[Giant Bombcast Episode 925: Charity Streams, Resident Evil, and the Night Watch]-[925: Human Ramekin]

Giant Bombcast · C1 · 2026-01-27

📋 Summary

Giant Bombcast Episode 925: Community, Charity, and Gaming Insights

In this week’s episode of the Giant Bombcast, the crew—Jan Ochoa, Jeff Grubb, Dan Ryckert, and Mike Minotti—navigated a wide array of topics, ranging from lighthearted personal anecdotes about winter weather to serious discussions regarding industry-wide charity efforts.

Supporting the Community

The podcast opened on a serious note as the hosts addressed recent events in Minnesota. Demonstrating their commitment to their local community and industry peers, they announced a collaborative charity stream, the "Giant Bomb Cross MinMax Ice Out," scheduled for Friday at 5 p.m. Central. Jeff Grubb and Dan Ryckert will join Ben Hanson and Jacob Geller at the MinMax studio to raise funds for those affected by the ongoing situation. The hosts highly recommended Ben Hanson’s concise video explaining the severity of the circumstances, encouraging listeners to share it with those outside the gaming industry.

Gaming Deep Dives: Sekiro and Resident Evil

A significant portion of the show was dedicated to the "impossible pivot" back to video games. Dan Ryckert shared his transformative experience playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Describing it as feeling like a "modern Punch-Out," Dan recounted his grueling but rewarding progress, specifically highlighting the "Genichiro" boss fight as a major skill check that left him feeling like a "god" once defeated.

On the horror front, the team discussed the upcoming Resident Evil Requiem. Mike Minotti and Jeff Grubb shared their impressions from a demo, noting the fascinating dual-gameplay structure where players switch between the action-heavy, "badass" style of Leon S. Kennedy and the more tension-filled, survival-horror approach of Grace. Mike also reflected on his recent playthrough of Resident Evil 7, admitting that while he used to be terrified of horror games, he now finds the "jump scares" to be a fun, reflexive part of the experience.

Indie Impressions and Tech Talk

The crew also touched upon several indie titles:

Re-Animal: Mike Bacalar discussed his time with the demo from the developers of Little Nightmares, noting its satisfying mix of stealth and "fucked up visuals."
Escape from Ever After: Jeff Grubb praised this Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door homage for its excellent pacing and "juice," noting that it manages to avoid the common pitfall of indie games spending too much time on assets at the expense of gameplay propulsion.
Cleared Hot: Grubb highlighted this Desert Strike-like helicopter game, praising its physics-based rope system that allows players to pick up friendlies or drop trucks onto enemies like bowling balls.
Vital Shell: Mike Minotti recommended this mech-action title for fans of the early PlayStation 1 era, praising its "drum and bass" aesthetic and bullet-hell boss encounters.

High Guard and Industry News

The team shared their collective disappointment with High Guard, a game they found "empty" and lacking in engagement during its gathering phases. They debated whether the game’s design or their own preferences were to blame, ultimately uninstalling it shortly after testing.

In news, the hosts discussed the potential for Grand Theft Auto VI to launch digitally-only to prevent leaks, and the announcement of new Virtual Boy titles coming to Nintendo Switch Online—a topic that led to a fascinating, albeit bizarre, technical breakdown of how the original Virtual Boy hardware used a single oscillating pixel to create its 3D effect.

Closing out the show, the hosts engaged in their usual banter, answering listener emails about "money laundering fronts" and providing a humorous ranking of Giant Bomb members based on social media interactions. The episode remained a testament to the show's blend of genuine camaraderie, industry expertise, and the occasional absurd debate.

🎯Key Sentences

I just got a terrible feeling.

Let's just see what happens.

You got nothing to worry about.

I haven't left the house in days.

That's just what I've extracted.

Expand All

📝Key Phrases

looming threat

no good deed goes unpunished

take a check

remiss if we didn't

climb the mountain

Expand All

📖 Transcript

Everybody, it's Tuesday, January 27th, 2026.

Welcome to the Giant Bombcast, episode 925.

I'm your host, Jan Ochoa.

Joining me, co-captain of the ship, Jeff Grubb.

I just got a terrible feeling.

Dan's been in a really good mood going into the podcast.

It was always kind of a little bit of both, because the like the 3do, the idea behind it, and i vaguely remember, is that uh, ea wanted to like, have like an open-ish platform that was separate from nintendo and then the rest of them nintendo and sega, and so 3do was going to sort of be this spin-off thing that the guy that created ea was going to have, And but they were always going to also publish games, I think.

You can see it in the video we put out, but there is like this gigantic blobby, big boy, goopy dude that is roaming the halls and with some of these bigger enemies they're not just static, so you may encounter a big boy as grace in one part of the map, but that guy is roaming around, he is like constantly moving around, so you may see him occupy a different hallway, be in another room doing his own thing.

I bet that was two great bullets. all right fantastic chat says uh mike goes and i quote oh i don't need the magnum right now just like i'll get that later was that the was this the one with like the the labyrinth and the marble maze stuff no wait marble maze i don't think i know what you mean the ones you rotate and a little marble yeah which one was that was that for a remake Now I'm not sure.

You know kind of um tag along, you know uh, what's the name when you know like like, what i go was right where you're just like uh, it's kind of like an escorting yeah, like a cinematic platformer hashtag or you know a parenthesis 3d, i think yeah, i mean, that's what you're getting here and there there's a really satisfying level of creepiness.

And then they just went away because, you know, they kind of ran their course and they couldn't figure out how to build on top of that fundamental gameplay to keep them complex enough for modern games. this is somewhere in between where it's like it's not trying to be a full-on modern game it's trying to be like a desert strike but there are a handful of other elements to add to that complexity to keep you interested in what's going on a big part of it is uh like just a little bit of physics and a rope system so you can drop your rope and pick up uh your friendlies and they can get on the the a helicopter unless your helicopters full in which case you could pick up you know like eight people have them sit in the helicopter and then you could still pick up one more on the rope and then you kind of have to fly them back to the base but not don't fly so fast that the rope flies up into the propellers and kills your friend oh it's that sort of thing where it's like you can just pick up a truck and fly at the enemies, like stop and then let go of the truck and it'll just fly into the enemies and sort of like roll like a bowling ball through them.

It is in Siege, but it wasn't here. it's not here at all siege it's like a smaller contained environment right and like the phases in between matter versus here you have that defense because it's smaller you like funnel the enemies into a certain way and like you want them to come in this direction and you want to put up a a path that is resistive to them so they come the way you want and here that there's so much openness and all these different directions they can come from it's it's not the same The map doesn't feel like it... The map is huge, but it also feels like it doesn't quite matter because the gathering phase of loot and then waiting for the Shieldbreaker to spawn, most of the time, in our experience, the Shieldbreaker was somewhere inside.

I didn't even think about how this game would be improved if there were just like little mobs to shoot in in between um, and by the time we were done with our time with high guard, it felt like it was more useful to actually just go mine for the crystals or vesper, whatever it was called, and rather than actually looking for different items in the chests.

It took me a while to be like okay, I'm going to only really be able to take advantage of that in very obvious long, prolonged team fights, because if i try to use in any other situation, they're just going to run away and they'll get out of my range and the eagle moves very slowly and the shots move very slowly.

The Rare Replay version of Banjo is good, but I bet this is way, way better. oh yeah and uh yeah this is like such an obvious one of these to do so it's uh very nice to see badge kazooie still a fun game yep all right that does it for the headlines i have over here jan i'm handing the show back over to you fantastic grub thank you so much we're gonna go take another quick bricky break and we will be back with some emails and super chats if we have them see These are the emails for the show.

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