The Giant Beastcast: Episode 236

Yeahhhhhh!

No Jeffrey

Matching thumbnails with the Bombcast this week!

A Jeff Bakalar impression requires getting mad at Vinny for having the gall to play The Division 2.

Edit: Happy Pissgiving!

SkateBIRD confirmed GOTY.

Enjoying the small crew cosycast!

I'd like to second Abby's rec of using face moisturizer every day. I put on some Cerave SPF 30 every morning and it's so easy. Worth it for reducing acne and not having dry skin.

Driving down the information super highway to Porn Town

What's the fascination with showering questions from this audience, seems like comes up every 3 months or so?

@sixtycakes: I just bought that Cerave one today lol. I was using Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel before but it seemed to irritate my skin and I would occasionally break out after using it in the morning. I think it might be the fragrance in it because it has a very strong smell. Hopefully this one works better.

Also, I wouldn't say moisturizers are a must for everyone because skin type is so different. There are some people who do not need it and can just splash warm water on their face and their natural oils will do all the work for them. But yeah the rest of us who have oily or dry skin or a combination need some sort of extra moisturization.

Many households don't have the Apple TV (or Roku, Fire, etc) connected to the same TV as their console. Also, consoles use much more electricity and are noisier for streaming media.

Oh my god that SkateBIRD game is genius. How has that idea and that name not been snatched up and turned into a microtransactions-fueled phone game already?

The Apple arcade trial is crystal clear about you not having access to games if you cancel it right away. The only way to not see it is if you had your eyes closed when you were cancelling.

They dont force you to take cards in Slay the Spire. In fact one of the best skills to learn is when you need to stop adding cards to your deck. You can skip every single after battle card draw.

Buttered Kaiser rolls are an old school NYC thing. I used to get that w/ coffee and a daily news on my way to highschool. That plus the small coffee was like 75 cents in 99-00.

Thats probably why im fat now. @vinny I'll back you up here.

Slay the spire is one of those games everyone is raving about, I played 20 hours of it, have not understand the hype. It’s great game for what it is, but it feels like I am missing something because the further the run the more bullshit enemies throw at you and it simply stops being fun.

@liquiddragon: yah I really didn’t get the complaint there and was more surprised that it was backed up. Like it’s a free trial, you’re already getting a freebie, and then it’s ALL of $5 for a month.

@neocalypso: I’ve sunk at least a couple hundred hours into Slay the Spire, and occasionally watched Twitch streams of it where I’ve picked up a lot of advanced strategies, and my biggest problem with the game is the tutorialising. Deck-drafting card games are a pretty underrepresented genre in video games unless you very specifically play Hearthstone, MtG, etc. Underrepresented to the point that I think these games need to forcefully teach players the principles of the genre, and I don’t think they do a good enough job.

I came into StS having played a fair bit of IRL Dominion, another deck drafting game where friends had taught me the concepts of keeping your deck lean, having the right balance of different purpose cards in your deck, looking out for synergies that aren’t immediately obvious, keeping a reasonable mana/resource curve in your deck, etc. So going into StS I immediately grasped what it was going for, but to someone without that prior experience, it can be a steep learning curve which the game doesn’t help you with very much.

My recollection of StS’s brief tutorial is that it explains how things work (”press skip to not always add a card after a fight“, ”press this in the shop to remove cards from your deck”), but not necessarily why that’s so important. It’s intuitive for some, but if you don’t have a statistics-leaning mind, it may not be apparent. I think it leads to situations where players new to the genre bounce off it because they don’t understand why they’re losing and the game just doesn’t offer much in the way of high-level tips.

I guess it’s kinda the same issue as a lot of strategy games. Like, you can know how the pieces work in chess or StarCraft, but you’ll still lose to a more skilled player every time who knows how to use them better. People expect that of a PvP game, while StS is pure PvE but you very much need to know your shit to succeed in that game (though honestly on the lowest difficulty you can kinda clown around).

I recently attempted to put a little bit of skate into Session.

It's my first time with the Unreal Editor, so it's pretty rough. Not an exact replica of the community center area from the demo and game, but fans will probably recognize a lot of the general layout.

This is a nice surprise, I thought they weren’t recording one this week

I don’t really get the surprise about stadia. It’s a brand new attempt at a new tech of course there will be hiccups. Like you think u are going to get the performance of a $2000 gaming pc for $10 a month right off the bat? Like ok I guess but I have a bridge to sell you.

Giantbomb is owned by cbs and still has hiccups in their videos. They’ve been doing this for decades and there are still hiccups. Give stadia some time to get everything worked out otherwise we will be stuck buying $500 consoles forever. Progress takes time.

@stradalemc: True, but this isn’t the early 90s where any Philips or Panasonic motherfuckers can half-ass their way into launching a gaming platform because it’s still an emerging playing field. It’s a very competitive market, and platform debuts are important (look at how much the bad messaging damaged the launch of the Xbox One which totally blew their lead going into this generation).

Launching Stadia in this weird state where it has half the features and only works on one specific Chromecast model just seems like it’s not going to get enough attention for the platform, despite it having a concept that should be wowing people. Were this any other service, I feel like Stadia would be in some kind of New Zealand-only closed beta.

@bisonhero: yes but a soft launch a year before new consoles is much smarter than in Dec. just being like “hey don’t buy that console here is a new thing”. They need a year of build if for this. No one and I mean no one would just flip from Xbox or PS if they don’t get the tech out there and get it known and proven. I don’t care how good it is people would be skeptical and just buy the known quantity.

Do a slow roll out and get the bugs worked out before new consoles hit next year is the smarter decision.

