The Giant Beastcast: Episode 51

I love all giantbomb but GBE is in a league of their own

@firecracker22: Consider: I'm specifically not playing and talking about UC4 right now because I don't want to just be a contrarian on the podcast. I was explicitly asked about the game on the cast, and I answered honestly, otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up at all. I know what my tastes are, and while I'm curious, I'm not rich, so for now I'm going to pass on the thing and when it's a little cheaper, I'll give it a fair shot.

@austin_walker Hey, is there a website / community for your Friends at the Table podcast? After your mention of it in this episode / last episode, I've started listening to it from Episode 0 and good lord do I like it. I also need to see this map y'all are drawing on. Googling around is just pulling up things related to that awful sitcom "Friends" instead of anything related to the podcast, even with quotes and the word "podcast" in the search terms.

EDIT: Though someone needs to stop hitting the table / their mic.

Gonna be honest...rolled my eyes a bit too much during the AC movie trailer discussion.

Also no, having spent too much time of my life studying and reading about WW1...I have no interest in a BF game about that. There are some wars that have too much baggage to touch. But hey, they made this mistake once already with BF: Vietnam. My dad had a real hoot talking to me about the war when he saw that one was coming out. I can't wait to see the "serious and respectful single player" campaign.

Shelling the enemy for weeks, disastrous inventions of war, chemical warfare, the rise of Marxism, trench warfare, shooting at pilots with pistols and dropping random objects on people, tanks that drive under 10 mph, 0 morale on any side, weapons that aren't fun to use in a game, etc...sounds ripe for a conquest mode.

Oh yeah, and Kanye West is terrible. Only redeeming moment is when "Power" was used in Saints Row 3 and not for reasons he'd want it to be (not that he had a decision in it being in that game).

If someone ever asks what's the best Beastcast episodes to listen to, I'll point them to this one right away. What a glorious thing, on some moments I had tears in my eyes from laughing so much.

@humanity: "Oooobisoft" comes from the fact that it's a French company and French people don't read the U as "you". This also applies to a other European languages besides French, such as Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian. So that's already a bunch of people reading as "oooo". And since that's how it's read in French, people say it that way, the same way some people say Mojang and CD Projeckt Red as they say in their countries of origin.

As for E3, only recently they all say "you". There's been a lot of French people there saying "oooo" before.

@kingpk: fucking right? I mean, just watch that video; it's a clear scam and they're both in on it. I don't care when it was filmed, why not just run off and leave with the money and fuck the trying to pass it off as "I got scammed" instead of "we scammed you".

Damn, I mean, is this a Canada thing coming into play? Jokes aside, this video is laughably fake and honestly views like a some reality TV shows or one of those "we reconstructed this crime scene using actors" show. Sucks for the backers, hilarious from the outside looking in.

@matoyak: FriendsAtTheTable.net and @Friends_Table on Twitter! There's also a wiki for the second season (but I suspect you're still back in our Dungeon World game!)

AMD's announcements are making thing even more interesting.

When Alex was talking about the two kinds of curry with that music it killed me.

I didn't realize how that Star Wars question made me look a little psychopathic until someone else read it out loud >_<. In my defense, the context Alex left out made it seem a bit less crazy.

Also, I did play KOTOR 2, but only when it was first released on Xbox, and I barely remember it except for the slideshow ending. I can't think of a game that was so obviously unfinished but also fun. I knew the Steam release fixed stuff but haven't tried it yet; maybe it'll scratch that 'dark' Star Wars itch I've got.

Paradox's defense of that Stellaris review was A1 and very classy but no Austin, Rowan Kaiser is often not a "good guy."

https://soundcloud.com/totalbiscuit/enough

This is not the behaviour of such a person. And yes it happened and yes to everyone who will leap to his defense, this is very fair and reasonable to point out.

This is not the behaviour of a professional or a "

Question for future reference; am I allowed to talk about Uncharted or any recently released video game in this comment section as long as I put it behind spoiler block; or do I need to go to the specific relevant forum thread?

Thank you sir :) (And yeah, I'm still on the Dungeon World game. Love the concept of building the world out alongside the players and the story as it goes. Going to use this to vicariously get my pen and paper rpg fix, as I can't play them myself at the moment, and haven't been able to in 5 years or so.

