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S1 Ep31: The Catchup Rundown image

S1 Ep31: The Catchup Rundown

S1 E31 · Soapstone
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71 Plays7 years ago

Join Dave and Jake as they talk about some games played recently and throw in a bit of gaming news!

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Transcript

Week in Review: Family, Gaming, and Shopping

00:00:58
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Serpstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave? What's going on, Jake? How you been?
00:01:08
Speaker
I've been pretty good. Had the week off. Had a bunch of time to hang out with family, play some games, make some Black Friday purchases. So got that new computer rolling in sometime next month. Should be good. Exciting. How about yourself? How are you doing? I mean, it's been a lot of travel recently. Work trip, then some holiday traveling, seeing some family. Right. For those aforementioned holidays.
00:01:38
Speaker
Beyond that, I don't know. I feel like... Have you gotten a chance to play many games yet? Or is it kind of settling back in, recovering from jet lag? I'm settling back in. I was able to read the Dota 2 patch notes. Yeah, yeah. And then that was it. Oh, yeah. We'll have to circle back, talk about the Dota patch notes at some point here. Because I know some of our listeners are involved in that. Dota scene, if

Gaming on the Go: Challenges and Experiences

00:02:03
Speaker
you will. Yeah. So, I mean, we played a little bit recently.
00:02:07
Speaker
A couple of games, check it out. Like when I came in last night, I'm like, I need games. I need games now. You got the itch.
00:02:14
Speaker
Yeah, if you're off with family or just traveling and you don't have your setup, like I played Binding of Isaac on the plane. Yeah. And like that was it. So I wouldn't do like an actual game. It's just Dave shouting on the plane. He's like, Oh my gosh, why can't I find my bombs? There's no bomb. Bombs are now keys. He has a key bomb.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, which is actually one of the moves from Dragon Ball Z. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Key blast, key bomb. Yeah, a lot of good stuff there, but still not playing that much yet. Yeah. Yeah, not yet. This is what

Community Reactions to Dota 2 Patch

00:02:53
Speaker
I do. I'm like, hey, Jake, do you see a new patch? You're like, no, I haven't. Gee, that's interesting. I'm like, yeah, it'd be cool if you tried it out. It's impossible not to see the new patch, though, because
00:03:03
Speaker
The community basically lives for those. Any time that there hasn't been a patch, they're just like, when's the next patch? They

Jake's Gaming Highlights: Reviews & Recommendations

00:03:12
Speaker
start memeing like crazy. They lose their minds. Have you seen this patch? This patch is bullshit.
00:03:19
Speaker
there's a there's a comic that goes around every single time which is just like ice frog this new this new patch is poop you know like whatever and it's like it's been around since classic dota right i'm pretty sure and it's just like this is garbage he's just completely just a frog completely silent he's like this like i'm never gonna play so i'm quitting the game and the last panel's always like he hesitantly takes the bite and that's that's exactly how the community works
00:03:46
Speaker
But enough about the community. That's a different TV show. I played a bunch of other games. I played some recent games. What games have you played? So big ones probably Red Dead 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, which one of our listeners recommended, and Destiny 2, which I know you've gotten a little bit into.
00:04:11
Speaker
I have left clicked a couple of times. And that's the game launched. So let's close it. Still a little bit behind on that for sure. And Fallout 76, which as everybody knows is critically acclaimed.
00:04:27
Speaker
I'm just making eyes at Jay, not the sexual kind like normal. What's Spider-Man? What are your thoughts on that? Spider-Man's a fun game. It's kind of like it exists in that space of like open world action games, like prototype, like infamous and infamous Second Son, like the Spider-Man games that have come before him. So he's in a city punching bad guys. He lives in the city actually.
00:04:54
Speaker
live in it we'll just put it as an ad i shouldn't i shouldn't do my own rig i mean we already had it as an outro so we can't even really use it oh fuck you're right yeah yeah we can we were using content at that point it's tough but yeah he lives in the city um there's actually a lot of those games take place in manhattan like i don't it's just maybe convenient for the architecture or something but it's just like new york
00:05:20
Speaker
all the way across, just do it, do it in New York. I think like infamous was one of the exceptions. I think the first one might've been Chicago and then the next one was like Seattle, but everything else is New York. But yeah, like Batman kind of large cities, buildings, things like that. Usually I feel like you need taller buildings to make it interesting. I just came back from Arizona and it's relatively flat until you get into like downtown Phoenix area.
00:05:49
Speaker
And like, as far as web slinging, as we would assume, right? Um, what are you going to swing off of? Yeah. You have to implement like a ground pull forward mechanic or something like that. Are you got nothing?
00:06:03
Speaker
But yeah, it feels really good. I think there's a joke kind of going around. All reviews were like, you feel like Spider-Man, right? In the Spider-Man game, you said. Yes. But it is true. And it's got pretty amazing web swinging. Some of the other games have the older games. They're just like, webs just go up in the air, off the screen, and you just move forward.
00:06:29
Speaker
There's not much interaction. Yeah and like older kind of spiders like go forward and it's like I got you fam Yeah, and you just go forward right there. The webs are vertical somewhere attached to clouds and in this one like There might be a couple times where it doesn't really make contact But you can pretty much always pan the camera and see that you've connected to something. Mm-hmm
00:06:53
Speaker
And that feels really nice and it also makes everything really dynamic So there's like if there's like a bay or something like that There's a large crane overlooking the bay and you hit that web web swing button You know that you're pretty much gonna hit the crane and then just gonna you'll have this like arc of spinning around the crane because it's the only thing out there Okay, can you tighten it? You can I guess it kind of depends what you mean
00:07:19
Speaker
So let's say you shoot out something that's like 100 feet of web. As you're going, can you pull the web so it ends up being shorter?
00:07:27
Speaker
Um, I don't think you can tighten it, but you do get the parabola kind of like effect where you just swing down that pendulum better way to put it. Um, but, uh, yeah, I don't, you, you can't quite tighten it. And if you're just traveling, then most of the time you're using it to just build momentum and keep your, your altitude. But, uh, you can just hold onto the web and just stop. Like I had something going on on, um,
00:07:54
Speaker
like either food delivered or something. There's some reason I didn't really want to continue transitioning through the city. So I just held the web and he just like just rocks back and forth on the web next to the building and then settles against the building and just sits there. And like just holding the one web that I just never released. I thought that was, it was a nice touch. It was pretty good. I'm surprised there's not a voice line for Peter going like,
00:08:17
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, just appreciating the view. He does have like some idle animations, I think. But the voice lines, it's interesting you bring that up. That was probably the thing that impressed me most about the game. And I think this applies to almost all of them. But there's a lot of conversations while you're in transit from one place to another. You got your earpiece, you know.
00:08:39
Speaker
your Batman, you know, communicator, basically. And if you're swinging quickly, his voice lines all sound labored. Like he's like swinging. Yeah, out of breath. And if you just stop and you just stop, like are standing on a rooftop, they sound completely calm. So like, it's hilarious that they, they like recorded both sets of lines, right? Like,
00:09:05
Speaker
Not really necessary at all, I think, but it's cool that they did. That adds a little bit of something extra to it. Yeah. Cause it always, it always seemed weird to me that nobody seemed super suspicious of Spider-Man winning. Like I keep calling Peter and he just sounds like he's running a marathon. Peter, are you in there? Uh, don't, don't come in. Gunshots in the background. Yeah, no, it's, it's pretty ridiculous, but, um,
00:09:35
Speaker
But the game is really solid. They do this thing that a lot of open world action games do, which is, don't do, which is actually build the characters out. And there's been plenty of origin stories for Spider-Man, right? Every other movie is another Spider-Man origin. But this one does a pretty good job of making him
00:10:01
Speaker
One, the game doesn't start when he turns into Spider-Man. He's already Spider-Man. But the characters kind of develop over the course of the story and have interactions with each other that are like meaningful, which is really hard to do because it's easy to make those situations boring. And I think the game in a couple of places fails with that.
00:10:27
Speaker
There's times where you play as like side characters. We're just like human people. And you're like, all right, like evade the military and like get more supplies and stuff. And you're like, all right, guess I'll sneak and periodically like hack something. But just the antithesis of playing Spider-Man.
00:10:48
Speaker
And I get that they're trying to get you in the brain of people who are living in the city that aren't spider-man round out the picture Yeah, but that's I mean, it's spider-man game. I got it to play spider-man, right? So

