The Giant Beastcast: Episode 96

Just under 2 hours? Oh, that makes me a little sad.

Ok this drinking game sounds hilarious

Am I allowed to be mad that Dan hates Lord of the Rings and doesn't just dislike it?

Keith David has definitely slowed down in recent years, but he did have a small role in last year's excellent Shane Black movie The Nice Guys.

Vinny editing a snippet of "Bored" into the podcast after saying he knew Alex's favourite band was Deftones cracked me up.

@nickhead: I think it really works for his character; Dan is the opposite of Brad.

Some audio glitches around 26 mins

Ugh. I guess it was too much to hope that maybe Dan actually was out of the office and I'd be able to listen to at least one episode of the Beastcast. *sigh* I really miss Vinny.

The beastcast has become my favorite podcast. This week was hilarious! Thank you gentleman.

@nickhead: Dan is wrong about a lot of things on the internet. Sometimes I wonder if he's not just actively trolling, though.

Regarding the email about considering developers' circumstances when making a game: the thing that made me fully understand this concept was Dragon Age 2.

It was a really cool narrative, really interesting structurally, and ambitious in terms of characterization and how little it gave a fuck about the Special Protagonist. I really liked all that stuff! It is the least Bioware Bioware story they ever made.

But the part where it's a game you had to play? To run around and do things in? Suuuuuuuuuucked. From walking around the poorly designed, boring looking areas, to fighting through the same mind-numbing maps over and over and over again, to a bunch of poorly designed quests that barely had anything attached to them, to severe difficulty spikes for specific builds you could never predict. Problems up and down the board.

And I wanted to know why the game was that way, so I did some digging, and it turns out the game had a production phase of about a year. Learning this explained so much about why the game was the way it was. It didn't magically make it less shitty! But it no longer made me mad when I looked at it anymore. Heck, it actually made Dragon Age 2 impressive to me. Given how little time they had, the fact that there was anything interesting, cool, or even playable about the game was crazy!

@alex's amazing win in that LOTR quiz is the most skillful thing I've ever seen!

I think Vinny's thoughts about Andromeda have pushed me to wait on it. He's probably the biggest ME fan on the crew and even he has major problems with it.

The link between two dollar bills and strip clubs is BS. There are not enough of them, and 90% of 2 dollar bills are in Vinny's wallet - this is KNOWN. Two dollar wills are the legal tender of grandpas, small children, and eccentric dad's. Really ecentric dads have United States silver certificates in their wallet.

@skinnersweet: What is the reason you need headphones for?

I watch the blu ray on the ps4 at a lowish volume and play the commentary on my phone over its speaker (I could bluetooth it or chromecast it to proper speakers but that could introduce some lag that makes syncing a pain).

Simple, but it works.

Great episode this week!

(I have never watched They Live either, I'm on Bakalar's side here).

@skinnersweet said:

I play the movie via headphones (which I do either through my TV or my computer), and I play the podcast on either my laptop or phone and with earbuds. I put the earbuds on underneath the headphones and tweak the audio until I can hear everything easily. Works really well.

If stuff is missing, why wouldn't you just send it back? I feel like I could have arranged an Amazon return in less time than it took @danryckert to explain the issue.

Edit: Cheat Engine itself? Fine. The sites that you can end up trying to download it (even via the real site)? Not so much.

so
horseshit - something that is unfair
bullshit - something that is untrue
dogshit - something of poor quality

The conclusion to the trivia contest was beautiful.

Sadly, Joss Whedon is the one that's owned up to that toad line: http://www.avclub.com/article/joss-whedon-13730

Jeff's 'poffertjes' wasn't that bad at all!

Hollow Knight is a very hard game, I don't blame the asker's dad for wanting to use it, good on him for picking it up at all.

Holy crap, you guys read my correction/concern regarding Keith David! If my love of Mr. David is able to facilitate a Films & 40s of They Live, or at the very least make sure Jeff sees the film, then I'd say my work here is done!

@Vinny A few audio glitches throughout the podcast.

Having to replace something that gradually degrades because you are unlucky enough to do the last 1 percent is HORSESHIT. If said item wasn't improperly treated, fix your own damn thing.

I bet the waitress didn't recognize the coins.

Yeah, glitches again this week, both on the RSS feed download, and the embedded player on this page.

Happy B-day Jeff!

0:00 Intro / Dan's Call Support Anecdotes

16:00 Mass Effect: Andromeda

33:38 Nier: Automata

39:05 Destiny 2

44:03 Nintendo Joycons

E-mails

53:40 Do Reviewers Care About How Developers React to their Criticisms?

1:03:05 How Can My Dad Cheat in Games?

1:09:09 Podcast Quiz Time, Middle Earth or Middle England? (Bonus: Alex's Favorite Band)

1:16:25 Did I Do A Bad Thing?

1:21:53 Difference Between Horse@!#$ and Bull@!#$

1:25:25 I Broke Friend's Guitar's String

1:27:00 Fast & Furious Series Drinking Game

1:31:40 Alex's Wolf Sanctuary Experience

1:32:37 What Does Vinny Use Oscilloscope For

1:33:25 Corrections

1:45:03 Wrap Up

I would've thought the Switch dock scratch thing was an overreaction until it happened to me.

