Diecast – Twenty Sided

Thank goodness 2020 is over. COVID-19 has vanished, everyone’s jobs went back to normal, and Republicans and Democrats are finally friends again. I’m glad we put all of that unpleasantness behind us. Please enjoy this video game podcast where we spend an unusual amount of time talking about pornography and movies for some reason?

Sorry for all the noisy children on Paul’s end. That’s actually my fault. We normally record in the evenings after his kids are in bed, but my sleep schedule forced us to reschedule this time. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in a house with more than 4 children, but quiet is just not obtainable in the middle of the afternoon.

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Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
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Show notes:
00:00 Happy New Year!

So the new year rolls around and I discover I’ve potentially been exposed to the T-Virus. It’s been 8 days since the potential exposure and still no symptoms, so the odds are in my favor now.

04:36 Mailbag: Where did Bob Case go?

This message came to my personal email instead of the Diecast, so I’ve withheld the name:

Shamus,

Where did Bob Case go? His articles series appear to have stopped abruptly.

Also, a couple of his videos are now gone, presumably due to copyright takedowns (Dragon Age 2 and the Shandification of Fallout). These should be in the Criterion Collection, but now I’m worried the copyright issues may never be resolved or the videos never re-uploaded, becoming lost forever to the sands of time.

08:27 Mailbag: Great Action Movies of the last 10 years?

Hi!

First of all, Happy New Year!

Second of all, I don’t really have any good questions (too busy playing CP’77 and analyzing it). But I’m actually curious and its probably as appropriate as any. I remembered you (Shamus) talking about John Wick and action movies in general long time ago. So what action movies of the last decade that you: a) like the most b) hate and c) consider underrated? Same set of questions goes to Paul.

Best regards, DeadlyDark

I omitted Marvel Movies from these lists because they dominated the conversation for the last 10 years. That conversation is played out and it’s more interesting to talk about all the other movies everyone skipped while we were busy watching the Avengers Punch Stuff Real Hard.

Favorites: Moneyball, Argo, Molly’s Game, The Founder, Logan Lucky, John Wick.

Hated: Self / Less (Wasted a magnificent premise and the time of Sir Ben Kingsley on a very stupid action movie.) Hobbit (Turned a brilliant piece of children’s literature into a big dumb loud incoherent cartoonish boring obnoxious disrespectful tedious chore.) John Carter (So bored.) Snowpiercer (Clumsy blunt allegory.) Good Day to Die Hard (Unworthy of the Die Hard legacy, dumb in every way the original was clever.)

Underrated / Should have been more popular: The Raid, Dredd, Blade Runner 2049.

35:10 Mailbag: Traffic Numbers

Dear Diecast

I suspect I am only the latest in a long line of people to tell you that I too am one of the nobodies who listened to the last episode. I am curious though, as to how much traffic actually changed for last week compared to episodes released at other times? And is there any other interesting seasonal variation in traffic you have noticed?

Keep up the great work, Henry Chadban

Short answer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

48:59 Mailbag: How to Search Steam?

Hello Diecast!

I remember Shamus complaining earlier about the difficulty of finding
good games on Steam by just browsing and searching, since the search
capabilities have not been great.

On December 10th, Steam introduced the early version of new Steam
browsing capabilities:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/2904223191309544355

It allows for example searching by

– Themes (e.g. Choices Matter, Female Protagonist, Sci-Fi & Cyberpunk)

– Social & Players (e.g. Local & Party, Online Competitive, Singleplayer)

– Genre and subgenre (e.g. Strategy: Grand & 4X or Real-Time, Sports and
Racing: Combat Racing, Ball Sports)

– Special Sections (e.g. Free to Play, Controller Friendly)

When I’m writing this, Steam has 43,680 games with a release date, and
that is rising by maybe 10 or 20 per day. Do you think this new feature
is the correct approach by Steam to find gems in that mass of games?

If you were the King of Steam, how would you design the browsing and
searching experience?

Personally I decided to use the brute force approach and look at every
individual game separately, and either ignore it or add to my wishlist.
That works for me but is not something I would really recommend for most
people.

Trouble finding good games with search? Why not brute-force look at every game on Steam? from Steam

– Alpakka