The Giant Beastcast: Episode 116

Yay beastcast!

Woooooo!

Halflife 3!!! It's not Halflife 3

Heck yeah, Dota cards!

Looking at bright lights to help sneezing is totally a thing for me too, Dan.

Please ignore Dans opinion on Hellblade.

Well, maybe do as you please, but yea.

Woooooo indeed.

I'm Happy. :)

@ivdamke: Ignore Dan's opinion about most things

Fred Schneider needs to get together with Margaret & Jeremiah.

After the mention of those books I was very displeased that there was no extended ancient aliens talk.

@vinny Live streaming a podcast is a waste of resources and time. It just becomes something to play in the background. Since the west started streaming their podcast, I think I loaded it up twice just to see what was going on.

Aaaah yes, give me some of that Giant Beastcast in my life.

Where is that DOTA card game reaction clip from?

FUNKIN IN THE SHACK!

Dang 'bad to women' is a real rough take for a game you haven't played.

Life....uh..... finds a beastcast

I wonder if it's a plot so they don't get more corrections but NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN DURING AN ECLIPSE UNLESS YOU WANT TO PERMANENTLY DAMAGE YOUR VISION!

Jeff was almost completely wrong about that. The danger is that you look at it when the sun reappears and then your pupils will be a lot wider than normal due to dimmer light. He was correct about it involving the sun and the moon though.

Sorry for hating Jeff, but looking at the sun is really dangerous!

I usually watch the video feed of the Bombcast, but it's entirely a second screen experience on my laptop while I play something on my PC. I sometimes glance over at it, especially during loading screens, but its basically just something for the corner of my right eye.

So for me at least, if it takes any extra resources to add a video feed for the Beastcast, it's not worth it.

The Beast-cast is a little old place where we can get together.

Video games don't belong at the Olympics.

he's as deep as a puddle, the complete opposite of Austin :-(

@ivdamke: You really shouldn't listen to Dan with games that are very story heavy (that isn't MGS), he really can't seem to enjoy those kinds of games.

You forgot the MPreg tag.

@ivdamke: To be fair his criticisms here are totally fair. The combat is shallow and the puzzles are incredibly repetitive. For Hellblade you have to be there mostly for the story and that just isn't Dans bag.

Plus this time it wasn't just a gruff "meeehh bad game". Progress!

@alex I completely disagree that Valve should do curation. From my perspective what you say you want out of Valve is what Valve was in the 2000s. Remember when there were not many games on Steam at all? Eventually, Valve acknowledged that they were bottlenecking the process of creators delivering games to consumers and made the process of uploading to steam faster and easier.

To me, part of the answer to this problem is user-level steam curation pages. Because sifting through the garbage on steam is such a valuable service, curators could receive a portion of a sale if somebody buys a game on a curator's recommendation. In fact, this is a big reason I visit giantbomb.com so often. Generally speaking, you all only post quick looks of games that have something to offer. Also, there are so many ways and means and communities to go to where you can get game recommendations that Valve having its own curation seems redundant.

I do agree with you all in theory that Valve should have some low bar of quality that all games have to meet before getting on the store, but the problem I think is there is a market for people who want to play terrible games for streaming or whatever else. Would we have ever had goat simulator if all games had to clear some quality standard?

Really enjoyed the podcast this week!

@ivdamke: Repetitive puzzles and combat is a fair criticism.
At least he has played the game, unlike Abby with Bayonetta.

Steam can start by having an opt-in selection to show early access games on the main page. Additionally, they should have a corner marker that indicates certain titles are in early access - make it clear what it is without having to click through to their main page. That alone would filter out consumers who are probably not the target demographic for testing/gambling out early access games.

It sounds like you guys don't want to do video but for what it's worth I would enjoy the Beastcast on video. Ultimately, I don't want you guys to do something you don't want to but I would definitely watch the Beastcast instead of listening every week.

Thanks for the great content!

The Shrouded Isle's colors reminded me of The King in Yellow's cover and the same character and what he represents in the book. I should read that book again.

@lebdrift: Yeah it's far from "unuseable", the "curation" valve do is by showing you games that will interest you according to their alghoritms and so far I've had no problem with 1. fidning games I'm looking for and 2. finding new games that I might like based of what valve shows me by seeing highlights on the store or using the queue.

