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S3 Ep218: Gaming in July
72 Plays3 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about what NFTs, crypto, Mojang, Stray, Paper Mario, Multiversus, and a bit of news in this week's episode!
Intro:
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Intro:
- Gorillaz - Rhinestone Eyes (Instrumental)
- End of Monolith - Monolith (SilvaGunner)
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Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
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Transcript
00:00:02
Speaker
So.
Introductions and Casual Chat
00:01:01
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going okay. How are you doing tonight, Jake? I'm doing pretty well. I had three packs of fruit gummies as a pre-dinner snack prior to recording. So I am gummede. So you're going to say all gummed up. Yeah, that one doesn't sound as good. How are you doing?
00:01:32
Speaker
You already answered this. Okay. But I had sheets for dinner again. Um, I'm currently doing like a crispy chicken snack wraps too. Cause I'm not a glutton. Um, and then I do like lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and hot sauce. Ooh. Interesting. That's gotta be a pretty strong flavor.
00:01:54
Speaker
It's just like a nice little Buffalo chicken type thing. It fits what I want basically. And it's filling. It's good. Um, it allows me to get out of the house and people watch very briefly. Yeah, that's really, that's fair. I mean, that's a good answer. That was about as long as mine are slightly
Gaming News: July
00:02:12
Speaker
longer. So we've got the, uh, what is it? Um, the formal stuff out of the way now to the heart of it.
00:02:21
Speaker
What do we want to talk about tonight in this episode of gaming in looks at watch July? You can watch this the month. I don't even know. Actually, probably a lot of watches have all that information. It's not just the time. Yeah, they're basically watch only tells the time. Mm hmm. What are you going to use? Grandfather. Oh, that's a grandfather clock. Thank you. Thank you.
00:02:47
Speaker
as we were just talking about changing things. But not this time. We're not talking about changing things. We're going to talk about other things, which are strange, like some of the games have come out in July. Just strange things. Or other gaming news in July. Yeah. I think that's fair. So first thing I had, I don't remember when this happened exactly, but there was a development here that even beyond the note that I took here for our podcast cheat
The NFT Debate
00:03:16
Speaker
sheet,
00:03:16
Speaker
But you might have heard of NFTs. What's your opinion on NFTs, Dave? I do not like them. OK. I guess we'll just throw my thing out. No, I'm just kidding. I don't really know many people that do like them at this point. And I know that they're losing a lot of money.
00:03:37
Speaker
Because as people are belt tightening and things like that, NFTs have kind of fallen off a cliff. As it turns out, they were never worth anything. It was always just people thinking they could sell it for more money. But the thing is, it still exists for somebody to
00:03:55
Speaker
have enough cloud or notoriety to essentially spin up a currency or something to say, hey, this is valuable. And then a bunch of people jump on for, oh, this is going to be the next big thing. Like Bitcoin. People are like, oh, Bitcoin's not going to do anything. And Bitcoin's not going to shut off. And people are like, oh, we need to do something like that. So I feel like NFTs is the current evolution or iteration of that.
00:04:23
Speaker
I hope it fizzles out, but I'm worried that like something else would come up with be like, because you should money on this thing. Now technically you can buy and sell and trade anything. Um, but I still feel that overall it's very predatory for how it's marketed. And again, it doesn't really provide any value. Yeah.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's very much selling a promise, essentially. Like there's plenty of videos that critique NFTs and things like that. And that's not what the episode is about, but man, it's pretty much selling your place in a line, but like the line isn't to a midnight release of anything or a doctor's appointment or a food stall. It doesn't go anywhere. And then that's what an NFT actually is.
00:05:16
Speaker
I think what was it? I saw a Twitter post where they were talking about like, hey, if you minted an NFT on the blockchain that was referencing a diamond, right? It was like the serial number for a diamond.
00:05:31
Speaker
Like that diamond could be lost. It could be potentially destroyed. That's kind of hard with diamonds, but it's doable. Like something could happen to the diamond, but you know what? You'll always have that place on the blockchain. And I was like, exactly. This is the stupid problem with NFTs. It has nothing to do with whatever you're trying to represent. And basically, the more Konami
00:05:55
Speaker
is invested in something, the more evil it is. So NFTs are pretty bad. Yeah. That's why I feel like either in today's day and age, or I'm just at the age where I give a fuck and then make judgments about certain things, certain people's stances on NFTs or a company's stance on NFTs is now weighed very heavily against them.
00:06:21
Speaker
I think it was probably like four or five months back. I'm going to say that because one, I haven't looked it up, and two, you're not going to fact check me. But Serge Tankian, renowned singer and vocalist for System of Down and many other things, was hopping on some NFT train for something. And everyone's like, dude, what the fuck?
