Giant Bombcast 02/03/2015

Oh man, Inner Space! Now that's a deep cut. I played the shareware of that quite a bit.

Missy Eliot has said she's taken time off because she had concerns about her sudden rise to fame, that she hasn't heard anything that inspires her to make something new and probably the most important, she has Grave's disease, an autoimmune disease that at some point prevented her from even lifting a pen.

@drewbert phish.net is probably one of the best websites ever for the sheer amount of available data. The fact I can plug in the list of shows I've been to and be able for me to have the craziest statistics about things like: what songs I've seen the most, what commonly played songs I haven't seen, and the percentage of their total catalog I have seen is insane. Even dumb stuff like "Over/Underplayed"(which means, for example, if I've been to 20 shows, and a certain song is played 50% of the time, I would be expected to see it 10 times in my 20 shows, so that stat basically tracks expectation vs reality) is tracked. There's actually an interesting infographic on the site right now examining the by day distribution of shows throughout the years.

Eh, they sell out because an NFL game being playing in London is a rarity and is one of the most populous cities in the world. That being said, yes, people who do not live in the United States have the capacity to enjoy some ol' gridiron. Also lol @ moving a team to London...that's a hilarious can of worms.

Just like here in the US while tour games from teams like Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Manchester United sell out to gigantic stadiums... and while the domestic American league (MLS) is ok, it is not even comparable in the success of the Champions League. In addition, there are plenty of soccer fans in an NFL locker room to my knowledge, and the idea that "real" Americans have some childish grudge against the sport is stupid.

Born and raised in Belfast, I think I'm in a decent position to clarify how it's pronounced, so here you go: Belfast. Pretty much what Danny said, just without the (southern) Irish accent.

Yes thank you Jeff! I said the same exact thing about H1Z1 and a lot of people came out telling me how many positive reviews it has and how it's showing so much potential. I didn't really want to argue too hard about it but I thought those people were crazy.

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOOTBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Always nice to have Danny on the cast too, both because he's generally wonderful and because he can bring a UK/EU perspective into the mix.

As a Scotsman born and bred I can confirm that we say:

Ta = Thanks

Da = Dad

Ma = Mum

Granda = Grandad

Granma = Grandmother (usually just granny)

Also (gran)mither and (gran)fether are also suitable substitutes.

I felt the need to chime in on DRIVECLUB. It's a great racing game, and the online portions have been working fine for me since the weather was patched in (that's when I bought the game). I love this game so much that I traded in my disc copy to buy it digitally on PSN, along with the Season Pass. In fact, I have come to realize that I love DRIVECLUB more than FORZA HORIZON 2, which is high praise from me, as I'm a longtime PGR / FORZA fan.

@undeadpool said:

@amyggen said:

I want one of these. Not just for me, but for EVERYone in my life...

I can't stop watching this. I don't want to stop watching this.

So they mentioned this at the top...how many episodes of the bombcast are there?

Not counting game of the year episodes.

Far Cry's climbing is better than Dying Light's? That is crazy talk. Crazy.

I've had to explain Game of War to so many relatives.

Danny stole his joke about grandmothers from Dylan Moran:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNAh9_BPBFk#t=623

I'm on to you O'Dwyer! :p

God, Quake 2 and Voodoo 2s in SLI... the true birth of enthusiast PC gaming.

@mrsmiley said:

@undeadpool said:

@amyggen said:

I want one of these. Not just for me, but for EVERYone in my life...

I can't stop watching this. I don't want to stop watching this.

My favourite Danny O'Dwyer .gif ever!

So now we actually have some context for Brad's displeasure with the N64 that doesn't come off as complaining about it because he happens to be playing an N64 game he doesn't like at the time. Now it just comes off as complaining about it because reviewers don't experience games the same way that regular hu-mons do.

He's not saying that the N64 and everything on it is terrible, he's just saying that after the Super Nintendo, with its mystical ability to instil a bucketful of bias nostalgia into the hearts and minds of reviewers everywhere, he expected a system that would one-up it in every conceivable way to follow. Seeing preview footage apparently reinforced that expectation, and then when the actual console released, he was disappointed.

But Brad, you have to understand, since you defending your blasé statements certainly doesn't make it sound like you do, that not everyone plays games for a living, and not everyone saw the Ultra64 at preview events. When you say the N64 was bad because you hyped it up in your own head, why would you act like you have the unequivocal right to stomp all over it and not be subject to counter opinions from people who simply bought a console and had fun playing games on it?

