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Soapstone Against Toxic Emotes (SATE)
47 Plays2 years ago
We live in a simulation, City of Heroes has an officially licensed fan server, we like the option to censor antagonistic emotes, and preserving video games is important... all of these are indisputable facts that we discuss in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Jets and Guns 2 - Men Orka
Outro:
- One Step from Eden - Chaos in Paradise
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Transcript
Empathy and Allergies
00:00:35
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? I'm doing as well as you are. Oh. I'm a chameleon. I like to match. Okay. Brain states, emotions. If you're sad, I'm sad. I'm an empathetic little guy. So how are you doing, Jake?
00:00:59
Speaker
I do think that there's a certain amount of danger to that, to just being like, hey, if you're sad, I'm sad. If you're happy, I'm happy. How are you doing? Cause now it's just like, oh, if I was sad, now I'm guilty of making you sad, right? Like that's a lot of weight to put on one person. I'm doing pretty well though.
00:01:20
Speaker
You don't want to, you don't want to kind of shoulder that, that sadness together with me. I really get the impression you want me to be sad so you can be sad.
00:01:36
Speaker
Now, if I was, I appreciate the offer, but I think right now things are all right. I've been a little out of it this week because seasonal allergies kick up and I like a zombie. I fucking resonate with that one. I'm already allergy ridden.
00:01:52
Speaker
And I forgot that I have it, but like when I've been outside with the dog, she's always sneezing like, Oh, bless you. Because like, she's like literally dragging her nose through the grass or like freshly mowed grass, or there's like piles of grass that have been there for a couple of days after mowing. And all this stuff is just like kicked up in the air. And like, I'm sneezing along with the dog. I'm like, I need medication. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:18
Speaker
It was, uh, if it's something that impacts, like you remember those old ads for, um, Claritin where they're like Claritin clear. Um, I, I wish that the medication had that effect on me that I felt like super clear. Um, I, it's not, it's not like it removes the film grain from your brain and everything's good.
00:02:44
Speaker
Maybe it makes things a little bit better or maybe the medication just doesn't work as well on me, but I understand the film grain effects now. Cause I haven't always had kind of seasonal allergies, but now it's like, I wake up, I get a decent amount of sleep and I'm like, why am I just like fatigued? And it's like, why, why is thinking harder? Um, it feels like I'm uncaffeinated even when I am.
00:03:11
Speaker
probably the easiest way to describe it. That's how I feel all the time. But for me, allergy is just like, my nose gets obviously like, more likely to sneeze, maybe because of the sinuses, maybe your eyes are like a little bit right, you should be like, yeah, sinus pressure is pretty obnoxious.
Taste and the Miracle Berry
00:03:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I think that's where some of the other. Okay. That makes more sense. It's like when you're sick, you maybe like get some science pressure. You're like, Oh, everything sucks now. It just kind of cascades.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, the noses are like the nose is just super important. You need it to like taste and to smell all of the senses. How have you been eating hot dogs? No, it's at least it impacts the taste if you can't smell. If you're like clogged up, if your sinuses are clogged up, food does not taste the same or nearly as good generally. By the way, I want to harass you about this.
00:04:07
Speaker
Have you tried the miracle berry yet? I have, I have not. I also don't know where it is. We probably have it somewhere. It's in the kitchen. It's in the bowl. I know exactly where it is in your house. I don't think I have anything super sour to go with it. Like I had some McDonald's sweet and sour sauce, but so that seems like a waste. So if you have like lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, I do have that. Those are probably like the most.
00:04:35
Speaker
There's the ones I remember trying a long time ago, but the apple cider vinegar just tastes like apple juice. And that is a weird. I drank the whole bottle. Breakfast, the champions. Uh-huh. Just, just Wheaties. You pour apple cider vinegar in with it. Loves this stuff. That is a cool thing though, that you can just.
00:05:03
Speaker
There's a chemical you can give your mouth and it's like, I don't know what things are anymore. I'm guessing this. Uh-huh. No, it's, it really is just like another reminder that we're in a simulation, right? Like it doesn't even take that much effort. It's like, here's literally a pill that makes sour things, sweet things.
00:05:26
Speaker
Like that, that wouldn't work. That doesn't make sense if reality exists. But if it's a simulation and you could just like reallocate the property of sour to sweet, now it makes sense. I like how that's like your scientific thing where it's like, guys, it's all fake. Are we replacing limbs?
00:05:50
Speaker
Nah, it's, I mean, it's sour to sweet. I think that's the main piece of evidence. Crisper? No, no, no. Sour to sweet. Sour to sweet, I think is the big thing. Yeah. I wouldn't mind. And maybe they do have it. Maybe it's just MSG. Um,
Bacon Mania
00:06:06
Speaker
cause I think when I was in high school, they categorized umami as the other flavor profile. And I love that. It's like the savory one, but if I could have a pill to make things more savory.
00:06:20
Speaker
Ooh. Let's say you fucked up dinner, right? You didn't cook it correctly. Didn't season. Correct. Let me just take a pill. So you have to attach it to something though. Cause again, it's a simulation. So you're not inventing the flavor out of nowhere. You have to replace a flavor with savory. Okay. So it's like, it's a lollipop. It's now with savory.
00:06:47
Speaker
The local like easy peasy hair place that's like within walking to this for me has like a little I guess they're dumb dumbs lollipops like the very small ball on stick And I'll still grab it because like when do I have sugar and like I spent money I at least deserve something else returned besides shorter hair. Yes, so like I'll take one Like so I'll have one a month
00:07:13
Speaker
But imagining that being like different types of meat. Oh, this is your top sirloin. This is like your, uh, your shredded pork. That's your, your beeria. That's very, very much Willy Wonka like scenario, right? Oh yeah. The meat flavored candy. Candy bacon's like, hello, do I get no love? That's weird though. Candy bacon is kind of weird.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, I remember when there's like the bacon craze in bacon still super solid. But just went around like when epic mealtime was big. Bacon was everywhere. It had to have been that's the only way they could have afforded that much bacon. Bacon strips, bacon.
