The HotSpot - Episode 385

This podcast is not political!

Everyone stocked up on liquor for next week?

Is Brad J Mascis?????

Brad has the same hair I had during high school

Anime Brad!

Brad and I grow the hair the same way. I only recently cut mine because I still go into my office.

Womack!

Arthas Brad

@humanity: absolutely not political! Ugh

How long till that Brad anime cartoon picture of him is updated with new hair?

The many hairstyles of Brad Shoemaker

I think they've overthought the plot of a new Call of Duty. Just a tad.

@l1fef0rm : I had the same thought

Still waiting for PC games to support haptic WASD

Is Alex moonlighting again?

I have some doubts about Microsoft adding the haptic triggers mid-gen. Primarily because they decided not to add a gyro during the generation transition, even when accessibility was clearly one of their initiatives (through the Adaptive controller). They could have even added the gyro to the Elite controller 2 to under the guise of future accessibility options.

Just like my favorite Ubisoft games!

GXBIXVM

@hippie_genocide: Yeah same with Watchdogs, kind of a bummer point in the spotcast

As a fellow long haired man, I want more long haired Brad!!

Highly excited about PS5's controller, glad there's already one element of the new consoles that is striking people as viscerally different and cool.

Continue to be annoyed by big game companies invoking real-world issues for cheap marketing heat, then insisting that's not what they're doing, then releasing a game that contains nothing provocative enough to justify doing the dance in the first place.

That's definitely all I'm thinking about right now, not thinking or worrying about anything else. not at all, nope

It's a shame Sony went after that company and gave them a cease and desist for making those PS5 plates but the bright side is that everyone that bought it is getting a refund

Okay is nobody going to talk about how freaking CUTE it is that Vinny's kids are dressing up as plusle and minun for halloween! My heart!

@zoofame: That “it’s just a video game” excuse very much is still a truth and will continue to be so until our society begins to collapse in on itself so that the lines between entertainment and reality begin to blur and disappear. Games are often so toothless when it comes to a lot of political issues because at the end of the day you need an end boss and sweet loot and exciting set dressing to prop up what has essentially remained a very unchanged form of left trigger/right trigger action. There have been a lot of think pieces written over the years about how games fail to introduce new verbs for interacting within their environment that aren’t violence - and I think anyone that knows anything about AAA game dev knows exactly why that is. At the end of the day it’s still entertainment and you might like it or not much like a TV show but just like good or bad TV it’s impactful on a very surface level.

Watchdogs sounds like a game I'll be buying in a year once it's on sale and enjoy it for what it is, a 2014-ass open world game.

@vinny I dunno if something went wrong on my end but the episode 385 that my iPhone pulled of this podcast is from last week?

EDIT: ok never mind something wonky happened to my phone it’s all good sorry!

With PS5 running PS4 games just fine, that mostly ruins the market for PS4 remastered editions in a way that wasnt true PS3 to PS4, which makes me wonder if we are going to see haptics used as a way to sell us old games again. Uncharted 4 : Haptics Edition etc.

I wish the console makers would agree on a controller gimmick per generation so that, you know, third party developers will actually bother to implement it (and do it well).

I fucking love Brad's hair.

Cmon Vinny, Brad BoOoOoOmaker was right there...

Brad's hair is "livin' on Reds, vitamin C, and cocaine..." and I'm all for it.

Regarding Our Not-So-Glorious Streaming Future:

Jeff is entirely correct. Microsoft set a dangerous precedent in buying (sale pending) Zenimax / Bethesda, and the exclusivity arms race that creates for the tech giants, e.g. Amazon, Google, etc., looking to get into gaming.

The near future of video games will be a hellscape of fragmented streaming platforms and exclusivity, with different pricing tiers, for all (formerly) 3rd party video games. It will be just as bad as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, CBS All Access, HBO Max, Peacock, Vudu, and the dozens of other video streaming services are now.

Game Pass, Stadia, and Luna are the beginning of the end. Those "great deals" won't look so great 5+ years from now, when you're paying for a half-dozen (or more) streaming services, in addition to whatever your ISP / cable provider overcharges you for crappy services and data caps.

Thanks, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc.

@zoofame: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, et. al. have more than enough money that they can simply absorb those loses, till they become profitable, either by sales or ads, or pricing structures, etc.

Also, nothing is more profitable than a monopoly. If people want to play beloved franchises (that were previous available everywhere) or games of a certain AAA quality, they'll have no other options.

The world of video games is nothing like movies or TV, which are MUCH cheaper and faster to produce, and far more ubiquitous. Netflix was able to fill out their library with content from around the world, when Disney, NBC, and all the other major networks pulled their content and started their own competing services. You can't do that with video games.

When Ubisoft, or EA, or Acti-Blizz, or Take Two, or 2K become locked up, platform exclusives, it's not like Microsoft (part of the problem), or Sony, or Nintendo, or Steam can simply replace that content like Netflix was able to.

My name's Clif, and these are my Bars.

Watch Dogs is still a threat in the open world sandbox genre that no longer belongs to GTA as the best of at, this game has a grab button, and dodge/block/response-attack timing tighter than any drivy shooty punchy game since Sleeping Dogs. So, hell yeah dude. Video games are fun.

Is that Brad or did J. Mascis make a special guest appearance on this weeks episode?

Brad's hair is majestic.

Loving Independence Day Brad and the great review of Watch Dogs by Jeff.

Steam's controller interface is fucking incredible if you like tinkering and trying stuff out.

I'll admit that the reaction to Blops-Reagan took me by surprise, probably because my reaction came in the QL of Blops 2 when the credit line for Oliver North came up. I mean, he might have had the criminal convictions against him vacated - he's still a person with very particular and self-interested view of events.

Wanting games that have a moral narrative or whatever, you can't really do that and do a story where your protagonist is American black ops soldiers.

Alex: sadly, alot of the details of nuanced long-term movements in the sociopolitical realm is not even known, sadly.

Ah yes. Not Bad Dudes Pop 80s Reagan, but that era's darkest scumbags...

...who is somehow skeeved out by New 10s/20s scumbags at the NRA...

Brad with his hair down looks like Sean Connery at the start of The Rock

The Dualsense stuff seems nice but I also remember being excited about Xbox One's "Impulse Triggers" (trigger rumble) and the end it was a total non-starter that was barely utilized. I just can't see the advanced Dualsense triggers actually meaning enough to people on any side of the equation for it to be used on a mass scale but I'll be happy if I'm wrong.

I am willing to wager that outside of Sony's first party games most of these controller features will barely be used in a meaningful way (but I'll take what I can get).