The Giant Beastcast: Episode 187

Yeah, the bummer with the Ascensions is that all of the "sorta fun, but unreliable" deck archetypes for each class stop working once you get to a high enough ascension, and like you said, you basically have to learn the only 1-2 god archetypes that are still viable and win the most consistently.

Ascensions are an interesting way to add longevity to the game, but ascensions 15-20 are thankless and punishing to anything but the most optimized deck build. After 354 hours, I'm coming pretty close to just turning off the ascensions and steamrolling the normal mode over and over again where I can actually have fun drafting a deck. I'm up to ascension 18 on a couple characters, but it's barely fun anymore now that I have to get extraordinarily lucky god-tier card and relic synergies to have any chance to make it to the end of the run.

His main job's on Marvel Puzzle Quest, so Marvel-adjacent.

PU (poo) leather is synthetic leather - Polyurethane - hence why the real (cow) leather is more expensive.

It's fine, of course, but my mind is absolutely blown by how indifferent everyone who works here is towards Smash Bros.

Why is it hard for grown adult men to say "you know what, this game that is popular amongst every one, is not for me" instead of "this game sucks"

The market have spoken, people do enjoy Fortnite. No need to be condescending about it.

Fortnite is such a weird case that I think their complaints are valid. On paper, nothing about it as a game really explains how it got this big. People enjoy Fortnite, but more importantly children and preteens enjoy Fortnite. Despite there being hundreds of pretty well-crafted free-to-play game clients available that hypothetically millions of people could suddenly download, for some reason Fortnite is the one that millions and millions of kids with no credit card are downloading and playing. Fortnite is the motherlode that all other free to play shooters have always hoped they could somehow attain.

It's a cartoony shooter with honestly kinda bad shooting controls and really finnicky building controls that feel like a relic from the point in its development when it was a slower-paced wave-based survival game. I guess it's just the right kind of cartoony shooter for the kid demographic that grew up on Minecraft, and it came along right when the idea of battle royale game modes were becoming a big thing, but it's still crazy to me that of all the cartoony, F2P shooters that have tried to ape TF2, Borderlands, Minecraft, etc., somehow Fortnite with its weirdo building mechanics is the one that tens of millions of people are playing.

Anyway, yes, it's popular, the market has spoken, but I think members of the Beastcast are thoroughly justified in saying it plays like garbage and is a bad game if that's how they feel about it, regardless of how massively popular it is. Epic just happens to be some kind of marketing sorcerer. Don't get me wrong, they're supporting it well with all the updates and events and everything, but I think the underlying feel of the game is just kinda junk and I think all of the environment and character art is really generic and forgettable.

@bisonhero: This is exactly how I feel about Fortnite as well, but I can see how it can be very fun to play if you are into this kind of gameplay. I am not a PVP kind of guy, which makes it completely uninteresting for me. But if I had been that guy, having a F2P game of this size? I would probably be hooked as well.

I do find it funny that Giant Bombs 2017 GOTY was a buggy, generic (and sometimes downright ugly) looking shooter that to me seems like a bore and a slog to play. I understand those who like Fortnite more than those who like PUBG. But again, neither of these games are for me.

It would be good if some people would stop using the "I don't like this so it sucks and is bad" and instead start saying "I don't like it, I think it sucks" etc. It's a small change, but maybe it would stop some people complaining.

Was Bakalar wearing a hat indoors? Is that kind of barbarism acceptable over there?

I haven't played RDR 2 Online yet because I want to finish the story first, and that's a ways away for me. But, from the explanation at the beginning, the posse system sounded a bit like how companies worked in GTA V Online when they added those. One person fronts the cash to create one, and they're CEO, and then can invite other players to be part of the company. But if the CEO leaves that session/server, the company disappears and anyone who was in it is no longer a part of it. It was just a per-session basis, which I found really tedious and annoying actually. No feeling of permanence to it. So hearing that RDR 2 Online has something similar to that system is a bit of a bummer to me.

Also, the horses in RDR 2 do have a sense of self-preservation - I think Jeff B. described it best before the game came out. You don't control the horse, you're telling the horse where to go and it follows those directions. If you start moving towards a tree, it will automatically start steering/adjusting so as to not hit the tree. But you can fight that automatic adjustment, and if you do, you'll most likely end up hitting the tree. I've done this a few times, and once it happens I immediately realized how I messed it up. And if you are spamming A/X to go full-tilt then yeah you're going to hit something.

Alex's spirit willed me to play Thumper VR, apparently, as I finally got to it and finished it in two sittings. Guess what that game is still incredible and got robbed at the GOTY discussions.