Giant Bombcast 02/26/2013

i dunno man- i think context and expectation are everything. a game like mortal kombat is a known quality- it has a reputation for being over-the-top, just like a saw movie or hostel. tomb raider does not hang it's hat on it's graphic depictions of death, whereas mortal kombat certainly does. i think that's why we're seeing the strong reactions to the violence. and to be honest, to paraphrase what patrick said on the podcast- i'm not sure what these depictions do to heighten one's enjoyment of the game. sure- they let you know what the stakes are. but when a lot of these occur in binary pass/fail situations- do they really enhance the experience? does seeing her head on a spike suddenly help you better understand that you failed and/or died? i'm just not convinced it adds anything meaningful to the game. it just seems gratuitous given the context.

and as far as lara learning to kill too quickly (and justifying that as a gameplay mechanic)- there's a bit of contradiction there. on one end you're saying that the graphic depictions of death add to the "grit" or realism of the game- and then you're also saying that her learning to deal super fast is a necessary conceit of gameplay. i think it's difficult to have it both ways- a game that demands a "realistic" handling of bodily harm, but then simultaneously asks you to forget that the girl is an amateur in most respects.

Awesome!

Noooo It's the worrrrrrst!

@Jeff I brought Corsair Vengeance for the same reasons of having literally no idea what to get, and some borderline knowledgeable person recommended them to me. And yes, they seem to work.

in terms of gaikai, my thoughts:

message to perry:

http://pastebin.com/Euu8jbU6

It makes more sense to emulate every single instance on a single device. than running a freaking huge Server at all time to stream on demand.

you can send a cd load sequence of a PSone or two titel with less network ussage and struggle, than one FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTT videofeed.

You can even compress both the data from a virtual pspne cd and PS2 to get even faster loading times.

imagen a psone game played over and hour throu gaikai. takes 2 gigis of video.

imagin a load from a virtual cd drive throu gaikai, from any device capable of emulating psone (basicly 2,5 billionandroid phones), with just 0,3 megabyte/s and at a max of 0,7gb, to be played basicly till you turn your system of.

and here comes a bigger problem for gaikai.

japan is swiching to 4k. in 4 years, million will have 4k tvs. are you going to send video in 4k. what happpens when 8k arrives, send 8k image ?

best thing to to is, run the code from everywhere, loaded from cloud, and upscale throu emulation.

FREED FROM THE TYRANNY OF RYAN! AT LAST!

alright Destiny online is Ps4 vs XbD for multiplayer let the war begin

What got edited out about 32 minutes in? There's a cut and Brad says "yeah, whatever"?

HUH!?

I'm sorry everyone, I'm really sorry but it's too strong and I just gotta say it: so many horrible, HORRIBLE things coming out of Patrick's mouth this Bombcast ..SO MANY. Please, just pace yourself Patrick. You're a cool dood but you have to stop making these definite proclamations that sound like you're stating facts rather than your personal opinions because it sounds kind of jarring.

Sorry I just had to let it out.. I like the Metal Gear fiction and saying it's all shit kinda made me wince.

I'm playing some MX vs. ATV: UNTAMED and listening to the Bombcast. Referred to in many circles as the "Dark Souls" of the MX vs. ATV genre.

Dat old intro!

I love the fact that no Ryan obviously means no one knows what the fuck is going with the bombcast and so they just up the old intro.

Yay, new Bombcast!!

@fattony12000: TY-RYAN-NY?

Also, to the GB guys I think it's a bit odd to say Microsoft "won the generation". I know it doesn't seem it, but the PS3 actually outsold the 360 (at 77 million units versus the 360's 75.9 million units sold). Not saying that's what determines who "wins", but the fight is nowhere near as one-sided as you were making it out to be.

Jeff.

Vacation? I don't know if I like the idea of them getting time off. My weekend is already GiantBomb less... Now the staff gets "vacation"...

That Life of Pi story is just insane, how the fuck can things be built on such a fragile grounds on the industry?

ALSO SCHAFER AND MUIR ON TNT OMGOMG!

Hey @Ryan how come you started using slashes in the date for the filename?

I mean, you've used -'s since the begining of time, why change now?
And if you are going to change, change to the proper dateformat.

Patrick is the future of the site he is a brash young brilliant mind with a lot to offer and attitude to spare

The second they were mentioned i paused the podcast, went to YouTube and listened to the following piece of awesome

Bez ,the random guy dancing with the weird glasses from about 3:10 onwards. Is incredibly still alive today despite seemingly being high on LSD since the 90's.

Patrick can be a bit of a negative nancy about a lot of things. Especially when it comes to realism in games (Tomb Raider talk). Other than that I'm cool with him.

HEY EVERYONE IT'S TUES.... oh wait I'm listening to this on a wednesday

great.

I'm loving the last hour and half of this podcast. The crew just riffing on the futurepast of video games.

Did they ever talk about Crysis 3?

Well technically they talked about how it's awful that the guys says hella in the first line of dialogue, but yeah, no, they totally didn't. Kind of funny how no one in the room or in the comments section really minded.

