Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf! 08/19/2013

Quickly become my favorite feature on the site.

Love it !

Great Love this program

sweettt!

TO BE THE MAN, YOU GOTTA BEAT THE MAN.

This is an amazing episode, guys. There's a ton of intelligent and interesting conversation about reviews and such. I love these guys. Awesome feature.

Alex, please do a write up or something about the weekend and feel free to mention nothing about the game. Also if you next year please bring Drew as this insanity needs to be on film.

SPOILERS GUYS.

wrong date

Thumbs up

AAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I adore having such substantial content so early in the week. And I love hearing Alex and Patrick converse. Please keep at it, guys. It's great stuff.

AAWOOO!

Not liking the message of "find critics you agree with" though I understand where it's coming from. That kind of thinking is why Fox News is so popular (which I lament). Why bother listening to someone if you already know what they're going to say?

It is important to accept that a critical review is subjective and you won't necessarily agree with it, but the takeaway should then be to find as many different perspectives as you can and then form *your own opinion*. One caveat being that you should probably only bother with people that you trust, but trusting someone is definitely not the same as agreeing with everything they say.

The conversation about reviews was absolutely fantastic.

@quantris:

Couldn't agree more.

@quantris: That was more the point I was trying to get across. Not necessarily to find your own personal echo chamber, but to find voices whose tastes and interests jive with your own. Like, if a critic hates all the games you like, then their recommendations probably won't do much for you. But as Patrick and you said, it's often worth reading and contemplating their perspectives, if only to grasp a broader understanding of the larger discourse around a specific game.

This starts in the middle of it to give people a gist.

I totally agree with that is defined as the proper use of Giantbomb. I make my own expected ''reviews'' for games I plan to buy but I still go to many game sites and see their reviews.
(Gregg Kasabin fairly warned us back at gamespot not to buy Devil May Cry 2 but I still bought it and I am truly sorry)

I like Patric's tastes especially on indie games and generally all of Alex's reviews. I also like the ''bad'' games Vinny defends like Prototype 2. I never agree with Geff and the great late Ryan Davis but I they clearly state what annoys or delights them in games and I know where they come from (besides they crack me up)

I can't wait for the next Powerbombcast to hear Alex recount his crazy Summer Slam trip in more detail.

Between Pikmin 3, Mario & Luigi, Tales of Xillia and DuckTales I felt August was already pretty packed without the releases from this week.

5/5 to my wallet.

Yoshi's Island still sucks

Patrick and Alex are ma' BOYS! AAAAAOOUUUUUWWWWWW!!!!!!!

Oh man I cannot wait to read that Bioforge piece! That series was one of the funniest things I've ever watched.

Loving this new show, Always good to get more Alex on the site. Keep it up guys.

Drunk Ric Flair is the Best RIc Flair.

I think it's less that Patrick and Alex were suggesting that you find someone you agree with and more saying that if you can't handle reading an opinion that differs from your own to find someone who reinforces how you feel about a thing.

I certainly don't think that either of those guys would suggest to avoid critical thought.

I disagree; If I had $60 I would buy The Bureau before those two other games.

I think alex is a it wrong about criticizing people who want to know the value in something they are paying for.

As a consumer on a budget, I would like to know if the experience I am getting is worth the price of admission or not. It doesn't take a lot out of the reviewer to say "yes" or "no" in this regard.

For instance, I can probably tell Gone Home is worth the money since patrick loved it so much, but is Saints Row 4 going to be worth the 60 dollars when it reuses a lot of the things found in SR3?

Maybe that's just me, but imagine if a game like Gone Home was going for 60 bucks. Do you think they would feel the same way then? Probably not

Oh crap, games I want to play are actually coming out, I forgot about games with all the console talk.

