Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm alfred hang and with us today is all-star video game reviewer jeff bacala thanks so much for having me guys quick hurry four minutes go I was gonna I was gonna keep doing the intro a little known fact about Jeff his middle name is also Fox no okay alright it's Seymour we don't often talk about video games on the show but we wanted to take a chance to discuss Red Dead Redemption too which is gaining a lot of attention so Jeff my first question is why why are people so interested in this game as it turns out it is arguably the most this is will sound like a cliche but it is arguably the most ambitious game ever made come on it is like I may have heard that before but you have you a chance to have heard it before but it turns out it's actually kind of true it is somehow able to create one of the most believable fictionalized worlds I've ever interacted with and there is something about this game that it does better than any other game out there where it is chock filled with characters events environmental effects and things that convince you 100% through and through that you are in this Western world and it makes West world look like city slickers so what did you like about the game and also what didn't you like about the game there's really not a whole lot I didn't like I think for a lot of people they might not be expecting a game that really takes its time the way Red Dead does some of it is a drag cowboy life in 1899 turns out not the most you know exciting thing in the world moment to moment what I did you know love about this game is is how quickly it was able to grab me every there is nothing there's nothing cut and pasted in this game every experience is unique every mission every task every activity every objective is is almost this bespoke kind of like you know beautifully crafted a meticulous thing that is an absolute marvel to experience it is unlike anything else I've ever played Wow well thanks very much for that very quick explanation of Red Dead Redemption - sure next up if you won the latest easy sneakers these days you may need a butt to help you out Alfred you've wrote about the world of sneaker head BOTS tell us a little bit about it yeah so I spoke with the creator of one of the more popular sneaker BOTS out there the bottled cyber AI oh it cost about two hundred pounds to get and then they only sell 100 copies of that pot every month and then people will try to rebuy if they miss out on the sale though try to buy that bot for about $2,700 Oh like sale market on the bots yeah yeah they get robots to buy sneakers and there's also BOTS to buy those BOTS now because there's only a hundred copies of them so people make BOTS to buy those spots and you might be wondering why so many people pay thousands of dollars for these BOTS even and the big reason is you know these sneakers are basically collectibles like even though these Yeezy sneakers on Saturday are gonna sell for $200 there's a very good chance that on the resale market or it'll sell for like eight hundred six hundred dollars or so and that's just like these sneakers there are sneak like the Marty McFly sneakers that came out a few years ago those were on an ebay auction for like forty-one thousand dollars because they're extremely rare and there's a lot of rich people out there that like wanna collect these so is it the people that get these BOTS are they more collectors or are they resellers there's a good chance that they're most likely resellers because like they're basically by investing in a tool to help them make more money hmm like it I don't think they'd spend that much money to just you know collect these sneakers on their own but it would be a healthy investment I would say if you're in the reselling business all right last Twitter reported a drop of nine million monthly users in its latest quarter but its stock is way up thanks to the company hitting a sizable profit I wanted to pitch this question to you guys is Twitter somehow benefiting from all of Facebook's misery what do you guys think about that yeah I don't think it's hurting them I mean but the fact that they lost 9 million users seems like a lot well they've been killing off incidentally a lot of bots getting around a lot of fake accounts getting out of there so maybe that helps I think for social media they're getting in a different game now of I think in the past it used to always be okay what's your daily monthly average user or anything like that and you know it was a race to see who could get the most users but now I think they're more focusing on engagement and like actual users and that's why they're okay with killing off all these like bought accounts in the past they were just there and it kind of helped them inflate their numbers a bit to investors but now I think it's much more important for them to say hey look we have a clean and healthy platform do you think Jack Dorsey is actually a set of identical twins why would because he's actually miraculously running square and Twitter at the same time it doesn't really feel like he's running Twitter though I don't know sir just like a mascot yeah I either way I wanted to mention Derick hers deep dive story about deforestation in the Amazon that just published today if you want to read about these stories check us out on CNET I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alfred Inge and I'm Jeff Bakalar thanks for listening all right thanks everybody for joining us for the recording of the audio podcast and it's nice to have