Especially mind-boggling is saying things like "THIS game was really good on it, and so was THAT game, but the console itself is still terrible". The console is its games, especially back in the days where all you did was put a game in and turn it on, with no system menus or extra functions. If the games are good, the system is good (or, rather, you like the system). If you only enjoyed one or two games on it, sure, say you were disappointed in the system, but don't start throwing around blanket statements like "the N64 is one of the worst consoles ever made". Your job (theoretically, though it's really been sidelined in favour of Let's Playing these days) is to write words, Brad; you should have understood that words have meanings and that we use different words to convey different meanings long ago. Stating opinion as fact just makes you sound arrogant and ruins any attempt to convey what might actually be a convincing argument.

Also, insulting your audience by equating any response as "nerds getting angry on the Internet" doesn't make it especially easier to take what you say seriously. You're on a website where there's no filter between you and the audience; you can't get annoyed at people not interpreting the things you say the way you want them to be interpreted if you can't do the same thing with the audience themselves. People responding were responding because they like you, and they like watching/hearing you talk about and play games. Hearing you say something that comes off as utterly nonsensical and then watching you dig yourself into a hole defending it against Dan makes people wonder where you're even coming from, because they expect you to be smarter than that. They are not just trying to yell at you on the Internet.

@roy42: Well put.

SUBSPACE! I've been trying to think of what that game was called for years, had vague memories occasionally bubbling up and driving me crazy.

"I was just bending a knee towards my North American colleges"

North America? As far as I know "zee" is entirely an American pronunciation. Canada, along with everywhere else, still calls it zed.

Hatch is still just Irish though.

Danny gets a cookie for the Dylan Moran quote,

Seriously get a new player. This one is garbage. Crashed on me five times in a row.

I still don't see how re-released games is bad, it gives those of us who didn't get a chance to play them a new way to play them.

Quake? as in "the most lame shooter ever"? Half-life and Gordon Freeman with his "crow-bar"? Halo?

HAVE YOU SEEN BRUTAL DOOM????? It sends a clear message to all developers: GIVE UP!

Also, you should totally play Delta Farc.....Force on the live show because that's one ugly ass game and that's great.

I'm looking forward to trying out Beseige. It sounds really cool, and it would be perfect for a Vinny Quick Look. Please make this happen.

I still can't for the life of me understand as to why the bomb crew continues to proclaim this console generation as the last. They seem to be selling incredibly well despite not as well as the previous generation; but surely not poorly enough to justify them not existing. And above all else, most console gamers are just interested in playing the next assassin's creed game on the simplest, cheapest machine possible, not how good the graphics are. This is especially true for most of my friends who continue to show no interest in pc gaming, and most likely never will.

Somebody please put together an ironic supercut of ten million different people proclaiming the death of consoles over the past fifteen years.

Including approximately seven million of them saying "but this time it's different you guys, I can feel it"

@roy42 said:

Yeah, he elaborated on the opinion he shared from the Mario Party 3 stream, and it turns out now I can say with even greater authority that his reasons for dismissing the N64 make no sense and are stupid. Sorry that no N64 game has Final Fantasy 6 characters in it, Brad, I'm sure that broke your little heart at the time, but who cares. There's a point to be made about how Nintendo sticking to a cartridge format held back some elements of game development for the platform (which I think Jeff started to mention or imply), but Brad's complaints were basically that Nintendo overpromised what would be capable on the hardware and/or what business deals would be in place for the hardware, so again, who cares. There are probably only a few hundred current or former game journalists on Earth who were following N64 and PlayStation launch news so closely that they would remember the stuff Brad is talking about.

Like, by Brad's standards, you could say the Game Boy was garbage because it could've been more on a hardware level instead of a glorified graphing calculator, and Nintendo didn't put out a handheld with colour or backlighting for years and years even though the tech was available. But you don't see people saying the Game Gear was a fantastic platform just because its hardware was more advanced than the Game Boy.

How can anyone who is an even semi-serious film buff not care about the Oscars....dammit Jeff.

wow.....also all man cards should be pulled for the lack of football love.

I don't see how anyone lives without some form of Live TV. I hear day after day how everyone is canceling their TV and just watches Netflix.

I don't get it.........Everything on Netflix is so old. I need live News and live ESPN ...not to mention all the shows. I am nowhere near the point of canceling TV services for streaming garbage.

I totally get where he's coming from though. I played through most of Borderlands 2 the first time and got bored with the combat, but at that point I was invested in the story. So I loaded up Cheat Engine, made every drop a Legendary weapon, and suddenly the combat was engaging again because my sniper rifles were shooting off 20 bullets and my rocket launchers were hopping around after I threw them at people.

As long as it's a single player experience, I don't see who it hurts.