In regards to the question about which developer after Hiedo Kojima should be next in being able to make a game the exact way he or she wants, Suda51 comes to mind. Maybe having a ton more funds available would resolve the janky control and/or gameplay issues some of his notable games tend to have.

This sounds great with just the three of you. Calmer and more laid back, not so frantic as usual.

This is probably already been posted but I’m on mobile in the super market:

The Apple Arcade trial is very very clear about how it works when you initiate the cancellation. I just set a reminder on my phone after seeing their language.

That being said,it does suck that they deviated from what is the fairly typical cancellation handling. It’s not unheard of though.

“How about shit in the shower? Just take a big ol’ dump...”

“I shit in the bath.”

“Yeah sometimes you forget your toys.”

“Oh GOD”

I feel like that was a game of chicken and Abby lost.

Buttered roll is absolutely a thing in NYC and surrounding areas. Vinny is right - and they are tasty.

There are a few reasons I prefer my Fire Stick 4k over my consoles. For one, it’s always on so I turn my tv and I’m immediately watching something, it takes much longer on consoles even with the fast start modes on. The stick also places all your video apps front and center, it’s more streamlined to use just for video streaming. Also, you can’t get the Apple TV app on consoles but you can on most streaming devices. Then there’s the Netflix HDR problem. On both consoles if you have HDR enabled Netflix will leave HDR on 100% of the time, even when watching SDR content. That’s been a problem for years and they still haven’t fixed that for some reason. Lastly, I use different picture settings on my console, most notably game mode, which decreases latency but also decreases image quality somewhat and it’s a pain switching it back and forth.

Just pay the $5 for Apple Arcade...

Glad to hear Abby checking out Slay the Spire. Sounds like it'll get lost come game of the year time, but it is a game that is worth putting time into if you like strategy / run-based / card-based games. I was lukewarm for 5-10 hours as I was learning the mechanics, but after having a few runs click with me and discovering just how deep the strategy really is it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time.

Think I've now dropped over 300 hours into it getting every class up to the highest difficulty level and playing a run or two a night. The level of learning you go through in the game in discovering the relative strength of cards, how to flexibly build a deck, how to take on each of the different encounters optimally, and how to pilot a deck well is up there with some of the best strategy games I've played.

Key random thing that made the game finally get into my head:

Understanding what cards are "good" and what ones will fit into your deck are key. A more focused deck will let you more reliably draw and play your best cards that are key to the strategy you develop, so skipping adding cards or removing bad cards are often the best options you can take. I used card tier lists online to help me develop a sense for what is good, as the game has a lot of mediocre-to-bad cards and a common early strategy is just to flood your deck with card adds you don't want.

Eventually you will get a feel for developing your deck and understanding what combos the deck has, which are really the meat of the game's deck-building. There are really innumerable ways to build a deck and win a run, which is what makes the game so amazing. One time you'll have a deck that multiplies strength to insane levels so you are obliterating every opponent, next time you'll develop a deck that blocks everything possible and wins through attrition, next time you'll get some fun combo with poison for the Silent or orbs for the Defect that carry you.

Health is a pretty precious resource, so you're often better trying to full block rather than putting out unneeded damage. Getting through encounters as healthy as possible is really important, as that lets you spend that health going for harder encounters, lets you upgrade cards rather than resting, or lets you spend health on some random events to make yourself stronger.

Try to plan out your route through an act to maximize your value, usually by maximizing the elite enemies and campfires you go across, which will then get you more relics and upgraded cards. Relics are the other key mechanic to the game that will usually be the thing that breaks your deck open. An early powerful relic can get you through huge chunks of the game.

Heh. I know Abby and Alex have both lived in NYC for many, many years... but not getting the concept of a buttered roll is the best example yet of "you think you're a New Yorker, but people who grew up here are always gonna be a *bit* suspicious of your bona fides."

I would love to see what Frictional could do with an unlimited budget. All of their games so far have been great but kind of restrained by budget.

Anyone else scroll away as fast as they can when they hit a big mutli-paragraph post? Guys, no one reads your Slay the Spire (et al.) strategies. Respect the passion though. And StS is great.

I need to hear why Alex got blocked by Jon Favreau lol, I love Pod Save America!

That email from a media studies PhD that incidentally mentioned how academia was a nightmare was a good rebuttal to Dan's recent comment that was like "I got a general studies degree in film without going to class, I'm sure getting a PhD in film studies is easy." Too bad he wasn't on this one

WooooooW...FUCK Stadia. Dick move google.

Anyone know what the buggy Nintendo game Vinny was talking about was?

I agree with Abby, I game on PC previously using my PS4 for streaming but decided to try an Apple TV and its so streamlined! I can even stream movies from my PC and mirror any content from my devices, remote is easy to use, can pair any stereo or headset and it natively even supports PS4 and Xbox One controllers. They even have Steamlink!!

@squigiliwams: I used to get a buttered roll on the way to school every day in NJ, I didn't realize that was such a weird thing! People are missing out.

Not sure how I feel about blanket statements about skin care ("everyone should...")

Meh.

Anyway I'm most frustrated that the immediate answer to the dev-who-deserves-a-budget wasn't SWERY. I want the rest of D4 damn it!

I mean, I'm sure outliers exist just like anything, but the American Academy of Dermatology recommends that EVERYONE should wear sunscreen EVERYDAY. It's just healthy living.

Just wanted to say this was a fabulous episode. Sometimes less is more when it comes to making quality content.

@rounderob: Agreed. @alex go on Blocked Party

@k9: Exactly, it even mentions it when you sign up. Loving when people blame stuff on others for their own mistakes.

@liquiddragon: Love it!! I was about to post the same snapshots!!😂. Abby is gonna be in trouble when she closes on a mortgage in the future ...☹️😝