Jeff on Jeff have you ever even been on 359 yet apparently he's been on eight times on a bunch I love that he knows the exact amount like it's he like puts a notch on his desk every time it's true I have a carved into the bottom yeah then also does but it's just like anywhere from four to six nine well we love having you on yeah very much my plate I mean to do a four-minute podcast that's you guys know how good yeah but we sit around for 20 minutes and talk to people so yeah it was it was a very very funny mini story that happened as we were walking in today to do the podcast was that Bryan was trying to talk me out of talking about Red Dead Redemption too because he was like have you have you played the game do you even know what you're talking about I'm like no I haven't I haven't played the game and then luckily you walked in yeah and and prove me right so this was actually well you were working on the review apparently people bear-like it would have been really weird if you have never played the game I was like hey guys today we're gonna talk about something that I've never played ask me anything talk about sneaker bites - which is another thing I know nothing story's wild I I'm a big sneaker guy but I don't have any of those bonds oh no yeah unless you're like reselling I would make the argument that there's no reason for you to have these so I have a friend whose little brother that's what he does for a living really I don't know if he hey I I wonder if he has a bot like this or that bot but like you he sends me photos in his room and it's like eighty hundred stack yaksas of like you know all those were so my friends do it manually as well but like it's much harder when you're doing a manual because you're competing of all these BOTS and I've tried the manual way once just because there was a pair that I really wanted and it is incredibly frustrating and impossible because like adidas and all these brands need to like do some well that's a thing right yeah they limit how many you buy because you mentioned no story 40 BOTS yes so that's true with this bot they don't actually go after Nike and Adidas own website so they'll go after like footlocker or like foot action that sells these but they don't do adidas or Nike because they have a lot of protections against it so one of the things that Nike does is they'll do a raffle through an app and it's much harder to send an app to send a bot towards an app address than it is a website and it is does similar cut they have like a lot of like are you a robot kind of thing yes when you try it's still impossible I can always try to buy a new adidas stuff and I can get it so they'll do they will do a raffle way now where you use an app and then you enter to buy it buy the sneakers and they pick like a thousand people that might get it so it's much harder that way a lot of brands have been doing that - like supreme which is another like hyped like streetwear brand has been doing that where they send you a raffle through you basically have to win a raffle to wait on line and it does the same thing as well look I would say that that's at least helpful in so far as like you mentioned in your story that one company bought more than a thousand tickets to a u2 concert yeah that's different a minute movie that's like concert tickets that's right but at the same time that was like Wild West type of situation where you're able to buy using bi it's like so quickly that like regular people don't even stand a chance so anyway let's get to questions sure all right some Red Dead is there oh there's plenty of red dead okay so I already one says Jeff is it a must play for Red Dead one to enjoy Red Dead - I don't it's not a must play but I think you know there is a lot of exposition that it makes sense with with having the context of Red Dead one in the back your head well what you said is Red Dead one is Error red net - I should say is a prequel right yeah residues a prequel so there are characters in Red Dead 2 that show up in Red Dead 1 if you're following it chronologically it's good for backstory stuff I don't think in any way like you need to play Red Dead 1 to appreciate Red Dead - it's perfectly fine on its own and I think there's a lot of Easter Egg II kind of like special you know tips of the hat for people who are familiar with the story but I mean to play Red Dead one right now in front of Red Dead 2 is like a huge undertaking you basically have to play a 60 hour game right now to get ready for the hundred and eighty our game well you have like how many years is it between Red Dead one and two uh so I start my in-game story or visit like actual well let's go at both okay so in game's story I think they're like 11 years apart this the red did two takes was in 1899 and actual development time Red Dead 1 came out in 2010 it was that long it doesn't feel like it was yeah I read the New York mag profile of Rockstar without a key that's another sort of story that's going on during this entire thing which is a hundred hours per week yeah it's a really difficult thing to kind of like you know have that go on too and then just give this in different opinion about the game you know I mean when you were playing it that it like seemed like yeah this I can definitely see like the developers porn pouring that crazy amount of hundred percent but I think you know and this isn't making excuses for anyone but I think you anytime you experience something that is creatively astonishing whether it be a movie or you know a piece of art or whatever it is a game I think it's