00:08:03
Speaker
The problem with messing with bacon is like, it's so easy to turn an almost ideal product into a worse version of it, right? Like there are candies that taste really good. Like chocolates, I like stuff like that. Crispy, like extra crispy, baking, like a BLT, something like that, like perfect.
00:08:24
Speaker
you're not gonna make that better by just covering it in sugar. In fact, I think it was either Arby's or Wendy's had this issue recently where they had some sort of brown sugar bacon sort of sandwich or burger or whatever the crap it was. And it was like, okay. But as I was eating it, I was just like, this is just bacon that's somehow less healthy for me than actual bacon, which would taste better. It's sacrilege is what it is.
00:08:53
Speaker
I really only like bacon mix with lettuce and tomato. It's good. A little bit of mayo. It's a good combination that was found. I don't want my bacon coated in anything. Exactly. I don't want it rubbery. It needs to have a crisp
00:09:14
Speaker
If I can break it into a Thanksgiving wishbone, that's where I need it to be. You could make a wish on bacon, but why would you do it? You already have bacon. What's the point? It's true. More bacon? No, that's too much hedonism.
00:09:30
Speaker
Too much hedonism, yeah. That is the downside to bacon is it's so good, but there's like the amount that you can safely eat is negligible. It's nowhere near the amount that you would want to eat. Like if I get a pound of bacon, I might have like three slices for like a dinner that's being cut by like other things substantially. Right. And then like, what am I doing? Like having it cooking a single slice of bacon for breakfast, like.
00:10:01
Speaker
I mean, presumably you'd actually just cook it in mass and then use it as you go. But yeah, it's basically like the best thing you can just add to a plate so that people can look forward to that. It changes the categorization of whatever you're dealing with to the bacon and the not bacon products in the meal. So hopefully everything else can just do its best.
00:10:27
Speaker
It even goes well in other things. Like mashed potatoes. I love mashed potatoes. Very hard to fuck up. It's tasty in all its varieties. Now imagine taking freshly cooked bacon. You just cut up and putting it in there, right? You have some of the bacon grease. You have some crunchy bacon bits. By the way, bacon bits? Not that good. Actually kind of bad. That would still enhance the mashed potatoes.
00:10:52
Speaker
I've had good, are you talking like a salad for the bacon bits? Or are you talking other things? In general, bacon bits suck. Yeah, I mean, they're definitely not as good as bacon. Turkey bacon is better than bacon bits. That's probably true.
00:11:08
Speaker
I feel like bacon bits is basically fish foods where they kind of like dusted it with like a bacon scent and they're like, that'll do. Yeah, you're definitely not getting the full potency. The thing I could see bacon bits actually being used in, it'd be like an omelet or something like that. That would be okay. But if it's just like resting on the bottom of a bowl or something like that, you're just praying that the leaves maintain the structural integrity to hold the bacon as you're lifting it towards your mouth. That's, that's not realistic.
00:11:34
Speaker
Like if that works, again, proof we're in a simulation. This is why dressing is a component to salads. It provides adhesion. I don't know. I don't know where to go off that one. Speaking of bacon. Do you have a segue off bacon?
Gaming Highlights of the Month
00:11:55
Speaker
I had to say we have an earlier point, but that we've long left that. That's fair. Well, some games have come out in April, as it is currently May.
00:12:07
Speaker
Well, we talk about the previous month. It would be weird if we talked about April during April. Your listings are going to come up. By the way, we have no information on any of them. Every month is just, you know how we have our beginning of year preview for the whole year and then the end of year review? We just do that every month. We're like, April, it's going to be lukewarm. Let's be honest. We think it's going to be lukewarm.
00:12:35
Speaker
And at the end of the month you're like, I mean, Stellar Blade was actually okay. It had really good story. But what came out in April? Stellar Blade is one of them. PS5 title, I think it's PS5 exclusive, which would track as far as how detailed the animation on the butt is and everything else.
00:13:02
Speaker
I don't know too much about it. I've heard, it's like seen some clips, heard some reviews. I think the action part is probably pretty decent. Probably a very beautifully designed, but for what I've seen from at least the trailer, story and character sub is just ass. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was hearing too. Um, like it,
00:13:28
Speaker
There are a lot of games out there where they focus very much on just how things look and they neglect the story or they're not really sure how to make an action game have a story. Which I mean, to be fair, the action games actually having a story was an invention over like the last 20 years or something like that. It wasn't so much a big deal before that, right? You can go back to Doom and everything where it's just like, eh, you got a gun. You got a gun in health.
00:13:57
Speaker
too much to make it cohesive, you can just be like, here's the next area. And I think it's fine if you keep it simple like that and you don't go story heavy, but what I don't like is when they're like, I'm doing this for my friend. And like they have some stuff, but like the characters aren't written interestingly enough to justify that. And then it just feels like a slog. And if you're just looking for the action, having that in depth of a story is kind of like,
00:14:28
Speaker
At least for me, it takes away. Yeah. I mean, it's important to read the room for the game that you're making, right? It's like Bayonetta is also an action game. I wouldn't say Bayonetta is necessarily story heavy, but they know exactly the type of feel that they wanted to have from the character interactions and just the characters themselves. Like it knows what it is.
00:14:53
Speaker
Um, but if you're, if you're going for something like that, or it's like, I fight for my friends or whatever, and nobody cares about the character or their friends, like it just takes you out of the game where being a little bit more generic might've even been better. Right. Um, but it's doing all right. Apparently I'm looking at the reviews here, strong on open critic, uh, with 82 top critic average, which is like, great.
00:15:21
Speaker
It's not excellent. It's not going to shake the world, but it's great. I June gave it a seven, which is actually kind of low compared to the other reviewers. Maybe they're getting critical. That doesn't seem right. Your issues and crashes when I launch nine out of 10. Uh-huh. You're a gamer doesn't even get as many points. See, here's another sign that things aren't balanced here. IGN. It has 10 points that you can give. They can give to people that you're a gamer. It only goes up to five.
00:15:50
Speaker
like your gamer gives a game five out of five. That's still only five points. I'm just saying. So you're saying European games aren't as good as that? I'm just saying they're not represented the same. Although the other reviewer that shows up on this list is called the sixth axis. So maybe like German reviewers are represented okay. They get a max of 10 points here.
