The Giant Beastcast: Episode 244

Call of Duty is a special kind of awful when it comes to updates. The whole goddamn game gets reinstalled, basically. It's the weirdest shit.

I wouldn't place the fault at Sony for this one. I play a ton of Red Dead Online and even that game doesn't have the issues CoD has.

OMG guys take a day, go buy a quest, and make sure everyone goes through the opening steps tutorial and then spends at least an hour in it. Everyone's ignorance on vr is now way past the expired date.

@vinny said:

Hey Vinny, you're a great host. Talk about whatever you want. It's always fun to listen to you guys talk about anything (wait maybe not... Mahardy's poop urinal story...???). Thanks for the great content every week!

I'm a wealthy industrialist, and if GB puts a moratorium on both Kingdom Hearts and The Sims discussions, I will purchase 1,000 premium memberships per year indefinitely. GB, the ball is in your court.

The Modern Warfare updates really are getting ridiculous. Me and a buddy had a couple of hours we could party up and play the game tonight, we can’t even play together every weekend so we take the time we can get. Well 2 hours wasn’t even enough to update so needless to say that didn’t happen. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I found Alex's take on Breaking Bad equally funny and frustrating, and emblematic of something that's been somewhat annoying to me about some of the critics on many of the podcasts I've listened to lately. I mean, it's fine to not find something as revelatory as others, and in Breaking Bad's case, had the show ended at the two seasons he watched, I'd probably agree too. But the critics that he casually called out didn't put Breaking Bad on the pedestal because of the first two seasons, it's because of largely the last three and the show as a whole. Those last three seasons, btw, are some of the most influential seasons of television in the last decade, with SO many shows obviously trying to out Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad. And hell, if you aren't into it, drop it, but to then question other critics and the community at large for the love of something when you don't finish it to actually understand why it's so lauded is a strange sort of phenomenon that just baffles me. Maybe he'll still end up finding the praise perplexing, and that's cool, many do, but come on now, at least watch it first before you question other's rationale.

Honestly, Alex was pretty respectful and tame in this, and I only call him out because it's the latest in a long line of instances of this, but it just reminded me that I've heard this same sort of thing from many other critics and reviewers lately that I would think they would know better. This kind of critic-call out mentality or culture where it's not just enough to stop playing or watching something you don't like, but then proceed to lambaste other reviewers for their love of it, often while questioning their critical eye and awareness of other pieces in the genre. I've especially seen this with games, probably due to the fact that many of them can be long. That would be like reviewing Lonesome Dove after the first 100 pages and calling the whole book dull (to use another point from the podcast ) while questioning why other people, who have read the whole thing, love it so much.

In short, love or hate something, I just hope more people will start finishing things before they critically question others more informed opinions that have. Call me crazy, but I think conversations around art might be a tad bit more positive (yeah, probably crazy. :P).

@internetdotcom:

The fair catch/mark rule and subsequent right to a free kick is so old that it predates meaningful differences between types of football.

eg. It's in the original laws of association football (soccer) despite handling the ball being banned in those same laws. It's also a main part of Australian Rules Football despite that being codified even earlier.

@stephen_von_cloud: it is super entertaining, what’s wrong with you (@vinny ignore him)

If you enjoy Herzog performances, check out Julien Donkey-Boy.

@ybbaaabby: The book you were talking about may be The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. If so, your take is absolutely the correct one. It is long and not good.

perhaps next week the thumbnail pic will ACTUALLY be bernie and not a stand-in

yeah, Kentucky Route Zero is really special. one of the few games to nail a magical realism look and feel, especially that of Carson McCullers and some others.

also I can't think of a book I hate more than Catcher in the Rye...god I disliked it so much I didn't read another fiction novel for years after (I was like 16 when I read it.) Every last thing about how the main character spoke screamed with the stench of skunk of a out-of-touch adult trying to approximate how an "edgy" young man might talk like. So insufferably lame I can't even. I hated it so much when people kept saying "oh this is one of the classic American novels" I sort of wrote off reading any others for awhile because I thought "well if that is one of the best, they all must suck."
Yet in reality there's drastically more to and superior works of literature out there than the milquetoast Catcher in the Rye.

Wind Up Bird Chronicles is my absolute favorite novel, it had the same effect on me. Don't care for any of his other work. Really happy to hear it mentioned on the Beastcast. Great taste Vinny!!!