00:06:43
Speaker
Cause it's like seemingly to us, like a very sellout move. Um, when they've always been, Hey, we kind of want to like raise some information about like the Armenian genocide that nobody really acknowledges. Um, and other bullshit goes on prison system, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so that was like a huge kick in the pants of like, Oh, I looked up to this person. I respected what they did, but now they're jumping on this ship. Ooh, not so much.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah. It's, it really is telling of the type of person who would just, who just wants more money, right? For like, for, for, for basically nothing. Cause that's essentially what NFTs are. They're, they're essentially zero effort most of the time. Um, but you want more money and I don't think that's necessarily, well, no, it is evil. Biblically, the love of money is the root of all evil. There you go. So, um,
Minecraft's NFT Ban
00:07:39
Speaker
Jot that down. But yeah, it's always disappointing when someone gets suckered in, which roundabout takes us to the news thing I want to talk about, because I'm not used to people like condemning NFTs that actually have any power beyond kind of reason. Yeah, choosing not to buy them. Right. And Minecraft, Mojang and Microsoft owning company came out and they're like, hey,
00:08:08
Speaker
We are going to not have anything to do with NFTs. And if you want to do anything with NFTs in your worlds, or associate it with Minecraft content, or do anything on your own servers that are hosted for Minecraft, you can't. We're not going to allow it. This is going to be a breach of, I don't know, terms of service. Yeah, terms of service. Exactly. That's what I was looking for.
00:08:37
Speaker
Um, and they were very explicit about it. They listed a bunch of things that couldn't be associated, including cosmetics and skins and worlds and things like that. And then there were like, and any other Minecraft content. So basically a blanket ban.
00:08:51
Speaker
That's there. Uh, it'll be up to discretion, but technically we did mention it once. If we think it's even remotely close, you're out. Yeah. It's the, the right to refuse service sign basically right next to the no suit, no, no suit, no, no shoes, no service. Um, you have to wear a suit to shop here. Weird loophole about that. There's this place called Margaritaville and I don't know if those rules apply. Hmm. Interesting.
00:09:20
Speaker
They have to check if this is a local place or is this a joke? This is a joke about one, the song Margaritaville into the actual place slash restaurant train Margaritaville. Gotcha. OK. The whole Jimmy Buffett promoted thing. It's very much like beach living type bullshit. Gotcha. OK. Yeah. I'll have to look at us later. But that news came out earlier. Something that happened just a few days back is
00:09:49
Speaker
the NFT community responded and they're like, okay, you don't want Minecraft to do anything with NFTs. We'll make our own Minecraft. Like they're just going to try to make a game like Minecraft and then just stuff it full of pointless NFTs. And how's that Roblox clone going? Right. It's it's such a stupid idea, but I don't know.
00:10:17
Speaker
I don't want to judge people for investing in crypto or anything like that, but there is a type of person.
00:10:22
Speaker
Uh, I do want to judge those people. Um, so I don't care how you get your money. Like I know historically people were like, Oh, you're making a buck too quick this way. Or you're selling your body in some fashion that I disapprove of go fuck yourself. Right. Um, however you make money. Cool. If you're a hit man. Cool. Yeah. Just, just not me. Um,
00:10:49
Speaker
but there's something about like the, like again, I'm coming at it from the viewpoint of, I see it as like a very sneaky, beaky money grubby tactic. So somebody who's like, Oh no, this is a great idea. I'm like, Oh, so you're a shit person because you're down for that love of money and you want to chase it any way possible into something that's, I don't know. I think anybody who's like solely obsessed with market stuff all the time,
00:11:19
Speaker
Mm hmm. Is probably too fixated on money. I guess that's fair. I think that's a, you know, that's a judgment call you can make. I was going to say, like, there's different levels for how involved in cryptocurrency people are, but there's a level higher than that. There is the crypto bro person who is like basically writing the hype.
00:11:46
Speaker
And they're drinking the Kool-Aid and every other expression for bandwagoning to, you know, whatever sort of success. And those are the people who are like, Minecraft doesn't want us. We'll make our own game and we'll do this crap. The problem is people have been talking about like minting concepts of games onto the blockchain and meta verse all of this nonsense for like
00:12:10
Speaker
some time now and I hate all of it. Like there's not a good implementation of that. That is good for the consumer or someone who actually wants ownership of anything real. So like, yeah, um, I don't think it's going to succeed. I think Minecraft is probably not too afraid about losing its market share.
00:12:35
Speaker
You know the literal thing of like we're going to make our own with a blackjack and hookers? That's what this is. Yeah. And the reason it's a meme is because your idea is bad and you're not going to fall through on it. It's not actually going to become a thing. You're just trying to be spiteful. Yeah. But maybe they're onto something. No one's ever thought about making a Minecraft clone before. So we'll see. That's true.
00:13:02
Speaker
It's objectively not true. My mention about robots. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I thought that was, I thought that was interesting. That was one, one, uh, news item we discussed on this, uh, this type of podcast.
Game Releases: Stray
00:13:20
Speaker
You want to talk about cats? Sorry, that was my segue. What was your thing? I'm just going to give Minecraft another shout out for always being a fun evergreen game I can go back to. There's so much content in it from mods or even probably the base game that I haven't experienced in a while because people can't commit to day two of a fucking town. That's besides the point.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, I was. Yeah, cats though. Cats are in Minecraft. Cats are now also in their own game. It's true. Stray just recently came out on July 19th. This had a lot of people purring with anticipation. I think that's correct. And that was the extent of it for me. I've watched some gameplay, watched some reviews, watched the initial trailer.
00:14:09
Speaker
What all have you seen of it so far? Mostly, mostly that without some of the trailers, but I have seen gameplay. I've seen clips from it. The original teaser, I also did see. I'm sorry, I was kind of staring off into space because you were talking about like.