Red Dead Redemption 2: Anticipation and Analysis

00:11:02
Speaker
would you say that it would detract fully from that? It's like I
00:11:08
Speaker
I don't know. They're paced very differently. And it's not like they're optional. The story is linear. You go from mission to mission to mission. So you just know that if you load in and that prompt comes up 15 minutes earlier, you just met with MJ. And it's like 15 minutes earlier. You're like, OK, I'm going to be playing as MJ and see what happened in the last 15 minutes.
00:11:33
Speaker
And their sections are always, they're always paced much more slowly. They're stealth sections. You gotta sneak past people. You have to solve puzzles, things like that. You can't use your superhuman abilities to achieve things. Yes. There's actually, there's one point in the game where they have you play as MJ and Spider-Man's actually there helping her.
00:11:56
Speaker
And it's cool because you can distract enemies and get them away from everybody else's patrols and things. And then you signal people who are out of place, and Spider-Man will take them out and attach them to the ceiling. Which is awesome. You're like, oh my gosh, I get to use Spider-Man's abilities. If only there was some other way that I could do this. As Spider-Man. Yeah.
00:12:21
Speaker
But the game the game feels really solid one gripe. I kind of the only thing I didn't do really was there's random events that happen throughout the city like prisoner breakout and like hostage situation things like criminal activities.
00:12:38
Speaker
And they just kind of randomly pop up. And to 100% it, you have to respond to every single one. Yes. And the way it works is each area has its own tracking for it. So it's like in Queens. I did completed five criminal activities. And I don't know. It just was not as easy as following icons on the map and just doing things. But otherwise, I pretty much cleared it.
00:13:06
Speaker
A common gripe some people had was that the combat was too easy. It kind of does the Batman thing where you're building combos and dodging. You kind of just press one button repeatedly and move your analog stick. Yeah. You can do that on the lower difficulties, but I played the game on hard. And in that one, if you make mistakes, you just die. You're like, oh, got shot. That is my hard counter.
00:13:36
Speaker
Bullets, bullets get me again. Yeah. Bullets take care of you pretty quickly. Um, so that forces you to use like some of your gadgets. Um, and it's, it's kind of funny because I mentioned like Batman earlier, this is like, it feels kind of like Batman. Less like a stalker because Batman plays in those games like a stalker. He's always like on gargoyles waiting for people below and things. But, um, this version of Spider-Man has like,
00:14:06
Speaker
10 gadgets were just like web bomb and he's like web drone and like, you know, all these things like web or spider. Those are your operative nouns, right? Just attach something to it. But yeah, felt pretty good. And on hard, you had to diversify your kit a bit to like deal with guys. And the combat does feel good because there's like
00:14:31
Speaker
If guys are webbed up and you hit them with an attack, they'll like knock them back or you pull them or do something like that. If they're webbed up and they hit a wall, they're immediately taken out of the fight. They're just attached to the wall, like the webs latch them to the wall and they're done. So one of his abilities is this like web bomb that like AOE web knocks people back. And if they're all like next to walls and things like that, you're just like immediately the encounter is done.
00:14:59
Speaker
because you just thought that was a great place to use it and they happen to hit the walls and you're done. And it feels good. Feels good to play. So I think that it's earned its place in the good open world action games.
00:15:17
Speaker
and definitely fans of Spider-Man should check it out because it's Spider-Man. If you don't like Spider-Man, it might not be the game for you. Yes. If you hate Spider-Man, it's definitely not. The only thing I wish they had was Venom, because I remember playing Ultimate Spider-Man, which was a similar game back in the day, and they let you play like half the game as Venom.
00:15:41
Speaker
And it was awesome, because Spider-Man never kills anyone. If you throw people off, also, this is the main reason why Spider-Man. I think I've said this before, but throwing people off ledges is basically what I strive for in any game that I play. Some games, this is very difficult. But you can do it in Spider-Man, like, no problem. So if you, like, just throw a guy airborne trying to kill him, right, because you're trying to kill people in Spider-Man, obviously, there'll be, like, a web attached to him at the last moment that, like, pulls him into a wall.
00:16:11
Speaker
so like you never get to actually kill people by throwing them off ledges but in that game you could play as venom and venom straight up killed people like there was this like a skull that would appear above people and they died and he's just like yep drained that guy until he died so anyways that takes a couple points off the game because you can't kill people but
00:16:35
Speaker
What are you gonna do? There's a there's another open world game obviously came out Different though Red Dead Redemption 2 Which I think is not downtown. It's not it's not actually in New York as far as I know It's like in Montana or Utah or somewhere. I don't know. I should know by this point, but I really don't Midwest yeah
00:16:58
Speaker
This was probably the most anticipated game, I think, of fourth quarter for this year. And part of that is, I think, because Rockstar just doesn't release that many games. And when they do, they tend to be pretty good. Like, did you play Red Dead 1 at all?
00:17:17
Speaker
I don't think I had the chance to. Yeah. I heard things about it as like probably the original Xbox. And then it just was gone. Yeah. It was kind of like a flash in the pan for when the viable time to play it was, I think.
00:17:33
Speaker
because there was a lot of hype and then it's just like then there's just the people playing multiplayer and they never talked but I played that one like on it so it was Xbox I had it hooked up to a computer monitor so I was playing like this wasn't a large monitor this was something like a 19 inch or whatever and that was tough that was that was low resolution nonsense
00:17:58
Speaker
They're not ever like super high res games at least back then they weren't right But you definitely needed more screen space actually be able to read the text. So it was it was interesting but Yeah, this was kind of
00:18:14
Speaker
kind of interesting from a genre perspective. There's not really a cowboy simulator, which is basically what Red Dead is. Um, there's like other action games come out, I think like call of war as, or other things that pop up in steam sales that I've never played. But, uh, red dead's kind of its own, its own beast. Um,
00:18:38
Speaker
And I think, uh, that's, that's great. You know, it's not another Call of Duty or something like that. My question is like, how does a game like this, if you have information on both compared to something like something like Far Cry 5. Oh yeah. So you're also like kind of like out in more backwoods, but still open world. And obviously that would be more of a first person shooter.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah, but there actually is a first person mode in Red Dead and they're both kind of like survival type games. Something that was big in the first Red Dead and is also big in this is like hunting. And it's completely optional. There's like a couple missions where you have to do it, but otherwise it's pretty much up to you. And it's not like this is Deer Hunter 5 Gold or something like that. It's got mechanics for it, but
00:19:27
Speaker
you don't have to like sit in the woods for 30 minutes waiting for something to happen like in a blind in a tree yeah so it's kind of straightforward but is that for just money or do you actually need those resources for the survival mechanics you can get like um so you have uh one of the the main things is you have a camp um of other outlaws basically because you're playing on the the wrong side of the law
00:19:50
Speaker
this one much kind of like the original red did and you need to supply the camp with like ammunition medicine and food and you could just straight up give them money and then buy those supplies or you know deliver food to the camp venison things like that
00:20:09
Speaker
and the hunting is actually like satisfying because they have like custom skinning animations for everything so you're like oh yeah i shot the i shot the deer and i made sure i shot it in its head so i didn't ruin the pelt and then like went up and they have like custom animations for like like
