more than one summoning ash.

Kinda sad that the NPC doesn't react to you having summoned him when you meet him later.

The two prevailing takes I see about Starlight Coke's (aka Space Coke) taste are graham cracker and cotton candy. It tastes like graham cracker to me, 100%. Which is kind of a shame, because I would totally be into a cotton candy-tasting Coke. But as it is, it's just ok. I don't hate it, but I don't like it much, either. EDIT: Had a second one and yep, still tastes like graham cracker. I wonder if the people saying other things are drinking the Zero version. I'm only having the regular one.

100% agree with that cutscene control email. In the past 10 or so years it's more or less become universal that games allow pausing during cutscenes. But it's still not guaranteed, and also because it was not a thing for so long before then (when any button press would automatically skip), I'm still to this day always gunshy about hitting any buttons during a cutscene. I hate it. I just want full control over it.

@beggary: Thats bizarre lol, I mean I get the campfire part because I do taste the smoke/burnt thing but I genuinely do not taste graham crackers or marshmallow. I have to rethink everything now :p

To quote the late, great? Enzo Amore....

"Looks like we got a cuppa haters over here!"

American chocolate is indeed worse. As is soda with all the HFCS instead of cane sugar.

Street Fighter III was such a flex that the arcade cabinet marquee didn't even say "Street Fighter Three," it just said "THREE"

@goosemunch: Not a fan of Atari owning Mobygames. But they've had a variety of dubious owners over the years.

Elden Ring controls seem perfectly reasonable to me

Sincerely,

An Armored Core sicko

I feel like Dwayne Johnson is just too clean cut for Kratos. At this point he's just this man pretty much made out of jasmine-scented soap. I really feel Kratos needs to be more brutish and ugly than the Rock.

How about..... Christopher Judge actually as Kratos

Jan's Taylor Lautner drop got a guffaw out of me

Not to be too cynical, but I don't think companies are pulling out of Russia because of solidarity or humanitarianism, or at least not solely for those reasons. The ruble's value has halved in a fortnight and will probably remain unstable for some time. If payment processors are cutting ties, it'll probably get more expensive to do business there. Getting their money out of Russia will be difficult without SWIFT. Nobody wants to get asked "why are you still doing business in a country that everybody hates", and announcing an exit from the market will get some positive press. There's no reason to stay in. Human rights have nothing to do with it.

@nem: Chapters/segment times are on the YouTube version of the podcast if you’re looking for a specific topic.

My guess is that they must have some kind of character limit hard-coded into video descriptions on the GB website, or the formatting looks absolutely terrible if they were to put in something the length of chapter notation. But yeah, it’s silly that they exist elsewhere but not on the website. Hopefully the web dev time can improve that somehow, for a site with so many podcasts.

Jeff said what I was thinking regarding Epic/Bandcamp. The best outcome of this purchase would be if Epic just scrapped their entire Epic Storefront and replaced it with Bandcamp's. Bandcamp does not have a perfect storefront either of course, but it's vastly superior to most, and that could turn Epic into a useful DRM free competitor to GOG instead of a Uplay-ish mess.

Jess' stance/reaction to publishers pulling stuff out of Russia was really dumb. I don't know if she just doesn't understand how politics interweaves with any form of media but her reaction "oh no, that'll show them!" was really naive and ignorant for someone who supposedly understands the industry and the notion of business linking to politics.

“Think before you speak” has never applied to the Bombcast so perfectly as it does during the Black Ops/Russian sanctions sections. Not everything needs to be a race to make the quip.

Tony Chocolonely has a pretty fascinating background story.

Here in the Netherlands we have a long-standing TVprogram where a cast of hosts dive deep into a question regarding a common household item or product. This particular time the host & journalist Teun looked into the background of the chocolate-bar and decided to sue himself for chocolate-crimes because that industry is rife with slavery on plantations. The court eventually decided that he couldn't prosecute himself because that would mean every chocolate consumer should be prosecuted. He went to Nestle asking them to create a slave-free chocolate bar, but they weren't all that interested, so he pursued the goal himself and that's how Teun became the titular Tony Chocolonely. He no longer works for them & now is often critical on their moves and how they are losing sight of the objective.

On Fromgames:

I think part of the gatekeeping that the Souls community does, comes from a place that is afraid their beloved games will eventually change design and become streamlined to go over better with a mainstream audience. These games have pretty much already hit that mainstream by now, but they're still pretty much marching to it's own beat and unlike other AAA-games. There's a fear that eventually the gameplay starts to resemble something more akin to Assassins Creed, which makes the amazing world design and monster design of Dark Souls approachable to a wide audience, but makes the gameplay less special to those that were coming to the games for that.

It kind of reminds me of the story of MGS4. The MGS fanbase had never cared for the left, right trigger shooter gameplay and didn't see an issue with the triggers being bound to item & weapon selection. But to open up to a wider audience, MGS4 opened up those buttons to 'modernize' the gameplay. There comes a point where a series becomes so popular that the old guard gets nervous that the game will stray from it's roots to try to attract a new audience and that in that transition the magic gets lost.