Giant Bombcast 03/25/2014

I don't get what @jeff was talking about with regards to Paz and it being disgusting. It was supposed to be disgusting. It made me feel dirty and sad and upset and that's how you are supposed to feel. It's a reality of war and something that has real life precedence as far as the torture and potential raping stuff goes.

I don't understand how people want gaming as a genre to mature, but can't handle it when more serious stories are told. It's not like Kojima handled the stuff comically or without a serious tone and he defintely didn't throw that information in your face...I mean the stuff is implied in the main game, but the more in depth stuff is only found through audio logs. I don't really understand how he could have been more subtle.

If you felt upset, and grossed out and disgusting by the end of it, then Kojima was successful, because there is really nothing else he would have wanted people to feel.

Hmm, I still think Infamous 2 is the best game in the series. Opinions, yo.

What the fuck is going on with all this beef man.

Dammit, just call the two sets of available consoles "new gen" and "old gen."

Because they're both "current gen."

(And the next gen is only "next gen" until it comes out. Then it's no longer next, it's just new.)

I can't stop laughing about the "stand wipers".

Brad will never finish DaS2.

Hold on, am I to understand that sitting while wiping your butt is the norm (according to that e-mail)?

I severely doubt that. I don't have any problems of the sort described in the email. All clean.

Am I misunderstanding something here?

On a scale of 1 to Perth how much shit talk is in this B-cast? I mean both kinds of shit talk.

@vinny There is a lot more after those 4 major boss souls are collected lol, I probably spent 50% of the total time I played it after getting those 4 souls.

Mad-Max Perth. I think the Emails broke Brad.

When it comes to the Second Son A.I. just walking around the city, people have had their share of problems with it, whether it being what had been mentioned here, or how they look, but for me, the only thing that really bothered me was how, right when you get into the city, even if you had done very little, or even nothing, someone will know your name, and it just didn't make any sense at all to me.

At the very end you could hear the moment when Vinny lost all faith in humanity.

The emails section of this podcast has gone down a dark road. City against city, region against region, brother against brother. Also lots and lots of talk about shit.

Also Brad is never going to finish Dark Souls 2 until they make it into a Breaking Brad segment in 2016.

Time to defuse the bomb

God damn. Emails continue to amaze. Years from now we'll reminisce about the Thonggate / Science Beef / Shit Felons period of early 2014.

Wow, that's like, what, 4 seperate strings of shit-talking during the e-mail section? Fortnite a game/not a game, pro-/contra-thongs in Australia, what Japanese kids are into, is biology a real science. XD

The accidental deaths alone in inFamous, ignoring the mega deaths of the various big events related to Conduits...kinda make a compelling case for why Conduits are rounded up and basically all marked as terrorists. And this comes from a dyed in the wool X-men fan.

EDIT - While it might have mutated, the whole conspiracy/alien thing of the 90's is at least a precursor. I recall the 80's being more straightforward, though even then there was the Dr. Strangelove distrust of people telling us living under the Sword of Damocles was the way to go (the whole through line of Spies like Us for example).

Yay, no ads!

That trojan email was great.

Heh, totally thought they were going to go onto the Facebook, Oculus buy-out at about 1:54

LOL at how they entirely forgot about what happened in MGS4.

Dat last email... >_<

My one thought is that Ryan wouldn't stand for that shit.

*collapses into a vortex of recursive entendre*

Okay, no more beeves. This community is tearing itself apart. You people are animals, no better than chimpanzees. I'm mostly talking about you Aussies and drunken murdering Brits.

That last email, no. NO. I will cancel my subscription if that is not THE LAST shit story we ever hear on Giant Bomb. And who ever wrote that email, don't show your face round here.

@somejerk: Somehow, I am not ashamed of my words and deeds regarding Quiet. In fact, it makes Kojimas comments about wanting her to be sexy for cosplayers about 10 times more disgusting. Jeff may be right; Kojima may be scum.

Or you could skip the emails section of the podcast until you have it on good authority that the shit emails have run their course. They comprise like 2% of the content every month.

I'm using podkicker pro and for several weeks I have been getting a connection failed when I try to download any of the premium podcasts? Anyone have any ideas? I just removed it and manually entered the RSS feed info along with my password and username but it keeps failing.

That ice-launcher power that shot you out like a catapult was pretty bad ass.

At the end of MGS4 Big Boss turns up and talks to Snake in the cemetery and it's not Hayter doing Big Boss.

This is one of the funniest podcasts in a while. Can't stop laughing, omg.

Yes, Metal Gear is nothing if not a series about holding a mirror to the ugly cruelty of the real world, what with the walking nuclear tanks, cloned super soldiers, cyber ninjas and hilarious comic relief character that suffers from chronic diarrhea. It's a mature series for mature adults who have reached maturity.