The other thing about antiperspirants is that their active ingredients are aluminum compounds, which react with your clothes to cause yellowing. If you aren't hella sweating, just use a deodorant.

Also, dang, KOTOR 2 is a good-ass game.

The most interesting fact I know about WWI is that at some point, before the US came in, every army involved just broke at some point and refused to function.

http://www.mountairycasino.com

Plus, I only remembered the Food Emporium backing track too.

If it hasn't been said already that Kickstarter update is the trailer for True Detective season 3!!!

It's the Frog Fractions of True Detective seasons

The most memorable book on World War One that I have read is The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 by Alistair Horne. The battle wasn't the largest, longest, or deadliest ever fought, but it is remembered as being the most intense. 300,000 dead on a front line only eight miles wide.

The bombardment was so constant and thorough that trench networks could not be built. Soldiers lied in shell craters and shallow ditches they dug during the night instead. When soldiers died, there were no communications trenches to remove the corpses, so they stayed on the field, occasionally buried by bomb debris and then dug up again by later bombs. Plagues of carrion birds and flies picked the remains.

The last entry from the journal of Alfred Joubaire, a French soldier who died at Verdun:

Humanity is mad. It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!

I still love the Mario Brothers movie its a great surrealist thing.,

There is some interesting conversation in this we can fight but in the end we all shouild hug and games are fun.

Man. These guys really shouldn't be talking about GPUs.

@alex I'm sure folks have already mentioned it a million times, but Marion Cotillard is pronounced similar to "Co-Tee-Ard".

And the Super Mario Bros. movie is fantastically dumb. The frozen bed slide looks so fun!

@austin_walker: Yeah, that makes sense. And I can understand knowing your tastes and it being a known quantity. I don't even think you need to play it to have an opinion. Just doesn't sound like it's your thing, and I'd rather hear about something else like Stellaris (a game that would otherwise not be on my radar or even up my alley) because how much enjoyment you seemed to get from it. But, it was also surprising to hear how annoyed you were by the hype. The "aahhh", I guess did it for me.

Also, it's feeling like every Naughty Dog release has a kind of blowback effect on hyperbolic reviews that sours people on it. I remember the whole "Citizen Kane of videogames" comment becoming it's own animal.

I feel that way about the new Doom. I know what my tastes are, plus I lack the nostalgia for old Doom that so many who love the new game seem to be harping on. I can wait for a sale.

Best ending to a podcast ever.

@yothatlimp: It is almost entirely unnecessary, apart from the fact that KOTOR is also a fantastic game in its own right. KOTOR II only shortly references the first game in ways that would puzzle someone who hasn't played it, and it mostly sticks to its own self-contained story, even if it's within the grander narrative of the Mandalorian Wars 'n such.

You can easily play KOTOR II without playing the first - I did that originally.

I'm sorry guys but I think you should seriously clarify that you are not giving buying advice when talking about the more technical side of PC Gaming. As someone who follows hardware news and releases pretty much as a hobby, the GPU discussion was painful to listen to and it looks really bad when you fail to mention NVIDIA's main competitor at least once.

Take for example the 8 GBs of RAM in the 1070, it's great that they were able to add as much memory as they did for the more expensive card, however, if look at the specifications provided by NVIDIA the 1070 packs the current memory technology (GDDR5) whereas the 1080 uses a new and faster memory (GDDR5X) and this will likely be the most significant difference in terms of performance between the two cards.

I think you also said that the cards are manufactured using the new 14 nanometer process technology, when NVIDIA is actually using the 16 NM node from TSMC. In comparison, AMD will be shipping Polaris using the 14 NM manufacturing tech from Samsung which may or may not offer a slight advantage for them.

There might be more I'm missing, but competition is very important when you only have two companies in the GPU market and I know you guys can present this kind of news in a much better way just by doing a little more research.

@big_denim: for sure. West coast has no energy of late

Why is this cool? well.. it doesn't use as much power.

Bakalar knows all about temperature.

also pretty impressed how knowledgable Vinny is about WW1

The Gandhi explanation was wrong.

http://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civilization-1653818245

Edit: Whoops, you eventually got around to it. Sorry.