00:20:27
Speaker
skinning everything. In the first game it was just like the camera points up at John Marston as he like stabs a knight who's like carve, carve, carve sounds. Like the monster on her car views. Exactly. It's the same motion every single time whether it's tail or their fucking face. Yeah, yeah. And this one, the custom animations are nice and you can kind of like gather hides from creatures, get some, the meat goes in your inventory which is just like
00:20:51
Speaker
bag of holding basically. You can just have tons of raw meat sitting in your saddlebag. Yeah. There's like limits on it depending on what type it is. So you're like, Oh yeah, I have like four units of large meat, like, you know, like, um, venison or something like that. And then I like hunt some pheasants and I've got like three units of small meat, but those are different stacks. So you can't like, it's not weight based. There's like, there's no weight. Um,
00:21:22
Speaker
But you can get hides off of some of those things like the deer and then like throw them on the back of your horse and just make a stack of them. So you just got a visible stack of hides on the back of your horse, then go to town and sell them all off, which is pretty cool. I thought you meant like, go to town, go to town on these hives, sell them off. And like, um, you can carry around like two small carcasses, like tied to the back of your horse. So like a quail or something and squirrels go like into your side bag.
00:21:49
Speaker
but a larger thing like a goose could be tied to the side of your horse and then one large carcass like a deer across the back of your horse.
00:21:57
Speaker
I like how Jake is just randomly listing animals, and you don't see the hand gestures, but he's like putting every single animal on the back of his horse. Or in his belt pouch. Yes, it's pretty accurate. So what did you do besides hunt in the game? Really nothing. The main content is like the main story you can go through. And pretty much the whole world, as far as I know, is opened up from the get-go.
00:22:24
Speaker
So you can just travel and find random encounters and things like that. Or you can do these set piece main stories where you're like collecting debts or like robbing a train or doing things like that. And Rockstar has always been really good on their set piece content where they're like, this is our main story and we're going to make it dramatic over the top.
00:22:50
Speaker
It's just really fun to play in those settings. Now I subvert that because I'm like, I'm in max when I play games. So it's like, if they send like 50 law men against me and me and my crew have to shoot them all down, you know, whatever. I say law men, I don't know where I'm from. The cops, they're just cops. Yeah, cops basically. The game wants me, I pass that to like, oh yeah, no, no, go forward to get to the next objective. And I'll be like, hold up.
00:23:18
Speaker
There's 50 bodies here I can check. And each one may have about $2. Where's the goods on them? That's real savings. I'll see you in 15 minutes. But that's just the way I play. So if the game lets me do it, then I'm going to gather everything. So I'm hearing good main quest content, decent hunting mechanics. Yeah.
00:23:45
Speaker
Um, how is it as far as, I know you said there's like some random interactions as you always need for open world. Yeah. Like maybe there's an encampment that you'll ambush or something. Yeah. But how sparse is it? Cause I know we've kind of gone back and forth on previous open world things of, I have this great open space. I can explore at my own pace. Yeah. And then it's just fucking empty. Or it's like, Hey, it's camp type A again.
00:24:10
Speaker
Yeah, and that's something I don't really, like I don't want to see a map with a bunch of you must do this things on it. And Red Dead mostly avoids that. They have these legendary monsters you can hunt, which are really just like, not monsters, animals. I was going to say like, mega bison. But it basically is that. It's just like, here's a white moose, something like that, albino moose. And those are usually specific to regions, but everything else just shows up as you're writing.
00:24:39
Speaker
So like I've had a couple times the same encounter shows up, like someone's bitten by a snake and you can either suck them off. You can actually, what's one of the options? You can suck the poison out or give them the healing like tonic. In both cases, I've given them the healing tonic because I just don't know, like I have the healing tonic, why am I gonna pick the other option? I don't know what's gonna happen. Option one, give them the healing tonic. Option B, use your mouth. Also I like how I go from option one to option B. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:08
Speaker
option theater yes exactly but there's actually so the nether encounter I've seen twice is um there's like a bandit or somebody and they are have they're kidnapping a woman she's on like the back of its horse and or tied you know to the back of the horse because you can just pick a person up hog tie them and put them on the back of your horse this was a core mechanic in the first game it's a core mechanic here but you can chase him down and you know shoot him or whatever get him off the horse and rescue the woman and just like
00:25:38
Speaker
she'll want to go to somewhere on the map and you can just... Can I can I go home? Yes, go home, right? And you can like do that and you get honor, which is like part of their morality system. But the first time I did this, I hog tied or I lassoed the bandit off the horse and then like jumped off my horse and hog tied him. And as I'm doing this, I see that the other horse as his rider has been like pulled from the horse as
00:26:07
Speaker
out of control. It's just going down the trail and it's gone with the woman on its back. So I was like, all right, I got to take care of this guy first because I don't know if the game thinks that mean murdering him is going to be dishonorable, especially now that a hog tied him. Right. So I just like left him in the trail. Someone else will find him.
00:26:23
Speaker
And I never found the horse, so I assume she's fine. There's still rumors of her riding around town through this day. Just on the back of a horse. The second time I just shot the guy. I got the encounter another time. I just shot the guy and then recovered her in the horse. But that worked better for that woman. But yeah, there are kind of encounters like that. And they're fun. You can get some nice rewards for them, things like that.
00:26:49
Speaker
Sometimes you get tips for like, hey, there's a shop that's in this one specific town and they've got like a side business going on and you should totally rub that. They don't say that last part, but that's internal monologue. So yeah, those events are fun.
00:27:06
Speaker
Is there any difference between if you play morally good versus immoral? I don't know yet and it's it's based off of honor because so here's the weird thing this is maybe one gripe I kind of have with the game is whenever you're doing the main stories your missions you're playing with your crew like they're all outlaws they're trying to get money they're gonna do terrible things
00:27:30
Speaker
Um, the rest of the game lets you choose how you want to play. So if you're playing as an outlaw, that's all fine. Now you have a consistent character, but I'm trying to like build up honor to see what happens. Um, and then the game's just like, and you rob a train and you kill 50 people. That's not really consistent with my character now, but I kind of get where you're going. I'm going to see if there's consequences.
00:27:57
Speaker
People seem to like me a bit more. I wouldn't say that. Right, right. Well, they seem to. They hide it well if I'm honorable. And you can still do fun, murdery things as an honorable person because there's plenty of bandits. And you can also take bounties, which is probably my favorite activity in the game so far. It's just like, get this person and they must be taken alive or something like that.
00:28:26
Speaker
And they're like, oh, they pulled a gun on you. Now you have to go into Deadeye and literally like shoot their hand. So they don't just kill you, which is how you lose in many games. You're dead. You're done. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I like that I added challenge and being a bounty hunter is just fun. Um, but yeah, so far it seems pretty solid. It's got a cool opening too. It's got like, uh,
00:28:53
Speaker
The game is gorgeous, like super, super pretty. And the opening is during like winter mountain pass, like tons of snow. And I just went around with my horse, like making, plodding down snow, making like a little, uh, indentation in the snow. And it's really freaking like the, it's just a technical demo, basically what I'm like, what I'm experiencing here. But,