like oh my god how many people spend how many hours on this game or movie or whatever it is so yeah it's it's the fact that nothing is repetitive in this game is I think what really makes it stand that part pretty crazy oh I know what I need to do I just got to collect the chickens yeah I'm just gonna collect chickens you know you play that's what I started to realize with fallout 4 was that after a while the missions just repeated themselves and there's a different environment I was people would they don't push you forward and so it sounds like they did a better job at this game of actually moving for the narrative and I'm just like aimlessly searching around that was basically what like always like makes me stop playing open water like after a while it's like okay I'm doing the exact same thing you know this is a game that you're gonna want to keep playing probably all the way through because there is something insane like a thousand unique activities to accomplish nice and I've maybe done 100 of them I mean it is wild how much stuff is in this game add up to a point where you where you once you you know the game opens up very slowly and but once you sort of like are let loose and and you see the scope of what you're being offered it's uh it's it's almost like overwhelming to a point were just like oh no this oh I can't do this in a week so yeah how many people do you think are gonna take off of work just to play the game so I've heard wild stories I've heard of stories of like small offices that they buy everyone a copy of the gaming you know Friday off seriously yeah I've heard two independent stories about that in the games industry oh this accounting firm which by the way I need to get a job at that account that's a great accounting firm it's not like you know people close the store and just like play the game but I've heard a lot of stories of like PR people or whatever it is like hey you've earned it take Friday off play Red Dead for 15 hours so no national holiday is what you're saying no no just the election the banks are still open thankfully let's take some more questions shall we let's talk about the size and scope a little bit more specifically how big is the file size for the game and then if you want to follow that up how big is the world now you used a pretty good analogy for me yesterday and comparing it to like breath of the wild which is my most current frame of reference as far as open world goes but try to tell them give them a good like paint paint a visual picture of like how far and wide that game can take you I don't necessarily have like a one-to-one scale comparison like geographically of what the the game size feels like but just put it like this I very rarely will ride around in that game and just be like oh I've seen that before you know like there's so much you're constantly going in a direction you likely have not on in and you know not a lot of retread yeah I mean you know everything is so varied and unique even though it is sort of like this Old West thing there are like the snowy mountains in the north northern you know sort of reaches of the map there's a huge body of water that's sort of centered in the in the whole thing and you just aren't really gonna ever feel like this thing I feel claustrophobic in this thing it's it's you know for a long time a lot of games would brag about like it's the size of Rhode Island and you're like oh that's cool but yeah I mean this is massive a lot of games now are massive this feels just as massive as anything else and as far as file size to download a for you cuz it is available digitally it will be right yeah yes I get a whole new ps4 just to I mean like a lot of people who I talked to reviewed the game had a clear out space I think the initial download is on ps4 is 95 gigs and I think that still makes you clear out as like a buffer something like 110 and that's the ps4 pro I don't know I don't know if the regular ps4 version is somehow smaller it might be because it doesn't have as high-res textures in it but it's a lot it's a lot if you buy a physical copy comes on to blu-rays it's which is like unheard of wow we haven't seen multi-disc gaming in a minute now like that uh we saw a lot of last gen or at least more frequently last gen but right never seen it right now I mean two blu-rays that is Q blu-rays can hold like 120 gigs I think or something well there you go I mean like you were talking about roughly 110 gigs the extra 10 as like a buffer for installation but the core file is something like 92 or 95 gigs it took me like four hours to download I like that the the chat there is people trying to guess the size of the game throwing out words like Utah Bronx New Mexico Arizona Montana keep it going guys I want to see where this goes it's probably this it's probably the size of like I I don't want to like think of it town that it would be the size of but you like can't even do it it's just it's big it's a big game big wide world okay we got a couple minutes left we got a couple of graphics heads in the chat too so you said some really stellar things about the visuals in the game can you give us a little more yeah it's what's wild about Red Dead is that I think Rockstar has the ability to recreate like human vantage points and create the illusion of like photo realism in a way that not many games are able to do I think I think like God of War had shades of that a little bit but God of War is obviously so based in fantasy that it's tough to kind of ground yourself in it in Red Dead there's a lot of little things