The Giant Beastcast: Episode 274

Awesome Beastcast now featuring 2 Jeffs!

Also happy to see Alex is playing Spiritfarer as I'm loving the game so far. Though @alex here's something about Spiritfarer that you'll like. The game features 2 player co-op and the 2nd player is Stella's cat Daffodil. So if you and your partner want to play this game in co-op and one of you can play as the cat, its totally doable.

I don't know if Vinny is cruising the comments but I'd like to know what microphone arm, pop filter, and webcam are being used? And any other additional peripherals? it's very professional-looking and it's kind of the aim I'm going for.

Edit: I'm a little bummed to hear the take that "everything sucks equally" seems to be the prevailing opinion on this Epic v. Apple thing. I'm not here to argue about which company deserves the money more or to take sides emotionally, but as a consumer, I don't see an upside to Apple continuing their status quo. That Apple has the ability to remove an entire engine off of an entire segment of devices at the snap of a finger is a little bit fucked up, no?

I also think that leaving consoles out of this makes sense, at least for now. Those are specialized gaming devices, whereas a phone is a much more general-purpose compute device. When I sit down with a console, it's for video games (or maybe Netflix). But when I pull out my phone, it could be for nearly any reason.

Stadia has less latency (if you have decent internet connection) than running the game locally on an Xbox One.

Beastcast is always a highlight of my week, and this was no exception.

Great show.

Chat sucks.

Alex seems surprisingly ready to stick up for a $2Trillion company. Regardless of the stupid ways Epic is trying to appeal their case to the public, they have a pretty valid point and if they succeed it will have a positive impact on game developers, especially small ones. Apple is obviously the bigger asshole here.

Vinny's microphone arm is the Rode PSA1. It's somewhat of an industry standard. It's also a bit on the expensive side but well worth the money, I think.

@rvone: Appreciated! Definitely the one I've been eyeing, in some virtual window shopping it seems like the less-expensive options either don't hold very well mechanically or are very loud when adjusted or bumped.

Man, the Fluidity games, haven't thought about those in a hot minute. There was a 3DS one, Fluidity: Spin Cycle that used the gyro in a fun way, and a WiiWare game just called Fluidity that used the Wii remote in a similar way; in both games, you are tilting the levels to move water around and solve puzzles. They were cool games, although I remember liking the level/puzzle design in the original game more than the 3DS one.

@the_nubster: You can't go wrong with it. It's very solid and also quite easy to mount. I think the pop filter is just a generic one. I think most of the ones available would suit most needs. The camera is something you really need to get Vinny's attention for because I don't remember he's ever said what it is on any of the Beastcasts.

Vinny and Brad should play Factorio now that they are done with Astroneer.

superusers are so fuckin annoying man.

I see a lot of discussion on Jeff Gerstmann's outburst at chat and it got to me too, so I have to give my two cents because I feel left out.

Without seeing the chat, it's hard to say if Gerstmann's outburst was justified. Based purely on what was said, I think it was not justified to say the people suggesting how to work around the issue "suck". It seemed to me that they were trying to be helpful since Bakalar claimed he didn't know how to do that (and afterward claimed he did know). Even if the advice ends up not being helpful for whatever reason, I don't think that's an appropriate reaction. If the chat were also saying that the launcher didn't need or shouldn't have that option because of that workaround existing, then I disagree with them but that still wouldn't justify the reaction just because you disagree. If they were also mocking or insulting Bakalar for not knowing, then that would be a scenario that would probably justify the reaction, but seems unlikely from my experience with GB chat.

Assuming that's not the case, Bakalar and Alex agreeing with the sentiment wasn't cool either. Obviously this doesn't make any of them bad people, but it should still be okay to criticize instances where you feel they should do better.

I don't really care that Jeff G snapped at the chat or whatever, but Jeff B's complaint was silly. He says he knows how to mute things in the volume mixer... but he didn't, and instead waits to complain about it on a podcast later? There's no logic there.

Since the Tony Hawk remaster came out, I've seen a lot of people say getting off the board in THUG and later is bad. Why?? I loved being able to get off the board. It allowed you to line up things much easier. And if you don't like it, then you just don't have to do it. I guess that the Caveman line combo timer thing can be cheesed, but I didn't do that.