Fallout 76: Reception and Critique

00:29:19
Speaker
uh, I just appreciate that a ton. It's really cool.
00:29:23
Speaker
Nice. But yeah, we'll see. I haven't beaten the game yet. Probably like maybe halfway through. But I've been playing other things. So kind of like come back to Red Dead, play other things. That's that's the tricky choice. Whenever I move to play, like whenever I'm jumping to PlayStation, I'm making the sacrifice that
00:29:40
Speaker
I'm not going to be available to, you know, play multiplayer games with people and stuff like that. But you actually like will sit down and set like a block of time for like, I'm in the living room now. Yeah. And I'm like, I think I still have my PS award. Yeah. But, um.
00:29:56
Speaker
Yeah. Seems really solid. And critically, it's like on fire. So I had checked in. It's got a 97 on Metacritic right now, which is about as good as it gets. That's like half-life Bioshock, the original Bioshock. I think I got like a 96. So really well reviewed. I only encountered a couple game-breaking bugs.
00:30:24
Speaker
travel detail because I thought they were hilarious. I had missions where there was other NPCs I needed to follow and they would like like talk to me like that's where Rockstar's format is you go somewhere and the other people talk to you like while this is going that's how they pass time right on the trail and the NPCs just stop.
00:30:46
Speaker
They get to a point where it's like, there's supposed to be another trigger. They're supposed to jump to their next event or whatever. And they just stand there. And like, I tried some ridiculous things to get it to progress. Like run them over with my horse. Or like, uh, like knock them to the side and things like that. And there was a couple of times I had to purposefully fail a mission because I couldn't find an ability to retry in the middle. I had to just like run out of bounds and it's just like, you abandoned.
00:31:16
Speaker
like butch or whatever Dutch actually and I'm like yeah but it's cuz he literally wasn't moving anymore and I had to reload the game so that's been unfortunate but otherwise pretty clean
00:31:33
Speaker
Solid game. However, there was a game I have been playing that many people do not consider solid. And that is Fallout 76. I was hoping you'd say Metal Gear. Yeah, Solid. Metal Gear, not so solid. Yeah, soft Metal Gear. But yeah, Fallout 76 is technically in the Fallout franchise.
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah, so what the fuck's the deal? Because I know you've been spending a lot of time playing it, but every single reviewer who I know and respect, or YouTuber who covers a game like, hey, here's my experience, has been spouting terrible, terrible things.
00:32:11
Speaker
Just up front, just clear it all. It's pretty much all true. Good, good. It's been in an interesting space. They basically took a genre that everybody appreciated as a single player, open world RPG, and made it a multiplayer open world kind of RPG. It's like...
00:32:39
Speaker
they subverted that pretty hard like in a lot of ways. So let's start with the I would imagine shorter list of what did you enjoy about it or what did they do correctly as far as the game. So things that I enjoy about it is playing with a friend and certain circumstances
00:33:00
Speaker
When you're not trying to slowly go through a narrative set piece where like you want to listen to hollow tapes, which are like their voice recordings, um, or read terminals, which, you know, people will do a different, their, their own reading speed. Um, times where you're not trying to sit there and appreciate the story. Multiplayer is actually pretty fun. Um, it's, we had a couple of times I was playing with our friend Ian and.
00:33:26
Speaker
We had a workshop we needed to defend. There'd be like waves of enemies basically. And traveling back to help them out with that and kind of like, you know, side by side, like tearing through all these guys. That's really fun.
00:33:43
Speaker
There's also some times that people people role play a bit and I haven't personally experienced this but I've read stories about One guy was dressed all in He had chameleon a chameleon effect on so his character is basically invisible okay, there's like an aberration in the air kind of like video game cloaking, right and He snuck up on somebody and the controversial decision was made in the game that
00:34:11
Speaker
By default, voice chat would just be on and always on. So I turned it off immediately, but some people left it on and this guy would come up to people and be like, hey, you want to buy some drugs? And that's awesome. Like, I love that.
00:34:29
Speaker
I mean from like a VR chat appreciation I can see like the amusing role-playing stuff going on being like Oh, they're really committing to being a certain type of character. Yeah, but I Really? Hope you have other things you liked about the game where this is I mean obviously being able to like play with a buddy like Ian and do something cooperatively can be fun but
00:34:51
Speaker
for what the franchise has been as far as I've heard as single player, very good narrative and side characters. Yeah, and they've cut a lot of that out. The other good thing is if you're playing on your own, there are some good narrative set pieces where it's like,
00:35:12
Speaker
Bethesda does this a lot. They do environmental storytelling, where if you're a perceptive player, you'll just get more of the story because you see things that are going on. Like, um, the classic example of this in Fallout is like, there will be like a skeleton next to rat boys and then a depressing message somewhere, right? Like, you probably drank the rat boys. Exactly. Or like, um, if you're just running through the game, running, gunning, you'll miss a lot of the stories that get told. Like this pastor who poisoned his entire congregation because he
00:35:42
Speaker
They started to realize that he was he was a fake and he was just trying to get their money There's like a church steeple that's like overturned in a swamp and if you climb up to the top of it There's actually stairs that lead down into an underground to an underground cave where there's like this like kind of demonic cult shrine and That's just really cool. Like that's just a really cool atmospheric
00:36:10
Speaker
like atmospheric storytelling that unfortunately gets undercut by multiplayer. So that's the big dichotomy for me. So from like an open world perspective compared to like other follow-up games, without any of the multiplayer aspect, how does that match up?
00:36:27
Speaker
