The Giant Beastcast: Episode 225

lmao abby on Control: what's the big deal I don't get it it's fine I guess, Abby on the sims; Witches are awesome!

hard to tell just how early she is but I'm p. sure its no spoiler to say if you are a fan of Annihilation, the matrix, or the twilight zone, it would be odd to not at least be intrigued by Control I think..

I like the devils advocate in Abby even if I saw this one coming- Abby if you can shove all of what's been said around Control out of mind, please do play control as if you hadn't been told anything. At least that's how I went in and everything about it was a surprise for me; while I already knew I was gonna love it. I'm not sure you can get the same effect after this much discussion on the cast and this saddens me because as jeff said about (maybe read dead?) games like this don't come along too often. If ya don't dig it, totally fair but I think waiting for it to impress is to kind of sidestep the natural-unwrap that feels fun to investigate around the world. So don't read the industrial sized hype that is the next paragraph about how great it is. Bioshock Infinite/red dead level f5 praisetext; brace yourself-

Control's so good and unique I've in my head just been comparing it to all the best action john woo graphical and story game highlights of my life like max payne and psi ops met zelda's rule of threes with bosses, and dead rising's timed mission events that mae the 'role of director awesome to inhabit, and the narrative/worldcontext-storytelling all rolling into that once-per-ten years game that hits me like RE4 with hallway/gun elements, half life 2's gravity gun and certain self-awareness within a genre. Then some mix of both dead space monsters and ECHO's lights-on-supernatural dressings, or dead rising/bioshock's contained area with elements meant to make it feel like you just arrived in an aftemath to piece it together in a horror-beauty mystery where when not running and throwing couches, loot-light, and eye out for documents and other stuff, because they give you sometimes important context/access/progression, and finally, a very solid delivery.

Something that pinged me off the bat was how similar to senua's sacrifice/fictional schizophrenic first third person inner monologues were up front and showcase, as if a nod from Remedy like, slow start, don't worry. They also earn the cliche pin of 'the environment is a main character' even the most boring hallways have a great buildup dread the longer you don't see something and the more you listen to the incantations; (I literally jumped at one point in the atlas room because I was trying to suss out the hypnosis speech and suddenly demon man warps in. Also, the way the game literally 'flows' with the combat, is directly and almost perpetually spectacular in how levels are designed- and because that design ranges from sterile government office to full on Space Odyssey ending, and enemy variety, beyond what alex reduced in the QL to 'swat guys and staff', in a way that nobody has talked about thanfully. Also how you fight feels great and is extra well suited for a very well thought out design and visual map of The Oldest House, for destructability, set pieces, and dynamic fights that are just fun to have, instead of barriers to get past. Dying does I guess suck in terms of trekking odd save-spots, but beyond that, pretty much got my solid pick for GOTY barring super surprises.

*edit: and now, thanks to the news section, which actually was news to me, I am now super pumped that there is DLC coming for Control. Remedy gave a fat 'Probably no to more Control' in a discussion over NG+ or what if anything next for Control. I have been breaking the game up over a few weeks because I don't want it to be over, excellent, Remedy done good.

**edit edit: I know I've used up more than my fair characters for a comment box, but regarding Death Stranding- if it can match half the surprise and tamed-dark-chaotic-unknown and playability of Control, Ill be happy to play it. I am a fan of most of Kojima's stuff and I like surreal and supernatural and science fiction enough to not watch gameplay footage and analyze it all before I play it for myself. Obviously, that was the right call for Control in my book, so I think watching and contextualizing an hour feature on a game that is similar in some angles to Control in known/logical meets supernatural explained science, is to possibly going to rob one of what makes playing it (for gameplay or just the cutscenes), 'fun/good/for you', because you've already taken your stance on a genre, a personality, a reputation so on, This rule applies for the expectations on any game, be it Cyberpunk, Death Stranding or Red Dead 2 as the best example of divisive- how you'll feel about the game when you have the actual platform having played it to work with resonates more than empty opinion, and rewards you with something sometimes fucking awesome, hype is real etc, less often than not, but sometimes.

Then I was thinking. If Abby's cool with a man crippled (or just wat) to a shared bed for 20 years and then doing a jig because 'its a musical' I think is like accepting a thematic opposite relative level of craziness as ridiculous but fun as kojima's batshit, because 'it's a video game' as a forgiveness clause feels just as valid haha.

And I love Jeff's pinball idea, it's a good idea, Jeff. You deserve better than these squares

I couldn't.

I don't think this is a hot take actually. It's mostly media that overhypes him because he tends to be very polarizing at times and that's great story material. That said, he does have his qualities and I'm curious to see what comes off Death Stranding. We certainly don't get AAA games that unique every year.

@dashibuya: Did you listen to that part of the podcast 3 times or something? Where did you get 22 minutes of Sims talk?

@bladeofcreation: I'll be honest. Once she started talking the Sims I just started skipping until I distinctly heard the conversation change.

I really wonder how Death Stranding will shake out once the game comes out, because so far it seems like it's got a lot of the same systems that RDR2 had, that Dan grew to absolutely hate, but I bet Dan (and others) who hated those systems-heavy interactions and long travel time in RDR2 will absolutely love it in this, because it's Kojima and he gets free passes on everything.

I'd love to be wrong and for the game to be good, but I'm really not feeling it. Can't wait to see reviews and reactions to the game post launch.

