Giant Bombcast 02/18/2014

Reeeally interested to find out more about what really happened with the Irrational closure.

And it seems pretty likely, with a hundred and fifty people suddenly fucked over and angry, we totally will!

So that'll be fun.

Man it took me embarrassingly long to figure that the Ad was not for stamps.com. Small business owner.

I think what he's getting at is that at it's core, the pacing and how you shoot dudes in Titanfall is very similar to Call of Duty (which is not a surprise given who's making it). Obviously the wall running and double jumps and mechs change it up but when you're just running and shooting on the ground it is almost exactly the same as Call of Duty. That doesn't mean that's a bad thing (though sadly a bunch of people on the internet have already written the game off because of that without even playing it). However, if you're someone who happens to enjoy the way it feels to run around on the ground and shoot dudes in Titanfall then it wouldn't be that much of a leap for you to enjoy the way the shooting is done in Call of Duty.

The Xbox 360 version of Titanfall was pushed back a couple of weeks. If someone would rather go out and spend over $500 than wait a couple of weeks for a game then I don't know what to say about that.

There are probably several reasons why Titanfall is delayed release on Xbox 360, but seriously, c'mon.

Sucks that they have to sell that Lumosity snake oil, but I doubt that's their decision.

Who do I have to contact to get extremerestraints advertising on this here podcast.

Just for the record Robocop 2 is the one with the anti drug message and the little kid is one of the bad guys (he gets shot and killed too).

Robocop 2 is so dumb it's fun to watch. It has a lot of video game references also which I always thought was weird. It was like they knew kids liked Robocop movies so they were kind of making those movies for kids at some point even though the original movie wasn't really what I'd call kid friendly.

I think that's why Robocop 3 was so bad. If I was the owner of the license to the Robocop franchise and someone walked in my office and said "Robocop with a jetpack" I'd just stand up, point at the door, and yell "GET OUT!"

I always appreciate Matt labeling time stamps in the movie podcast description. I don't mind spoiler talk, even if I haven't experienced the game or film in question, but it would be really nice if someone put time stamps(.com) for the people who do not have the means to play everything immediately. It takes a couple minutes. Saying "come back in five minutes or something" never works because it's never the amount of time that they think it's going to take. It's common courtesy for your fans.

I'll cut Brad some slack because The Last of Us is over the unofficial "6 month period" that some people have decided for spoiler talk, but he totally could have describe the DLC without getting into too much detail.

We've been down this road before several times, though. It's one of Brad's idiosyncrasies that he gets super defensive about when someone complains. I kind of understand where he's coming from, because this has become an intense "no spoiler" world we live in, but I've always been of the mindset of if I really like something, I want everyone to experience it the way I did.

I'm sure he has literally dozens of colleagues he can speak with outside of the Bombcast. Or better yet, why not have spoiler-casts more often than like, once a year?

I dunno how much it actually helps your brain but it sure is a fun way to waste 2-3 minutes when on the toilet.

The problem for me, in this information overload society, isn't that people distrust all corporations, politicians and scientists. The problem, for me, is people believe they suddenly understand everything.

Yes please, Mr. 19-year old college student, enlighten me about the secret intricacies going on when huge companies publish cross-platform games. You read neogaf, listen to a bunch of podcasts and play a lot of games, you would be the one to know.

I wanted one, never got it. It was sad

@roboculus92: Ah, that argument makes some sense to me now. Thanks!

@brad I don't mean to sound like I'm wearing a tinfoil hat right now but do you know how easy it is for supplement companies to hire "experts" to back up their claims, or how many fake studies are bouncing around the pharmaceutical industry right now? And I'm not even going to bring up the irony of that brain gym app you advertised at the top of the show.

@christoffer said:

While you're right that the era of information we live in has allowed average joes to erroneously consider themselves experts on things and talk completely out of their ass, it's usually pretty easy to tell the difference between an asshole who clearly doesn't know what he's talking about, and someone who is intelligently deconstructing some new piece of news with simple logic. I personally consider it really important to try not to conflate the two, because that can lead to really insular thinking.

