The Giant Beastcast: Episode 303

Everybody loves a 303.

I have a PS5 through a friend who got caught up in the thrill of buying PS5s. He doesn't even play videogames. At first, he did it to get one for his nephews, then he started getting them for friends, and eventually to scalp. It led to him looking into other collectibles and discovering that these sneakers he hung onto that his H.S. girlfriend gave him in 1985 were really valuable - those sneakers being the first Air Jordans.

I had some trouble in my life with being addicted to shopping for some time. I totally get the “thrill” aspect when things aren’t always available and it’s really bad that people always take advantage of that. If I were rich (which I’m absolutely not) I would absolutely buy a PS5 from one of those assholes to be honest. And by doing that I would be part of the problem.

It’s not great having almost no money right now, but I’m guessing this is the upside of it. There is absolutely no way I could buy that right now so maybe that’s a good thing?

When I was addicted I bought stuff I never used and after few days or weeks I didn’t even sell it, I just threw it out or just gave it to someone. It’s a weird thing and it’s a real thing, I’m very happy that therapy (and having almost no money tbh?) helped. It sucked, really.

ACCIEEED!

(sorry, 303, can't help it.)

I got one of those invitation emails from Sony that were ridiculed on podcasts, to get a chance to preorder a PS5. I’m just a regular schmoe, but I’ve been in the Playstation ecosystem from early in the PS1 days, so I guess Sony thought I’d like a PS5, so I entered, was able to get in and order one a couple of days after the store preorder mess happened, and had it delivered to me in Hawaii on launch day. I’ve been using it pretty much daily, playing games that feel pretty much the same as they have since the PS3, but I’ve enjoyed them all this time, anyway, with some souped up aspects. Otherwise, I certainly wouldn’t be spending time chasing after a PS5 the way it’s been, if you can’t even just wander into a store and pick one up, and all the online stores just get gamed so regular people never even get a shot.

That TMNT theme song is basically the Futurama song where they're superheroes https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n93Mxnf6c2Q

Honeycrisp is an old UMN joint, and their new hotness is Sweetango. They're perfect.

I am going to go ahead and defend the people who said the melody for the theme in the new TMNT trailer is way worse than the original;

It has nothing to do with the "sanctity" of the theme itself(i like the new theme apart from the change made to the melody) it is the fact that they took a very goofy and silly melody and made it sound way more like a generic rock melody which is a shame.

^ counter; I like it, and the original!

Maybe retire that slur and accent @alex :/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikey

Apple genetics are wild - the seedlings won’t come anywhere near true to seed or even reasonably close to the parents of a cross. It can and does take a lifetime to create and find and test a profitable apple from seed. I believe all commercial apples are grafted branches on the root stock of other apple trees. Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire (book and film) are awesome and informative if any interest in plant history or genetics have been sparked! (I love this stuff and trying new apples! Thanks for the apple update, Jeff!)

@zoofame: Yeah. I should talk to them about it. For all I know I didn't fully understand when she explained it. Maybe she filled in time with personal days and did get overtime, or they gave an end-of-year bonus. Better remove the post, for now, in case there's something to report. Thou it's a weird loophole going on. They shorted hours cause the big C. I assume they then didn't have it on paper, but asked those working to finish the task before closing day, thus it's a trick cause now your working till about normal hours. Can't really claim overtime, but kinda could, yet no one wanted to pull rank, stand up and say pay me more when this big C thing was just starting. Everyone was hurting and I see why people just shut up and work in those cases. Plus people are happy to just have income coming in. Tons of jobs really have their employees by the balls, cause they can't leave like they used to and get a bigger salary, due to them no longer being a commodity. Limited jobs and hiring, is making a weird power shift I think. Sadly no one is talking about it much along with all the other fallout this thing will have after vaccinations.

"Exclusive games that ship on platforms where Game Pass exists" is super clever wording by Microsoft. It opens to door for these games to exist on Playstation and Nintendo, but it puts the onus on the platform holders to allow Game Pass into their ecosystem.

Like Alex, I seriously lucked out on getting a PS5. I was actually one of the few thousand selected to pre-order one from PS Direct. But for some reason it fell through and I couldn't secure one. So I had to wait for release day weekend to try and get one like most people, and while I was waiting to rush and get one during the drop times on the Walmart website which was proving to be impossible, I just so happened to have a lot of other websites open, including PS Direct when suddenly the screen went from "Unavailable" to "Add to Cart" I tried to rush through the order as fast as I can and I was able to get to "submit purchase", before the site shutdown from traffic. By pure luck, when the site finally came back online minutes later, it showed that my order went through. It turns out I was able to catch PS Direct right when they made the PS5 available before they publicly announced having limited amounts.