I think the N64 was pretty cool, but I don't get the opinion that many have that it was a more important machine than the PSOne. I was around 20 at the time of release of these machines and once I bought a PlayStation ....I really had zero interest in the N64 until Zelda came out (which was my favorite franchise). I never played more than a few games on it. To me the PS was the more adult system aimed at older gamers and the CD-ROM seemed like the wave of the future. I find it strange that a lot of big gamers from that era only had a N64 or old those games more esteemed than the PS. To me the PS was way more revolutionary but I know everyone doesn't agree with that.

lol... I love the Bombcast but Brad can barely stand to let others talk.

@dbene: I pretty much agree with you. The N64 lost so much 3rd party support that the N64 has less standout games than the PS1. But just because it wasn't the lead platform doesn't mean it's a bad platform.

When DriveClub PS+ vanished at the time of the original PS+ launch it was replaced with Contrast, ResoGun was always meant to be the first PS4 PS+ IGC title alongside of the PS+ edition of DriveClub.

CONSOLES ARE DEAD. LONG LIVE CONSOLES.

@red720: What's remarkable is that Operation: Inner Space is still being sold today through the original website (http://www.sdispace.com/), and even the game's support page was updated this year: http://www.sdispace.com/support.html

Not too shabby for a game that predates the World Wide Web.

I'm almost certain the only people who care about the oscars are people who aren't film buffs.

RE: Brad complaining about the N64 and saying it fell short of it's promise, seriously?? I thought it was a better console than the Super NES, which was only noteworthy for 2D platformers and for the best conversions of Street Fighter 2. I owned both the original Playstation and the N64 at the time and they complemented each other really well. Games like Zelda and Mario which I never really cared about before transitioned brilliantly to 3D on the N64, as did crappy mode 7 racing titles like Mario Kart and F-Zero. The N64 was also home to Goldeneye, the best console FPS to date and cool titles like Wave Race. On the Playstation epic JRPGs, fighting games and novel titles like PaRappa made the most of the optical format. Basically, I wasn't impressed with the 16 bit consoles because I had access to games on the Amiga and the PC, but the N64 and PSX both did things so well that I had to get on board with consoles at the time.

Jeff only likes like maybe 1 out of 10 games it seems. He's becoming the grumpy next door old man neighbor yelling for us to get our proverbial soccer balls out of his yard.

The N64 was my first console and it will always hold a special place in my heart. That said, a lot of the catalog's well regarded "classics" don't hold up. Turok, Rogue Squadron, No Mercy, almost every Rare game, etc. just don't play all too well in this day and age (either mechanically or controls-wise). I mostly agree with Brad. Sure, maybe the way he said it was a bit too harsh. There are still stellar games out there for the console, but I feel like whenever I talk to people in my age group (as I'm 21 years old) about the N64 the rose tinted glasses always come on.

Also, at the very least can we all agree that that controller was ass? Even as a kid playing it, I felt like it was cumbersome and weird from a design & ergonomic perspective.

Well said , man. Seems like most of the people who love it are in their 20's because it was mainly their first console. Even though I cut my teeth on NES, and Super NES (along with Atari) by the time I was in my 20's it was Playstation, Saturn, or wait for the 64. At the time.....the cartridge choice seemed like a horrible choice. Although even then I was interested in the Zelda games and Mario....it seemed like something more kiddy and old gen. Now I realize that fun games are fun games (despite the more colorful childlike graphics), but at the time i was enamored by the more adult direction the Playstation was taking and was obsessed with the idea graphics were becoming more realistic (and hoping perhaps one day they would be photo -realistic). Later on, I wanted to go back and play the few great games for it but never got around to it.

p.s. Tom McShea of Gamespot is one of the critics who maintains the N64 is a superior console than PSone.

As Brad pointed out, the idea that the death of the console is coming, has a major problem. So many people do NOT have PCs in their house anymore. Also, as Danny says it's about convenience for the consoles, but one thing they did not point out is Uniformity.

With the consoles you get uniformity in play and no hacks , mods, etc. Especially for things like gamerscores and other security ...the PC simply doesn't seem to have the same amount of security.

Also, the problem of PC games having different requirements etc. Now when a company makes a game for xbone and Ps4 they KNOW that everyone with the system can play it. With the PC you don't know how many users have the ability to play at time of release.

Giant Bomb friends, I HAVE NEVER NEEDED YOUR HELP MORE.

Around the 2 hour 20 minute mark ( a little before) when talking about Subspace Danny asks about an old game like Subspace where you shoot icons from your PC.

This is a game long in my memory from a kid that I have been trying to remember the name of for years. Does anyone know what he is talking about?