The Giant Beastcast: Episode 75

THE Jeff Gerstmann? Damn, how'd they pull that off?

GBeast annual performance review via the Beastcast

YOUNG JEFF

GBeast will go to drastic lengths to secure a Jeff on the podcast.

HMM wonder if he is in town to hop in Waypoints stream

I hope their yearly podcast performance review goes well.

This is obivously a Jeff Gerstmann who hasnt played a single mario party game yet....if only younger Jeff would have known what horrors the future will bring.

YO BIG JEFFREY

im hearin double heah! FOUR JEFFS!!!!

e: darn that didn't work for this one :(

the podcast photo is baby Jeff!!

Explains why twitter was so spoopy yesterday

So, is Jeff moving to New York?

Jeff now is like Jeff of the past just wiser and married.

@ripelivejam: A simpsons reference worthy of the wolf himself

Just like the Bombcasts of October 2013 when I started listening. Good job, Mr. Gerstmann and Mr. Caravella.

That thumbnail is missing nuke.com's and videogames.com's watermark. Maybe also add in the hotspot's logo for good measure.

2.5 hrs!! Yessss!! :D

I wonder if he's in town to do interviews for the open position out West. That was what popped into my mind first when I saw Jeff was on this week.

The last Vine you'll ever need

There's something immediately comforting about hearing Jeff and Vinny together on a podcast again.

Jeff is our special Beastcast treat!

The man. The legend.

Hearing about FFXV having online co-op, there's absolutely precedent for co-op multiplayer in Final Fantasies. Every few years me and a friend will dig out my snes and his copy of Final Fantasy 3 and play through it 2 player. A few of the other games in the series had 2 player, obviously just 1 person controlling the overworld stuff, but you could select who controlled which characters in battle. It would be pretty cool if they just did that for the whole game in 15.

Kinda disappointed Small Businessman didn't make a return :(

Crossing streams!!!

Drop 'em!

Jeff + Vinny content. RARE AND CHERISHED NOW!

Cross-brand synergy!

Time for some Beastcast.

I got Battlefield One through Red Box and within an hour of playing the game I was already over it...so much so I didn't even want to touch the single player. I don't like how the weapons feel, there aren't enough vehicles to matter, the map design is awful, and the spawning seems somehow worse than it ever was. I am incredibly thankful that I didn't waste $60 on this and that I went for Titanfall 2 instead.

This episode is so spoopy.

Maybe one of these days they will understand what Star Citizen is trying to achieve. Or maybe do the research to try and understand...
Either way, great to hear Jeff and Vinny together!

@nardak: yeah but if you look closely into those eyes, you see a man who has just had a vision of his future, and doesn't quite know what to make of it.

Which can only mean during Mario Party Party 8, Jeff discovers a way to communicate with his past self.

Alex's Mario Lemieux / Ghostbusters reference was just... I don't know how anyone could not love him!

Could have used a few more watermarks in the picture, but I'll take what I can get.

Kessler <3

This is great, but probably means that Jeff won't be on UPF.

@geoff: Exactly why i said doing research. You can pay $60 and get Star Citizen plus Squadron 42, no other purchases are necessary. Its not milking if people are willing to pay extra to help fund development.

Just to point out on the 3 years. How long has it taken most AAA titles to be developed?

Oh hey they answered my question about which NES games to bring to a Throwback Thursday at work! And didn't make fun of my name, which is always appreciated.

I ended up bringing a bunch of games, but mostly people played Super Mario Bros 1, Super Mario Bros 3, Double Dragon II, and RBI Baseball. It was actually pretty fun - I enjoy sharing my love of gaming with other people!

@squirrelbait: Anyone who (still) doesn't should just read his writing.

That is one professional Giant Bomb watermark in that image.

@markus1395: Yung Jeff

Yes, absolutely. Though I miss Jeff + Ryan and Vinny + Ryan so badly. They both had such a vibe with him.

The people who would listen to our long discussion in this don't need reviews at all, but they might enjoy reading them.

Sounds about right. Despite you guys coming from the biggest traditional video game website, I pretty much think of you as Youtube Personalities and I'm a fan for the entertainment value, not the buyer's advice. I don't give a shit about reviews most of the time. I's easy enough to get an idea about what a game is like from videos, word of mouth, or at most skimming some different reviews linked from metacritic or, say, a new topic that pops up in this forum every time a game people care about is released.

They are still fun to read occasionally though. Often they're much shallower than what the youtube experts and fansites can provide(or if you're a fan of other types of analyses and critiques, there are always channels for that too, like Errant Signal, Superbunnyhop or Joseph Anderson), but sometimes they're fun to read. Alex' review of No Man's Sky was so good, for instance. I haven't checked the comments on that review since I read it, but I remember I was not alone in thinking it was just a great piece to read.

Three years for a AAA release is on the longer end and also for Star Citizen it's been like five.

Sometimes i wonder if that chair will ever be still.

@solidus_ty: The part where it's sketchy is where you're paying significant amounts of money for the promise of future content. Say what you want about AAA game development, but they don't ask you to pay for it until the product is (ostensibly) finished.

It's weird that they're trying to label Star Citizen and Squadron 42, as two different products as if it's some kind of amazing value-add to the game. S42 is just a singleplayer campaign for SC, and as far as I know the first episode of S42 is running late anyway.

Until that stuff is out you're not really paying $60 for SC and S42, you're paying $60 for access to a limited sandbox alpha of SC.

EDIT: That's not to say I don't want to play it when it's done, but as it stands it doesn't do anything but look pretty, and the pricing scheme seems incredibly abusive.

@efesell: Im not gonna disagree with your statement, but I will say when you mention something like that you need to speak within context. Cloud Imperium Games wasn't a fully functioning company until about 3 years ago. Also, they started from scratch, unlike most other games that only take about 3 years(COD, Battlefield, AC, etc...). They had to rebuild an engine and build assets as well as get systems in place so that they can produce content faster.