The Giant Beastcast: Episode 175

@thejhawk:

Saint Gritty, The First Cleric Beast.

Me after seeing the Philadelphia Flyers' new mascot -

I want to see Vegas play Philly so that a knight slays Gritty

Gritty is like if The Lorax and Crazy frog had a baby

The video game urban legend talk immediately made me think of the Final Fantasy naming story and the Kingdom Hearts elevator story, both of which are probably not true, right?

@memu: dude, I live in BFE Tucson. It’s been mostly dealing with brown/black widows for me, and a nice infestation of bark scorpions... btw, aniscorp is $20,000 an oz., which means one hospital ED trip, for a scorpion sting, is about $100,000.

Abby's gotten all uppity and defensive about Spider-Man the last couple weeks, but now can't even be bothered to beat it? Weird. That game's story hits some good notes near the end. It's worth beating!

Spider-Man's story was pretty good, but the character animation and voice performances are fantastic and made the campaign even more enjoyable.

Did people catch in the first two minutes that they're doing some new spooky movies for Film & 40s? Very excited for one of my favorite features of the site to return.

Gritty is just Youppi's brother... yes, he has a meth problem.

@madbootsy: Surprise! Abby doesn't beat another game! No shade towards Abby, but a friend of mine and myself have a running bet on whether she'll actually finish any games this year outside of little indie games or whatever. The last bet is on Red Dead!

gritty is a more-fitting representation of his host city in modern times than any other sports mascot out there. also, i don't stand in solidarity with dan when it comes to most things, but i do when it comes to jelly bellies edit: rescinded because of dan's rant against people who don't capitalize on the internet. i refuse to empathize with such a narc

@liquidprince: I thought she finished God of War? Either way, this is a really dumb bet.

I am really enjoying Abby's level of not having it regarding Dan and his bizarre food tastes.

Edit: I also meant to mention, my mother also did that weird lightning bug thing as a kid and as far as I know she's not a serial killer but I always did find it creepy and a little awful.

@sethmode: She didn’t finish God of War and thanks for your input. Truly.

Abby should be careful using "pervert" as an insult to Dan. Funny as it is - with today's political climate - I can see one or both of them having to explain themselves to HR at some point.

@liquidprince: Yeesh, that felt a little aggressive. Sorry, duder.

"I have not prepared for this" - the most accurate and truthful thing Bakalar has ever said in regards to VR. JFC guys if you're not going to do even the most fleeting and cursory research just maybe don't go beyond mentioning it's happened.

Oculus Quest - stand alone 6DOF headset the controllers come with it they are button compatible with the touch controllers.FYI- one of the titles that was shown off was Superhot , Abby.

for fututre reference any vr related questions check either of these two.

https://uploadvr.com/

or

https://www.roadtovr.com/

I doubt Six Crazy Frights and the Halloween themed Film & 40's combined could be as scary as that cover image.

@liquidprince said:

Perhaps you and your friend should explore the healthier, less-obsessive world of sports betting.

@indigozeal: @sethmode: There’s no intended aggression. It’s all in good fun and mostly started when my friend pointed out around God of War time that she had stopped playing and had sold another game back. Good for her, really. Like I said it was just in good fun.

I’m surprised that Alex didn’t pick Ghostbusters as his movie. This is assuming that Return of The Living Dead was his pick. I have no idea what Abby and Dan might pick.

I know your bet is all in good fun and whatever, but it does seem to be unfairly targeting Abby.

tbh, most of the GB staff doesn't finish very many games unless it's a short indie game, or they're formally reviewing it. While I'm not meticulously taking notes on what games they've each completed this year, most of the staff seems to play about 5-20 hours of a game and then they just kinda peter out and move onto a different game. That's enough time for them to form a loose idea of how much they like the game, and usually the last 50% of the game isn't going to dramatically change their mind about how much they like the game, so essentially they already have an opinion of the game ready to go for GotY talks even though they haven't finished it.

Looking at a few of the single-player, "finishable", higher profile games that came out this year:

• A Way Out: as resident "guy who actually finishes narrative choice games", I believe Alex is the only one who played through this.
• Far Cry 5: pretty sure no one came close to finishing this other than Jeff
• God of War: probably has the highest staff completion rate of any AAA game this year since it's a game where they dramatically overhauled both the gameplay and storytelling and it's really polished
• BattleTech: this is an Austin Walker game, which means no one on current GB staff is going to finish it
• Frostpunk: see above entry, though I think Alex(?) played a fair bit of it
• State of Decay 2: Brad got pretty deep into it, but I don't think anyone on staff completed a campaign?
• Detroit: Become Human: once again, narrative choice game that I'm pretty sure no one finished but Alex, even though it's like a 10-hour game. So get ready for the opinion of Alex (and sorta Abby) to almost single-handedly decide its fate at GotY time
• Switch release of Hollow Knight: half the staff is trying to get around to finishing this game this year, but most of them aren't enjoying themselves. I really doubt any of them will finish it
• Octopath Traveler: I think only Dan and his wife really played much of it, but I seem to recall Dan not having the patience to grind out the ending of the game
• Dead Cells: I think a lot of them played and liked it, though only some of them have beaten the final boss once
• Dragon Quest XI: pretty sure nobody is really playing this but Jeff, pretty sure he doesn't intend to finish it
• Spider-Man: a lot of them have played it, though again a lot of them are starting to peter out after 15-20 hours and we'll see how many GB staffers actually bother to complete it by GotY. If you mainline the story missions it's a lot shorter than God of War, so this game honestly has a pretty good shot at most of the staff finishing it by GotY talks

So if we're gonna use your criteria of "actually finish games this year outside of little indie games or whatever", while Abby may be at zero, each individual staff member isn't doing much better than like 1-3 games at this point in the year. I'm really struggling to think of any longer, non-indie games that most of the staff got close to finishing other than God of War and Spider-Man; almost everything else the only person who seemed to finish it was the person reviewing it.

Yeah, good point. That has unfortunately been the norm for a longgg time now.

@bisonhero: I don't think I'm unfairly singling anyone out because there is no malice behind the bet. It just so happens that every game that I've considered a big release this year that she's specifically played, she has yet to beat. And it's always the same sort of, "oh I fell off of it and sold the game back." Which is perfectly fine. It's just an observation.

The only reason it sticks out with her aside from how you said she's the only one with zero completions, is that the last time we were in this situation she made a ton of outright false claims about a game in the 2017 GOTY. I was hoping this year would yield different results.

Love u, gritty.

Man... you guys should totally do a Film and 40's on Evil Dead 2. Fingers crossed!

I'm not completely against all the "internet humor" stuff, but I'm with Dan in that I don't really get the fascination with dril. I've seen a few tweets that are mildly amusing, but for the most part I just don't find it that funny. I had the same opinion about all those "ebook" accounts that were a thing like 5+ years ago. Those made no goddamn sense, and not in a funny way either.

But Dan is completely, absolutely wrong when it comes to jelly beans. Buttered Popcorn jelly beans are the worst. They're vile. Really, any jelly bean that isn't fruit flavored or at least fruit-adjacent is not great. The "weird" flavors like buttered popcorn are universally terrible.

The version of the Tootsie Roll indian myth that I always heard was that it could get you a free slurpee. Why that brand cross over would ever exist did not occur to me when I was that young. I actually tried to cash in on that once when I was with my cousins and they looked at us like we were idiots.

Also, Dan, Coastline in Siege is a nightclub, not a house, lol.

Scrappy Doo is totally ok.