00:14:29
Speaker
So I was like, is there any other game that has cats in it? And I know they exist, but I couldn't. Gotcha, Roboto. Next question. The fuck out of here. All right, you found the one game that has a cat in it. The one I thought of. I can't think of another one right now. That was my one. I think Spiritfarer has the co-op person's a cat. Oh yeah, that's true. That's the only one I could think of.
00:14:53
Speaker
looks really good, but I haven't played it. And I'll be honest, it didn't look like the type of game I would rush to pick up. But it's been doing pretty well. Yeah, I'm happy to have success then people are enjoying it. Like for good things to be good. But for me, it's very much in the camp of I would watch somebody play it for a little bit.
00:15:17
Speaker
That's it. Um, like it looks visually like a fun storyline to go through, but mechanically it seems very like snappy for, Oh, you automatically jumped to here or you automatically moved to here or you put transition somewhere. And like, there are some games like where I've definitely played through where it's, Hey, you're along for the ride of the story. I played journey. I don't think it's critically acclaimed. Thought it was pretty. Um,
00:15:48
Speaker
Though that technically had free movement. Yeah, that's the thing. It's not like a platformer. It's more like a it's more like a tailored experience. They want you to go see these set pieces and see what they want you to see and do what they want you to do. And those can be really fun and enjoyable.
00:16:08
Speaker
I just I don't think I want to spend money to do that. Right. Versus watching a YouTube play through of that game. I guess how much of this is just like. Like, who is this game for? Because I think it's it's probably like the reason I'm not interested in it is because I don't usually pick up chill games just for chill game's sake. And that's where my brain categorizes this.
00:16:37
Speaker
It's like it's not necessarily an adventure. It kind of is, but, you know, it's not meant to be an action game or strategy.
00:16:47
Speaker
Like I kind of don't get it. You know what I mean? I think it's, it falls under again, curated experience, a bit of a SIM cause you're definitely doing some cat stuff, going cat places, doing cat things, knocking things over all the cat tropes and things that catches do. So I think if you have cats, you probably appreciate it on another level because you appreciate all the mannerisms. You're like, my cat actually does this bullshit all the time. Um, right.
00:17:18
Speaker
Or if you just like cats, I think that you'd fall into that camp as well. Or if you just want a cute, chill game, I feel like you'd fit in as well. Yeah. Is that like a thing, though? Because I mean, I like animals. I like cats. I like dogs. But I don't think I would buy a game because you play as a cat or a dog.
00:17:41
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like, if you have a cat or a dog, you're like, oh, I'm more likely to buy this game because there's a cat or a dog in it. What the fuck was that? Neo Tokyo? Not Neo Tokyo, but there's like one where you play as a dog. It's like a PS3 title. Hmm. That definitely exists. PS3 games. Google a Tokyo dog game for me. Yeah, we're not.
00:18:11
Speaker
Tokyo Ghoul? Is that Tokyo Jungle? Tokyo Jungle. Tokyo Ghoul is an anime and manga, I believe. OK. I don't think I'm familiar with this. I don't know too much about it. I just know you play or you can play as a dog, maybe other animals as well. Uh huh. But I think. Like I grew up with dogs. I like dogs. I appreciate like petting a dog in a game.
00:18:42
Speaker
But that's the extent of it for me. I'm not a big...
00:18:47
Speaker
needing to play as an animal in something. But when we did have the dog companion in Metal Gear Solid 5, and it would kill people with a fucking knife, that was hype. Was it like D-dog or something like that? Yeah. Everything was like D-somethings, like D-horse, D-dog, D-mac. It's really D-dom. D-titties that we didn't give a voice. D-quiet. A quiet D.
00:19:19
Speaker
But for me, it's a bonus thing. I'm like, oh, that's cute. That's cool. But that's it. If Stray was a dog, it wouldn't make it any more likely you'd pick it up. No. Because again, it's too much of a curated experience. And for me, it took me years to get Journey. And it was like when it was on $5. It was because people were like, it's critically acclaimed. I was like, oh, I have time. I'll check it out. I'm a critic. I will acclaim it.
00:19:48
Speaker
But yeah, that's really it for me. There's not the same draw. I can't think of something that a game could tout, and it's, hey, check it out. The game has this. And I'd be like, oh my god, I have to get the game because it has that one singular thing. It's usually, oh, that universe looks really interesting from the cut scene. I want to hear more about it. Or mechanically, this looks really fun.
00:20:15
Speaker
Or it just got a cool steam punk vibe. But again, that goes back to the theming and the environment. But again, it wouldn't be just for like, it's a steam punk game. I must buy all steam punk games. Yes. Yeah, exactly. I think I'm in agreement. Same rationale for me. I like the world, like the look of it. If someone gave me the game, I'd probably play it, or eventually might play it. We'll see. That hasn't helped true for all games I've received. But we'll get there.
00:20:44
Speaker
Oh, can I hear the joke? Sure. Go for it. How's Yuck? Is it going, you motherfucker? Yeah, that was what I was thinking about while they said I haven't completed all of them. That one. That's it's nice to have a bar. It's nice to have a game that you want to play that you haven't played yet that you have, because now in the same way, if there's a show that you want to watch and you have not yet watched it, if people are like recommending shows to you, just be like, well,
00:21:12
Speaker
I mean, I kind of want to finish Attack on Titan. Oh, you're saying you want to have a, you want to have a buffer. Exactly.