00:16:16
Speaker
But I mean, it looks like a hack and slash third-person combat type thing. Yeah. It does seem to be more intense, like where you need to know parries, learn move sets. I don't know how approachable it is for like, I'm just getting into the genre type. Right. But I think if you have experience playing those types of games, this would probably still be up your alley. Right.
00:16:43
Speaker
would be my guess. This is not a title I have experienced as I do not have a PS5. Yeah. If you have a PS5, maybe that's, maybe that's, it helps inform your decision about the games that you're going to be playing. Cause there's not as many, I guess, that are just coming out for a PS5. But I mean, I don't want to disparage it. I haven't played it. Apparently it's great. It's just, we play games like near, right?
Game Preservation and Technology
00:17:09
Speaker
Like what are you going to do? We live in a post near society.
00:17:12
Speaker
Near his better butts, better story, better combat. It's all of the criteria we use to judge games. What's the butts like in that game? Low butt score. I'm imagining a perfect game, but it's barely any badonkadonk. Two out of ten. I spent two weeks playing Animal Crossing. No butts. Uh-huh.
00:17:40
Speaker
That's fair. The new stuff I prepared was less particularly, it's not that it's not game focused, but it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily about releases. So we're gonna, we're gonna have a little bit of give and take I think as we, as we work our way through. But the one I wanted to mention was, I don't think we talked about it before, maybe we did, but I don't think we did on the podcast.
00:18:05
Speaker
relates to me, because I used to play this MMO, but City of Heroes slash City of Villains, which was abbreviated, it used to be C-O-H or C-O-V, but both of them together, since City of Villains was like an expansion, was C-O-X, Cox. And so this is a MMO that's been canceled for a long time, has not existed for a very long time, but there was a community server called Homecoming, like a private server.
00:18:34
Speaker
And they did something that was really cool and I haven't seen other private servers do this and probably for legitimate reasons. They stayed in contact with the publisher in Csoft and tried to keep that communication open and work their way towards an official license. And they did it.
00:18:55
Speaker
They actually did it. There is no like official, official city of heroes server. Don't have like a monthly subscription or anything like that, but they are a licensee able to run the game. And there were some stipulations about like, Hey, make sure you.
00:19:11
Speaker
like crack down on certain types of activities your game could be used for, names that are inappropriate, things like that. And I'm sure that there's plenty of ripcords for the license to be torn from them. But as of right now, they are the only officially licensed private server to run the MMO with the blessing of the publisher. Yeah, that's really rare.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like when stuff like this comes up in the news, it's because like Blizzard or some other owner of an MMO nuked a private server from orbit, right? They just like aligned a satellite and they just set like direct laser to someone's house.
00:20:01
Speaker
That's what happened with WoW Classic because they had a just vanilla WoW server up, ran by the community for a very long time. And then WoW was like, we don't like you doing this. And then they eventually, I'm not sure if it was directly around the same time or it was after, but like, Oh, we're going to now.
00:20:24
Speaker
we will allow for vanilla WoW to be played again, and we will host it, and you can buy it. You can pay us a subscription fee to go into this. Do you want us to remove DLC? That's going to cost money. I mean, a lot of people bought into it because they like that nostalgia. What's crazy, I can't imagine that with... Can you imagine that with any other type of game franchise? Or MMO specifically?
00:20:52
Speaker
It's kind of tough because a lot of the ones that were, or at least the ones I was more involved with, they were like IP based, right? So I played like Star Wars Galaxies. And there's still stuff about Star Wars Galaxies that I could just, there's an open threat to Dave, any point I can do a Star Wars Galaxies episode. And he doesn't have to show up, it's fine. But that's Star Wars, right? So like there's no way that they could get a license for it.
00:21:21
Speaker
That's like, that's actually impossible. And there's another Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic by Bioware. So yeah, not going to happen. But in general, you're disincentivized legally to like do something like this, to be like, hey, we're out of that space.
00:21:41
Speaker
but we're gonna license a private server so that people who wanna play the game can still play it. Because what if you change your mind? What if you wanna come back? What if City of Heroes is like, oh, we're coming out with City of Heroes 2. They don't wanna divide their consumer base. They would just wanna revoke that license. And they'll look like a bad guy if they put themselves in that position. So what if they just never let anyone use their license? There's some cruel business rationale to it.
00:22:12
Speaker
that I would understand. Yeah. But I mean, as a non-business and just as a innocent whittle consumer, it is really nice when, like, should we talk about game archiving and stuff in general? Yes. But as technology changes, they stop making these games in that format.
00:22:38
Speaker
disks aren't even that calm. Yeah, I don't know. I don't have a disk drive. But allowing for people to still experience those games, like years later, I think is a huge win, obviously for
00:22:56
Speaker
Developers themselves and for the community of just gamers Yeah, especially if you can do it for free on top of that instead of just having like oh it's gonna be on Nintendo eShop I think both are viable options But like if you can imagine something like with books like hey That book's no longer available Well, can I read it like on Kindle? Nope, it's actually just gone entirely
00:23:24
Speaker
Um, if you're in favor of that, you're basically aligning yourself with book burning, essentially. So maybe, maybe temper your stance. Weirdly, I have a book for you. Just kidding. It's the movie Fahrenheit 451. We don't, we don't do books. Um, you raise a good point, right? For preservation, this is a big deal. Um, and I think you're right. I don't think many other MMOs would.
00:23:51
Speaker
would take a stance like this for the business reasons that I outlined. But if it, for human reasons, it can make a lot more sense, right? If you had an entire development team that spent, you know, a decade working on this game, and then the MMO gets shut down for financial reasons. And the only presence it has is in old internet screenshots and people's LinkedIn profiles, like
00:24:18
Speaker
It's kind of cool to be able to be like, no, no, your work is still going to be available. So I have two relatable things here for my personal experience. One, I do code stuff for my adult business job. This doesn't pay as much as I thought podcasting. Holy shit. But I've definitely worked on things and sometimes they don't see the light of day. Maybe they get sunset as needs and priorities change.
00:24:47
Speaker
Um, but it is cool to like see your stuff live on after the fact and it still get used.
