Quick Look: They Are Billions

For the horde!

...wait.

I’m happy GB has more strategy game rather than Vinny or Alex just playing it

Dan really hates LA.

I find it's a perfectly fine city. I don't quite understand why he hates it so much.

I wish they would've showed off more of the campaign. I feel like a lot of people interested in this game have already played the survival mode to death, so this wasn't super informative.

At first I thought I was losing it in a "didn't we already QL this a long time ago?" but it turns out that was an "Unfinished" feature. Guess it makes sense for Dan to helm this, given his love of "old-school"-type RTSs like Command and Conquer. (Also, more "versus Mike Mahardy" videos please!)

@subscryber: Dan (at least, on air) generally REALLY likes things or REALLY hates things, and if it's not one, it's the other.

Also, as someone who's lived in Los Angeles for the past 10 years because I love it, I've *never* heard anyone describe the Tar Pits as "the best LA has to offer". :b

Vincent "not to be backseat driving" Caravella

Mouse and Keyboard are supported by the console versions as well.

Live with your choices. That's the game. :)

I wish this game wasn't zombies I know that's not a hot take but it loses points for me since the other monsters are cool but zombies are more like zzzombies. I had a problem with this game in its very early versions and was not having fun due to the difficulty so I am wondering if maybe it's better now too bad they didn't make a super useful campaign since survival is boring to me as an old school rts fan. Gimme some Dark Colony!

I really wonder if the team has played much of Homeworld Deserts of Kharak? Prob one of my fave recent real time strategies. Really wish there was more of the genre either way because they can be a lot of fun.

Wow Dan is an awful person

Uh. That is harsh and seemingly unprompted.

This seems neat! Like a modern spin on the old Stronghold games. I love those!

The tar pits museum awesome (albeit small) look at the flora and fauna of California over the last 15,000 years.

I do laugh at the irony of Dan calling LA a “garbage city” while living in NYC. Where there are mountains of literal garbage on the corner ever other day because they don’t have alleys for dumpsters.

I’ve lived in both NYC and I live in Los Angeles now, I love both cities and they both have issue- because they are cities.

Though, I think if my only experience of LA was the LA convention center every June, I’d hate LA too.

@the_nubster: Dan has told plenty of stories where he has come across as an awful person. His main method of enjoyment is trolling other people, which is a pretty bad personality trait.

@sharbok: Except the only people he really "trolls" are his friends, his actions are annoying at worst and never full of intentional malice, and by his own admission "New Dan" is a bigger, better person than "Old Dan".

@nasher27: unfortunately it seems like the campaign wasn't really made for folks who have a lot of experience in the survival mode. At least in the early stages (all I've played of it) it's verrrrrry slow. Def seems to me to be more for onboarding than expanding the experience for folks who have 20-200 hours in it already.

@dasakamov: Just recently he bragged about cutting the line at wrestlemania for no reason other than he doesn't want to follow rules and his main thing to do in Mario Maker is to make levels that frustrate people and are impossible to finish. He might be better than when he joined GB but he still regularly comes across as an unpleasant person to his friends and strangers alike.

Giant Bomb really hates L.A.*

If anyone's vocal about it, it's Jeff and Brad, not Dan.

You clearly don't actually listen to any of the Beastcast as since Mario Maker 2 came out Dan has stated many times that he's finding it much more enjoyable creating fun levels that everyone can enjoy, rather than troll levels that just annoy people (or are designed specifically for one person in mind - Patrick).

FYI, you may think Dan is unpleasant (I disagree), but you're being unpleasant here too.

Related to the QL, I really dislike playing games for the first time with people that are really familiar with it and Vinny here demonstrated exactly why: everything you do is second guessed and it's always "I don't want to backseat, BUT..." and it's just really frustrating. Just let him play and don't say "pause for a sec Dan, I want to tell you how to play this properly" over and over.

The Amazon factory worker comment Abby made had me spitting out my coffee in laughter.

Caught that too. Last Week Tonight fan spotted.

I had no interest in this game until the Quick Look.

been playing this game alot recently, glad to see it getting some love from the Crew

As someone who has lived in L.A. for 5 years and only really found it enjoyable for maybe the last two, I kind of understand where Dan is coming from having only been here for short periods of time.

With that said, however, I think its incredibly shitty of him to constantly dunk on an entire city that he knows nothing about and has only visited for large bullshit press events.

SAVING!

To offer a counterpoint, i was glad Vinny was on this quicklook. Dan usually talks about how he has been playing the game and then just plays on from there, while Vinny is more into finding out how the underlying systems work & communicating that. Which is extremely important for a game like this. Like Dan is still in the process of playing a map for hours, losing to 1 specific problem, taking that in account with the new save. Rinse , repeat. Vinny has already lost a dozen times and has learned how to sidestep these issues. Why not take advantage of that knowledge to fast track people into being successful? At some point, Dan will have to start micromanaging his units to split up zombie hordes & having patrol routes outside the city walls to procure extra resources, rank up his units & remove spawn points. But you won't know that's needed until you lose a bunch of maps.