Game Rating Systems
00:21:20
Speaker
Right. Cause like, if they don't pass, if it's not higher than that bar, then like, why would you even list it? Why would you add it to the list? So like Yakuza having a man like the Yakuza zero is also great, but like a dragon is the one Dave's referencing that he has graciously provided to me and I need to play it.
00:21:40
Speaker
Um, maybe more likely now that I have the couch, a lot more comfortable down here. Yeah. That was the factor that, uh, what do you think stray rated on Metacritic? Cause you know, Oh, okay. And it was a question. Metacritic out of a hundred. What do you think it's at?
00:22:04
Speaker
Uh, I mean, I think once you pass 60, yeah, technically counts as mature, uh, actual game rating though. And jokes aside, I'd guess somewhere between 80 and 90. That's pretty accurate. Yeah. Uh, so I'm seeing 84 for PlayStation five. Um, which to me was a little surprising. It seems like it's received all this acclaim, but I think the people who love it just really love it. Right. Like the, the other people who are trying to put it on an American scale are
00:22:33
Speaker
Tending to put it a little bit lower. And so it balances out to somewhere that's like 80. So it's still great. Yes. But I'm going to go back to an old conversation we had with our boss at the time, Dan, not going to miss last name, but like, if you know him, you know, but he always said like, for an American scale, first name, Dan, um,
00:23:01
Speaker
On the numeric scale, anytime you say, oh, what is it? One to 10. One is like it's actively killing you. I don't think anybody's going to be putting below like a 50% because we assume a negative connotation with below 50%.
00:23:18
Speaker
So we technically don't always do things in a positive way. So everything's almost always upscaled, let's say by 50 points. Yeah. So like, that's your baseline of 50. So like, I see it like a grade, basically. So if you say 84, it's like, oh, it's a C. So that's kind of mid level. It's still good. Like C is passing, obviously.
00:23:38
Speaker
But if you get up in like the 90s, it's like, oh, that's pretty good. Right. Because you also have to figure out out of how many reviews the higher points you're getting on that, the more it's going to be weighted. Mm hmm. Yeah, how how people rate things is an interesting discussion, I think, because there's it's hard to really quantify more than five points on a scale. Right. I think Dunkey uses one to five.
00:24:06
Speaker
But even in his scale, like he's not really rating things one because again, it has to actively be killing you. Um, and why do you, why would you play a game that is so, so terrible? Like I almost feel like you could have a scale that's literally like one to four where one is just like, it's bad. Don't play it. And then everything that falls into it, it's like the game's broken or.
00:24:31
Speaker
you had no enjoyment out of it, whatever, it's bad, don't play it. And then it's like, it'd probably be good if you like this, but I don't. It's pretty good, or it's great. This is one of the all-time grades.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think less options for categorization are better because you can clearly define, Hey, here's what this means. So in the case of what you're saying for one, it's just under no situation, what I recommend anybody play this. Yeah. Okay. Pretty damning. So one is very distinctly one for in your cases, I recommend this to literally everybody. Yeah. And then two and three, you maybe have situational things depending on certain criteria. Mm-hmm.
00:25:18
Speaker
It gets hard to separate two and three, I think, in that type of scale. But yeah, I feel like three is I would recommend it to most people, and I would risk making them a little bit uncomfortable for how much I talk about it. And then two is I'd recommend it to most people, but only if I knew that it was really their jam. Right. You have to love this to pick it up. Yeah, it's interesting to think about, I think.
00:25:48
Speaker
because it forces you to kind of quantify how you would split it up. I mean, that's literally defining what a rating system is. I get that. But, you know, like a five, maybe that's reserved for like GameSpot, for instance, they had like a hundred point score for a long time. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't now. But like they're one hundredths were very rare.
00:26:15
Speaker
It was like, this is exemplary of this genre. Like if this is an RTS and it got a hundred, you should be playing it. Cause even if you don't like RTS games, you probably would enjoy this. Like that's what that represented. So yeah, I guess we can say some of that for the ratings episode, but, um, stray 84.
00:26:39
Speaker
Not bad. Good to great. Not amazing and not excellent. I still feel like things like this need to exist or games like this. Cause I don't know, chill games always find like a niche.
00:26:58
Speaker
because they need to separate themselves from other things. Like, oh, this is your action-packed adventure. This is your big multiplayer shooter. This is your MMO. And some people are just like, I just wanted to do some video game stuff. So for people who are more casual and just want an experience, yeah, stuff like that needs to exist. So the more good things we can have like it, more power to you. I have an immediate segue off that, but it is actually still on topic.
00:27:27
Speaker
Um, have you seen any of the mods for stray? Cause I've seen more information about it. So there's a Garfield mod. You can place Garfield because of course, I'm already, already on board with this. That's pretty amazing. Um, the one that really stood out to me as I don't think it can be topped is they replaced the meow sound.
00:27:48
Speaker
in the sections, like you can press, press the X button or whatever to like per meow with the other cats, um, with Jason and I love that. See that to me, now I'm more interested in watching somebody play like the janky modded version. Cause it's, it's a callback to something that I appreciate. Yes. Yeah. More you can relate to. Maybe that's why people with cats would enjoy it more.
00:28:15
Speaker
I hope all the other cats also just like Jason and different pitches and stuff. You're freaking amazing. Two cats. I ain't really hissing Jason each other. Jason. It sounds like cats. I think it checks out.
