Giant Bombcast 10/13/2015

I like me some cows yo

It's worth noting that pumpkin spice is not made of pumpkin. It's just "spice for pumpkins". Which means @jeff has a problem with two separate things.

Just don't mistake pumpkin-spice-flavored things as having pumpkin as an ingredient.

I'm actually pretty happy with the extra HDMI port on the XBox One. My TV only has 2 HDMI ports and 3+ things that want to be connected (XBox, Chromecast, Raspi/Laptop) so being able to run my Chromecast through the XBox is pretty nice and saves me a lot of swapping things in and out.

"Honey, I gotta go, we got cows."

I can be pretty Finicky at times. My name is Larry. I was mentioned on the Giant Bombcast. It's official.

Jeff doesn't like things! Dan is ignorant of european locales! These shocking revelations and more on this week's edition of the Giant Bombcast.

Now with one Irishman!

Am I the only person who has had zero issues with the new Xbox dashboard?

It's lightening quick everything is easier to get to. Friends list and parties work much better. My only complaint was the pins and my games at the bottom, but once I found out that RT jumped to the bottom and LT jumped to the top it was fine

Jeff is trying to play The Witcher for the past 4 months. It is clearly obvious it is not for him, but just out of an obligation for GOTY deliberations he is still trying. JEFF Witcher does not have GUNS!! Do not force yourself.

To clarify for people, you get a code with the physical version of Destiny that upgrades your game to The Taken King so you don't need to delete your digital install, if you still want to play using that.

@jeff You mentioning that the icon pickups in Battlefront are generic is not at all true. You can tell exactly what vehicle you are getting, or if it is the hero pickup. The individual icons are all easily discernible if you look at it before picking it up.

I mean, the Gameplay in MGSV is great, but I found Witcher 3 to have good gameplay too, that with it's amazing story makes it better than MGSV for me. And I honestly had more fun hacking up people and monsters in The Witcher 3 for 80 hours than I did shooting everyone in the head with my traq pistol in MGSV for 45 hours.

Jeff spent $80 on pumpkins?!

@chebwa: what happens if i do?

Do i get arrested?

The Ryckoning has been incredibly entertaining; super impressed Klepek was able to beat it!

@flasaltine: I enjoyed both a lot but it was the opposite for me. Despite spec'ing in signs I remember most of the combat from Witcher 3 being the same 3 hits combo over and over mixed with a sign here and there. Likewise for most quests the tracking boiled down to following the glowy red footprints from A to B with very little actual detective work, if any. Still loved the game, even though it cheated me out of my romance option for some reason, but I wasn't too in love with actually playing it.

I feel like I'm around the same part in Witcher 3 that Dan is with trying to find Dandelion. I had a bunch of technical issues when I played it on launch (PC) and just have't gone back to it yet. (Like 30 hours in)

I did enjoy the game but to tell you the truth.. it's just too fucking much game for me. I don't have the will to play through an 80 hour RPG like I used to.

MGSV was nice because I could mostly just main-line the missions and important Side Ops. Witcher 3 I feel like the main questline is the most boring part of the game, as weird as it is. The side quests I got in that game were far more interesting.

Oh that seems unlikely.

I still just find the way they talk about Beginner's Guide to be bizarre. It's like when it comes up they talk around what it actually is and instead say things like "Well yeah but it's interesting" and "Well I guess it's nice that things like this can be made." They're just such dodges, they're not qualitative statements at all. It feels like we always have to do this tapdance with non traditional "emotional experience" alt-games where we end up talking about everything except the actual quality of the thing as a game and instead only mention how proud we are of gaming "growing up." It's just such a strange standard.

Danny was vague with the "Microsoft was talking shit about Sony's lineup at Gamescom" thing. Does anyone know what he's talking about?

@marokai: The problem with this game is that even describing what it is kind of ruins the experience. This is a game that is best experienced knowing as little about it as possible.

Though I feel terrible for even suggesting this, the whole game can be completed in 90 minutes (without rushing). Meaning you can literally get the game on Steam and ask for a refund when you finish. I will say that this is a game that will not resonate with everyone but for those who do, it's an experience unlike any other game can provide.

Spader wins. Evidence

Glorious cow.

I can neither confirm nor deny any legal repercussions.

Jeff has no time for break jingles

Dan, Danny, Drew, and D-Jeff is a great podcast team.

I still love you though, Brad.

@sravankb: Actually, Danny made a video for Gamespot explaining why people keep playing Destiny.

Dan's right, Warhawk PS3 was really damn good. That's twice he's mentioned it this week and it's true.

@zefpunk: It's half true. For gadgets (the special grenades, turrets etc) all just appear as the team icon, whether as vehicles/heroes are specifically labelled. That said it does sound like he didn't play much of it at all.

that's no cow.