Do they not sell PS2 games on the PSN Store in the US? Because they totally do here in the UK.

The death animations in Tomb Raider sound as brutal as Dead Space. Not sure what to think about that. Nice that Nixxes Entertainment is doing the PC version though; their PC version of Human Revolution was great.

@cwjoe: They sell them in North America as well.

I recall Sony once asking developers to develop content 1st on PS3 and stating that, that would make life easier to port to PC or 360. If that's true and i'm not imagining this stuff up, wouldn't this mean that Sony can at least port the most imortant PSN content to PS4. What about those multiplat games, can't they be easily ported as they have a PC version?

I can't belived they talked for like 20 min about Tomb Raider before the voice of reason (aka Vinny) actually asked about the gameplay, people shouldn't let marketing bullshit determine how they should feel about any game or worse having misconceptions about the game just because some marketing guy said something stupid on twitter... After having listened the GiantSnakecast again this week's talk about the end of MGS4 is a real bummer they all seem to like the game back then apparently Jeff is the only one who sorta cares.

Patrick puts Microsoft on a fucking pedestal.

UG from MGR:Revengence stands for Unmaned Gear if I remember correctly Boris or Doktor says it sometime during the first or second chapter.

Brad broke down the wall! Jeff told me that it was Tuesday the 26th, but Brad said "just after recording 'I Love Mondays' this morning" when talking about Tomb Raider. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE!

Enjoy listening to it.

https://www.xkcd.com/1179/

HTH.

Killzone will probably be a great launch game. Why wouldn't you want an online shooter at the launch of your console? What better time?

Sleeping Dog-Z: Prey 2

Perfect.

Tomb Raider's death animations were made to create amazing Conan videos - http://teamcoco.com/video/clueless-gamer-conan-obrien-reviews-tomb-raider

I feel bad that Tomb Raider is getting dragged into the Press vs Marketing emotional black hole. The game could suck and there is a chance it does, but the bulk of the talk had more to do with how much they hate bad PR. This is the same deal as Farcry 3, but instead of focusing on the game they got hung up on the switch from innocent character to killer.

@videogamesarenotart: There is no fanboy-ism in video game enthusiast press, just stop. STOP. They are critical of a company that seems like it offers a lot of promises (much like their previous console) and are trying to keep the hype out of the excitement of "OMG YAY NEW CONSOLEZ!11!!!!!".

@patrickklepek Stat boosts in level ups in Fire Emblem are not fixed. Level ups in the series have always been random.

Listening to Patrick finding interest in all these "new" genres (almost as if he's discovering gaming for the first time) makes me wonder if he's starting to realize why so many people disagree with his perspective on gaming. It's interesting to hear him talk about being engaged in games largely because of gameplay.

@ddensel: I can't recall a Bombcast that I would describe as "rigidly structured". That's one of the reasons I love this show so much.

I would love to see Patrick play Valkyria Chronicles at some point.

Man, reading the comments before listening to the podcast, it sounded like they took a huge dump on Tomb Raider. But, I didn't get that at all. The gist of it was more like 'it's a game I'm warming up to, but there are certain elements I'm not a fan of.'

What a scandal.

OLD INTRO IS GO!

I was confused for a minute... thought my RSS feed had pulled down the wrong or an older 'cast.

As far as a good resource for the best products in a certain tier, check out thewirecutter.com. They don't mess around. Pretty straight forward "this is the best one, this is the best affordable one, this is the best cheap one" mentality.

As others have said, Patrick should really play Valkyria Chronicles in his newfound enjoyment of strategy games.

I thought the bomb crew had a real good outlook of the Sony conference, overall positive on the whole thing and what Sony is saying. There was so much negativity on the Sony conference in the gaming press last week! I thought they gave us much more information than I expected. It really did feel like a conference for developers and gamers, respect.

Regarding backwards compatible PSN, I never expected all my digital PS3 titles to plan on a PS4. I do expect Sony to keep PSN on the PS3 up for a long time, so I will access to get these games on my PS3 or if it dies, another PS3, but the PS4 was not an expectation for me. I bought them to work on a PS3, I only expected they would work on PS3s. I am considering buying a backup PS3 when they get closer to quitting production on PS3's so I can futureproof my collection of games (probably still 5 years+ before they quit making PS3s, the PS2s just stopped production this year).

I also expect they will make PS1 and PS2 games on PSN play directly on the PS4 just as they do on the PS3, so those games will come over without having to Gaikai-stream them. This will likely not be available at PS4 launch, but the same was so for the PS3, the PS1 and PS2 games came slowly over time. Who knows, maybe over the PS4's lifetime they will figure out direct emulation of PS3 titles on the PS4, it is possible given the hardware specs of the PS4, its just a lot of work. I don't think Sony wants to spend the time and resources on that right now when there is so many more important aspects to a console launch than the games on the last console! I'm totally fine with it, even with the dozens of PS2 games I have now, I so rarely play them because there are already so many great things to play in the current gen I can't keep up.

Anyways, love that we are talking about the next generation of consoles now, and I can't wait for Microsoft's announcement, hurry up MS!