00:28:33
Speaker
I will say it's really quick for them to have mods for that. Yeah. Cause again, it came out July 19th. We're recording this on the checks calendar 28th. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I wonder, I didn't say what platforms did this release for? I have to assume it's PC with a turnaround like that.
00:28:56
Speaker
Um, I mean, at least PC I'm sure is also PS4, Xbox latest. Yeah. Yeah. Microsoft windows. So PS4 or five and windows. Um, interesting. I don't actually see on Xbox. I can't believe they wouldn't have it on Xbox if they have it on windows. It's a timed console exclusive, but it also came out for windows.
00:29:24
Speaker
That seems weird. I don't know if that's, I'm already suspicious. Yeah, it's out on Steam. So like, that's weird. Um, yeah, overwhelmingly positive on Steam though. Play cat, be cat. Live your best life. That's my segue. Uh, what's your next topic?
00:29:49
Speaker
I was going to say real quickly, I just want to make a shout out to a game I've been playing recently that falls in the more casual space.
Paper Mario: Origami King
00:29:56
Speaker
And I did not think I would like it as much as I have. Honey pop.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah, we're back to honey pops. The new DLC is bananas. It's actually just bananas. We went from gems to just full on fruits. Oh man. I'll tell you what the banana represents though. The duality of man. The slippery slope if you will, because it's covered in bananas. Banana peels really.
00:30:27
Speaker
All right. That joke's going bad. All right. I'll stop at the puns. Anyway, I've been playing a Paper Mario Origami King. Okay. Yeah. I will save gratuitous details because at some point I would like to have an episode on it. Um, but holy shit, I, it just continues to put my brain in like a little happy space. So kudos to it for that. Yeah. I never know where it's going to go next. And then it's like something dumb and funny. I'm like, all right, you got me.
00:30:58
Speaker
Oh yeah, Nintendo tends to treat their, their hatted lad pretty well. Um, and although like, I don't like every Nintendo game for the most part, they have pretty high production value. So by the time we actually see something that's, there's such a massive difference between like a triple A developer announces a game for next year and you're like, maybe it'll be good. Maybe we'll need a day one patch. Who's to say? And like, yeah, we're like dropping Mario RPG.
00:31:28
Speaker
out there. So like, have fun with it. Like it's literally done when they announce it, basically. Yeah, which is crazy. You have to be a speed runner to oftentimes find the faults, technical faults in these games. So I believe it.
00:31:44
Speaker
Yeah. Um, that's going to be in my. Hard recommend list. I've already been talking up and like this cords are like, you should check out this game. It's actually really good. There's this cool guy named Mario. I don't know if you've heard about him. It's just like the old Mario is 2d. Well, actually, I remember when I played the, uh, the first, uh, paper Mario for in 64 and I was like,
00:32:12
Speaker
This is a turn based fighting. Like what is, what is going on here? This is, you know, an actual RPG, but nothing but good times there. So I look forward to playing it. I think, uh, I might be confusing paper Mario with something else, but there was thousand year door also. Right. Is that paper Mario? I think so. Paper Mario, the thousand year door was the other one that was apparently for game cube.
00:32:41
Speaker
But yeah, Paper Mario is developing series. Then I think, are you talking about Super Mario RPG? You should talk about turn-based combat. Um, maybe I am. Super- Is there a character named Geno in there? Huh. Um, I may actually just be thinking about my RPG. Did you fight a sword called Smithy at any point? I don't know if I'm going to be able to remember. It's been a very long time.
00:33:11
Speaker
but it was different than Mario RPG based off the screenshots. Okay, so was Paper Mario not on the N64? I'm looking this up now. Yeah, Paper Mario N64. Okay, so there's just been a couple entries in it and more than I realized. But yeah, first installment in 20 or just 2000 even.
00:33:38
Speaker
Uh, which is very difficult to complete 2000. If you started reading it as 20, right? It's like 20, 20, not 20, a hundred. Yeah. Yeah. And I haven't played any since then. So looking forward to this one. I'm sure it's going to be great. Yeah. You're going to, you're going to have a blast.
00:34:02
Speaker
Thank you. Probably slightly less eccentric than a Yakuza like a dragon, as far as RPGs go. Hot take. Yakuza goes some weird way, some very weird directions. I just.
00:34:20
Speaker
So I will say about both of those games. I appreciate the level of detail of like putting in either dumb jokes or like really well thought out jokes and like certain areas where they didn't need to go into that detail, but they do anyway, whether it's just like somebody's dialogue or like a very small interaction. I'm like, oh, you spent a lot of time on this. And that's like.
00:34:42
Speaker
Very polished. Oh yeah. I actually, one of my favorite things, I get the word talking about Paper Mario, but I don't want to spoil it. And I think we will have an episode so I'm not going to talk about it too much. But one of my favorite things about Yakuza, it actually has nothing to do directly with the game.
00:34:57
Speaker
but the actual Japan Yakuza were like, uh, this is an accurate representation of what it's like to be a member of the Yakuza. I'm like, no, it's absolutely not. I hope not.
00:35:18
Speaker
run around trying to land full combos and like smashing full-on motorcycles over people's heads and catching money that appears when you beat them up. Yeah. It's such a good game. Also for recycling a weird amount. Yeah. I think a lot of games have done that. Yeah.
