Giant Bombcast 03/22/2016

That guy needs to close his meth mouth.

Man, VR talk is so boring. Tried my share of Oculus for some time, and it really not grabbed me. Guess that's what some people felt when they talked about Destiny.

@unastrike Jason, I work in the warehouse at a Canadian Best Buy because going to school for archaeology never 'dug up' much work afterwards. 1. I apologize for the sales staff at any Best Buy, it's terrible listening to them. 2. Most of the Sharp and Toshiba TV's sold at the store are actually store brand Insignia TV's rebadged as Sharp's and Toshiba's. Stay away from them.

A bombcast with a Jamiroquai cover is always a good sign of things to come.

VR talk kind of sucks, but I can't deny that I'm listening to Jamiroquai right now.

There was a geometry wars "vive" to this thing. ;)

Good to see the King of Summerjams getting his dues on Giant Bomb Dot Com.

@kirkdouglas: @unastrike: Seconded. Work in an electronics store in Ireland and the vast majority of Sharps and Toshibas are all just outsourced generic TVs made in Turkey, right down to their system menus being totally identical and remote controls working off the same frequencies. Even some of the entry-tier Panasonics are coming from them now.

Well, now that the VR headsets are almost out and people other than press will be playing them, I can't wait to see what the 5 richest kings of Europe have to say about VR.

Meanwhile, back to playing games on my PC and 3DS.

Because people always complain about VR talk, if you want to skip it skip to 1 hour 14 minutes.

Why is Patrick Klepeck wearing that funny hat?

this.

i just like hearing my boys talk.

A $499 PS VR Bundle is not AT ALL "within spitting distance of an Oculus" considering the buy in for the PC necessary to power an Oculus is at least $800 more than a PS4 console.

I like how they spend 20 minutes speculating on the whole PS4.5 thing and throwing around words like "scary" and "paradigm shift" before Brad says "maybe we shouldn't be talking so in depth about something we know little about".

Ya think?

Still no idea about VR. It's practically impossible for me to try a headset.

Do you understand?

I'm a Garbageman.

Is it crazy to say that I actually unironically love Jamiroquai?

Saw Jamiroquai on the cover and was like oh, this episode has to do with VR!

@lostinthewired: No, I don't think so.

@lostinthewired: Jamiroquai is probably one of the most internationally beloved British groups of the 90s and early 2000s, not to mention their incredible musical talent. There is nothing wrong with digging Jamiroquai.

As an avid "content consumer," GB and others have done a perfectly fine job conveying what VR is all about. Regardless of how hard they try, a lot of users simply do not care as much because we have never been able to try it hands-on. And that will continue to be the case for several months if not years until it finally reaches a mass market.

Games media has done a perfectly fine job of conveying what VR is about. There are two items that I feel discourage users from reading/listening to VR content.

1.) VR Coverage has been done to death. Just check the comments on Bombcast, Beastcast, etc. A lot of folks are tired of it.

2.) 99.8% of users have never tried it. You can be the best orator in the world, but no one will be able to relate to your experience.

Until it has hit the mass market and it is widely available to the gaming community, VR coverage will continue to be less popular than traditional console/PC content.

The Bombcast

Is made of

Virtual Insanity

They say as much towards the end of the podcast, but feel that it is important enough to cover it extensively. Regardless, the first headset will be out in a few days, we will see.

It's funny. I went from totally hyped, to mildly interested, to kinda annoyed of, to completely sick of VR over the last 2 years.

@luck702: I'm with you man. It's a cool concept but right now it just looks like a wii/kinect bastard child except you might actually kill yourself tripping over the dumb wires.

Now I'm going to have to listen to Virtual Insanity about 50 times in a row. It's the only cure.

I was just listening to the "I'm a wizard" segment the other day so that I could hear the "Virtual Insanity" joke again. Glad to see there might be more waiting here.

Fun fact: Jonathan Glazer directed the music video for virtual insanity. He also directed Under the Skin. (Its a not bad movie!)

Another great Giantbomb thumbnail.

Man I just realised Kojima's PT demo would've been scary as shit in VR

Running games at 4K could be potentially be more viable than one might think. PS4 runs on a BSD based system forcing them to use OpenGL and now Vulkan graphics code. When Valve ported their games to OSX and Linux they got roughly double the framerate on those systems. Without the need for tons of drivers, you might be look at a pretty attainable 4K setup. Post new PS4 games will probably use scaling. Also those console are x64 because they are 64-bit machines, or i686.

This VR talk is my endurance run.

Quite pleased that Salt & Sanctuary wasn't ignored by the staff. Had a great, great time with that game.

clearly not him

he still has his goatee

Yes, console hardware subscriptions are coming. $0 upfront, but $20/month that gives you all hardware updates when they come out.

I am pleased the GB Greenscreen is back

Listing to VR talk when you have never touched VR gets dull fast, its like someone describing the texture of food in their mouth... its really hard to understand/care at some point

@amyggen: thank you. Wondered how far I needed to skip. So much detailed talk about a tech so few of us will experience until late next year (once price begins to fall)

Elite Dangerous has a build in VR mode with freetrack support, so even Google Cardboard works including headtracking as long you can stream it to your smartphone with for example TrinusVR. Crysis 3 is another game like that. Some other games need a connected Rift or Vive for VR to work (which sucks since smartphone VR has a future in my opinion as a cheap entry VR option).

Also, Brad still needs to play the new Doom level in VR in GZ3Doom. The circle is not complete without it.

@inappropriate_touchscreen: PT in VR should be illegal :p

About the teacher run poll from the last question.. 5% reported that they didn't play games. Back when I was a kid, mid to late eighties, I would say 5% played games separated over a bunch of platforms. C64, Amiga 500, Nes, Sega Master System, Amstrads and Ataris...

95% of the population on that school played something. Console kids are 20% of 95% of the kids at the school. That to me sounds like the healthiest fucking market ever. Been playing games since the early 80s, and I can not remember a time when 20% of my generation was even into gaming.. At all..

@dougfunk15: The problem is there is still no game worth caring about. VR is just a really fancy, really expensive minigame collection right now.

Constant VR talk? On the Bombcast VR is the new Destiny. Though I really hope it isn't a sign of things to come.

Danny pointed out on twitter that, VR topics generate fewer views over at Gamespot than other content and it made me think - because we haven't been able to see it, it's not going to draw huge crowds - the fact that so many people have looked at those crazy prices and decided "maybe next year", which immediately makes the topic uninteresting to them. With 'flat' games, people are still wondering if they should play or not.

@dudeglove: I think this stereotype is well known because of cartoons and video games. And the Simpsons too probably.

Same here, although I haven't tried anything outside of Google Cardboard. I've been a huge fan of the Bombcast since the beginning and I don't think I've ever zoned out so much on the podcast than when they talked about VR. Not because the guys were boring, but I just can't give a damn about VR currently.

My question regarding the highschool email...can somebody explain to me, how do kids have access to their parents' money? I know one case implied parental consent, but still...obviously I can think of answers, but it seems so baffling to me

correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the Xbox 360 elite an upgraded version of the original 360? Or do you get the feeling that playstation and Xbox .5 versions of current gen is gonna be something completely different?

These are the kind of things where you use a card once and it gets saved so you can use it again. Happens a lot to parents when kids have these micortransaction games. Even parents I know that don't do it would have a story of their kid spending like $100 before they realized.

And to compare to my life, my parents had money and were generous with an allowance to me, especially with games. I bought new games frequently. If instead I was playing this mobile game I could see them letting me spend on it if that's what I really wanted I suppose (thank god this didn't come to pass).