The Giant Beastcast: Episode 193

Febuary-February-Februrary-Feburary.

4 ways to say the month's name.

@tfarcevol: It's a They Might be Giants song. But, nice Bobs ref.

@benderunit22: but also, DONT PREORDER GAMES

Boy, I just cannot get over the triangle conversation, still.

Every podcast I think, "Dan has gone as far as he can go."

Now, triangles.

I don't silent the first 'r' in February. I just put way less emphasis on the 'u'.

hearing them talk about the port authority 2 hours before I have to go there for my commute made my skin crawl.

HEY EVERYBODY, CHECK OUT THIS KID’S DORITOS

@benderunit22 said:

Every platform gets its start from exclusive content that necessitates joining the new ecosystem. In the case of Steam this came from Valve's acquisition of the two most popular mods at the time, Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, and the transition from won.net to Steam that required all users to adopt Steam in order to continue playing online.

I'm also really not seeing the whole "piece of garbage" angle. To be frank, any community of people that happen to be circulating that sort of empty-headed sentiment aren't worth engaging with. Epic's store is very bare-bones, but it's incredibly stable and serves its purpose. If I were to contrast where their store is relative to where Steam, EA/Origin, Ubisoft, Windows Store, etc were in their first couple years of operation, I would say Epic is in a very positive position.

If Epic had something equivalent to the Steamworks service/API which supplied more tightly integrated back-end features (especially like online match-making), then you would probably see kids complaining even louder about how Epic is attempting to permanently lock-in communities to their service. IMO it's a waste of time trying to reason with those sorts of people - they've got an axe to grind and will view the landscape from whatever perspective they need to justify their outrage.

So I guess I'm one of those freaks that still goes physical with the majority of my purchases? Physical games go on sale so fast after launch and I had Best Buy's program to save me more. I'm kind if the same with books: I have book apps on my tablet and that's fine, but I still prefer holding a physical book.

Possible MGScanlon type franchise play through with Abby and Dan? ResiDant Abby.

Regarding the hate for the patriots, Spygate was 100% cheating that for years greatly helped build their dynasty. Hell, when the Broncos hired the patriots offensive coordinator as head coach he got caught doing the same thing.

There’s also been all the rule changes that make it easier for quarterbacks like Brady to stay in the game and succeed: can’t hit low in the pocket, can’t hit high, tuck rule, etc.

The patriots also happen to be in one of, if not the least competitive division in football, guaranteeing a playoff birth and possible home field advantage and first round bye. They can literally win their division with an 8-8 record almost every year.

The refs also tend to throw more flags in the patriots favor. I don’t think it’s rigged but the patriots always get more breaks from the refs than their opponents.

Lastly, similar to Dan, the patriots have ‘deal with the devil’ type of luck which is aggravating to a lot of people.

So I’m usually all in with riding the Dan said something crazy train, but this one wasn’t too bad. He just wanted to know if triangles are widely used in irl physical life. The set up got a little out of hand. But otherwise it was a decent question from someone who doesn’t know much about that stuff

That sounds cool, although as someone who hasn't really played the series, I'd love it if they could start with the remake of the first game rather than just continue on from their playdate of RE2.

While I would fully welcome an Abby focused series with RE, I also want to mention Resident Kineval, with friends of the site Mary Kish and Mike Mahardy. It's a lot of fun and there are like a billion episodes to binge.

Did Dan ever play the RE0 remaster? I feel like he'd appreciate being able to drop items wherever you want instead of needing an item box.

HOT TAKE

RE6 > RE5

noclip does good video game documentaries

Abby would probably defend Apple even if news came out that they were the root cause of African genocide for the past 30 years.

At least we have Vinny to balance things out.

Of course personal taste is what it is, but I'm always surprised by how much Alex hates Detroit but will say Beyond was in any shape or form enjoyable or redeemable as a videogame experience, much less a story. At least Detroit has some interesting scenarios to playthrough while a good chunk of Beyond is so mindlessly tedious and boring. You work on a farm or beg for food - it's not only dull from the gameplay side but the story does it NO favors and the uncanny valley is unnerving in a way that Detroits isn't.

I remember playing several hours of Beyond because it was free on PS Plus and at one point just not being able to stomach it anymore despite genuinely kind of wanting to know what the heck is happening with these super powers and stuff. The erratic timelime progression was a neat idea if not for the fact that whenever things started getting interesting you'd be pulled into a sequence where you're a young child and have to tidy up your room or something.

I don't know if they're fully regional in the northeast or limited only to Pennsylvania, but Weyerbacher puts out some of my favorite beers. Merry Monks, Insanity, Blithering Idiot... what I wouldn't give if they distributed to Texas.

@i_speel_my_dreenk: Might be a while, considering they have a beer literally called Dallas Sucks haha.

It's been a while since we've had a "Peak Dan" moment on this website, but a hypothetical about "What if an EMP got rid of all the triangles" was up there.

Yuengling is fine and, for its price point, the superior beer.

The way they misrepresented the epic game store and Metro/Steam deal makes me legitimately angry. If you have no idea what you are talking about then you really need to just shut up. Especially Alex.

If you're going to say something like that, maybe explain how/why they misrepresented the deal and then email a correction instead of pouting like this.

I have exactly zero interest in typing up an elaborate explanation as to why they (mostly Alex) misrepresented the issue. That shit has been all over the internet hundreds of times. I'm not going to waste my time reiterating everything,just to have an smart ass spout the typical "It's just another launcher. Competition is great" shit again.

They could have informed them themselves before talking out of their asses, but in good old GB fashion they didn't.

@depecheload: They miss several points that are important to why people are upset.