00:35:41
Speaker
Omori notwithstanding hmm.
Mooncrash DLC & Deathloop
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah Let's see what else is going on here I had a note that Oh, actually, you know what if we're gonna briefly touch on things we've been playing recently I put a lot of time into moon crash and we're probably never gonna have an episode on moon crash. So like It's freaking great Did we do death loop?
00:36:06
Speaker
We did not do Deathloop, I did not play Deathloop. Okay, that would explain why we didn't do that. When Deathloop came out, everybody was talking about Deathloop for three weeks. We talked about it too much, yeah. I went into a beacon of silence, and it's been that way ever since. When you said you went into a beacon of silence, I don't know why, but I visualized a diving bell, and just crawling it in some reach.
00:36:29
Speaker
But it's always like the ripples of the ocean life nearby. No more to interact with the land dwellers. I've definitely done that. It's very much possible to if you're not there right at the jump, all of the hype that can be fun to be a part of at the time is instead distracting or discouraging or just something you want to avoid.
00:36:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's why when there's game news like, hey, there's a E3 panel or a PlayStation doing an announcement or Nintendo. I like when everybody's on Discord, like we can all talk about it, whether it's in chat or in voice. It's cool to be part of that way of like, oh, shit, you see that? How cool is that? But if you miss that and like you're then coming back and reading the messages the next day or something else in the game, you're just like, I missed the initial thing. Oh, I'm late. OK. Uh-huh.
00:37:22
Speaker
It's harder to be as hype in the moment. I definitely have had times where we're watching a presentation or expo on Discord. I'm like, that game looks pretty good or whatever. And then I came back to it later and I was like, no, it doesn't. Like, I'm not that interested in that. I still have like a dragon I can play. But yeah, the reason I brought it up was because Mooncrash is DLC for Prey.
00:37:50
Speaker
Prey being one of my favorite games of all time in the running for the number one spot It's just so good But moon crash did not sell very well and it was there the highest level description of it I can give is it's a vaguely rogue like
00:38:14
Speaker
simulation basically but that doesn't really matter for the purposes of the gameplay where you try to escape the moon with an assortment of characters with the ultimate goal being escaping with all of them at the same time in one run and as time goes on everything gets more dangerous so you're incentivized to move more rapidly it's freaking great but it's also the precursor to death loop because
00:38:43
Speaker
This game didn't sell that well and they literally just took the mechanics and the ideas and they're like, let's make an entirely new IP and just like unslot these from this game and slot them into that game. And then they kind of removed some of the decision making and they made it a little bit more linear and it became Deathloop, which is also good.
00:39:10
Speaker
It's, it's, it's interesting to see the prototype, right? This is like playing system shock before playing Bioshock. Um, it's, it's a different experience to see where it came from. Yeah. And you can also kind of go back in the decision tree and see certain things that might've like cut out or maybe see, I guess an alternate tree line of where it could have gone. Yeah. Or sometimes like there are just game splits where it's.
00:39:38
Speaker
Here's an FPS. Oh, so now we have like arena shooters. We have these type of shooters and it splits out or maybe just have a kind of a corridor FPS, something like system shock where it's, I mean, I guess like the older shooters were just, Hey, here are the levels. This is what we have for a map. Um, yeah.
00:39:58
Speaker
It's cool to go back and see where things came from for sure. I did enjoy Prey. I haven't checked out Mooncrash, but if Jake is saying it's good, it took me so long to finally play Prey, eat Prey love. And then when I finally did, I'm like, why did you not force me to play this game early? Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:22
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't have like as much of a narrative. Look, but there's some really cool stuff in there and there actually is a story which is not always easy to get in a sort of like rogue like game, but they make a couple concessions to like fit the story in and I think it was the right call.
00:40:44
Speaker
But yeah, my only advice for people, if you do play Mooncrash, based off my recommendation, don't beat the last objective until you've done everything you want to do. Because unfortunately, the game does save in the final sequence. And if you want to go back and get achievements and things, you have to start a new save, basically, from scratch. And I hate that.
00:41:11
Speaker
Thankfully, most of what you're doing is knowledge-based anyways. It's one of those games where if you know what you want to do, you can kind of just rush through it. But yeah, big oversight. They didn't make the same mistake for that loop. Big mistake. Huge. Absolutely. But that was good. Have you checked out any of multiverses?
00:41:38
Speaker
I've watched some of it and it looks incredibly floaty. Shout out to Tyler for getting me a key for me to check this out. But I'm also going to dump on it.
Multiversus & Platform Fighters
00:41:53
Speaker
Currently, it is very different from what I'm used to with Smash Ultimate, which is like the only type of game like that I play. It does feel floaty and kind of weird.
00:42:05
Speaker
You have air dodges, you have spot dodges, but you don't have shield. There's not really a distinction between like, you have either like a jab, which you do with forward and your attack button, or you have your smashes, which if you want to do an F smash, it's just you hold and press the attack button. Okay. Without a directional.
