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Giant Bombcast · Giant Bomb

921: Lieutenant Gungan

December 16, 2025·39 min·2 clips
Jan was mistaken for Mega Man Legends voice actor Yuri Lowenthal at The Game Awards — and the fan asked him to follow on Instagram before looking him up.
Episode 921 is birthday-branded chaos. The crew is at Main Gear HQ on Tuesday, December 16th, 2025, with Game of the Year work nearby and everyone sounding a little banged up. The couch roll call does not stay on rails for long. Train travel, flat feet, a microphone-table accident, and Dan working injured all get dragged into the opening before the rundown can get its shoes on. Then Dispatch takes the room. The panel digs into the hacking because it is not just busywork here. It ramps up, pushes back, and keeps feeding the story. Someone loves hacking with zero shame, and BioShock's pipe-style hacking even gets a defense, because old minigame grudges apparently never die. The hotter argument is about choices. Cutting Sonar splits the room: awful guy to some, goofy little freak worth saving to others. Coop and Lady Batman get pulled into the wreckage too. The group keeps coming back to how corporate and uncomfortable the forced cut feels, which seems to be exactly where the game wants them. Nobody treats it like a tidy review segment. They bounce between mechanics, character reads, and bad-decision pressure, and Dispatch comes off more game-like than some story-heavy peers because the systems keep twisting the knife. Then, beautifully, the show slams from messy moral argument into a Main Gear and Nvidia read like nothing happened. The last stretch is community desk energy. Giant Bomb forums are back in the mix, with account resets, hundreds of people posting, and user-written articles getting some love. Holiday break is coming, and the crew says they will not technically be around the following week, though Game of the Year podcasts are already lined up. It ends in physical nonsense, with a question about the most impressive hand motion demonstrated by Mike Minotti. Somehow, that feels right.

As heard by us

A loose, funny Giant Bomb couch hang, strongest when its Dispatch talk turns small choices into real attachment.

Giant Bombcast 921 opens as a birthday episode from Main Gear HQ, with Jan Ochoa gathering Jeff Grubb, Sean McDowell, Dan Reich, and the rest of the room before the Game of the Year recordings.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want a loud GOTY warm-up with one very unfortunate on-air mic incident.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
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