00:24:54
Speaker
There was also, when I was very young, there was like a ceramics type thing, like a local art place, TLDR. Me and a bunch of other kids had some class and made part of a mural that was in downtown by where I grew up. And it was cool to drive by, I'm like, hey look, see the side of that building? I did that one little square.
00:25:21
Speaker
I don't know if it's still there now, but it was a really cool thing to see, hey, this is a tangible thing that you can still access and appreciate. Right. Yeah, I mean.
00:25:35
Speaker
And for the little art thing, that was probably, maybe it was like a day's commitment or I don't know exactly how long you were working on it as a kid to contribute to it. It's not that long. Yeah, but like it was cool for you to go back and see that and still have that connection to that place. Imagine being in the video game industry, just for a second. Well, we won't imagine this for long, terrifying, I know. But like those people are worked to the bone, right? They make less money.
00:26:02
Speaker
They work longer hours. It's basically subsidized by passion. That's the reason that video game developers are taken advantage of. And like, yeah, to put all that effort and then just see it vanish into nothing. And MMOs are like, they're a tremendous amount of work to like, to actually ship and a lot of money. I think it'd be really cool. I really, I do think it would be really cool if we kind of
00:26:33
Speaker
can break out of everyone has to play the latest thing or the latest MMO and, you know, maybe smaller communities and things like this for, for, for the stuff that was, was always fun, right. And comfort, comfort game or something. So yeah. And again, like the company itself does not need to.
00:26:51
Speaker
be the one hosting 1.02 that everybody loved from 30 years ago. If there is a community passion and drive for it and they're willing to do it, just let them do it. You don't need to pee on their parade. By the way, never pee on parades. You have to get a decent amount of elevation to start.
00:27:17
Speaker
Um, I know that there are some caveats, like they can't make money off of this. They can accept donations, but they can't take subscription fees and things like that. So it is just a free private server. And then every month there's just basically a life support bar where it's like, we need to hit this bar or we will not have servers. And so that just fills and then they're, they're good. Um, but I see Wikipedia. They say, they say they do. I don't know how much money Wikipedia actually makes, but.
00:27:46
Speaker
Um, I donated like once or twice and I've been getting emails ever since. And I think they do okay as a, as a nonprofit. I could be wrong. If you're, if you're Wikipedia, come on, come on in. We'll have you as a guest for the podcast. If I'm disparaging the reality of your financial situation. Yeah. Kudos to city of heroes being able to continue, continue on.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool. Hopefully we can have more uplifting pieces of video game preservation, news, and fewer things slipping through the cracks or season two exist. You want to take the next one? You want me to?
00:28:28
Speaker
I have something that's burning. Sure, go for it. Burning Passion.
New and Upcoming Games
00:28:32
Speaker
I won't go too in depth because I would like to talk about it more in the future, but this April another crab's treasure came out. I feel like what's that? Crab Dark Souls is like the go-to term, or Crab Souls.
00:28:49
Speaker
It was surprisingly good. I don't really know what to expect. It seems kind of Sponge Bobby, but no, it was actually really well done. And if you're like, Oh yeah, but like they just do like the, the bonfire gimmick and that's it. No, it has a decent amount of things. You're like, without spoiling too much. I might've told you on discord, but I encountered a
00:29:19
Speaker
boss type enemy. I don't think it was like an official here's your health bar type thing, but I encountered it. I did the target lock thing. Like, Arios, let's square up my guy. And it like stances at me and it repositions. It kind of jumps back, jumps off of the ledge and dies. That's entirely Dark Souls. That is. There's nothing at least Dark Souls two. Well, no, no, no, actually all of them. Yeah. Black Iron Tarkas and Dark Souls one is a classic.
00:29:48
Speaker
and the Hade's Tower of Flame Knight in the circle arena that you can expand. It is a thing in Dark Souls, yeah, it's definitely a thing. Legiboss, that's the key. But I will say, also, if it sounds interesting and you have Game Pass, it is on Game Pass. That's fine. Value keeps going up, as long as they don't raise the price.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, I do recommend people check that out. If it seems like it'd be up your alley. I will say I plan on giving it a shot at first. I thought maybe Dave was just inebriated or something. I was like, why are you right? I would never. SpongeBob esque game to me. Um, but, uh, yeah, it seems like it's legit. Um, so worth giving it a shot. You know, so one man's trash.
00:30:45
Speaker
Ah, you figured it out. Ah, see, it took me a while, but we made it. For my segue into my piece of news, I have none, but I do have the piece of news. Have you ever been in a situation where someone was playing a video game
00:31:04
Speaker
And then they taunted after you died. Maybe they use like a voice line or an animation or something like that. All the time. I was like, you played Otis. It was kind of a freebie. They made the decision to add that. How does that make you feel? Not usually the best. Um, a lot of times I will kind of find it funny to a degree or laugh it off. Right.
00:31:29
Speaker
I think a lot of people would probably share your opinion. Now, how do you feel about this? In Fortnite, this is the first piece of Fortnite news I think we've ever had. In Fortnite they've added an optional setting you can enable, which replaces all of the confrontational emotes with like a basic one, like a very basic animation that's not meant to like,
00:31:55
Speaker
to aggravate you or whatever. Basically censor the ones that are meant to piss you off. How do you feel about that? So this is like an individual option, so... It is. Okay. You can opt in. I think it's a fine thing to have, but I'm definitely coming here from the standpoint of it's not for me, so I can't fully understand it, but I don't want to take that option away from other people.
00:32:23
Speaker
Right. Um, but my two senses, it's stupid. Uh, if you're getting really pissed off at like somebody twerking on your body, cause you got shot. Don't play that game. I don't know. Um, yeah, it applied apparently applies to specifically for emotes. And I don't know what these animations are. Cause I don't play Fortnite, but I know our listeners do. So I'm going to, I'm going to list them out here, laugh it up, take the L whip crack and make it plantain.
00:32:53
Speaker
I don't know. I guess what the first three are. I'm not sure about that last one. Yeah, I don't I don't know what make it plantain would be, but. Yeah, there's different settings so you can make it so it's it's global. Basically, you won't see those at all, or you can see it make it so it's just the friends in your party if they use it, but you'll see it or just turn off the setting entirely and see all the emotes.