00:42:31
Speaker
All right. I know. And then you still have like up smash, down smash. You have your aerial stuff. You have your special moves. How do you do different smashes if you, Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. You can still directional and then you hold the button. Okay. I see. Yeah. So you like, you'd face a certain way and be like, I'm going to hold my punch and then big punch. Right. Gotcha. Gotcha. But kind of similar to slap city, which I'm very impressed. I remember the name of, um,
00:42:59
Speaker
how you go into freefall after you get hit feels very much closer to that. Gotcha. OK, I don't know. It feels weird to control for me at this point. I think a lot of it is I've spent very little time doing it, but I'm not the biggest fan at this point. There's some things I have to learn who owns like multiverses, like who is who's the developer or publisher? Like what IP range does this encompass?
00:43:26
Speaker
Who all do we have in this one? Warner Brothers, who owns it? Okay. That's a pretty big umbrella.
00:43:35
Speaker
But they have like Arya Stark from Game of Thrones. They have Finn and Jake from Adventure Time. They have Batman. They have Iron Giant. They have Harley Quinn. They have Wonder Woman. All the DC stuff. Arya Stark doesn't fit. I thought Arya was HBO.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah, Shaggy, I think was there too. Shaggy, Bugs Bunny. The only reason I know this is because there's been long before the launch of this game, there's this like ultra instinct Shaggy meme. And I think they referenced it in this. It's really funny.
00:44:24
Speaker
There's also going to be DLC for apparently not, maybe not DLC, maybe just releasing later, but Rick and Morty and LeBron James. Yeah. One of those, one of those things is not like the other. How much do you think LeBron had to pay to get in the game?
00:44:42
Speaker
I think they paid him to use his likeness. Or rather, whenever he signed a contract with them when he did Space Jam, they probably said like, hey, we're going to give you this much for the movie and your likeness for other stuff. And he said, seems like a good deal. It's like, what other stuff? And he's like, don't worry about it. Multiverse things. It's just all deep fakes. I think that's the more likely reality. But what I want to believe is like,
00:45:13
Speaker
Lebron caught wind of the pre-development of this thing and he calls up his agent and he's like, I need to get me in. He's like, software, I burned me once. He called me a goddamn multiverse. It was a toss-up between Sora and Sakurai. Sora and Sakurai. Sora and Lebron to round out. It would have been funny though if Sakurai was the last fighter.
00:45:40
Speaker
he's like it is me i am the strongest he's going through like describing all of his moves and how he likes playing as himself i also kind of like the idea that his his fighter would be like um
00:45:55
Speaker
He like holds a controller and then just like plays another fighter that gets summoned in, like one of those old fighting bosses that can like mimic any other character. Sora is just like, OK, I'll or Sakurai is like, I'll play Jigglypuff now, you know, switch over. It'd be funny. He becomes the Pokemon trainer in the background. Uh huh. It has like the most complex command inputs imaginable to switch to all these different characters.
00:46:23
Speaker
It's like, oh no, link was up, up, down, down, left, right, A, B, start or whatever. But yeah, LeBron James is, I guess Space Jam or something would be the theory of where he comes from given Warner Bros.
00:46:44
Speaker
Yeah, because if you if you're having Looney Tunes in there, you now have LeBron by Space Jam proxy, Space Jam to proxy. Sorry. Is Bugs Bunny in? Yes. You say Bugs. OK, cool. Bugs. I'd be surprised if they didn't add more later. Mm hmm. I was going to say Bugs Bunny has to be in. Right. Like I think the most iconic Warner Bros character in my mind.
00:47:12
Speaker
Taz kind of like, he's obviously a great fighter. I don't know if Taz has as much, um, like clout or market share. I don't know what the term would be. Like do kids know who the Tasmanian devil is? Right. I'd say not as much. That was more so.
00:47:31
Speaker
really like Roadrunner era days for that type of stuff because he was with Looney Tunes but he didn't have his own show really if I remember at a point they did give him like an animated thing which was it did not do well if I remember
00:47:48
Speaker
But I mean, everybody knows like the like the windmill, shout out the windmill, Jesus, the the little tornado, the hurricane. Yes, yeah, his his special move, I assume. It just the way they gave it to Meta Knight, it was it was Tasmanian devils. Yeah, they couldn't animate people walking from one location to another. So they just gave them your your windmill now. I will say tornado.
00:48:13
Speaker
I did play a couple of them. I do appreciate some of his moveset because he has like what I assume is like a slow input. But basically like you pepper somebody and turn them into, you know, like a perfectly delicious golden turkey. Gotcha. And then they actually are a turkey. And I think they do play with some disadvantage. Gotcha. He's got a polymorph effect. Yeah, that's funny.
00:48:40
Speaker
I have to imagine it limits some inputs that you can do as a turkey. Otherwise you're doing all of the animations for a turkey. Yeah. Watch as the tier list comes out for the game and they put turkey at like triple S. It's just like Taz will throw the game if he turns you into the superior life form. Yeah.
00:49:00
Speaker
I did see, um, you mentioned, uh, iron giant and, uh, this is where most of the gameplay I've seen from the game came from. Um, but they were apparently very, very accurate in their depiction of like a lot of his moves, like in the, um, uh, also, if you guys haven't seen the iron giant movie recommended, like, I really enjoyed iron giant. That's not much. Uh, it was a dreamworks. I think it, I think it was dreamworks. Um,
00:49:31
Speaker
I'm going to, I'm going to look this up because I just can't stand to be wrong, but, um, I believe that's correct. Warner Bros pictures. Um, and who knows who knows beyond that, but was it literally just Warner Bros? Huh. It may have literally just been Warner Bros. Yeah. Uh, Warner Bros feature animation. So published and distributed by them.
