Giant Bombcast 546: Declaration of Hot Dogs

I don't like all this mystical stuff in Assassin's Creed. The last Origins DLC which I own but haven't played, and this Medusa stuff seem to be leaning right into magic and mythology. The Pieces of Eden and all that precursor race, sci-fi layer was fine and it stood in for lots of percieved magical phenomena throughout history, but if all these ancient gods and creatures are presented as straight up magic that's an unwelcome departure from franchise conventions.

Gary is absolutely one of my favourite people

Jesus. Never been happier to not have any interest in Starbucks coffee.

@sweetz: While I don't feel like it has soured me on the game necessarily, I 100% agree with you that the last boss just isn't fun. All of his attacks do ABSURD amounts of damage, they cover huge swaths of the screen, and perhaps worst of all it generally takes me up to 45 minutes just to get to him. Not only that, but it feels like if I have any kind of build that tags you with an additional damage received trait (which has happened to me when upgrading to "plus" for some items, and then I don't have enough money leftover to try and cycle it off) I just wiped out in actual seconds. Like, anything that adds 100% of damage to me? I might as well just give up right away because I know 1 hit is going to knock me down to almost nothing, and then it's just going to be a frustrating struggle to get myself enough breathing room to use a potion, which I will probably get hit while using, knocking me down even lower until I'm finally dead.

*sigh*

Felt good to get that out.

I just can't get into Dead Cells. The action is great and I like the art syle, but the whole run based aspect kinda kills it for me. I much prefer the classic metroidvania style of a persistent world that you explore and map out gradually, with all the backtracking and learning an area that comes with it. It just feels like nothing matters in Dead Cells, its just window dressing for you to rush through when you inevitably die.

@big_denim: agreed. Good game, but nothing spectacular.

I do. And I like it... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

There's no such thing as beer that tastes good.

But boy, does he know his DOTA 2. Aren't we lucky.

Can someone provide the timestamp for when Brad breaks out into "Thriller"?

(thumbnail joke)

When Gary wondered if there were actually people that didn't prefer ketchup on a hotdog, I said to myself oh no here we go again.

One time I was at a friend's house and his aunt had a laptop with a wired mouse that she said the mouse wasn't working on. I tried for 10 minutes and then finally looked at where the mouse was plugged in, it was diagonal in the cat5 port.

Huh? I don't know if I've ever seen someone NOT put ketchup on a hot dog. If I had to have only one condiment for a hot dog, it would easily be ketchup by far, as much as I love mustard and other toppings.

loved gary on the pod. brought a nice spice to it

@sethmode: Yup and after reading up on the game's mechanics a bit more, I think there are definitely some legitimate "fairness" problems with the Hand of the King.

Specifically, the game scales enemies, including bosses, up based on your stat increases. However there's apparently a cap on how much damage you can do per hit to HotK, yet there's no cap on how much he scales up in relation to how many stat increases you take.

So, after a certain point, leveling up damage dealing stats actually hurts you, because you won't be doing any more damage to HotK, but he will still be getting stronger. That's pretty screwed up. It apparently makes "glass cannon" builds where you only level up Brutality pointless because you won't be able to do more damage past a certain point.

---

As a tip, other than save scumming like crazy, the thing that allowed me to beat him was the Wings of the Crow (aka Crow Feather) item. It's a skill item (i.e. goes in grenade slot) which makes you fly above the ground and shoot lighting bolts downward for 4 seconds. It doesn't do a ton of damage, but a lot of the enemy AI doesn't "understand" how to hit a flying enemy and simply won't attack - HotK included. You can apparently completely cheese him by doubling up on those items and taking the Efficiency mutation (lower cool down time) which basically lets you alternate between them non-stop. HotK will just sit there, slowly taking DOTs, because he won't attack a flying player. The damage output is low and would take a while and be pretty boring, but before anyone is ready to completely give up, there is at least a "cheese" option.

I didn't do that. I just had one of those Crow Feathers and the Efficiency mutation, so I couldn't just spam it the whole time. However, I found that the brief 4 second respite it gave me between attack sequence is basically all I needed. It allowed me to collect myself every so often and setup for the next attack, which is all it took. Having to be "on" for that whole, lengthy fight is beyond me.

https://twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1031943006612422656

From what it seems, a lot of games are falling behind. AngryJoe literally made the same point that maybe it's not those vocal people and maybe it was a bunch of other factors and he literally got brigaded by the people that wanted to use this as some sort of victory (getwokegobroke, what a sad time to be alive)

Jeff cant even muster up happiness for Windjammers. its more windjammers, what is there to even question?

@sammo21: That whole preorder bullshit was just digital copies on amazon. It was an easy target for a narrative

EDIT: And the crew ate it up with NO research. Nice

Steve Balmer was not talking about Windows Phone, he was talking about Windows Mobile which had a majority share of "smart phones"/"pda phone" market. And he turned out to be correct as it was not iPhone that took over that majority share (it was Android).

Also, I dont know how you value Mario over GTA. GTA has been a phenomena since 3 (2001), and 5 has almost never left the top 10 NPD since it launched and is the best selling game of all time in the US (in terms of NPD tracking). I am definitely not a fanboy of that series or company (never even bought 5), but if your going to bet your retirement on a franchise, GTA seems like the smart choice. Might as well go along with a long running series that ALSO has a metric shit ton of sales and mindshare.

I also found the RTX-2000's series discussion pretty atrocious - I expect better of a fellow PC gamer.

1. They failed to recognize that Pokemon is the largest game IP by a massive margin. Not just in games, either. It is the largest media property in history. It more than doubles Mario's total lifetime revenue.

