Giant Bombcast 481: Rupert Grint's Ice Cream Truck

Yay

Happy Tuesday everyone. And a Merry Bombcast to you all!

Tuesday!

Boooooooooooombcaaaaaaaast.

Bombcast woop woop!

Great episode.

Thanks for helping out, James West.

Let get this show on the road

"horizon with Farpoint" or do you mean "Horizon with Farpoint?"

People don't talk about Horizon, because it's really not that great. It's just another open world game. Just happens to look nice.

ON ICE

Yea, I am glad Rorie is loving it but imo it was a bit overselling Horizon. Don't get me wrong I liked it overall and thought the main story writing was good (the backstory that is). But I wouldn't call out any side quest as fantastic or sticking out in memory. Plus some of the systems are not all that well designed imo (like the loot, inventory, shops). Alloy just kind of acts like a standard cocky smart videogame protagonist for the most part, which sometimes I find is at odds with the first part of her life. And while the game looks good, the frame rate and insane amounts of motion blur did not do anything to endear it to me visually.

Killing robot dinosaurs was fun tho.

I just started Horizon after finishing Zelda the other day, and it's pretty cool but I wouldn't say it's anywhere near as special as Zelda. And I strongly disagree with Rorie saying the writing, voice acting and face animation are great; I thought all that stuff, in the early game at least, were very inconsistent. It has a little bit of that Witcher 3 thing where the world and character interactions feel really static or stiff. The writing is mostly decent by video game standards, but has some really silly stuff too.

I would say that it's a better version of the most recent Tomb Raider or Far Cry.

Great cast. And yeah, Horizon is something else. I think I might like it more than Zelda too, despite only having spent 1/3 the time with it so far.

Especially if you are a Souls fan, the roll i-frames feel very similar and familiar (but a little more generous). So much fun to play.

Happy bombcast day everyone. let us listen and experience pure joy.,

In my dark little soul I can see a world in which Hitman and IO get sold off to try and infuse life in to the FF7 remake. I'm sure no matter what the reality is it's almost certainly more complicated than that.

Bottom line is I've played FF7 and would much rather have more modern Hitman then any kind of FF.

Horizon is my GOTY so far and I prefer it to Zelda.

Honestly the super low field of view killed Horizon for me. Especially when you get into a cave or a town. I've never felt so disoriented in a game. Fights were difficult mostly because I found it super hard to even realize what was going on around me.

The Photo Mode lets you increase the FoV, so I'm hoping a future patch lets you do it while actually playing.

Did someone say "Shaaave butterrrrrrr"? In regards to Brad talking about wishing rogue-lites had more secrets similar to Spelunky, Enter The Gungeon had a bunch of cool secret stuff though based on how much he shat all over that game during GOTY he likely didn't see much of it. Not saying it's on par with what some of the secrets in Spelunky add to a given run but that game had a meaty amount of content to pursue if you were up for it. I think so far my least favorite hot take from Rorie in the history of his podcast appearances was the supposition that Dead Space 3 is the best game in that series. Just...no, not even close. I will say it is refreshing to hear Rorie talk about actually enjoying a game as oppose to talking about how much a game makes him want to play WoW and watch TV simultaneously. I still have not played Horizon though I do plan to at some point. Thanks as always for the podcast.

@mezmero: I was gonna mention Enter The Gungeon, the amount of secrets in that game is insane - and so is the amount of weapons.

I disagree! The combat in that game is probably the best of any open world action game I've played. Also the main story was pretty interesting. Easily the most engaged I've been by open world action game since Mass Effect 2.

Oh yeah, it does look like a face.

Did anyone actually buy Alan Wake? Even at that price tag, it didn't interest me at all.

I played 3 Rise of the tomb raider twice, platinumed Horizon and played Zelda on Switch and in my opinion Horizon has just pretty graphics for it but nothing else. It's really a standard open world that is a bit too long for its own good. I love the new Tomb Raider so my option is obviously biased but concerning Zelda there's no contest it's the better of the 3 by far and I'm not even a Zelda fan (only like Windwaker before).