00:33:20
Speaker
My thought on this, an accessibility thing. Yeah, it's pretty much an accessibility thing. Yeah. It's under the social privacy section of the UI. So it joins things like filter, mature language, friend to invite permissions, party join ability can receive gifts, stuff like that. I'd like to opt into receiving gifts, please. Yes. I am curious why that's optional. I wonder if there's some sort of like,
00:33:47
Speaker
maybe you don't want people to social engineer your kids while they're playing the game or something, right? There. I'll trim your armor and just come to the wilderness. Yeah, it's interesting. I do think like,
00:34:03
Speaker
I also I'm with you. I don't believe I'd find myself enabling this functionality. But it is very funny to think that like all of these emotes in some way were devalued instantly. Right. There are now two classifications for emotes. Some that all players will see and some that only a certain population will see. That's very funny to me.
00:34:28
Speaker
Not to play devil's advocate or use slippery slope logic, but I'm trying to imagine if this were to extend through something like cosmetics.
00:34:41
Speaker
And again, if it's like something that like you earn through gameplay, that's not super crazy. But if it's something that you were specifically spending money on, I mean, I guess really it's for you more so than anybody else. I guess it doesn't matter. You'll see yourself flipping the bird to whoever. I don't assume that's in the game, but you know, something like that.
00:35:05
Speaker
But I think that is the argument, right? Is it's gonna be, it's a little bit devalued. If you bought this, then maybe it's something that you're like, crap, not everyone's gonna see it now. But that's all in Fortnite's wheel space. We'll see how long that affects the rest of the industry. What else have you got on your list to go through?
00:35:31
Speaker
Another game that came out recently in April is no rest for the wicked Mm-hmm. I think we mentioned this before but this is made by the same studio moon studios Who did or in line for us right and the second one? That was the name or a second one. Yeah But I mean like it it has some of that
00:35:59
Speaker
I would say like highly detailed style. Like if you remember Ori's parallax stuff was being very detailed, very in depth. Oh yeah. Now this is not a side scrolling game. This is an isometric action platformer.
00:36:15
Speaker
But it looks pretty good, pretty dark and edgy. And it seems to play a little bit closer to Souls-like. But again, everything gets compared to that. So I don't want to give it a broad stroke and say, this isn't indicative of the gameplay. But it does seem to have some very deliberate and difficult combat as part of its game loop. And from the looks of it, it's not
00:36:44
Speaker
like very linear where it's like, Oh, here's your little mini map up top. You're like, Oh, I can go to the left. I can go down. There's a secret here. It's very just like, here you are. And you can go around and explore. And I think you are rewarded for that as well. Like there will be like shortcuts for stuff. Make it easier to get to a boss. Maybe you can find secrets and treasures. It's got the classic action adventure trappings.
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, I really only watch the trailer in a very brief bit of a review because this seems like something I will eventually check out. Right. And I don't want to be spoiled. I don't want to I don't want to know nothing. It seems like it's I mean, this would be the type of thing that would presumably come to Game Pass at some point, I would expect.
00:37:36
Speaker
I would be kind of surprised. Goes to double check it's not on game faster. Yeah, I know. I'm looking to right now. But it's not announced as upcoming. So. But I think it's around 30 to 40 on Steam. Yeah. Yeah, the Steam reviews weren't as high. I mean, it's a little disappointing to say. Not as high as I'd like them to be. Like they're around 70 or so from the user reviews.
00:38:06
Speaker
but I'm curious why that is. You know, maybe it's just something they need to work through or something to patch, or if it's fundamental, I'm not sure, but that would be the thing to check, I think, before I personally would buy it. At least it's not a full priced, you know, AAA priced game. So that does give them some ground to play with, but I'm curious, right? Like why a game from the makers of Ori would be reviewed lower, right? So.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, I can't really speak to that, but definitely worth checking out. Oh yeah. User reviews and other reviews in general. A lot of my opinion will be based on, Oh, I like so and so in their content. They like some of the games that I like.
00:38:51
Speaker
what's their take on it exactly that's definitely going to bias my opinion on some stuff but don't only check in an echo chamber check some other places as well yeah maybe they'll say like hey this is really great but it's really buggy for this one spot or maybe the sound design's bad whatever it may be
00:39:14
Speaker
Just making sure that it has the elements you want in the game and not the elements you don't. Yeah. The other element I'm actually seeing right now, is this early access? Did it launch into early access? I don't know, actually. Because I was doing a little bit of researching while I was looking here. I'm going to check on Steam. If it is, I'm going to wait. That could be
00:39:43
Speaker
both a good and a bad thing then, right? If you're mostly positive in early access, that's plenty of time to potentially kick that up to a positive, but it also means that your initial impression perhaps was not as strong as it could have been, depending on what they wanted going into early access, so.
00:40:02
Speaker
We'll see. Early access is not necessarily a bad thing. There are plenty of games that use early access as a way to kind of hone their final product. You know one of them.
00:40:17
Speaker
Excellent work, Dave. Excellent segue. One of them this month was seven days to die. That's not where I'm going. Seven days to die was an early access for, I think, 12 years. Is that right? I believe that's right.
00:40:38
Speaker
I think that's correct. I'm going to verify really quickly before I lie. Almost 12 years. Almost 12 years. Seven days to die. Fully announces it's leaving early access. Which is crazy, right? Like you're really stretching the definition of the term early access.
00:40:57
Speaker
It's like, is it done? You're just adding content now? Or like, what's like, you wouldn't call a 12 year old early access on life, right? That's not how that works. I don't like the term 12 year old and access in the same zone. Well, what I'm saying is by the time you're 12, you're starting to figure out how the world works to some extent. It's not like things are going to massively change up on you. Right. 12 years is a long time.
00:41:29
Speaker
I feel like I'm going to get pushed back from Dave that people aren't fully cognizant of their surroundings at 12 years old. I mean, enough so. They can walk and they can buy things at the store. I hope. We're not a child development podcast. I'm going to disclaim that right now. I do not know when kids learn things. I was online at 12, so that's why I can tell you. Plug directly into the matrix.