2. They didn't mention Mr. King Dice in the discussion of best gaming "Mr."

0/5 stars!

Whitta was great tho.

@hiimzev: well, based on how they sometimes will pick emails and sometimes immediately chide the question asked (even Brad does this and he picks the emails) shows that sometimes they probably don't have tons of time and are rushing in to do the recording. Also, they never fact check on the podcast so it doesn't surprise me at all.

I like this lineup!

We don't need ray tracing, here's a forest without it, courtesy of theHunter.

Aww shit I'm a dumbass. I am embarrassed for not immediately getting that reference haha.

@cjf4 said:

@pretty_sharp said:

@cjf4 said:

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, puts ketchup on a hot dog.

I do. And I like it... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

@mrsmiley said:

@cjf4 said:

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, puts ketchup on a hot dog.

Huh? I don't know if I've ever seen someone NOT put ketchup on a hot dog. If I had to have only one condiment for a hot dog, it would easily be ketchup by far, as much as I love mustard and other toppings.

Fuck man, I can't believe no one made a wurst joke during "the worst convention hotdog" segment. wurst! THE WURST HOTDOG! God, I was dying for someone to make that joke and can't believe it didn't happen.

TIL what Gary looks like, after years. Looking good Gary!

The comics podcast War Rocket Ajax has a recurring feature called "Every Story Ever," where they put reader-submitted comics stories on a single big ranked list. On the current print version of the list (which is slightly out-of-date with the podcast), the Garfield story Gary Whitta mentions ranks at...well, #420 out of 592 entries. It's a very top-heavy list. This does put the story above The Killing Joke, however, which I would argue is an accurate assessment.

man this conversation about streamers and youtubers is killing me.

Hey! They read my email!

This was really hard to listen to with everyone talking over each other.

@hiimzev: It's not quite that simple actually. Look at the full chain https://twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1032045108814700544

Sales may very well be better than their estimation but it's not like their system is based on a single piece of broken data. Saying it's based digital copies on Amazon and a "narrative" isn't particularly accurate.

OI!

Gary Whitta is always a good guest.

I'm sad that no hotdog discussion ever includes the hot dogs sold at IKEA.
IKEA hot dogs are great, 1.50€ will get you a hot dog and a free refill drink, you can even add the toppings yourself.

Is this not a thing outside of Germany or why is nobody ever talking about IKEA hot dogs?

@jeff Your PC making sounds like that could be due to brittle decoupling rings. Many silent PC setups use plastic decoupler rings to dampen out the vibrations of mechanical stuff, like the vibrations of a fan traveling to the chassis through the screws.

Over time these rings can dry out, become brittle, and not decouple properly anymore. Maybe that's what's happening with your PC.

there was a recent @jeff stream where he played mr. do, and it was noticed the melody when you pick up the items was the same melody as "do re mi", which sort of leads me to believe the game is pronounced "mr doh" instead of "doo". (??)

Hey! They read my email!

Ben came prepared with the Ubisoft talk and he still had no clue what the games were called. That's goddamn hilarious.

I can't believe noone brought up MR. KARATE, surely a top 5 Mister In Video Games at the very least

I think the ketchup thing is more a by-product of the traditional NYC and Chicago styles not including ketchup because it can cover up the taste of the frankfurter, consequently leading people to avoid it altogether, rather than this like live-or-die declaration.

Or, rather, I would think that, but this is the internet, so of course it's live-or-die.

@nethlem: Costco does something quite similary in the U.S. You get a hotdog and a drink for $1.50. Unfortunately, the mustard in the U.S. is nowhere near as good as the mustard in Germany.

@eojay: I completely agree with your sentiment. More and more I find that the members of the Bombcast are woefully uninformed in areas that they talk about relatively confidently. Also, for what it's worth the average player age at The International 8 is 23, with quite a few players that are 28 years old.

Garry Whita always a fine edition, reminds me of bombcasts of yesteryear.

Would be nice if they had a guest every week on the bombcast

Oh yeah, for sure, if you're taking extra damage from one of your items, the last boss of Dead Cells is practically impossible. Frankly, even if you're not taking extra damage, it's still a very hard boss to clear if you only have 20%-40% damage reduction from your items. It honestly feels like about 2 hits kill you under normal circumstances, so if you take that 1 hit, you better find a way to heal up with a flask.

Most of my successful final boss clears in Dead Cells are with builds where my items, skills, and amulet give me 50%-75% damage reduction. The Hand of the King's damage is just absurd if you don't have massive damage reduction. Even if you don't really intend on parrying or even blocking, sometimes taking a good shield into the final boss is worth it just for the passive damage reduction and the half-second invuln whenever you take damage.

pointing to those Chinese tariffs aren't most GFX cards made in Taiwan which ain't part of China as much as China want's it to be?

Weird hearing then talking about Ninja the way they do when he was a pretty big pro Halo player/streamer and then when that started to fade in popularity he became a big Fortnight player/streamer so when Fortnight runs its course he is bound to become big at something else

I think it's hilarious when you guys talk about computers not running right or being loud. Take an afternoon and learn how computers cool themselves and run, learn fan profiles, look at your temps, and be better. Seriously your guys ignorance on properly running PCs is bind blowing after all these years.

Food snobs are always bad, but people who are snobby about simpler food (i.e. ketchup on hot dogs) are a special brand of bad.

I totally remember that dark Garfield strip Gary was talking about. It just comes out of nowhere and is morbidly bleak. I think it was supposed to be around Christmastime?

Gary is a great guest, hope he come back more often.

"If I'm not seeing the wiener, I'm not having fun" - This guy gets it.