Rorie is definitely overselling the quality of the writing quite a bit, especially the entirely unremarkable sidequests, but did the people complaining Horizon is nothing special actually engage with the mechanics of the game? Horizon has a bunch of different weapons and enemy types that are fun to play around with and explore different ways of dealing with enemies other than shooting them in the face. Obviously it's not Zelda in terms creativity and weird solutions, but the core combat gameplay is also much smoother and more satisfying than Zelda's boring old sword-swinging and unlike Zelda it actually has a story interesting enough to pay attention to (in the backstory; present-timeline is just ok). Horizon may not reach the peaks of Zelda, but neither does it have the troughs (fucking rain making you stop playing, constant weapon breakage early game, crafting that is boring, time-consuming and mandatory). I feel like Horizon really gets a lot of shit just because it came out around the same time as Zelda when they are both GotY contenders for different reasons.

The last PUBG circle is just very small, it does not constrict to the point where everyone is taking damage.

Finally able to listen to the cast.

I'm glad they brought up Horizon, it's a great game. I haven't played Breath of the Wild so I don't have any opinions about it as a game, but I was a little frustrated that it came out so soon after Horizon and dominated the media. I wanted to hear more discussion around that game.

Have to disagree completely. Horizon was a wonderful game, and the story was very engrossing. I wanted to know more about that world and what happened in the past and was happy with the payoff at the end.

@scorched: Actually, I'm pretty sure it does. In this video you can see the circle does completely disappear.

I'm not saying it's a bad game, I am enjoying it and the story seems fairly interesting so far. I just don't think it's all that great in every regard. It's a 'good one of those' as some would say, but not truly special. Though I am probably judging it more harshly having just come off of Zelda, which is easily one of the best, or maybe even THE best game I've ever played.

Horizon is the best open-world action game I've ever played. Period.

But this is coming from a guy who got bored halfway through BotW and stopped, so what do I know?

@blerg: Hit the nail on the head! Love em both though.

This time i'm that one asshole looking forward to E3 so PlayerUnknown's Bombcast will end.

I hate when they talk about a feature in a game and they had no idea about it when it is clearly shown to the player in a tutorial, specifically talking about Persona 5's click the touchpad to see what percentage of people did what that day.

I wouldn't assume that the Montana Far Cry's gonna be a period piece. The guy "taking over a portion of the United States" (acccording to rumor) is probably some sort of Richard Spencer motherfucker backed by a Freemen-type group.

(As someone who lived in Montana for a good long time, I can't imagine what the local response to this game is going to be if it is modern-day. We went through a spate where there were a few high-profile crimes committed by people living in or from Montana (the Unabomber bombings, the Freemen town takeover, some guy shooting up the Capitol), and the state at large became concerned that it'd get a reputation for being home to violent, unbalanced folks. Having it be home to one of Far Cry's charismatic sociopaths might start that conversation up again. Of course, the real Richard Spencer actually does live in Montana, so...well.)

@indigozeal: I thank Montana for taking this for the team. They could have easily set in a secessionist modern Texas.

The obnoxious cheering woman from last year's E3 that Rorie mentioned was from the Bethesda presentation, namely during the ESO section. Which is how you know it was fake/someone personally involved with the game, because no one who was not directly attached to that project would genuinely be that excited for ESO.

or eastern North Carolina. Given political times recently the idea of an new American civil war is not so far fetched that making a video game out of it is crazy.

Mass Effect 2 was not supposed to be an open world action game BUT AN RPG..sigh. Anyway - what the heck @rorie you did not like the dark knight rises? So you want more of the silly 60's batman? No thanks. Batman is dark and is supposed to be.

Exactly. Far Cry has made modern geopolitical commentary (or at least geopolitical trappings) in "exotic" locations its niche - and there's no locale as wild or unfamiliar as the U.S. of 2017, unfortunately.

(That said, even divorced from politics, Montana does has enough variety in terrain and weird stuff going on to qualify as a Far Cry setting - though they are gonna be doubling over 4 a bit with the parts set in the mountains.)

@zaldar: Word, Rises was awesome. People that want 60s batman back are weird.

Usually Bombcasts starting off with poo stories are hilarious but this one ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Dark Knight Rises was terrible. Even Nolan would tell you the movie is a wreck and doesn't work. I don't want campy Batman back, but Rises was a total mess.

Horizon is really good, I platinumed it, the plot is one of the better game stories in the last decade, gorgeous art design, music, combat stays fresh and fun. I thought the side quests were fun, enjoyed them and how they were presented more than how Far Cry or Dragon Age 3 or Mass Effect Andromeda did them. Not up to Witcher 3 quality but you can tell that was a direct inspiration.