The only jingle I can recall growing up would play in the movie theater every single time. It was for a local Toyota dealership. Unfortunately the only video I could find of it is really bad handicam level quality. It cuts off the first words of the commercial which is the actual name of the dealership so I'll put brackets around the omitted lyrics: "[Atkins-Kroll Toyota], In Guam we lead the way..." Good stuff. That shit would always crack me up.

The Beastcast brightens my week with every episode. I've been a fan of Alex since the Gamespot days but his comedic timing has reached a whole new level with this group of duders. You guys are all the best. Thanks and keep up the great work.

I don't see why it is acceptable to bring up a group of people's race as a reason to laugh at them like that. I don't even care if they are the same race as the one saying it. That doesn't make it acceptable. This seemed far below the standards of this website and I am disappointed such racist comments are allowed.

@alavapenguin: The worst thing about this comment is that I'm pretty sure people would genuinely believe that...

On an unrelated note, I was in an airport in Lima, Peru yesterday and there was a dude just playing Civ 5 in one of the restaurants. It was nearly midnight in this congested terminal, and he's just hanging out, having a good time and playing Civ. What a great game.

Killer episode. The email segment about jingles was hilarious, and I'm not from that area so I've never even heard them. Everyone not believing Vinny about the Food Emporium, and then listening to it... I was almost in tears.

Kind of surprising to hear Austin be so positive about KotOR II and even a little dismissive of KotOR I, and also seeing that echoed in the comments a bit here. Up until now, the absolutely prevailing opinion I've seen everywhere is that KotOR I is superior to II, and not just because II is unfinished (although that is a big reason). I mean, I really enjoyed both, but I also think that 1 is better than 2. I've played 1 numerous times, and I'm not sure if I've fully beaten 2 more than once (I've tried on multiple occasions, though).

About them only talking about Nvidia and not AMD: this is anecdotal, but I feel like I've noticed a trend among game journalists that pretty much all of them use Nvidia. Not claiming it's a conspiracy or anything of that nature. I just have never seen mention of someone in the games press using an AMD card or processor, but have seen a lot of them talk about Nvidia cards. Personally, I've always felt that Nvidia and Intel are kind of overpriced, but I'm incredibly limited in what I can afford, so price is a big factor for me personally.

Man this was a weird one, it's like the rest of the crew is slowly and surely turning into vinny, he is spreading. :)

Also everyone should play KOTOR 2, it was pretty flawed and a bit broken at launch, but the modded re-release on steam fixes all some of that, it is the best thing to come out of the star wars franchise, and i say that as someone who really likes the star wars franchise.

the band is green jelly, not jello, I call bs on that story

But how many of the death tolls in the Taiping rebellion were Chinese? Not to say they don't matter but the view at the time would've been much different if there were millions of white Europeans getting killed. In WW1 the British used a recruiting tactic called pals battalions. They would recruit entire communities of young men (fraternities, football clubs, etc.) and send them to fight together on the front. When one of these units died that was it for the young men of that community.

It took several months after trench warfare began before the leadership realized that men needed to be taken off the front occasionally so they wouldn't lose their minds. There were battles where one side or the other might drop literally millions of artillery shells in a matter of hours. When the sound of shells wasn't deafening soldiers could hear their comrades in no-man's-land crying in agony as they died and no one could save them.

The battle of Passchendaele in particular is a battle that really stuck in the British conscious. Due to weather conditions in Flanders there are plenty of stories of soldiers drowning in mud and then other soldiers being pulled in trying to rescue them.

Yes there are other horrible conflicts like Vietnam but the number of losses for America during that entire conflict is what one side would lose in WW1 in a day.

As for peace, it was mostly the French that argued that Germany should pay for the entire war. There were plenty of people even at the time who saw what could happen because of the treaty as it was passed but they couldn't be stopped. Woodrow Wilson had a plan but the European powers didn't want to give up their colonial holdings.

All that being said, I'm excited to see how the game will turn out.

I've been going back through old Beastcasts, and this was a great episode until the Invisible Inc. email, where Austin starts talking about himself in such a conceited manner that I had to turn it off. What the hell, man.

This has been your incredibly timely podcast reaction.

I've also been going through old Beastcasts and this is good all the way through. The brief moment where Austin is feeling himself was great and appropriate given the question (which he did not choose).

The section where they watch the Food Emporium commercial was INCREDIBLE. "That white guy got his cornflakes."

All that curry talk was a little weird for me.