So Dan doesn't know the difference between the Pixel phone and the Android operating system, turns to his friend Jeff who works for frickin' CNET and the guy gives the most cryptic non-answer? Sometimes I really feel for Dan. Don't get me wrong, he asks a lot of stupid shit, but it's ok to not know about everything and to expect the tech expert to be able to explain it in an easy way and not have to rely on Vinny to sum it up.

@benderunit22: For like a decade now, GB have been this weird brand of Apple purists who both condescend Android and display amazing ignorance about it. I absolutely agree with you, though, Bakalar should have been way more helpful than he was. It's sort of in his job description.

They have said Death Stranding was an open world game from the very early stages, they just hadn't built the game out yet so they couldn't show what didn't exist yet.

The footage looks like an evolution of MGSV (the UI is almost identical), but they swapped out the secret agent spy/soldier stuff for this new 2001/Solaris inspired sci-fi stuff and focused more on being in that world and traversing it rather than infiltrating various bases. Kojima seems to be making a similar game from before, but certain key things have changed now that he isn't shackled to the legacy of what MGS is. If anything, the gameplay and the narrative seem to be as tightly coiled as they have ever been for him. Even the kernels of MGSV's online player connected nuclear disarming concept now has been deeply re-envisioned and used for a bunch of other things throughout the game and narrative.

Either way 2019 has been good but it's easily the most compelling, unique and exciting thing in video games this year.

every time you guys talk about VR I just imagine you sitting around in your wheelchairs or leaning on a walker waiting to hear if the mid-afternoon snack will be strained peaches or prunes.

@dan_citi: Abby likes everything Bjork does. If Bjork killed an entire African village with napalm, Abby would dig it.

Seconded. It feels like this segment is on weekly by now, I know that Abby plays a lot of this game and good for her, but man I just zone out whenever she begins her Sims reminiscing.

First time I've ever disliked the beastcast was the phone talk. Just absolute death. Feels like the kind of convo people had 10 years ago. I can't believe it went on as long as it did too.

Bjork isn't on the oculus store for rift or quest.

you could stream from a computer through Virtual Desktop with Steam Vr, which isn't difficult but would mean putting the quest in dev mode.

It's not hard or lengthy but given Dan can't keep it charged it will be deemed too complicated.

I thought about saying this last week, but didn't.

Now that it has come up again. Wilmot's Warehouse is in the Humble Monthly Trove. so if you have Humble Monthly, you can get it free.

EDIT: Now that the quick look is up, I see it has changed a bit. The Steam and Switch version are more up to date. Trove version is older.

A show where Abby has to play driving simulators while giving updates on her driving (with Dan wearing some sort of drving instructor costume(??) probably(??)) would be a lot of fun. Bring out the racing wheel!

@escapevelocity: I don't speak Japanese, and have only heard about what was shown as I have no desire to watch it but it's really not as complicated as people have said. Read some things about what was shown about the gameplay loop and some of the random goofy stuff you can do followed by comments of people going "but what is it?!" is mind boggling as it sounds like it really showed off a lot to help people.

@soybomb43: I like. May I suggest the titles Abby and the Bandit or The Dansporter.

At the end of the day, they're all rectangles what you click squares on. Not saying Android and iOS are exactly the same, but a lot of apps carry over and you can just about do the same things on them. I never understand the Apple users that act as though no other phone can also have clickable squares.

I was thinking there's no way those kids died in that movie, but then I remembered the boat ride... maybe they did.

My dark sense of humor: When I read your comment, I got this image of Brjork has some awful dictator of an African country. However, she still speaks in her squeaky, child-like voice.

Every time Abby says Okeydokey it reminds of an Austrian TV show for kids where they say it pretty much the same way.

Did Dan not shoot the ice in the Gears 5 fight? I died once against it, and I’m not spectacular at the game. But it would be a god awful fight if you didn’t realize she could get stuck inside the ice lol

It's so cute when they try to talk about Kingdom Hearts. Turns out it's not all Disney or Final Fantasy! Sure it's very complicated to know the intricacies of that series, but you should at least know that yes, that game has been released and no, that game is not Final Fantasy + Disney. I haven't even played those games but that bit was like nails on a chalkboard to me. Also, i'm pretty sure all the people in the room have had this talk at least 3 times before in the lead up to, you know the game that got released and had big trailers at big shows they were at.

Dan's mind is going to explode when he hears about OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE. Also, if you're not 80 years old you can operate an android phone. My 60 year old uncle bought one for the first time this year and does fine. You're not out there typing in command line commands and surfing the pirate bay to download some shady links to apps that might be locking you out of your phone or something. No one is like 'well.. i have to buy playstations from here on out because i just don't think i can handle the way microsoft makes menu's on their system.' These things are made to be easy to use.

Only played the first Mordor game but i thought the whole idea that you had to die to make stuff happen was terrible. I felt like i wasn't getting enough of that nemesis system to happen by playing the game correctly. I had to fail to get that 'oh noo, not you again!' nemesis feeling.

I'm all for that pinball feature. Pinball is great :)

As for Grandpa Joe, i'm a bit fuzzy on the details but i bet that having all these grandparents in the same house laying in bed all time was a way to capture the imagination of a child what it's like to be poor and have disease struck your family which makes it feel like they have to be in the bed at all time. The one time that this rule for poor sickly people gets swapped out for a dancing grandpa is when FINALLY something good happens to the family. The golden ticket is such a grand prize, it even gets the sickly grandpa out bed to celebrate it.