I like this thing, I hope I don't miss the story by not watching each one of these videos >:D

My problem with this philosophy is that the subjective future of videogame journalism starts to narrow down the potential audience on the receiving end. At some point who is Patrick writing for? Are game journalists going to slowly start writing reviews that mainly other game journalists can relate to because they all exist in this ethereal vacuum of cost and time value - what's the point? If you don't take under consideration the target audience of your "review" and instead are little by little turning it into an editorial opinion piece then let's do away with scoring altogether.

I understand where Patrick is coming from, and I'm glad he likewise understands that people like him and Alex are in a unique position. I was hoping this would lead him to understand that to some people things like cost and game length are definite factors. If it's a given that each time an interesting indie title comes out Patrick will rate it highly without challenging his own views and taking under consideration potential shortcomings that affect the average consumer more so than himself, why would anyone keep reading those reviews? That seems to get away from good subjective writing and appear more like self serving validation.

AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOO

@quantris: I find the "Knowing the reviewer" approach to make purchasing decisions really easy. Knowing Brad plays most co-op games solo and doesn't enjoy them because the mechanics are built very co-op oriented. Or that Brad doesn't read loading screen tips. So if he hates on a game for being too difficult and it is co-op essential then I know I will probably like the game for the reason's he hates it.

I don't know if that makes sense but yeah Resident Evil 6 and Lost Planet 2 were both some of the greatest co-op experiences I have ever had.

On the part where "find the critic that works for you" is probably why I've stuck with the GB crew and followed them since the heyday of their Gamespot years. Having the familiarity of these reviewers let me truly understand what a game is about or if it was for me on knowing how a particular reviewer responds to certain types of games. Its one of the great things of the Bombcast is when you get several of them together and share their different perspectives on a single game.

I'm sure the majority of the games press didn't have to pay for Gone Home. There would he far less criticism about it if it was about half the price.

Loving these videos. Patrick's take on the term "hipster" is basically in line with my own. Then again, I feel that same about modern nomenclature like "hater" and "troll." Emotionally charged terms that really have no descriptive value. It seems like a small thing, but I'm glad that there are people in the games writing industry that are actually concerned with language.

It's much more difficult than a yes or no. I loved Gone Home and am perfectly happy having spent $18 on it, but plenty of people don't feel that way. I don't agree with them but I understand it. You're asking a reviewer to factor things like length, quality, fun, replayability, narrative, interest in genre, etc. then put a monetary value on it and have that value translate across all economic brackets. It's a futile measure so I'm glad fewer reviewers are trying to do it. We have enough media and information out there to make those judgments for ourselves on an individual basis.

It really can't be that hard to read a review, look at a price tag and think whether something is worth the price? Right?

Good stuff from the dynamic duo.

Still can't believe @alex got to hang out with half the NXT roster, though hearing it was via an invite from Xavier Woods explains a hell of a lot. I bet that dude loves Giant Bomb.

The moment you mentioned that a wrestler was a fan of Persona 4 Golden, my brain short-circuited. All I can think about is a giant hulking man huddled over his vita wondering who to social link with.

Great show, especially for a Monday morning.

well hipster is the evolution of hippy which was the evolution of beatnik. It's just counter-culture people.

@draxyle: well this is nxt, it's like wrestlers in-training. They are all young guys like 20 years old.

Now if it was rick flair play P4G.......I'd......I'd pay so much to watch that.

I seem to remember that Vinny didn't dislike Mirror of Fate.

Ric Flair is god.

The only Ric Flair in my book.

Patrick's visual reactions to Alex's tales of Ric Flair were incredible.

Thank goodness for that switching camera for those wonderful moments.

Yea, my only knowledge of wrestling is through the crazy antics of those like Hogan and other media "friendly" wrestlers, which is totally unfair to the lesser known dudes who are probably very normal in real life. It's still a very amusing image in my head though.

Another episode of Pat & Aland LOL at rick flair just shooting on everyone.

This is way more digestible than a bombcast. Also what ever happened to Patrick's initiative to try out games he didn't understand (Monster Hunger et al), make that a part of this feature. I find that way more useful than swooning over indie games.