It's if if you take out all the multiplayer aspect and there's only like 20 people per server and most I think You just switch worlds whenever If you take out all of that the world feels really empty
00:36:41
Speaker
And they warned us they said there wasn't going to be any human NPCs and there's just going to be robots. But it doesn't feel right. Yeah. There's actually, according to lore, which is always, you know, get to the lore. West Virginia wasn't hit by nukes. Like this area wasn't. So this escaped the nukes and that's why the Vault 76 could open so early.
00:37:08
Speaker
There was also something else that happened that basically killed off all the people or drove them crazy. It's hard for me to reconcile those two facts in my head, right? Like, like, uh, uh, new Vegas was had a lot of people because Mr. House shot down the bombs or like disarmed them mid flight. Uh, Washington DC basically got hit and was obliterated, but still people moved out and lived in villages and things like that.
00:37:36
Speaker
And this one, everything looks like almost pristine by comparison to other Fallout games. And there's no people. And that just seems dumb. It seems kind of like a way to say, hey, here's content. But here's why we don't have content. Yeah. It's like they tried to make an in-universe justification for a technical decision that was made early. They're like, we're not going to be able to have NPCs for whatever reason.
00:38:00
Speaker
But the game feels fake for it because they'll have times where you're just hearing about people's stories that it feels like they were there just recently, like a month ago or something like that. It all seems like recent history. And then there's no one.
00:38:16
Speaker
Yeah, I I feel like it worked and left for dead because you had like these little messages and like the safe rooms of like Hey, did you hear the CDC or like a bunch of cocksuckers and like? Hey, you might be able to go here for like safety from zombies Because you weren't expecting there to be a lot of
00:38:33
Speaker
people you were with your group of survivors but like everything else was fucking zombies because that's what the the world was in that universe and they break it up they even break it up and left her dead there's the the church guy who was uh infected but still a human and not turned by the time you make it to the church and there was the helicopter pilot yeah like there's a couple of those i think actually through the course of the series so you at least
00:38:56
Speaker
got the impression that there was other people. Even if you're talking to someone on a radio, it was a live person on the other end. You don't communicate with live people in 76. It's all recordings. Even if it's like a public event, which is like they want multiple people to come in here and like defend against waves of enemies or something like that. Your instructions are all given over like a PA system that are recorded by a person that was alive at some point.
00:39:24
Speaker
But the game subverts its own narrative in a way because there's quests where it's like, hey, find out what happened to this person. You're like, I know. I know. It was spoiled literally when the game was announced. There are no people. These people are dead. That's not even a spoiler. I'm not spoiling content for the game because we know. It's on the box. Everyone's dead. Yeah.
00:39:49
Speaker
It's just it's really unfortunate that they went that way because it takes out The traditional role-playing aspect to fall out is you have your special stats, right and those still exist But everything related to charisma speech all of that. It's like that's all out you have That's all out 77. Yeah. Yeah, like you have odd you have perk cards and one of them's like you get better prices at robot vendors, but there's no like
00:40:17
Speaker
trying to convince an NPC of something. And it sucks. Yeah, like one of the big draws of
00:40:26
Speaker
other things like Skyrim, other fallouts or going into like the Dave sex thing. Yeah. Is you didn't always have to like go straight murder. You can just be a crafty bastard. Yeah. And be like, Hey, demonic possessed dog. Let's chat this out. And the dog's like, you know what? I was really working with some issues against my dad. Yeah. Um, yeah, I shouldn't bite you. You're right. Yeah. And it's cool to have alternatives, but it's.
00:40:53
Speaker
a weird direction that they're like, and it's gone. And it's good that you bring that up because that's the other thing. You could take the people out and still have multiple ways to complete quests.
00:41:03
Speaker
They haven't really done that. They took the people out and all the quests feel really go here, do this structured. Like at the end of the day, those were all the quests we were doing anyways. Like it was pretty much always go here, do this. Yeah. Accomplish this. But you can have an awesome quest that's go here, do this. Like people love Dark Brotherhood from Oblivion. Yeah. Cause you had multiple options for how you wanted to assassinate this. It all boiled down to kill this person.
00:41:29
Speaker
Here's a bonus if you weren't seeing. But the options were there. Exactly. And in this one, none of your choices really matter because you can complete these quests, you can find out about the story, but it's just you witnessing what has happened instead of changing anything. In Fallout New Vegas, in Fallout 3, in Fallout 4, you can, lesser extent, in Fallout 4, you can dramatically change
00:41:56
Speaker
what happens in the world. The pivot around the world turns kind of around you by the end of it. And in this one, what you do does not matter. And the slightest.
00:42:08
Speaker
like you can't change the state of the world because there's other people there and you know there's not going to be like one savior of that given world server or whatever it is you blank image of template face yeah in tea tea pose and that's that's really unfortunate and it kind of removes a lot of that fallout identity um
00:42:30
Speaker
They introduced some interesting things like camps, which is like your own special building space, kind of like the settlements in Fallout 4. And you can kind of move it around the map. It's kind of like a mobile base that it's free to travel to. So you can construct it, and then once it's constructed, you can just teleport it? Yeah, pretty much. You teleport it, yeah. There's no real in-universe justification that makes teleporting that makes sense, but
00:42:57
Speaker