Amazon actually had xone for 400 bucks on for a couple hours with a promo code till they stopped it after a couple hours.

Oh my God. The emails, so great, so fucking great. Haven't laughed so hard in a while.

No, it doesn't. People are locked in dark cells indefinitely in the real world, and people are raped in the real world, and people are blown apart in the real world, and it might even be feasible that for some incredibly unfortunate human each of these tragedies occurred in their life... but not for the purposes of character development. Not to shape an audience's sympathy for them. That's crass. That's what a director who's knowingly parodying the tropes of shallow, gut-punch grindhouse films writes into their story to try and shock a jaded audience.

Only, Kojima has stated more and more clearly his intentions to try and create meaningful works, to elevate the form as a whole. So it's equally clear that his aim was not a cheap thrill, but a realistic portrayal of suffering. He has claimed that detractors of the Quiet character design would feel shame upon learning her origin. I only feel disappointment that a man so rightfully praised for memorable character work in his games could create such an ugly simulacrum of human intent. No one derives special motivation from that kind of personal horror.

The Quiet character in its current form exists for one sole reason: to evince a negative audience reaction. To drive the player to want revenge in a game that doubts its own emotional stakes. It's juvenility in the purest sense.

That comic relief doesn't take away from the serious moments. It's not like when a character is dying or expressing their views on the world in very dramatic sequences, you suddenly get Johnny coming out of a porta-a-potty. The comic relief is there on the side, and it's great that the entire game isn't some hardcore ride from start to finish, that Kojima is willing to inject his "serious story" with some downtime and wacky stuff. While I don't think those games are meant to be incredibly serious, they do have some serious themes.

I've long stopped trying to understand Jeff. Some really idiotic and minor game elements will make him incredibly excited while other things that are truly novel will hardly evoke a yawn from the man. Once again I am completely surprised that he thought the backstory of Ground Zeros was "sick" and done in a ham-fisted way. Sick I can somewhat understand because listening to the tapes I thought they were pushing some boundaries. But certainly not done in extremely poor-taste: I thought it was really brilliant the way it all wraps around in terms of the story. The use of audio is brilliant, substituting a scratchy recording instead of a gratuitous cutscene.

Maybe I'm simply seeing this through rose tinted glasses as a fan of Metal Gear. I'm not even a die-hard fan at that. I played each game exactly once and enjoyed them all for different reasons. I think the direction is always superb and the mix of wacky call-backs and serious narrative is perfectly balanced. Once again I'm taken by surprise at the crews reaction to this - I thought they would really see the greatness in how this was handled instead of being disgusted by how terrible it was. But then again, there are some games which the crew loves that to this day I can't see any merit in, at all. For example I think Bastion is incredibly boring and repetitive - different strokes for different folks.

Sorry, kinda started rambling there at the end, but this is the second week in a row that they talk about Metal Gear in a sort of "well these games were always shit but I liked the goofy stuff, where the goofy stuff at Kojima!" It pains me a little.

I've never played a Metal Gear game, but I've read up on what happens in Zeroes. Seems interesting and pretty bold.

Hello guys!

@foil1212: I use Doggcatcher and haven't had any problems. Try the "force update" option.

The art this week kinda reminds me of the murals we have in Belfast.

Yes, we actually have shit like this painted on the sides of houses and buildings here. I'm sure I've seen a few rocket launcher wielding balaclava wearers in some of them.

Here we go:

You know people actually travel the world to come and take pictures of this mediocre art. It's weird.

So, the RSS and direct downloads as well as the web-player are completely dead.

Help.

@fuwano: It says "DL Failed 5 times, giving up"

It looks like @rj2k is having similar problems with podkicker pro.

Immature people some times have a problem confusing gore and grossness with mature content. There's really nothing mature about it. There's a reason why teenage boys are generally the ones attracted to that stuff.

You can deal with practically any tough topics in a mature way sure but the way you handle it determines that not just tossing it in so you can be edgy. The way it is handled in this game does sound gross.

The major US retailers have dropped the price of the Xbone because it's not selling well enough (even with Titanfall bundled) and they need to clear out stock.

He thought Murphy getting shot to pieces in Robocop was funny, while Brad and Vinny found it sickening.

We need a reboot on the e-mails segment. No more geopolitical beefs, no more shit stories. I'm with Vinny, that stuff was just a bummer all around.

Damn, I was hoping for some Rift talk.

Bombcast: Now featuring the musical stylings of Brad Shoemaker covering Harry Chapin. Keep it going, Brad!

A laser tag or paintball place that would let you act out Payday 2 scenarios is literally a genius idea.

Beef: It's What's for Email.