Giant Bombcast 548: The Shush-Shush Lad

Is there talk of the Riot PAX room fiasco?

Is there talk of the Riot PAX room fiasco?

All this Raichu hate will not stand!

Hear, hear! Raichu is a saint and I will not sit in silence while it's good name is sullied!

Oh boy...

I've gotten so weary of the "is this a sandwich?" query and all its cutesy variants. You can argue that a taco or a piece of pie or a human arm (delicious meat between slices of skin!) are sandwiches, but if I give you my ulna if you ask for a sandwich, you're not going to be happy (...probably). At the end of the day, words have gotta communicate some degree of shared meaning to be functional.

@bjklein: I don't know the game's structure but my guess is that the aspect they mentioned is introduced early in the game but the other sequences are deeper in? I hadn't seen the stuff you mentioned during preview coverage (not that I mind hearing about it, to be clear).

So many new games to talk about, video game season is upon us. Wooo

First. Yay Bombcast!

After hearing Jeff. Quiet Man sold

Pretty sure Spider-Man is a buy for me, despite the reservations over the stealth sections.

I got to play The Quiet Man the day after they talked about it, and let me tell you, it's a wild ass ride.

Hey it's... Tuesday?

Is the new Destiny 2 content (by which I mean everything beyond the base game) worth checking out if I don’t intend to actually do raids? Is there enough other fun stuff there to make it worth the price?

@bathala: The catch is that after hearing Jeff talk about any game in a positive or interesting way I’m usually sold ..

I hope not. The political coverage on review sites tends to be one-sided, without argumentation and typically uses some of the most extremist one-sided sites on the full spectrum (such as resetera/vice) as sources. Even though I am a leftist (and always considered myself pretty extreme in that regard), I could do without that on a cozy game review site.

@tikicobra: It really depends on how much you like Destiny. I use it as a podcast game so I get enough out of it to be worthwhile but if you are just going to play the story and do some strikes, I am not sure I would recommend it.

Marvel's Spiderman sounds like a fairly polished but ultimately by the numbers open world game that I probably have little care or room in my life for at the moment. Maybe eventually, but it sounds a lot less engaging than the crew acts like it is.

"What?! I actually have to play the game for it to become fun?! I have to unlockskills? Gah!"

It's God of War all over again.

@loktarog I don't expect Jeff to like any new games these days, but I'm glad Brad and Ben are all in.

my comment was deleted? LOL

Wh-where did the outro music go? ;_;

@ikuorai: No. I'm not even sure if they were aware of it, since none of them really even engage with Riot.

Anyone get the feeling that Jeff just banged out a ton of ad reads in a day? He sounds downright tired in the last one for this episode.

Ben spoils a lot about the new Spider-Man game in this episode. I mean it isn’t even out yet and he’s talking plot points (early game sounds like) and upgrades and mission set up stuff. Just seems like bad form for a game that isn’t out yet so be warned.

So… I assume that someone got picked up by a TSA strike team during the first break for publicly admitting to their blatant violations of pointless airport security theatre very important rules indeed. :P

I want a new Warhawk.

@ikuorai: I mean, the fiasco, such as it was, was just a bunch of man babies whining online so I'm not surprised that they don't address it. Who has the time anymore? They could hire someone specifically just to keep tabs on what the man babies are mad about, and it would be like an 80 hour a week job.

Anytime they talk about anything Destiny related, I wonder if this day they'll love it or hate it.

GB Quake 1 duel would be awesome.

Oh, the good old times of Quake1 / QuakeWorld duel matches on DM4 or DM6!!

I've had a capn crunch beer. It was ... strange, to say the least. Anywho...

It cannot be overstated enough, just how bad Ben is at explaining anything.

I went to check out Quiet Man after reading Patrick's tweet. I had a similar reaction, where I needed to talk to someone about how... odd the game is. I got the same "it's 95% cut scenes, 5% gameplay" caveat from the person at the booth. I 100% agree with Jeff's bewildered response. When I asked the demo person how far along in development the game was, she said it was mostly done, so... I'd follow it with morbid curiosity.

This is my biggest beef. He starts talking then cuts himself off and restarts so often I lose track of what his thought was, and on top of that he often gets things wrong. Like how in artifact there's no way to earn cards in game even though he said there was.

I dunno man, SF's shit problem seems way worse than other cities.

What @Sethmode said. The so-called "fiasco" boils down to this:

Riot Games: "We're going to invite female and non-gender-binary gamers to an intimate conference where they can offer us suggestions on how to make the gaming world more open and inviting to them and their peers."

Man-childs: "RAAAGE our priviledged demographic has been the sole market force for decades but we demand entry into a field of discussion that was absolutely of no concern to us until we found out that we weren't invited to a private conversation!"

I'm pretty sure Jan plays League of Legends. I'm not sure how closely he follows Riot and things outside of the game itself, though.

@humanity: Unless he's explaining the DOTA all-heroes challenge to Brad. The he becomes Ken Burns.

@loktarogar: I don't see what's unreasonable about expecting a game to be fun from the beginning. If a game isn't fun 30 minutes in, then I'm probably not going to get to 3 hours, much less 30.

@bran_smith: That's a pretty silly comment to make, since he calls a new game "great" in this very episode (Donut County) and talked about how much he liked a new game last week (Dragon Quest XI).

Hugely agree, but at the end of the day this, the BFV nonesense, and everything else that's happened in the past few months is a chilling reminder of how much bullshit is tied to gaming culture.

@blindx0r: Only half serious and It's kinda the running joke with Jeff, he obviously has good things to say about some games.

Every time Brad does the hand gesture in the thumbnail, is he sending a sign, trying to communicate via the language from Arrival, or playing charades with the giant checkers at Cracker Barrel being the answer?

@overbite: Like, I get that Artifact is kind of obtuse but how did he not make the connection that the colors represent the same thing they do in regular Dota? I've seen like 20 seconds of footage and I can already tell you that Red cards are Strength-based, Blue is Intelligence, Green is Agility. No idea what Black is though, maybe some sort of Pure damage?

That being said, Ben is still the man and I love everything he brings to the site.

That's a bit harsh. I mean if you took all that out, you barely have anything to evaluate or talk about in the review....

Jeff with the Paste Pot Pete reference

People who keep on harping about how "Spider-Man 2 was the good one because of the swinging" hasn't played that game in a hot minute. It does not hold up well, it didn't hold up well then either. The swinging was the *only* thing it had, and that wasn't enough.

Web of Shadows is the real bar to beat. I'd really like to see how this Spidey compares to that to be honest.

Once I get my 4K tv, Spider-Man will be one of the first games I play on it. I can't wait!