It's nice because like this guy, we found someone's house and it was just like a lakefront property basically. Like built it out on the water next to a pier and a boat and had some like turrets and stuff on it. It looks cool, but they give you a fixed budget. You can only spend, you can only put so much stuff into your house. So I have like a two-story concrete house and it's kind of cool. It's got all my crafting stations. It's got some missile turrets on the outside, which I think are awesome.
00:43:25
Speaker
It's got like machine gun turrets on the back. Great. But I used all my budget like on some defenses in these two stories. So I can't put like posters up really anymore. I can't put like a chair and a table. So it just feels utilitarian instead of like a house. So I guess the limitation there is due to multiplayer. You don't want to have too many assets loaded into like get in space for the game to be running.
00:43:56
Speaker
Again, the whole thing feels weird to me. I've not been a real player of the Fallout franchise, been kind of following things. Do they have DLC or in-game transactions for things with crafting? They do for cosmetics. You can wear an outfit, which I really enjoy. It's got this, again, dead rising kind of feel to it, where you're like, here's your helmet, here's your suit.
00:44:23
Speaker
So like I have like a golf visor, like fashionable glasses, just like black glasses, white rims, and like a golf suit, like with pants that are khakis that go down to like my thigh, no not my thigh, my ankle. And it's hilarious just pulling out like a super sledge, like a huge hammer with like heating coils on it and just charging at somebody in your golf suit. I love that.
00:44:48
Speaker
But unfortunately, you know that doesn't really carry the game those cosmetics you can buy with You get currency by completely completing random challenges kind of And then you can just buy that currency with real money if you want to to unlock more cosmetics like that Oh, how convenient that I can use money to buy things. Yes
00:45:07
Speaker
And it's not like hugely gameplay impacting in any real way, but it exists. And the biggest great people have right now is you mentioned like they are worried about assets for a bunch of people in multiplayer. And the stash size, it's like you have a box and you can just throw all your stuff in it. And it's where you store everything that's on your character. There's no way you can like have a bunch of different boxes and put what you want in each one.
00:45:36
Speaker
Any time you access a stash box is always yours. It's like teleporting storage, basically. And it's only 400 pounds, which in Fallout weight is like nothing. So the last game Fallout 4 was like, pick up everything, all this junk, you need all of it.
00:45:55
Speaker
And this one's like, you can't pick up all of it and you still need, you still feels like you need a lot of it. So it sounds like a lot of it has, a lot of the gameplay has been kind of truncated from the most recent fallout. My other question is like, how buggy is this? Because I mean, it's besides the title. Yes. And historically they are pieces of shit when it comes to game performance. Right.
00:46:19
Speaker
I don't mean it's just fair. This is actually, so bug wise, there's some pretty big ones. There's some game breaking kind of decisions.
00:46:33
Speaker
There's a quest that has you follow this person around, like listening to their audio logs, because that's all you can do. You know that they're dead because there's no one alive. This is why I don't leave you voicemail, Jay. Oh my god, Jason. You must be dead. But at the culmination of it, you need to go and kill an NPC without spoiling anything for people who want to play. And the problem is that NPC is only alive once per world at server reset.
00:47:02
Speaker
So he doesn't respond. And since you got like 20 people per world, unless you jump on right after a server reset, you can't complete that quest because he's always dead. You'll just go to where he's at and it's just his corpse there on the ground. You shoot it a couple of times out of frustration and you leave because you can't complete your quest. That's bad. There's issues with people falling out of the world. I've had hard crashes, which really sucks.
00:47:30
Speaker
Um, cause there's a mechanic where you can get temporary ownership of a location, set up defenses, and you get resources over time for owning it. That's awesome. I like that mechanic. As soon as you drop from the server, you lose that location and all of your things you built there vanish. Wow. So that's a bad thing to have in conjunction with hard crashes. Yeah.
00:47:54
Speaker
It's a bit rough. It doesn't sound great overall. It also runs like trash. They said they had some performance fixes in the first patch, but I'm not really feeling them. Usually I run borderless full screen, so I can like do stuff on other monitors too. I can't do that. I literally need the frames from running it in full screen. And I just... It could be so much better. That's the thing.
00:48:19
Speaker
What, I mean, besides all the performance issues, what would you do to fix it if it is possible to fix? It's, it's actually a really hard question because they don't, it doesn't feel like fallout. Like they could increase your space. If they could find a way to increase your storage space, you could store things. That would be great. If they gave you a reason to play the game, other than just launching nukes at things to get more loot. Cause that's literally your late game.
00:48:50
Speaker
is trying to get nukes, irradiate areas, and then fight the high-level monsters that spawn there. It's tough. They need more actual content so people can engage in it in a group and feel like it's worth playing, and also things where you can play as a single player and have a fun time with it, like a narrative experience.
00:49:17
Speaker
The problem is so many of these things are ingrained in the system. It's always the multiplayer fighting against the single player. On top of everything else. Yes. And it's a hard sell. They've got a big trudge up that mountain to get there. And I think, I was thinking about this earlier, and if this was not a Fallout game, if it was just a survival, wasteland experience, but had nothing to do with Fallout,
00:49:45
Speaker
And it was early access. And you could pick it up on Steam. People would think this was great because it has so much potential to be good. But as potential would be good after a year or two of development.
00:50:01
Speaker
And that's not what you want to hear when the game just released, right? Yeah. I mean, I only wish they had like enough employees and budget to be able to make a game. Yeah, right. This