The few people who seems to have a real problem with this is for example journalists or other people who are tasked to find new games and/or have a lot or all games on steam (including shit games which skews the alghoritm). I's like when Jim Sterling goes out to look for shit games and then gets angry that he's showed garbage games, like it was your goal from the beginning to find shit games why are you suprised you find them? Steam is more like the app stores or amazon than a wall-garden and I'm happy about that because games like stardew valley or other games would never have ended up on steam if valve curated it like they used too.

EDIT: and as the beasties mention you have to click a lot of fucking buttons to get to proper new releases because valve knows that "new releases" is not a good way to be shown games. Now the question should be "why" is it needed to know everything that released on steam? I don't sort spotify by "new", I don't sort play store on "new" and I most definetly don't sort Amazon on "new" because I as a consumer understand that I will find no value in that instead of using the different companies different ways of curating their store by showing stuff that it believes will interest me on the front page or alternatively through ratings, top sellers and categories etc.

+1 for loving the postcards y'all

And I thank the heavens every day for that.

UFO 50 is now my most anticipated quick look, in the fine tradition of that 101 Games console, the Xbox Indie rundown, and the Game Room quick looks. Except, you know, I actually expect most of these games will be good. Requesting a special Vinny/Jeff G QL when it's out!

@chicken008: @efesell: You are right, those are fair criticisms. What lead me to write that however was his other comments.

The game is certainly not a masterclass in game play design but what it does do well more than makes up for where it lacks.

Really I just don't want to see this game get dismissed so easily, it would be a damn shame. Despite it not having the best gameplay I do believe it's a very important game.

"I haven't played this game, but it's bad to women based on clips I saw" is quite the hot take. Granted Bayonetta is extremely Japanese in its portrayals, but having not played something at all yet feeling so strongly about something is very Dan-like.

Abby is awesome! ?

What's with all the talk about video beastcasts anyway, we have one it's called Blue Bombin.

I'd love it if you guys did a mailbag for all those post cards. I just wanna see Jeff's desk covered in them really.

I was thinking about posting something like this, but I feel like everyone's got some stuff they just dislike without ever even touching it. I knew I'd dislike Mortal Kombat way before I ever tried it, and I hold the same untested dislike for genres like realistic sport games, MMOs, car games, the Modern Warfare series and traditional PC RPGs. I think people can throw stones here if they've never talked crap about something without trying it.

Bioware games, Netherrealm games, the Tomb Raider reboot, Bioshock 1 and Infinite, Assassin's Creed 2/Black Flag, Persona 3 and Halo 3 are probably my biggest "popular franchise/developer/single game I don't like as much as others seem to". And it's not like I sampled every game that fits the bill. If you think you're not gonna like something it takes something to try them out. The only one I've kept coming back to with regularity is Bioware, because I like parts of those games the most. I'll sign off on not liking Horizon super much, but I don't dislike it either, it's basically fine. And besides, I've heard no hype for or talk about Horizon really. I'm sure it reviewed well, but Zelda stole all its thunder.

Damn right.

Why am I not surprised that Dan hates Hellblade.

Yeah, thinks Kojima is a good writer and that MGS has a great story, so when something quite a bit deeper comes out it isn't going to be for him. I agree on the gameplay/puzzle part though, bored me quickly but the story/writing are very good.

Alex's Big Booty Fed Schneider was amazing.

There better not be any Bayonetta bashing in this beastcast or else.

That thumbnail makes me feel weird.

@alex - There is no 1000G single achievement; the highest is Brave: A Warrior's Tale which gives you 500G for beating the game, or FIFA World Cup: Germany 2006, which gives you 500G for beating all scenarios.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Burning Earth might as well be one for 1000G though - you just need hit combos of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 to unlock everything, so you can just mash X in the tutorial area.

The really dark path is when you decide to import a Japanese 360........

e: _How_ can you possibly curate a marketplace as wide as Steam without losing a lot of good in the process? Can you imagine the flak they'd get if they blocked, e.g., PUBG (it's a buggy, non-performant mess) or Undertale (the opening hour(s) are bad)?

Everybody's talking about Dan's hot Hellblade take and i'm just over here upset that he said Rez was barely a game

I will fight you in real life Ryckert

@stordoff: I don't think the kind of curation they want would catch that. Like maybe they exaggerate the severity just cause its a problem they face when finding things to cover but there are a ton of basically not-games that could be pruned from that service.

He very specifically said he didn't hate it, but that it wasn't for him. When did that stop being okay?