One of the amazing things about the times we live in is simply just that we have detailed historical records, it's super easy to look back on something and come to a conclusion about one policy or another based on what has happened when it was attempted somewhere over yonder. A lot of things today you genuinely don't have to be some sort of highly educated specialist to figure out. Empirical evidence is awesome, and the world we live in now is full of it. Evolution, for instance, you don't have to be a biologist to figure out, there are actual long-term experiments that anyone can observe and understand very simply. Or when some state or province raises wages, you can simply look at the effects and tell whether it had a net-positive or negative effect without being some kind of snotty economist.

Without going off on a tangent though, video games can be much the same, and even though there are trolls and idiot know-it-alls, bringing up resolution-gate as an example of crazy people getting upset over things they don't understand is actually a really poor example for the point Jeff and Brad were trying to get across, because at the core of the controversy was a very simple and easily observable thing that should've never actually been that controversial; it just spiraled out of control when stupid console warriors decided to use it in some fictitious "war" and in return, press figures got super dickish and dismissive, and started feigning ignorance to seem "above it all."

In the end, the controversy is actually a really good teaching moment for both sides in how you shouldn't get swept away by reactionary (albeit very human) impulses and stick to the facts. The disappointing truth about, well, the truth, is that it actually often isn't right in the middle. The stature or the tone of a person claiming something like "Ps4 1080, Xbox 720!!!!" (or whatever else is the story of the week), no matter how immature or grating, shouldn't affect your ability to admit that it's right or wrong.

@christoffer: But is it not a good thing that because of the internet people are more informed than ever? Sure, it's annoying that people speak as if they're industry professionals, but at least people have enough information to have an opinion and voice their issues with what corporations are doing.

You're right about people immediately assuming corporations are evil though. That's super annoying

Depends on what you mean by being right or wrong about the resolution. Of course it's right that higher resolution is better if everything else is the same. You can't argue about that because that's just a fact. However, I've seen a lot of people argue in forums here and there that higher resolution matters and so the PS4 is the right choice to get because of that, which isn't necessarily true for everyone who's considering buying these consoles because there's probably a whole bunch of people who don't know anything about the resolution or other details regarding the hardware in these things. The bomb crew haven't dismissed the fact that PS4 is more powerful, they've just pointed out that having more powerful hardware isn't the only factor and that people can prefer a console despite it being less powerful (PS2 is prime example). Also, I'm sure they, like a lot of people, are just getting tired of hearing about resolution being brought up every single week because there's no need to make a deal about it every time because it should just be a given at this point that the PS4 is more powerful so no shit.

People on the internet are still bringing up that they have issues with Battlefield 4, but by my experience on PC and 360 Battlefield 4 is fine.

I seriously hope everyone on the radio can do ads like you guys do, it is actually enjoyable

Yay Bombcast!!

I feel bad every time I say something bad about Vinny, but sometimes he comes off as a misinformed conspiracy nut. Every time he has a "what if" scenario he pushes a certain agenda, one that implies heinous wrong-doing. Or, as is the case with the TtP talk, assuming (again) there's something illegal in the process without bothering to find out before making assumptions. Maybe I'm making it a bigger deal than it is, but I am a fan of informed opinions.

I wonder if this has anything to do with Vinny's background being in video production rather than games journalism as is the case with the other members of GB. He's been in the "biz" long enough to pick up some things, but maybe he doesn't care that much. Like during the Bioshock talk, misunderstanding the power structure and relationship between Irrational, Levine and 2K. I'm not saying I'm some genius, but those relationships were fairly clear if you followed his career since at the very least Bioshock and the inception of Irrational.

And yes, I'm prepared for the hate this will inevitably bring. I love Vinny too, but he manages to hit almost every pet peeve of mine.

@ch3burashka: Vinny is the guy that makes the podcast understandable for people who don't obsess over the video games business. His stupid questions are the very same ones that I have and I'm sure many others so the answers he gets benefits many people. Also, who the hell else in GB would ever sit down with Brad while he plays Demon Souls for hours on end?

Okay, wow.. The level of Fox News bashing on this podcast, coming from Vinny and Brad especially is at such an unprecedentedly asinine level that it's turning me off from these guys completely. I get it; you guys are liberal. And this is the internet world so it's cool to hate on anything and everything Fox News, just as it's cool to hate on anything and everything from Kotaku. Without reason, without basis, no matter what it is, you hate on it. But let's try to be honest, here. Fox News is not some over-the-top boogeyman full of nothing but misinformation and lies. It's a normal news agency with stupid opinion shows, just like every cable news outlet including CNN and MSNBC. If you're going to call out Fox News at least be intellectually honest and call out CNN and MSNBC. It's one thing to be liberals, it's another to be hateful, exaggerated conspiracy nuts.