Diablo Immortal: Community Backlash

00:50:12
Speaker
indie company. I know it's harder for a lot of smaller companies. Yeah. So yeah, that just sounds disappointing overall. It is. And the disappointing thing is there's parts of the game that's legitimately fun. Like you said, I've spent like
00:50:25
Speaker
Over my my time off. I spent like probably three or four days just straight playing this game Improving my gear exploring spaces like having fun with it But what happens is the game subverts its own fun. You're having fun hard crash You're having fun. You got the the workshop all the servers go down. You're like it's just too much stuff that just holds it back and
00:50:49
Speaker
And if you want a consistent fun experience, which is usually what we do as adults when we want to play a game, right? Ideally. It's kind of hard to find that right now.
00:51:03
Speaker
It's earned, I think, it's 50 on Metacritic, which is, interestingly enough, lower than No Man's Sky at launch. Holy shit, at launch. What was the No Man's Sky at launch? It was like 65 or something like that? It was around there. They were paying somebody. It's like, yeah, it definitely had plenty of problems at launch, but it didn't subvert its identity, like Fallout did.
00:51:34
Speaker
Fallout 5 is my answer to your question, like what do you think they need to do to improve it? Make a different actual Fallout game? Yeah. Okay. Pretty much. Todd Howard got on that. Yep, so that's our advice.
00:51:48
Speaker
But yeah, other than that, I mean, there's a couple of things that happened since we did like a sort of news recap. We had Blizzcon and all of the announcements there. And I know that we did have an announcement on, I think, one of your favorite franchises. So how are you feeling about that one? How you described Fallout 76, as Kevin Sorbo would say, disappointed.
00:52:16
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we'll stop beating around the bush. Diablo Immortal, the big mobile phone game for the Diablo franchise. It's what everyone wanted, I think.
00:52:30
Speaker
Thanks for testing that with people, Blizzard. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like the overall consensus for everybody that I've seen is that it's trash. And like, why would you do something that's been a traditionally PC platform game, very in-depth RPG into like,
00:52:52
Speaker
I don't want to throw in the blanket of casual for mobile, but traditionally if you do have certain limitations on a phone, because you don't have like a mouse and keyboard and other things, you just kind of have to work with a person who can touch this or slide this. So it's not going to be as competitive. I know how to play Angry Birds, all right?
00:53:14
Speaker
I mean, we have like some other notes here which a lot of people have already covered. But we assume our listeners don't have any ends in the industry. They don't pay attention to other people's videos. We are the source.
00:53:28
Speaker
Like it seems like a reskin of a reskin of Diablo. Like another very similar type of game. Yeah. And I don't know. It's it's real disappointing because it would have been fully disappointing, I think, if it was a completely original phone based game, but they just stack that on top of the fact it's a reskin. And you're like, there's just layers of disappointment. Yeah, it's just.
00:53:59
Speaker
It's always been like this great, as I said, in-depth RPG. And I grew up on it and appreciated the aesthetics of everything. I didn't realize how janky the game was at the time, like kind of going back for Diablo II specifically, Lord of Destruction. A little D. Yeah, but it was like, it was immersive for me as a kid growing up. Yeah. And even when I did Diablo III, I had some gripes because it kind of like smoothed a lot of the edges. Big tonal shift.
00:54:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But they improved a lot of things too. And it was cool to have, oh, I can have these combos of gear and other things. Yeah. But this is just such a divergence that I don't know why. Yeah. And this is, I think to me, this is kind of a similar issue to what
00:54:52
Speaker
Fallout 76 has if this was not a Diablo game if this was not announced at Blizzcon if it was just like Blizzard's making a game with the Chinese mobile manufacturer and It's a mobile game people would be like. Oh, okay good for you, right? I'm not gonna play it. Yeah, it's not for me, but whatever it's fine But they had to tie that Diablo IP on it so that it kind of had more More more power to it more push, right?
00:55:20
Speaker
Um, same thing with Fallout. It's like the, the response would have been so much less dramatic if this was just a third person action game. That's not, not Diablo. Yeah, I don't, but it is. So this will end up on the Wikipedia article of Diablo games that have been released cannon Diablo mortal. Yeah. And, uh, I don't know. I mean,
00:55:47
Speaker
It's obviously a really big misstep, and it's impressive from an industry standpoint that they didn't see this was gonna be, two things, either didn't see this was gonna be such a big deal, and they were gonna just get memed on like crazy for how out of touch they were, or they knew it was gonna be a big deal, and they still did it because they think that some people are still gonna pick it up, and it'll be better for sales, for sales. Ladder, yeah. I would almost always lean that way just because big companies will,
00:56:15
Speaker
Again blanket. I'm just a guy in his 20s who has opinions. Yeah, it doesn't do a lot of research. Well My feeling would be that they probably saw an opportunity to Get a return on investment from a popular IP. Mm-hmm And even though like certain people might bitch and moan like we're doing now That there still would be a market and I'm sure there is still one that would exist. Oh, yeah
00:56:41
Speaker
but like you saw for like that guy at Blizzcon, who's like a Diablo fan, obviously a PC gamer, is like, what are you guys doing? And a lot of people who were there also felt the same way. Is this the late April Fool's joke? Yeah. The thing I disagree with, because I mean, I can't tell the company how to make money, but they cost their franchise like rep, so to speak, when you do this. You're dragging the name of Diablo down.
00:57:12
Speaker
when you attach it to a mobile game that nobody wants to play. Same thing with Fallout, obviously.
00:57:18
Speaker
In the same way, they don't really trust Bethesda outside of my current experiences with Skyrim. They've lost it for me as a company entirely. I don't want Blizzard to do the same because they've made a lot of great games and a lot of great choices for directions they've taken things. Overwatch is