especially if you do like first-person stuff yeah that you're you get tricked really easily into being like oh I'm not looking at a movie I'm looking at a video game weather effects are wild the skybox is like super convincing you know there's just stuff in that game that makes you have to kind of do a double-take the other little details you're you were playing this on a ps4 pro okay so I have a ps4 it's like fantastic right the experience graphically is not gonna be substantially degraded no I don't have no no it's gonna look great I think if you have ps4 Pro or you have ambitions of one day getting one or at the very least if you have a 4k TV do yourself a favor and get that you know or if you're if you can look if you have a 4k TV maybe a Playstation 4 Pro become a little easier to you so if you're on the fence man do it but I just spent all my money on a 4k TV say wha but I just spend all my money on a 4k TV l can I get a ps4 Pro well you know you just have to not treat yourself again for a while yeah Christmas will have to come early just eat some PB and J's yeah just live off cup noodles you'll be fine you do that anyway I do that anyway okay with the last couple minutes coming down back into the open world sense priority one wants to know is it more open world infarct ithe Far Cry 3 mother came of all time well I didn't hear that last part they asked is it more open world than my favorite game of all time Far Cry 3 yeah of course yeah no Far Cry it's like there's nothing in that open world I mean ferger's yeah like yeah I mean the latest Far Cry game those are open-world games but I mean like mad small isn't it it's all I wouldn't call it small but I think compared to what Red Dead 2 offers it's sort of like a night and day situation like the I don't know on the scope and the in the massiveness of Red Dead I will say this like people it sounds like a damn cliche people will not be prepared for how overwhelming and sort of like daunting this game can feel this it's it feels insurmountable in the beginning where you're just like about a lot of things in this game and the open-world Miss is lends itself so well to being encouraged to explore and discover and do your own thing I think better than any game I've ever played like I I applaud games that figure out a way to encourage you to explore but it comes so organically in Red Dead 2 that it's like alright there the night they're the ones to beat now hmm yeah I mean you say that but it's no Shenmue so there can only be one true king all right before we go Jeff did you get to try it on any other platforms I know you did your primary place there on the ps4 Pro the Nintendo Wii doesn't run real well on switch I was surprised no I mustn't controls were awful just shoot awkward perks and bonuses to ps4 versus ex bonus PC so it's not on PC I I hope it's on PC one day because I mean you know I replayed Red Dead when the sort of HD texture thing came out a couple years ago and I was like I was like man this game looks real good on Xbox one X at the time and that's sort of like a thing if you if you aren't gonna play Red Dead 2 and you're just like I want to play the first one first played on xbox one X it looks really good it holds up remarkably but I wish I knew that I wish I could get them side by side I haven't been able to do it I would love to see excuse me if there are differences between the one X and the ps4 Pro right now I can't imagine oh what I've compared plenty of enhanced games side by side and it's really tough to discern a difference between the two I would be quite surprised if there was a real meaningful difference in fidelity between the 1x and ps4 Pro and what I can gather the way Rockstar likes to show this game off they were showing it off on Xbox on um on PlayStation 4 Pro in their private sessions so if they're showing it on ps4 Pro in-house they are quite confident in how that game looks on ps4 Pro so don't go don't drive yourself crazy about which console to get it on all right we are at the usual stopping point do we want to cram anything else in about the sneaker BOTS or any of the other stories before you wrap it up today you want to I'm just gonna answer questions but if nobody has any I figured everyone cares more about Red Dead Redemption yeah they're all over the game today the sneaker bad thing just tweaks me out though it's a cool story it's very cool it's very little reading guys but it's just even more daunting that even the simplest thing is like buying your essential clothing is now regulated and alright mate it's not none of these are essential clothing those are like really expensive and like wear sneakers you're you're gonna be able to get your New Balance is fine like nori which I did no BOTS going after that all right I'm putting a call out to the audience somebody build a bot that will find me rare Magic the Gathering cards that's what I need they probably something out there man you are nerdier than I thought all right we gotta start digging you guys help me look ok good get Brian those do land cards thank you yeah got'em my deck is a mess okay which time to wrap it up say goodbye thanks to Jeff thanks everybody for a good week and Ben you want to take us on out of here under the weekend sure the 359 is available on iTunes tune in stitcher feedburner google play music google podcast the amazon echo and of course cnet.com jeff thanks so much for coming on thank you everybody for all your great questions have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you on Monday take care folks you you