I think the era where internet famous wasn't proper famous is long gone. In fact, Mark Rober got a deal with Discovery(IIRC) to make a TV show, and his salary compared to his salary as a youtuber was paaaaathetic. If money is your goal, internet fame is where it's at. You just have to be independent so that a corporation/investors can't take all the profits whilst exploiting the workers for an hourly salary. No one working for a large corporation will make money off their internet fame. Being someone's asset will never create wealth.

I envy the internet famous folks out there. Hard work, but maaaan does it sound like an awesome way to live.

@dan_citi: To be fair, and saying this as someone who doesn't really give a shit about Catcher, I think Salinger was pretty young when he started writing it.

@swazzyswess: Not all heroes wear capes. I thank you for your boldness.

I honestly have the opinion that Bird-up Chronicle is my least favourite Haruki Murakami. But again I really love Kafka on the Shore.

But that’s a moot because Ryu is the better Murakami anyway. In the Miso Soup is mind blowing incredible book.

I started reading the Murakami short story collection that had Burning in it a while ago but the opening story was too close to my routine so I put it down. But it's weird that as an English Major during a time when those books were really in vogue with a lot of people, I never got the time to read them when reading books was the thing I was in school for.

@madbootsy: @obikwiet: People are allowed to leave feedback.

Whoa now, I stopped the podcast at the point where Mike is -I think- about to describe the opening hours of the new DOOM?! Can someone spoiler-check for me? I don’t want to know how that game starts - do I skip the rest of the episode? Maybe I am just too sensitive but for me it was enough to het parts of another unreleasedngame spoiled - Alex talking about Kentucky Raute Zero was a but too far for me as well, talking about specific scenes. Unreleased on consoles that is, I haven’t had the chance (or wanted to - I am not enterested in early access) to play the game yet.

@shadypingu: My guess for the book Abby put down halfway through was (spoilered since something she said is a big spoiler for it) Use of Weapons from The Culture series by Iain M. Banks. Kind of a shame since I think it's a really great series, but it's one of my least favourite entries in it.

@l1ama: Hmm. Iain Banks is kind of a shameful gap in my SF reading, I should get into the Culture series. Anyway,The Gone-Away World prominently features the twist Abby mentioned too. But who knows--it feels like a very common plot element, especially in sci-fi/fantasy.

When did I say "people aren't allowed to leave feedback"?

@dastardry said:

I never said they weren't allowed to leave feedback...? I was even leaving Vinny some positive feedback, so I extra don't understand this kind of response.

I guess I am one of the lucky ones, with regards to COD updates. I have not really experienced any issues updating on PS4 since the game launched. Granted, I do not use the suspend mode.

Alex did an awesome job of describing Kentucky Route Zero. I played that game for the first time in 2018 and loved it to bits, and was afraid it could get an unjust representation, but I couldn't have asked for anything better.

One assessment I disagree with though is how he thinks we might have missed the boat on following episodes as they come out, and that doing them all at once might be a less enjoyable experience. I personally loved being able to binge them when I played 1-4. I don't think I would have liked to have waited between chapters 3 and 4.

@stephen_von_cloud: Thank you for sharing that. I thought I was the only one. I gave up on the Beastcast solely because of Jeff.

Suggestion: Vinny and Jeff do a podcast where they recommend/discuss games for younger children. I don't think it would even need to by that long.

The Sims 4.

Community is often a bit segmented between people who find 4 to be incredibly frustrating, shallow and a step backwards compared to the older games on a core level in terms of what Sims do and how differently they behave from eachother. Sims 4 Sims have next to zero discernible personality despite the traits you give them, story progression had to be modded in for 4. But really even that is just applying a salve to a tumor. (For reference, story progression is a thing where other Sims in the world over time get married, have kids and just in a sense seem like they are progressing through their lives independently of the household your playing. This is a thing previous games did but 4 opted not to.)

But the other parts of the community are the younger people who don't know really what the Sims *were* like and the people who only focus on building and making stuff.

The Sims pricing structure is also a total ripoff because the packs are incredibly hit and miss. But that is also partly because the genre has no competition so they don't really have to try, sadly. I would like to hope Sims 5 does better but honestly I feel like they're going to try and go the multiplayer route so they don't have to put any "life" into Sims.

TL;DR: Sims 4 has problems with its pricing structure VS amount of content. As well as issues with the simulation aspect that were handled better in older games. But some people stomach it because it looks nice and EA have no reason to do better because there's no competition.