I really appreciate Danny kinda coming down hard on Destiny. For the longest time I've had similar thoughts about how shady this whole game appears to be but I never really saw anyone from the mainstream press touch on it. Brad is mostly content with how it operates so we never really get too deep into these conversations about how they're manipulating peoples expectations. The way the game is engineered to specifically make sure you don't get too much good stuff just seems counter intuitive to the basic concept of playing games to enjoy yourselves. Whats even more preposterous is that just recently Bungie went on Twitter to suddenly agree that nightfall strike rewards are poor, just now, after the game has been out for quite some time and people have been complaining about it forever they just now realized that you get poorly rewarded for the time investment. It's this sort of completely aloof attitude that is really terrible about the Destiny Bungie team.

One of the gaming truisms that was echoed in this episode is that Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood were great, but Revelations sucked. Why exactly? I played through all three, and thought Revelations was fine - maybe not *as* good as the previous two, but it wasn't terrible or broken. More of the same, for sure, and the tower defense minigame was kind of lame (but not required after the first time). Am I missing something?

@johnymyko: Except he seems to be of the opinion that the game is nothing but a slot machine and the players are basically crack addicts. What a fucking joke of a thing to say, especially coming from someone who covers games for a living.

Thing is however, Drew is the only one on the podcast (as usual) who nailed it. He seems to be the only level headed dude on there nowadays.

Destiny is about the shooting first, and loot later. The core game play is rewarding in of itself. If you're playing this game for loot alone, you will get burned out easily. And that's okay, it just means the game is not for you.

But Danny with his bullshit high and mighty attitude doesn't even consider this possibility. "Nah, the people playing the game are just addicted to it."

I like the dude, but dear God, it's painful listening to a supposed games expert not understanding what makes a game good.

@sravankb: I think he's just using a bit of hyperbole like Jeff does, it's not just as obvious. He's usually not the kind of guy to complete dismiss something just because he dislikes it. I'll admit, I think he was probably more open minded to some stuff before, but half of his "Destiny sucks" speech is mostly like Jeff or Dan overreacting and saying something that they dislike is bad.

The game has issues and has always had issues, it barely deserves to be a complete game after the taken king comes out. For every giant downfall it has "good shooting" doesn't make up for it.

Everyone is happy your precious money was well spent and you like the game, but it the idea that people shouldn't care about companies trying to take advantage of them is idiotic.

@rtkwe: Hey Tyler

....Seriously?

Why is the concept of an opinion that confusing to some folks? What you consider to be a "giant downfall" is nowhere near as big of a problem as it is to the people who like the game. The "good shooting" is a lot more important to us.

Also, stop phrasing it like they're "taking advantage" of us. I like the game, I've helped several folks with the raid just because I like playing it (even though I won't get any rewards). The rewards are an added bonus, but the gameplay is the reason to play. I don't believe I'm having to explain that the core gameplay in a game is the reason I play something. On a fricking gaming website.

And finally, FFS - we need to collectively stop misquoting folks. That quote you have from @johnymyko is nowhere to be found. I know it's supposed to be an attempt at so-called humor, but it's just garbage. Stop trying to make someone else's words fit whatever bullshit narrative you have in your mind.

Pretty sure that Jeff is thinking of Halloween 3

Thanks as always for this podcast and this website. Love it when Danny is on, all around smart and funny duder.

I was kind of in the same boat when it came to getting back to Witcher 3. Coming back to it after playing so much MGSV made it immediately apparent how much different the controls and pacing of a dark fantasy RPG feels from a sci-fi action game. Then I did a side quest or two and I had an epiphany. I was playing side quests with better writing and characters than most of the stuff in Phantom Pain. And when it comes to the main story kind of blew it out of the water hours ago and it's still not over. I say that as someone who actually likes the story in Metal Gear.

Personally MGSV is probably still front runner for my favorite game this year just because of how well it plays but man the more I play The Witcher 3 the more I run into this conundrum. I think if you play an equal amount of hours in both then it becomes an argument of either hearts or minds. You have The Wild Hunt which has more life in the world and characters than most games this year or any year. Or The Phantom Pain which is so meticulously designed mechanically that it's hard to put down once you get into a groove with it. I think by the end of the year this FOB stuff might start corroding my overall opinion of Metal Gear as a packaged product.

I've been keeping up with my first FOB though it was somewhat passively throughout most of the game. There are certain upgrades that REQUIRE you to have high levels in your Security Team so it seems to behoove you to develop it as much as you can. I've been periodically getting MB coins but it would probably take like seven weeks before I can get a second FOB and fuck insurance I barely lost anything so far. What I can't decide as of now is whether or not to save fuel for nukes or to just continue getting everything maxed on FOB1. It's a confusing ass process and even though I'm doing it, it's not fun, it's just busy work for very little pay off. I tried retaliating against some asshole who happened to be online. I had his first platform locked down, then he spawned in and tranq sniped me. It was a drag.