00:41:58
Speaker
But anyways, 12 years is also a long time to not release your game regardless of early child development factors. Yeah. It does seem weird. It seems kind of like when people get engaged for like a super long time, it's like, why haven't you just gotten married yet? Maybe you don't want to go through like the formal process, but like it seems like if you're engaged, that's where you're going. So what's, what's the holdup?
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Like if you were, if you're a long-term partners or something, fully understand, but engaged has some weight to it. Like there's, it seems like it's going somewhere. Same with early access. I wanted this claim. I traditionally like to keep romance separate from business, but to each their own. Right. Right. Well, earlier you mentioned, uh, target locking. So clearly you're into engagements of some sort. So it's fine.
00:42:51
Speaker
If you're keeping up with any of this, kudos to you. Yes, yeah, we do our best to make sure that no one can. We played seven days. I think we had an episode on seven days. We must have at some point. If not, look forward to next week.
00:43:06
Speaker
We're going to talk about Seven Days to Die. Not the latest version of it though, because I haven't played it. I do remember playing it with a big group and having a good time. Yes. This is one of the ones where we actually got a lot of our friends together to play it. Developed by The Fun Pimps. I remember their name because their name is The Fun Pimps.
00:43:26
Speaker
And they really could not get a concrete direction for how they wanted their game to be developed. And that's why it's an early access was an early access for like 12 years. But it's still fun. And I'm glad they made it, you know.
00:43:46
Speaker
Is there anything that's going to be changing drastically as it's going to form that release? I hope not. It would be very funny if they launched and like the day after news press bulletin, we're going to be working on 2.0. It's going to fundamentally rework all the systems. 2.0 is going to be in early access for.
00:44:04
Speaker
About two decades. Uh-huh. Because it's not absurd for games to be under development for a long time. Like Dwarf Fortress is a classic example. Minecraft is obviously still being developed. There is a lot of these that have been in development for a very long time.
00:44:19
Speaker
But they're usually not tearing down the old stuff to change it into the new stuff. Right. It's additive. They're continuing to add things to these massive games. Seven days didn't have that constraint. They're like, we're just going to rework the skill system. We're six years in. Yeah, we haven't really nailed down exactly what we want.
00:44:40
Speaker
That would drive me insane. That's what we call in business scope creative. Yes. Yeah. You didn't plan ahead what you wanted to do and then execute on it. You're like, what is it? It really is like, it's the type of thing I would expect more from like Patreon development or something like that, where you're incentivized to like not ship it. For Steam, there's a lot of people who just won't pick up an early access game, like pushing to a 1.0 release.
00:45:07
Speaker
is a fresh chance for people to buy your game, right? True. But they did not succumb to that pressure and continued to just change their game over and over and over again for 12 years, almost. But it's good. If we haven't had an episode on it, check it out. Cool game.
00:45:26
Speaker
Can you guess the other title I was trying to subtly direct towards? Was it early access? Is it related to early access or no? It is. It is, okay. The previous game was also in early access. Is it one of the big ones? One of the big ones we're looking forward to? Yes. Okay, that's probably Hades.
00:45:50
Speaker
Hades two idiot. I was leaving open a Hades nuts joke. Hades two nuts doesn't work. Well, I mean, traditionally you have two nuts. Actually, it works perfectly. Nevermind. Look forward to those jokes.
00:46:13
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I think in like the last week to week and a half, maybe two weeks, even, um, Hades two did release an early access, um, version, uh, for people to check it and play. Um, I played early access in the first one, not from launch, but maybe like a couple months in. And it was kind of cool to see the changes as they went, but I'm not a patient man and I don't have as much time on this earth as I used to. So.
00:46:43
Speaker
I'm going to wait for the game to fully release before actually checking it out. Instead of seeing like, oh, that's a cool thing. Oh, it's not there anymore. Oh, it's different than I remember. I don't want to have that comparison. I just want to go in fresh and enjoy the great game that will be Hades 2. Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure.
00:47:02
Speaker
I didn't do as much, I know both you and special guest Ian did a lot more Hades one, early access content. I think I played it a little bit to the, was it Numi and Hydra or something like that? Boss, that was the only boss that was available when I had played and the difficulty was like through the roof because they- Yes. It started off that way harder than it ended up being. Yeah.
00:47:28
Speaker
And so it only I came back like at launch I was like why is this boss surprisingly beatable like it's still hard depending on the build but
00:47:36
Speaker
One of the early versions of that Hydra is like, oh, I'm going to do like a homing projectile attack. And you're like, okay, I'll have to like, you know, position behind something or dodge. But it sent out like 30 of them really fast. And you would have to do combinations of dashing and hiding behind stuff. And if you just stood like behind something, like it would find you. And now it's just like light attack that does like a kind of
00:48:06
Speaker
Conal. Yeah, no. Canonical. Canonical. Canonically, it's attack is kind of like. The piece of information that I'm so I see early access, but I know that that term is sometimes used for different platforms. The first game was on Epic Game Store for early access until it launched on Steam.
00:48:31
Speaker
Are they doing the same thing for Hades 2 or is it going straight to Steam? I don't believe that Hades 2 was going to be exclusive to that.
00:48:46
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, it's on Steam right now. Okay. It's almost definitely going into early access on Steam then. Yeah. Okay. I think they only did it on Epic for the first one. Cause like that was their launch for it. Like, Hey, we have an exclusive deal with Epic. We can take that bag, roll with it. They don't want more bags. Well, I think the shape of the bag has changed for Epic. I mean, obviously we've talked about how many
00:49:14
Speaker
impacts that have been to the industry as far as people being laid off and stuff like that. They don't want to throw around as much money. Investors don't want to throw around as much money. Embracer Group split off into three separate companies. One of them is Lord of the Rings and Friends. It's Wild West out there. We don't know necessarily what's going on. Also, Hades 1 was massively successful to Supergiant, so maybe they don't want to be Holden 2.
00:49:38
Speaker
could be a little cruel to Epic here, kind of an off-brand publisher compared to Steam. And yeah, they probably don't need it and they probably wouldn't have made as much money. Hades 1 was one of the first games that really dropped on the Epic Game Store and was clearly meant to be like, this is the console seller equivalent for EGS. And because they had it for a year,
00:50:08
Speaker
People really went to it for that specifically. But then once that year ended, you started to see all of these ports for Hades. Switch probably being one of the bigger ones. Or anything that would be on a tablet, like Steam Deck.