Twice.

I don't know what else I can do differently. I already place/remove it very slowly and try to keep the screen away from the rails as I do. I wipe the rails and the bottom rubber grips after each time I undock it.

That screen is just too damn soft. I'd gladly trade some shatter-resistance for some scratch-resistance.

Thanks again for the podcast. I realize that I shouldn't take all the negativity about Mass Effect around the internet as gospel, but there's just enough of it that I would rather pass on Andromeda and catch up on all the great games being released that I still need to play. It's a shame because I really liked the Mass Effect trilogy. I just don't know if I love it enough to play anything they put out with Mass Effect in the title. Instead I'm still chipping away at Yakuza 0 which is still so good.

As far as trying to be considerate to the realities of development when it comes to criticizing games the last example I can think of for me is Nuclear Throne. No matter how much I try to keep in mind how microscopic Vlambeer are, even for an indie studio, the continued lack of support for numerous versions of that game is unforgivable. I'm content to never support them ever again and encourage others to do the same though by the looks of things I wouldn't be surprised if they never make another game. I find it ironic that Rami chooses to travel abroad to game jams and conventions to talk about how great it is to be an indie dev when in reality them being an independent studio was actually to the detriment of their own product as well as the consumers who buy it. I wouldn't be so frustrated with this situation if I didn't also think that Nuclear Throne was one of the best video games I've ever played. It just gets bogged down by being attached to a studio with some of the worst quality assurance I've ever experienced from indie development. Rant over.

Even I knew Alex's favorite band was the Deftones...I'm lying of course. Seems like a legit answer for a drummer. Someone needs to revoke Bakalar's nerd cred. I suppose They Live isn't necessarily a movie that attracts the youth ministers of the world but it's still one of my all time favorite 80's movies. Though to be fair I was also a big wrestling fan as a kid and Roddy Piper alone was reason enough for me to watch it. Anyways happy birthday Bakalar. I got you twenty copies of They Live.

This might be one of the best Beastcasts yet, I really enjoyed it.

@cursethesemetalhands: huh, dan's kinda the only reason i even listen to the beastcast, and that's only occasionally.

@ripelivejam: A lot of people seem to really enjoy what Dan brings to Giant Bomb - I don't know why, but they do - and I've tried really hard but...there's just something about his personality that irritates the hell out of me. I'm not saying he's a horrible human being or I wish him ill, just that his antics aren't my cup of tea. As much as I love Vinny, I just can't seem to get past Dan.

i used to listen to the beastcast weekly, but since dan came on it's been a rare occurrence, I don't think he's a bad person or anything either; it's just his personality grates on me as well. It's not very often when I see him share an opinion where I say "I never thought about it like that, that's interesting". Every other time I'm just like he's incredibly ill informed on this subject, and he has less experience and aptitude in writing about games and technology than everyone else around him, why should I listen to him?

To me it doesn't ruin the discussion, but kinda hold everyone else back when we're discussing reiterating basic concepts to Dan so he can join in.

Oh come on now, there's nothing nefarious about cheat engine.

Dan brings fun and new video content.

Beastcast has really been killing it lately. Fantastic episode.

Watched They Live for the 1st time today. Thanks dudes.

Yep.

Yep.

The problem with modern dollar coins is that they look like gold quarters. Bring back the Eisenhower silver dollar. Now that's a *man's* coin. Carry a few of those around in your pocket, and people will know you mean bidness.

I have definitely ran into people who think that dollar coins are "fake" money, it can be annoying. I think dollar coins are pretty cool though so I don't mind getting them.

Also, I have always considered horse/bull shit to be interchangeable.

It turned my stomach every time they said "soda". There's only one thing that compels me to always leave an angry comment on the internet, and it's when someone doesn't call it "pop".

At first I didn't like Dan, until I realized that he's so much like me in movies and videogame heresy. I loved when he said he hated LOTR.

Cheatengine is completely fine. It's a very useful tool in fact. It's just a super robust memory editor. Memory editors have been around for a long time, but cheatengine just kind of did the best go of it and also democratized the process where an open community can contribute (ie the tables for each game). It's in fact the safest and easiest forms of cheating in the game available to people right now, since cheats in games themselves have either gone away or have to be paid for ingame. If you somehow manage to download something malicious with it maybe you should stay away from the internet entirely.

To the person who wrote in, your dad seems way ahead of you buddy. He is having fun with his games the way he wants to. It's a leisure activity, not some life code, he isn't impacting other people (cheatengine is a singe-player tool). Rather ask him how it helped him and made the game he is playing more enjoyable, it might lead to a cool and interesting conversation. It could save him time for example (a precious commodity in life), remove the grindy parts, or help fix a design choice he disagrees with or dislikes.

Someone has to make an animation with that bit about the cheat-engine PSA, looking like those old VHS tapes

"It's Terrible Elephants all over again." - Vinny Caravella

The first time I ever heard of They Live, and my only experience with it, is that bit in Saint's Row 4. So I'm with Jeff. Granted, I don't watch a lot of movies in general, so there's a lot more "staples" that I haven't seen than just that.

They Live is a fun, bad movie, but for my money the John Carpenter films one should watch are the Kurt Russell Trilogy. Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from New York, and The Thing.