They talk about the revenue split like that was the deciding factor when it wasn't. Deep silver got paid for a one year exclusivity deal. That's why they say the game will be available on steam next year.

Deep silver even proves this point even further by trying to PR-spin it as a customer benefit by claiming the game will be 50$ instead of 60$ that it was on steam because of the better revenue split for them.

Conveniently they don't point out that the game is now more expensive on the Epic store in every other region than North America since Epic charges transaction fees and don't offer regional prices like steam does.

The Epic store gives no benefits at all for customers in EU for example, and since Metro is a EU developed game, a lot of the player base is located here. Epic store are missing features like cloud saves, achievements, good refund policies etc and the game is more expensive.

They also mention that competition is good, but Epic is not competing. They are bribing developers to make their games exclusive to their store. That's not competition, if the game was available on both steam and epic store but the game was cheaper on the epic store, that would be competition. But they know they cant compete since their store is worse in every possible way right now.

Alex also mentions that steam is like a monopoly and that is just false. You can buy steam codes for games from a lot of different storefronts like green man gaming and humblebundle. They mix up monopoly of selling games with the drm and distribution system of games valve offers.

Epic moneyhatting developers to get exclusive games is not good for consumers or competition, and its not the same as Origin, Ubisoft or even Steam since their exclusives are first party where the development is funded by the publisher of the storefront.

If you want arguably unfair angle, look to the angle that now exclusivity will be bought and how the Operencia team used Valve's beta features then amscrayed to Epic's.

We're likely to get much more half-a-dozen-sized teams taking some RMB from 10c and its inherent stability in the future, with Valve being encouraged to match this, plus GOG being left out of this behemoth fight should it occur. Things could get VERY messy here.

Imagine being Danny O'Dwyer and hearing your friends on their popular podcast grasping to remember good video game documentaries.

I had lobster mac & cheese for lunch today, and I have to stand by the opinion that cheese and pasta just don't add much to lobster. The former are too heavy for the latter, and the savory taste of the cheese is just fighting the savory taste of the lobster. Won't touch on the financial aspect, but tastewise, Dan ain't missin' much.

Also, Dan Defense #2: I was surprised by the triangle conversation, but by everyone else's lack of awareness of how important triangles are in structural strength instead of Dan posing the question.

@indigozeal: Yeah, they kinda glossed over how the underlying frame/structure of nearly everything is either a triangle or square. Buildings, bridges, most video games, would pretty significantly fall apart if all triangles were removed.

Or if he just meant like, triangles written or drawn on something then I guess we’d all be fine. But if Dan’s triangle EMP affected physical objects also shaped like triangles, it would be a really big deal.

All Dan was saying is "Buildings look square but I think they might have triangles somewhere in them, so are triangular shapes a structural necessity for buildings?"

@danryckert@vinny Apologies if this was already pointed out, but HowToLongBeat play times are intended to be how long it takes for a new player sitting down with the game for the first time to get to the game's ending. I.e. it's total play time taking into account the period of learning the game to beating it. It is not the time for one successful run by a player who already knows the game.

To be fair to Dan, I would wager that a large number of students, possibly the majority, don't actually read assigned books. It was always easy to tell that most people didn't when I was in class. Hell, I was an English major and I didn't read a chunk of assigned books in college. I've never been a good student, admittedly.

I don't think Vinny was completely off-base saying certain aspects of the whole Metro not on Steam thing was unfair. I can give one personal example where something similar affected me, in a very small way. I was planning on buying The Division 2 on Steam. They had a Steam store page up for it since it was announced. I have Steam funds on my account, and I planned pretty much since the game was announced that I was going to use those funds towards The Division 2. For the longest time, though, it wasn't available to pre-order; it was simply listed on the store. That should've been a red flag, and as 2018 ended, it was becoming one. But, regardless, I held off on buying some more expensive games that I have on my Steam wishlist during the Winter Sale because the funds I had were planned on going towards Division 2. And then, just a couple of weeks after the Winter Sale ended, it was announced that Division 2 wouldn't be on Steam. I was a bit pissed, because if I had known that earlier, I would've used those Steam funds during the sale.

As Abby was saying, I don't think that multiplayer/MMO games count in the "playing more than one game at a time" category. They're designed to be played in bursts, and you're not having to keep track of a narrative or anything.

That story about the Galaxy 2 disc.

Pretty sure Ryan laughed his ass off in heaven at that one.

Shout out to War of the Monsters. Loved that game.

Rodan is the best kaiju.

Just catching up on the podcasts.

I am going to age myself, but there used to be a burger chain in the US called Burger Chef. You, typically, ordered either a plain hamburger/cheeseburger with a bun, and then took it to the "Works Bar" and added your own toppings. Granted, it was burger-basic stuff: pickles, lettuce tomatoes, onions, etc.

More recently, near where I live in the Midwest, there was a chain called Macs-n-Melts that sold "fancy" mac-n-cheese. They went out of business after about a year.

BioWare was never that good anyway. All of their RPGs felt very streamlined to me.

I went there once at the end of a visit to New York and it was the closest thing to hell on earth I've ever witnessed. I was unfamiliar with the place so it was a struggle to find the entrance. Before entering, I was greeted with raving screams. On the inside, a nightmare maze and everyone seemed angry and reluctant to help. A very large man in a yellow do-rag with bug-out eyes was standing next to a pillar and called me over in order to very obviously lead me to the wrong place. No fucking clue what was waiting for me there.

If at all possible I advise all to avoid Port Authority forever.

"The world is changing. Things we assumed would always be there are just vanishing."

Hello, 2020.