Blizzard & Dota Updates: New Releases and Patches

00:57:35
Speaker
still crazy popular. I hear Hearthstone is still a thing. Yeah, people play that apparently. World of Warcraft, you think that's still going on? Yeah. I can keep naming games. They make AAA quality games.
00:57:47
Speaker
Yeah, and they're accessible. And yeah, I don't know. Well, we'll see what comes out of it, but I don't anticipate a major tonal shift that's going to make this accepted by the community. So I'm hoping that in the future, they can actually, if they want to continue with the franchise, make another Diablo game that's not Diablo 3, but can still improve on things and, you know, be on
00:58:15
Speaker
at least a console, ideally PC. Yeah, I mean they released Diablo 3 for consoles eventually. It had like local co-op, which was kind of cool, threw that feature in there. I'm fine with that. But, you know, make a PC game for PC gamers. I appreciate that. Speaking of PC games though.
00:58:32
Speaker
Overwatch has now added Ash. Oh, yeah. Got some time with her. She off the PTR now? She is. She's live. You can play her now in quick play. She's disabled and competitive because they give it some time. They don't know how to balance things yet. Yeah. They wait for the subreddit to be like, what the fuck is this?
00:58:50
Speaker
Yeah, they've made the mistake earlier of releasing heroes that were like underpowered and then having to buff them after the fact. So I think pretty much everybody even Dota does this. They release heroes in a powerful state and then they'll just depower them a little bit if they need to. Right. So I think Ash is another example of that. She feels really good to play though. Very similar to McCree. Yeah. She's like McCree plus mobility and some utility. Like McCree is all.
00:59:17
Speaker
I land my shots and you die or I die. And Ash has like knock back the ability to like fire a shotgun at the ground and force a nature jump her way up. She's got like the dynamite for some AOE and damage over time. And she just feels way more adaptive. She has like the aim down sights toggle. So she either fires her rifle really quickly or she can scope in and actually like do higher damage at a lower rate of fire.
00:59:48
Speaker
And she feels really good for that. The one thing that kind of like limits her, that kind of like pulls her back into like reasonable care balance. She has 12 rounds in that rifle, which is crazy, but she has to load them in one at a time. Oh my God. Yeah. I think every other hero has like the, and it's all reloaded, right? Yeah. A lot of them do. Most, most of them definitely do. Doomfist over time, like cracks his knuckles as he gets college back.
01:00:14
Speaker
But yeah, for the most part, they're clip-based. So would that encourage a more measured gameplay? Yeah. Where you would want to do the scope downsides, do a couple shots, and as you reposition and reload? Yeah, there's definitely been situations where if I get really close up to somebody, I can just mash left-click and fire the rifle really fast.
01:00:37
Speaker
empty out the magazine, or not magazine, but empty out all of the rounds and then I have no more burst left. It's like a Doomfist situation where I have committed the load of damage and I now need to reload. And if you're in melee, you can find yourself in a bad spot.
01:00:58
Speaker
I like characters that have some resource management to them. I feel like that adds like a nice layer that I like interacting with. Like Doomfist, now Ash, Moira, people who have resources. So yeah, she's a ton of fun to play with and she doesn't actually feel crazy overpowered right now, but we'll see what pros do with her once she's in competitive.
01:01:20
Speaker
But we foreshadowed it. We talked about it a little bit. Big game patch for Dota 2. No new heroes yet, but we'll see what they do. We'll wait before the next TI.
01:01:30
Speaker
Yeah. How did, uh, how did, uh, grip stroke mess stuff up? Cause they haven't really played since he was, since he was out. I know he was strong. I heard he was a really decent and then he got hurt. And I'm like, I've, I've never seen it in competitive. I've been catching up on some of the, Oh, he was, he wasn't in captain's captain's. He was not. But outside of like that competitive scene, obviously like, did you encounter him in pubs at all? Have you played or when you played, you mostly do competitive.
01:01:58
Speaker
Um, it ranges, which is why I always will ask like guys, like, are we doing right? I never, I never pay attention to what we're queuing up for. Yeah. Um, I've seen him be pretty good. Um, the old gets used pretty well with a lot of other things. Tie people together. And then just like, Oh, did you get stunned? The person who changed also gets stunned and other things. So like that has worked out pretty well, but he has gotten a decent nerf around a lot of those abilities because you can just kind of help roll on people.
01:02:28
Speaker
Did a lot of that, honestly. It was pretty crazy in demo mode, at least. I didn't play against people, but he seemed real solid. I saw it, like, talking about his ult, they added, like, a leashed keyword, this patch. So, Slark has it. Yeah. He leashes people with his pounce. So it's interesting that they... It's like a tied root, kind of. Yeah. You can move around, but you're constrained by something. Yes.
01:02:53
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so it's interesting. I'm glad there's more things that like cancel teleport, like, um, more consistently. Yeah. It kind of sucks when you're going after somebody and you're like, I don't have a hard stud. There's like TPing way. You're just like looking at him like, Oh, fuck. This is just cause of Oracle, right? Like it's just cause I have, I only have the dispel with the root. So that's my context, but.
01:03:18
Speaker
It is interesting to see because a lot of the gameplay changes seem to be around. Oh, you're going to get an advantage for gold here. Right. Or you're going to have like a more permanent stat. If you get a kill like lions. Finger of death. Yeah. Increases damage rate by 50 each time it kills somebody, which is a considerable amount. Like it's like 600 at a max rank. I think something like that might be higher.
01:03:43
Speaker
It's a lot though. It's a lot of damage. Yeah. 50 every time is like a dual win. Right. So yeah. But like the thing is, like, if you see the line in a late game, I mean, sure. He might have like a blink hex or he'll have like an eggs to hit multiple targets, but he's one of those supports that late game really kind of falls off. Right. People get BKB and he gets it. Yeah. But assuming that he's doing.
01:04:07
Speaker
pure damage or like cut somebody off guard he can actually still be relevant to like neutralize an enemy hero right yeah it's really interesting i also like this is one of the few times that they're like forgiving in a mechanic and that he doesn't have to get the kill with the finger if that person dies within two seconds after he uses it then he gets the bonus damage so he doesn't have to kill still you can still give it to other people um but i mean obviously will because you're playing lion so
01:04:37
Speaker
Oh yeah. If you're support, you're like, I'm helping. Nuke. I think the biggest change to me, kind of just ideologically, this is a Dota change was the change to denying though. Oh yeah. Because they've been revising that deny system like every major patch it feels like. It's like it used to be that you got gold and experience when someone else denied it and they're like, all right, we'll remove the gold, but you still get experience.
01:05:06
Speaker
all this and they're just like how about the person who got denied gets nothing absolutely nothing and you get some gold and now it's like ah dang son like this is hardcore um so i don't know it's it's gonna be interesting it's definitely a hardcore mobile mechanic so it fits into dota
01:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, but I think one of the main changes is they round they don't want people to have as much For experience advantage. Mm-hmm Probably passive rewards. Yeah Which is why like licious sacrifice got removed for another ability like that gaze sinister gaze Yeah, I haven't seen it yet, but it's it seems done. I'm not sure the effective range on it. Yeah, but
01:05:54
Speaker
He was like, hey, channeled walk in this direction. Like, oh, shit, that seems pretty decent. It's like to a halfway point between where they started. So it all depend on the range, but it's really interesting. Especially if they have haste. I'm not sure if that's a factor. Right. And then just bloodseeker's like, what up? Who runs Outletch? This is not what I wanted. Yeah, I think they want to encourage more people to have gold early. Yeah. Invest in their character.
01:06:23
Speaker
So that when you do get to mid and late game, you are pretty beefy. And if you are kind of stuck in late game, certain people have advantages where it's like, I have an extra 50 agility as I am Slark. Yeah. Or things like that. So you are a powerhouse and you can just close things out. Because now he can like steal agility permanently if they die. If they die under the effects of the essence shift. Essence shift.
01:06:49
Speaker
So he's like silencer kind of music. Yeah, you still smarts. I sold speeds I Don't feel so quick Mr. Slark mr. Slark mr. Slark. Oh my god there. Oh That's so good. We have to end on that cuz I'm not gonna come up with anything witty. No, that was basically it. So
01:07:11
Speaker
Hope you guys appreciated the podcast. We always like to hear from you. Feel free to like us and communicate with us on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. You can also send in feedback to our Gmail at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com. Always good to hear from you guys and see what you're thinking about our episodes. But with that, I believe that's all I have. So have a good night. Thanks. Bye.
01:07:49
Speaker
Bye!