Its kind of shocking and sad that we're heading into the spring of 2021 and it seems to be even harder to find a PS5 or Xbox Series X than it was when first released which should not be happening. Even with graphics cards its worse. People talking about the 3000 Series and the 2000 Series of Nvidia cards, you can't barely find a 1600 series anymore, which is what I have, a GTX 1660 Ti. And if you do luck out and find any of those cards, they cost twice as much as retail price to get one. SMDH...

In the end, if you ask me if getting a PS5 at launch was worth it, the answer so far is YES. It was worth it.

CORRECTION :)

Straßburg (now Strasbourg) is in France, right on the border to Germany. I belonged to Germany until 1919, it's in one of the territories Germany had to give up as part of the Treaty of Versailles.

Edit: Correction to the correction, they corrected themselves later in the episode.

@lepoufcelebre: THANK YOU!

I live there and I was so angry when they made this error ^^

I have a playlist of 90s music tuned around what I'd hear on KROQ or WHFS or Y100 and Faith No More is specifically and the only group banned. Just awful.

Cosmic Crisp isn't super-new. It's just had limited availability; I got one ~2yrs ago and a guy in the office said his wife got some at Costco. Can confirm though, very tasty.

Anyone else tired of TMNT 2D brawlers? How about a Souls like game, or an RTS with the turtles, something else.
Also, it would be dope to have a guest every week like the Bombcast..

@l1fef0rm:acid bass starts to drip from the walls as the bass drum starts pumping

Jeff's meandering, non-sequitur and convoluted way of explaining Loop Hero weirdly angered me.

The Gentlemen is great, especially Hugh Grant.

King Arthur is not.

Man from UNCLE is surprisingly good.

@eoin18: Hard agree to this. I said in chat at the time "Not cool to use that word, @alex".

I hope it was just ignorance of the hate that comes with the word, and he wouldn't mean to use an ethnic slur. When he accidently dropped an Italian slur a few years back he apologised profusely. Being on this side of the world (miles away of any Italian immigrant communities) I wasn't even aware of that word. So to give the benefit of the doubt I can see him, being in America, not knowing that it's really not okay to call the travelling community this word.

The National Travellers Action Group say's "There is no word more offensive to a traveller."

Please retire it from your lexicon, @alex.

@vinny@alex Eurogamer did a story on GamePass about a month ago, and they delve into the developer return side of things, among other things. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-02-17-is-xbox-game-pass-too-good-to-be-true

Game Pass on PC is absolutely not worth it, not even the $5 extra if you already have it for Xbox.

1. The app is somehow worse than Epic, no surprise to anyone who's had to use the Windows Store

2. Some games are out of date versions

3. The games are completely locked down. No access to game files which means no mods or community patches--especially funny with Skyrim/Fallout now available on the platform

maquette is a term used for architectural models

@eoin18: yeah I get that Alex probably has no context for it but still pretty shitty to hear the p-slur on the beastcast

Personally, I think the load times on the PS5 and Xbox Series X make them worth owning alone. It's a real bummer they don't have lots of killer exclusives right now but playing PS4/Xbone games on them and having the load times be cut down like 80% is incredible.

I hope Vinny got his transformer!

Marquette is a city in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP). Seeing Maquette throws me off.

Covid is not getting better. The epidemiologists are saying we’re about to see a major surge of the UK variant in the US, right when states are lifting all kinds of restrictions. A small percentage of people are vaccinated at this point, nowhere near enough to help us against the surge. You’ve all just been lulled into a sense of complacency by this rosy narrative from the media and politicians that everything is getting better. Who are you going to believe, the media and politicians or the actual scientists? We’re not out of the woods yet.

@haneybd87: then there’s the California and South African variants, along with others that may form in the future and the significant number of anti vaxxers out there who say they’ll never get the vaccine.

That TMNT theme had a real ’Tv-Theme Cover Band on Spotify’ vibe. The way he sings the lyrics is what kills it for me, not the instruments. Like Vinny noted, it feels very ’I’m guessing how this should sound based on lyrics and tabs rather than listen to the original’. I don’t mind a cover that takes liberties, but it’s not taking liberties, it’s just not doing anything unique. Every other cover has that off-vocal melody. Which makes it feel extremely phoned in.

And suddenly I became one of those nerds I didn’t think I was. Oh no.

As someone who loves Faith No More and TMNT, that theme was pretty bad. Sounded like he was putting the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllables.

Why does Alex think Steam's playtime tracking is not accurate? This is the second time he's said this in the past few months. What's not accurate about it? It tracks the time you have the game open. It works exactly as intended. If you mean it doesn't account for AFK time versus active playing time, sure, it doesn't. But does anything do that? Just close the game if you're going to be stepping away for extended periods of time if you truly want it "accurate."