The Giant Beastcast: Episode 24

Here's a question for Jeff Bakalar: In those first two hours, are there any supernatural elements in the gameplay? You guys talked a lot about ludonarrative dissonance, but what ticked me off about the first game(besides the story being forgettable and the QTEs being annoying) was that the enemy variety is terrible. The first combat arena that I really loved was right at the end, when you were pit against what seemed like a hundred possessed samurai armors with clubs and spears. But that's like the very beginning of Resident Evil 4. So do you just fight russian dudes with guns for an entire game again or has some of that Lara Croft Guardian of Light/Tomb of Osiris T-Rex and Egyptian gods leaked over into the main series again? It would probably even solve that ludonarrative bullshit, because nobody feels bad about beating up a bunch of skeletons or giant spiders.

I mean, I guess this post seems pretty negative, but I did play through the whole thing and liked the way it controlled and looked a lot. I want the second one to be more of what I enjoyed and less of what I did not like.

Uncharted has been criticised for its jet ski and ship graveyard segments innumerable times over the years. I myself recently called out the jet ski segments in my blog even... And when I eventually get around to blogging about Uncharted 3 I will similarly give the ship graveyard (and sandstorm) firefights a dubious mention. Not that many seem to care.

Also, the characters are superior in Uncharted because the writing is snappier, which in combination with the superb acting makes the character interactions feel natural and believable. The characters themselves aren't particularly deep, but they're loaded with personality and are generally likeable. Obviously you can disagree to their likeability, but there's a still huge gulf between the quality of characters in Uncharted and Tomb Raider 2013.

As for the shooting, I still stand by Uncharted 2 at least having perfectly adequate shooting and that it mixes in well with the traversal, melee, and stealth elements. That, and the level design throughout most of Uncharted 2 is really well done.

I'm guessing Witcher 2 filled the void Dragon Age 2 left/created.

GOG keeps my faith in VGames alive but I'm guessing it will run out when polish wages reach american levels.

Yeah, it's been interesting to see how GBeast does more and in some ways better content with half as many people in their office.

In the store, the price on King actually read: $5,899,999,999.99

Fun hearing that the 40K books Vinny likes are the 40K books I also like. But I want more. Giant Bookcast on the Horus Heresy series? Get the feeling that'd just be a Vinny monologue, though.

Hope this graphic I whipped up applies :p

I think @vinny has an exceptional talent of fostering intelligent conversation. He's able to respect games for their differences and unique aspects. The whole GBeast content has been very indicative of this. Until Dawn, VinnyVania, Contradiction, and now Life is Strange. I'm super pumped for GBeast now, and sadly I really don't care about anything SF does besides the occasional Metal Gear.

For me, Tomb Raider Legends and Underworld were the peak of that series. The puzzles in those games were really great and the platforming felt really good. It felt like a Tomb Raider game. The reboot really didn't do it for me all that much. I enjoyed it but it didn't feel like a Tomb Raider game.

Edit: Oh yeah, I just wanted to add they said they announced Cyberpunk early to gather talent to develop it.

Really enjoyed this Beastcast. Although I like both, I'm realising the Beastcast crew is closer to my taste in games than the Bombcast.

I enjoyed the Witcher talk. I actually finished it a while back and wanted to hear the guys thoughts on it. Actually got me to start playing the DLC. But damn that game is hard to get back into. Got slaughtered by the giant Toad and almost gave up.

Anyways great episode!

Thank you for the millennium jokes great stuff and mass effect as the "good news" is hilarious. The star wars conversation was reminiscent of clerks and hilarious. Only second of these I have listened too. I will be back these are great! You should talk abut how a non clone star trooper needs to be explained though ... can we get a general discount at crunchyroll for people renewing as I have been a member at crunchyroll since the anime vice days. (and they were right the transition before that commercial was great) Really wish you all reviewed anime too ... and the konami soap opera yeah they are still not admitting he is fired (yeah you mentioned that). This is hilarious. Keeping money offshore is not at all greasy and the obligation is maximize profits for shareholders is legal and correct that is why the system works. Maximizing profits leads to more being done and more produced which is the goal. The money was made off shore so taxing it in America would be wrong. It is profit of an offshore company made by an offshore subsidiary. Business often get loans from three different people not because of problems with their credit but because the banks want to spread out risk. I think the government forces them too as well. And yes one of the things when you are buying an IP like starwars is the right to make new stuff, you also can not over value an IP as that would mean there would have to be a "correct" value. Nothing has a correct value, only the value people are willing to pay for it in the market at the time which is fluid. Other than our differences on general business philosophy you do seem to know a lot about business though which is cool - not many here have that. Companies have an enormous amounts of money, check out the amount pharmaceuticals are sitting on. Convincing businesses to spend that money and invest it is one of the hardest thing to do. I do fall on the side of people should be able to do what they want but yes there are ethical issues around making a game to take advantage of psychological issues (I do believe there is pure information but it is scientific not memories of experiences). Your letter writer is correct on the law wish I had heard this question as I am a lawyer. Constitution is the top, common law and statutory law are on equal footing unless they contradict when statutory laws rule. Administrative law is law made by administrative agencies and they do have to be specifically empowered to make the rules (which have the force of law but are not considered laws academically) but they only have to be given really broad guidelines and have an amazing amount (many say to much) power. I am a patent/copyright/trademark attorney actually so if you ever have any questions along these lines let me know.

Wow did this get long. Overall great entertaining show will be back!

@kraine: I thought about that too when listening to that segment. Big Boss is supposed to be this trained-killer super-soldier, yet the gameplay in the series has encouraged avoiding the enemy from the very beginning. There isn't really any dissonance when it comes to him being a super-soldier if you're being really stealthy--but he seems like such a nice guy (for a super-soldier) if he's just going around tranqing everyone instead of killing them. Yet in MGS2 we have Snake talking to Raiden at one point about how killing gets easier the more you do it--but how often are you killing people if you're realistically reflecting Snake's stealth skills in gameplay? You can play MG1, MG2, and MGS1 (and onwards) without killing anyone except for bosses.

It's a series where being violent would make sense. It could just be like other stealth games where you're just violently, and lethally taking out every guard; you are always playing as a soldier who is very capable of killing some random grunt after all (even Raiden). But instead it's probably one of the most prominent shooter series that offers a wide array of non-lethal options.

Maybe Lara could use a couple of tranquilizer pistols; seems like a good option for someone who is dealing with combat situations for the first time, rather than a trained soldier.

Is there any way to get this show onto Stitcher Radio?

cool

@kasaioni: The problem with that is, tranq pistols aren't realistic. There's a reason you need fully-licensed specialists when applying anesthesia; there's a fine line between "unconscious" and "dead".

Every's been saying good stuff about Rise of the Tomb Raider. Sounds like they've made the improvements over the last game that I was hoping for. Guess I'll be waiting on the PC version to see for myself.

Lol 10:15 was funny. That issue has existed in many games though.. Gta IV, Far cry 3 etc

Haha agree with that

Nice Philip K. Dick reference there, Alex!