00:50:28
Speaker
Yeah, I could definitely. It's one of the games that actually would be perfect to play on that type of platform. I'm not much of a mobile or pseudo mobile gamer, but I could see it. I could see you playing Hades.
00:50:44
Speaker
That's good. Yeah. I mean, that's honestly, that's the biggest one on this list here. I have some other things. Um, some, some news things maybe don't go into as many details for, but I'd be lying if I said any of these were as exciting as Hades to be completely honest. It's a, it's a hard one at the top. Yeah.
00:51:04
Speaker
Hades at least has like an existing standing. You're like, Oh, I know what that is. Versus some of these things you're like, ah, it's just maybe not as big as name recognition. Maybe it's a new IP. And nobody does it as well as Hades did it. That's the other thing, right? Like Hades is to.
00:51:25
Speaker
Roguelikes as Hollow Knight is the platformers. Like, yeah, that's, that's the problem. Like it's hard to compete with that. It's just so good. I didn't even, I think when Hades came out, I said, I don't like Roguelikes generally. Some of them I do. I remember saying this in like Hades just like made an absolute fool out of me by just screwing with the average. So many hours into that game. Um,
00:51:53
Speaker
Anyways, we had an episode on Hades one. That one I know you can go back and check out. Games that I'm not going to go back and check out, though. Obviously, there's a big explosion for people playing Fallout games. I think we mentioned the people playing Fallout 76 for some reason on a previous episode.
00:52:17
Speaker
But I also mentioned that Fallout 4 was having a next-gen upgrade and it was going to maybe update some quests and maybe it'll do some stuff for the graphics, whatever. Apparently it was like 14 gigs. It did almost nothing for the PC version of the game. So what did they actually add?
00:52:36
Speaker
What was that? What did they actually add then for fortune gigs? So I think it was a patch, like they did fix some bugs. I think they added some graphical settings and maybe textures and things like that to accompany it, but it wasn't as big as what I thought, which was like an HD pack or something like that.
00:52:59
Speaker
So the reality is they probably just touched a bunch of files and that required the 14 gig update with textures and stuff I could see it in there. The issue though, they incremented the version of the game, which broke all mods.
00:53:19
Speaker
It's not a big deal if you're like Doom and people are really having to go out of their way to introduce any sort of mod. It's a massive deal if it's this many years after launch and anyone who had any interest in making something cool for your game and did so
00:53:36
Speaker
now has to decide whether they want to come back and update it or just not. And it just ceases to be a thing. So is it at least like an update that you can not yet? Not on Steam. On good old games, you can because they have a version selector. But on Steam, it is a retail patch. It's not a beta or something you opt into. If your game goes to update, it'll just grab the latest version.
00:54:05
Speaker
So turn off your internet. Do not let that go through. If you're playing a modded version of Fallout 4, I would like to continue doing so. So what's really funny about this, I know of two workarounds. One of them is a file modification, basically, I think like for the Steam app data, like a file that you'll drop in your Fallout install that just makes Steam think that it's updated so it doesn't patch, which is very funny.
00:54:30
Speaker
And the other one is a literal mod for the new version of the game that makes the game compatible. It rolls back the changes, basically, as they're loaded in so that the game is compatible with all the old mods. It basically is a mod that undoes the patch, which is so funny. It's so funny.
00:54:53
Speaker
This is the most Bethesda thing they could have done, basically, is not anticipate how much of their community they're screwing over that put all of this TLC into the game. I feel like every time we talk about Bethesda, there's just another example of like, yep, still don't like them. You know the bit with a sideshow Bob from The Simpsons where he's like,
00:55:17
Speaker
walking on rakes. And he goes from one rake to another rake, just stepping on the rake and getting smacked in the face. Bethesda. Like, it's just, it's really funny. Like, they'll do something that makes you think that they're clear of the rakes for a bit. Like, depending on your interpretation of the show, maybe that's an example. Maybe they're making distance, right? It seems like they're a little bit further from the rake, but they just like 180 right back into the rake.
00:55:48
Speaker
are
00:55:55
Speaker
Hopefully that's the last news piece we need for that. I thought about going back to play Fallout 4, but I didn't want to let this situation calm down. Why do they keep doing this? It's very dumb. Anything else on your radar? Are we going to rapid fire through the things that I think are worth mentioning?
00:56:22
Speaker
I will say, I know we mentioned this before as well, but Harold Halibut is on Game Pass. I think last, probably a week ago, I'm like, looking forward to being on Game Pass. And then it came out on Game Pass. I've not had a chance to check it out yet. But again, it looks like a story driven claymation point and click adventure.
00:56:45
Speaker
Uh, so exploring around solving puzzles, talking to people. Um, but again, claymation is a passion art because it is so fucking time consuming. Um, again, like early claymation, I always think of like Zabumufu when he goes like that imaginary world to visit his friends type thing. Right. And that looks like shit, but that also took so much time to do. Right. Yeah. Now imagine a.
00:57:14
Speaker
2024 modern game, that's the entire thing. Kind of crazy. So I'm still very interested in checking it out. I just have not had the time yet. Even if it's just like an art house sort of game where the art is part of the motivation for it, it's definitely worth checking out. You want to attend the exhibit. If it has the gameplay to back it up, awesome.
00:57:42
Speaker
This reminds me of Cuphead when you're talking about all the effort put into it. Well, true. There's definitely a correlation there. Obviously wildly different as far as style. Style and also Cuphead has a much different type of gameplay and now it's fast paced. It's themed to be very retro. Music is a big part of it too, the audio.
00:58:11
Speaker
I can't imagine a hero having like soundtrack of the year. You're red hot. Yeah, this is the counterpart to to Man Eater, also available on Xbox Game Pass. You can play Man Eater and eat Harold the Halibut or play as Harold the Halibut to avoid the shark. It's part of the Game Pass continuity.