The irony is that these guys are buying into the fear and hate of anything Fox News just as they're criticizing others of doing with big corporations. If you honestly believe this exaggerated view on Fox News, that everything about it is a joke and that no one should ever take anything ever out of it seriously, then you're just on a whole new level of loony. I honestly don't know if I can take these guys seriously anymore. They're coming off like misinformed, anonymous angsty haters flooding YouTube comment sections.

@cronodyne:

its because foxnews is full of stupidity and racism. Msnbc and cnn are just bad from a journalistic standpoint.

You have a point; sometimes Vinny does play the role of the audience and asks the questions the audience would. Brownie points for that. I'm talking more about the stories that always seem to end with him saying, "But that's illegal, right?" Irrational closing, TtP... others that occurred in previous podcasts. Like I said, the conspiracy nut sometimes takes over.

This applies to VinnCo "inventions" too. Yes, Vinny I get it, you solved all of the worlds problems... theoretically, but you seemed to have left out everything we know about thermodynamics and physics as a whole. Yes, they're dumb ideas, but the first few minutes in you can hear genuine curiosity in his voice, as if to say, "I think this thing will actually work - I think these magnets are the key to anti-gravity, and I, Vinny Caravella, have solved this problem in my mind."

Drew as audience surrogate is great. Love it.

@cronodyne: It's almost funny how worked up you're getting over a few off-hand comments. Giantbomb is not intended to be a fair and balanced source for politics, nor have they ever claimed to be, nor do they have any obligation to be. That's not their job. If you can't deal with that you should not be visiting such a personality driven website.

Besides, Fox News is still total crap regardless of how total crap any other news organizations might also be. Whether or not they call the others out does not change that fact.

@cronodyne: To paraphrase Mack 10 for a moment here... MSNBC is so wack it ain't worth dissing.

Damn man, that political whatever the fuck that was at the end was entertaining as hell! Fucking nice podcast duders!

@cronodyne: The network that gave us "Sorry, dumb minority children, Jesus was a Aryan superman!" and "George Zimmerman is a patriot".

Apparently, the chemical in fast food bread that everyone is obsessing over right now is banned in some places to protect factory workers because it's a possible asthma trigger, not because there's any evidence that it's harmful as a food additive. The fact that it's also used in things like yoga mats is irrelevant and was probably pointed out just to scare people.

After playing a bunch of games with Threes, I realized I reached my peak on game three at 28,000+ and promptly deleted the game. At that point it just felt like a time waster, and I don't got time for that.

• Custard-filled donuts are the best type of donuts.
• Pubmed is your friend for medical literature and research. That being said, please don't base your opinions on abstracts only, especially if the article in question does not come from a well-known journal. A critical review of the entire article is necessary to truly evaluate the validity of a study.
• MSG is widely believed to be safe, both in the general scientific literature and according to the FDA. There are no human studies showing it is dangerous.

@cronodyne: Hah, yeah, to hate fox news makes you liberal XD

You realize of course fox has been a joke to everyone but the far right for ages right? They just have too much insanity behind them.

Hell they tried to link Dark Souls with the Craigslist killer just a handful of days ago, and that's a peaceful example!

Still, if you feel you can't listen to anyone who dislikes fox news that's your prerogative.... but honestly, you're going to find yourself very lonely as more time passes.

Haunted food

Two thins about the ads: I love how they put them right in the front, easy enough to skip if it annoys anyone, and they actually make them all entertaining to a degree. That's pretty awesome if I say so myself. Good on them.

How Americans feel about Fox News seems to be how the rest of the world feels about all American 24 hour news channels.

"Yes. I want to type ANARCHY forever. I want the end of the world." - Jeff Gerstmann

Hm, I wonder what part in the new RoboCop Vinny had a problem with. Saw it last night but don't remember any particularly cringeworthy scenes.

Just watched it and came back here to discuss this. I think @vinny might have meant the scene where they take him apart and only his spine, lungs, and head are left. At least I thought it was conceptually terrifying.

@manhattan_project: Alright, I'd buy that. Not only was it pretty graphic, but the acting helped make it feel particularly unsettling.