Man did they talk about Jackbox in this one at all? I had it on today and scrolled trough it right now as well. Dont remember that. Either way I saw the UPF and got a hang of their feels but still. Or am i just bad at remembering things?

OK, wait, forget my comment from last night. I learned more stuff.

So I just started into this thing. Here's what I know about the Giant Bomb logo's history based on a mix of my own memory and some internet work. The website has only had one substantial logo revision as far as I know. When it started off, this was the logo, as designed by Dave Snider.

This logo stuck around until the major site redesign in 2013, when we got the version of the logo that we have now, designed by Alexis Gallisa.

While this is the logo that you see to this day on the top of the site, the original logo still seems to be the one that gets used in most official stuff. It's the logo that appears behind them alongside the Squarespace logo when they do live stuff like this year's e3 daily recaps, it's the logo for the Giant Bomb Emporium, it's used in stuff like this, and there's maybe more that my mind is blanking on. In a lot of ways, the old logo is still the main one.

Beyond these two logos that I have seen the site use, there's two more versions that I was able to find through some searching.

This logo is the main image on the Giant Bomb Reference page, and it seems to be the logo used on the Giant Bomb Logo Tee. The shading on the letters is a bit different, but aside from that it seems the same as the old logo. I don't know if it is used anywhere else.

Alexis posted this one in a topic when someone was asking for a high-res version of the Giant Bomb logo. I don't think that this version has ever been used by the site, though, as the original site logo didn't have the eyes looking up, and the fuse looked a bit different. My best guess is that this is a non-final version of what would eventually become the site's original logo. You'll recognize the upward-facing eyes from the opening sting for videos and from the default forum avatar, but as far as I can tell it seems like those both have the fuse from the original logo rather than from this one. Interestingly, this logo seems to be the one that CBSi drew from for the edited version of the Giant Bomb logo on their site (note the eyes). That edited version is also used on the mug in the store. I don't know which was made first, but there you go.

Honestly this wont be the last time people will come down on the game. The trajectory bungle is pulling is quite reckless and it keeps drawing attention to its self mostly in the negative light. I am still waiting for Jeff to flip out at the game again. He is a hard man to please which I like because what Destiny offers so far, you have to be someone who has been starving to play quality games for a long time. But yeah I don't think people will stop being suckers and keep ranting after the fact till the devs move on to Destiny 2.

Its funny but there is something as being too large of a game despite the quality. TW3 is definitely that, its pure quality but overkill can be overkill. I myself have not yet touched the game (big fan of the first two) as I am waiting for it to be entirely complete. It being so massive I can see myself having a hard time returning to it soon after I have beat it the one time. So I want to make sure I get the best and most complete version of the game possible. CDPR is known to keep improving on their games even when they have moved on to another project so like fine wine I wait for TW3 to mature with some age.

Also MGS5 has me confused. Its another game I have held off playing because I wanted to get some of the other distractions out of the way. But the wait has had a negative impact on this game which is the new patch that ties you singleplayer fob to your online base. Does this mean I cannot make new items or use the FOB without being attacked from online? Or is there an option where I can play the game purely online?

Like TW3, Fallout 4 is another game I am going to abstain from getting on release. Bethesda's inhouse games are pretty buggy at launch and I haven't liked all of their games (TES). But I did enjoy New Vegas till it bugged out on my PS3 and I had to abandon it. Like TW3 its hard to start from scratch because I had gotten pretty far into it DLCs and all. They are just too massive to sit through again once you got a decent footing. Not looking to repeat that mistake.

PS: I am not a big fan of wine,

@the_spaz_rises: The FOB stuff really, really doesn't matter that much. Not only can you only build your first FOB like 30 hours into the game, way into the main story missions, but it won't really impact your single player all that much.

I had to play for roughly 20 more hours after I got the "real" ending in order to be able to research some of those high end weapons, and even that was more for fun than anything else since they were all lethal variants of sniper rifles, revolvers or shotguns that have little to no use in single player if you choose to play non-lethal. Since the game is sort of built around non-lethal, stealthy playthroughs (the more people you fulton, the faster your research level goes up, the sooner you get new stuff) I'd say you will have 90% of the tools you'll ever want for the single player portion way before you have to worry about any of the FOB business.

Even if you do get invaded later on, you'll lose like 5k fuel or something, and that late in the game you'll need around 50k fuel to build more struts to mother base so it's negligible.

In short: honestly don't even worry about it.

You could have answered the Destiny recommendation email quickly by suggesting he check out the demo, which is the best way to check it out for himself.

Danny needs a video corner on Giantbomb dot com.

I'm not saying this to dump on games writers, but opinions tend to lose their nuances over time. No one seems to remember that Assassin's Creed III (for as much as I agree is not a good game) reviewed pretty well, even here on Giant Bomb where it was awarded "Most Disappointing Game". It probably doesn't help that Revelations was, from the onset, perceived as a "filler" game.