00:58:40
Speaker
And the other thing I'll just make a very brief mention about is Sandland. I'm enunciating that because when I say my name over the phone, people are like, what is it? Sandland. This is a game adaptation of Akira Toriyama's manga, I guess. RIP the Goat. But I haven't really heard much about it, which is one of those like, that's probably not the best sign.
00:59:10
Speaker
I've heard a little bit about it. I know Skill Up did a little bit of coverage on it because they were doing a work in progress review or something. And unfortunately, it just didn't seem to land that well from a gameplay perspective, which is unfortunate. Because you look at the art for it, and you're very much like, oh, yeah, this is Dragon Ball Z. This is exactly what we're looking at. And there's a lot of potential there. And you don't want the last major release basic that we know of, that I know of at least,
00:59:40
Speaker
Um, that Toriyama would have been involved in to bomb, right? But, uh, you know, get a plate as it lies. Yeah. So if it sounds like something interested in me, obviously check it out. That's a global policy. We think you might be interested in something. Look into it. Yeah.
01:00:02
Speaker
referral codes are the only way that we can get anything from his podcast. Just make something up, add it to the URL when you go to the Steam page. If you want to put down soapstone comma Dave, that'll go to me. Soapstone comma Jake is also me. I didn't tell Jake about this. I'm just taking credit for both. Yeah, there's a glitch in the system. I haven't gotten anything for Dash Jake yet, but we'll probably get that fixed one of these days.
01:00:32
Speaker
All right, rapid fire time as we have crossed the threshold in recording. Some of these are going to skip, but I do also kind of want to consider checking out the Diablo 4 changes now that we have a lot more details on how it works. It seems like they're curbing a little bit off of the end game crafting stuff for loot. They're refocusing a lot of it. They're making the numbers higher. They're making fewer affixes with more importance and all that jazz.
01:01:01
Speaker
There's interesting things at play and whether I play the game a lot or not, I'm curious about the system. Do you have any interest in putting any time whatsoever back to Diablo 4 or would they have to attach a blowjob or something to make it work for you?
01:01:17
Speaker
Hold on now. Well, I was going to say, Blizzard can suck my dick. And weirdly enough, at this point in time, I don't think I'm interested in putting any time into Blizzard titles. It's just not caught my interest entirely fair. I've not really liked what they've been doing game wise, just not for me. And also, I still have a little bit of a residual last epoch.
01:01:46
Speaker
going on. I'm trying to make a void night. Just seems interesting. But that's kind of scratching my ARPG itch. Entirely. Yeah. Unless there's like a whole horde of people like Dave, we're on Diablo four. We're having a fucking blast. Let's go. I'm probably going to hold off.
01:02:04
Speaker
If I launch, I expect that exactly the people in our friend group that would be checking out the new changes, at least two people, both of us. I can think of two. Yeah, you can think of the two. Those would be the other people in there with me. But I'm not even committing to it yet. There's some major system updates. They're doing something similar to the big changes they made for Diablo 3, which to their credit were big when they made them. Also free trading on all items.
01:02:34
Speaker
except I think like the absolute highest tier, or crafted. So if you start modifying a weapon, it becomes untrained. But everything else in the game is tradable, which is very cool. We'll see.
01:02:46
Speaker
I am kind of curious, but we'll see if curiosity wins over something else that I want to do more. Um, and then the other one, I just, I'll, I'll end on this one, which is kingdom come deliverance two was announced and I actually really liked the first game.
01:03:08
Speaker
Is that the one where it's a kind of like a first person, middle ages RPG, but it starts off where all your, like you're terrible at literally everything. The very worst. I played 20 minutes of it and did not get that far. Um, yeah, it seems like more of a slow burn type of game.
01:03:27
Speaker
It absolutely, it absolutely is. It's like when you start the game, you could try to like go poaching in the Kingswood to get some meat, to maybe like sell off to one of the people that would buy poached meat. Not viable. You're not going to be able to hit something with a bow and arrow. Why would you think that you could? Your character doesn't have skills. Think of like.
01:03:50
Speaker
where you start in Skyrim at level one on skills and stuff like that. And then just like drop it, drop it negative 50 levels. And that's where this guy starts. But if you aim the bow forward, it might go behind you. It's that bad. It was it was pretty bad. Yeah, if you didn't injure yourself with that, I think literally if you
01:04:12
Speaker
If you didn't use a special type of like archery bracer, you could injure yourself with the bow because it would like the string could hit you or something like that. The bracer would protect you from that. Any any fans of realism in chat? Yeah, right. For the most part, it was realism, but then it also had like alchemy. And that was the only magic I remember at all. It was just like magic like effects through alchemy. But what do you what do you think about alchemy?
01:04:43
Speaker
I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical. If alchemy isn't real, what did I do with the Taco Bell drink machine? Tell me that. That's true. Taco Bell was just... That's true. That's true. That's a good callback. Transmuting stuff into... No, I'm mixing all the drinks together. Uh-huh. Yeah.
01:05:03
Speaker
Um, but hopefully it's good. We'll see. Uh, I guess they're going, they're going pretty big with the scope, which that concerns me a little bit. The original game was kind of big. And I'll be honest when people tell me that they're making a bigger sequel, my brain doesn't translate that to better. My brain translates that to more diluted. Right. So. Well, no, it's an open world game. Okay. What's in the open world?
01:05:30
Speaker
It's it's open. You can go a lot of places. There's a lot of work, let me tell you. You know, Minecraft bigger than that. Oh, my gosh. Jeez. There is a limit now. I think it only goes so far before the game just would glitch out for old Minecraft. Once you got like to a certain distance, like things just didn't render properly and crap. But I think eventually they realized, like, let's just let's just put a limit on that in case people know clipped out into nowhere. But
01:06:02
Speaker
If you guys have other things that happened this month, you know, or last month, either of those would work in gaming pieces of news you want us to cover, you know, feel free to send those in. Always happy to have a mail that we receive. Obviously everything we picked through today, it was part of a massive list of requests. And we just picked the best, the cream of the crop.
01:06:26
Speaker
But, if you've got crops, send them in. Soapstone Podcast at gmail.com. Or, join the discussion on Facebook. Facebook.com slash Soapstone Podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Remember to have a good day, because if you don't, I'm not.