00:50:01
Speaker
Damn. But he does some things in the movie, as one would expect. He takes a bite out of a car, and then a horn goes off. So he sits on the car after swinging it around or something. And so that's one of his attacks in the game. He swings the car around, and then he'll sit on it. And there's a really cool scene. I guess I'm going to spoil part of the Iron Giant. That's fine.
00:50:31
Speaker
30 years old or whatever at this point. Probably closer to 20. But where he has the ding in his head is repaired, basically, after he was hit with an attack or something. And he goes full laser mode. All these lasers pop out. And he starts vaporizing tanks and stuff like that. And it's revealed he's this potential alien invader. And they represent that also in the game. And there's all this cool stuff.
00:51:01
Speaker
that is only slightly undercut by like a follow-up video I saw that was like, here's three combo chains you can use to instantly kill someone with the Iron Giant. You just like carry them off as I did the screen. And you do have to watch out for that in a fighting game.
00:51:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's, so I think everybody has two jumps by default, like when they're off stage. Um, they also have a mechanic where, so imagine all the stages are kind of like callous, flat up top, obviously, but like, there's always going to be sides, vertical sides or like a cliff and you can essentially jump up the cliff. Huh. Yeah. So.
00:51:45
Speaker
That's it is weird But you have like a limited number of jumps up the cliff you can do Mm-hmm, but if you can ledge guard you with is like gigantic body and just like kick you a couple times or just has you far enough offstage so we can't get back to the cliff or the ledge and
00:52:02
Speaker
I could see him being pretty oppressive. Yeah. In the right hands. Not me. I'd be like, my hitbox is too big. I'm being somewhat. Right. Someone with a projectile and it's all over. Now, he does look gigantic. He looks twice as big vertically as the tallest Smash character.
00:52:25
Speaker
Like he's, he's very, very large, not as large as he is in the movie. Cause in the movie, he literally can just like hold Hogarth, which is the kid's name in his hand, but still pretty big. Uh, maybe not the iron giant, the iron biggish, the iron bigot. I don't like you. Yeah. Uh, overall though, how you, uh, how you.
00:52:55
Speaker
How are you feeling about it? How's it stack up against Smash? And if that's too brutal, how's it stack up against Slap City?
00:53:04
Speaker
I've played slap city more, considerably more, uh, mainly for like the mean potential. It's, I dunno, I'll, I'll definitely want to try more of it before I give it too much of a damning statement, but I'm really not enjoying it. For me, it's, it still kind of falls under the, where I'd put the Nickelodeon game, which I don't think I even play because I think they charge money for that one. Is this free? It's just outright, or is this purchase and.
00:53:33
Speaker
Then you get, you said a friend got you a key for it. It might've just been for an early thing. Let me check on the steam. Yeah. I wonder where I imagine it would be. I wonder what their monetization strategy is free. You can get a founder's pack for other bullshit, blah, blah, blah. But for the base game, it is free. So anybody could check it out if they want it. Gotcha. So this is actually. So I just got to play a couple of days early. Right.
00:54:01
Speaker
Huh. Cause I was thinking like, where does this fit into the, um, the platform fighter type of space? Cause I mean, smash is a very accessible game, but it's really not. It's not compared to a free game. There's like a lot of kids who are not going to be able to convince their parents to buy them a switch or a smash. Right. Um, so for those kids, like.
00:54:28
Speaker
This might be, you know, potentially they're on ramp onto platform fighters, you know? And if it is free to play plus transactions, I mean, financially, I think studies have shown that that does work better, even if it is kind of scummy, especially in a game you're going to market towards kids. Um, so I'm going to, well, I guess we'll have to see what they do for monetization, right?
00:54:52
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure that they have stuff as far as progression for unlocking cosmetics. I think there are also some passives I saw. So you can like slot some, Oh, if you're at low health, you get this bonus type stuff. That works like in a, in a match. Like do you, not just single player. Okay. Wow.
00:55:11
Speaker
So I think all of this is geared for multiplayer. You're either doing like 1v1. I don't know if they have AI. Again, I played very little. But they also do have like a 2v2. Interesting. Because like there are certain characters that are like support characters.
00:55:30
Speaker
So like, let's say you're going off to a ledge guard. You're going really deep down like the blast zone. Um, you could have somebody like tether you back technically. There's a character that specializes in that. That's interesting. Again, the game's all very weird and new to me. Um, it's just so not what I'm used to at this point. I'm not the biggest fan, but want to give it a little bit more time. That's fair. Maybe since it's free, we can try it out at some point.
00:55:58
Speaker
Yeah, why not? I can always use more things to criticize. No, I'm just kidding. It's really funny. The idea of support characters and a fighter sounds really weird to me, but I have literally never considered it. How far are they away from having a 3v3 with the Trinity? It's like, all right, well, here's our tank. You're going to do more CC stuff or whatever. He's usually in the center stage. And then the support's in the DPS book to have a little bit further back.
00:56:24
Speaker
Yeah, a little bit back, yeah. Well, if you have a caster DPS, then they're a little bit further back, but they could be a scrapper, right? Like, so... You just have Fox 1. Yeah, just literally mashing B as quickly as possible. It's the entire engagement.
00:56:43
Speaker
They have all of these mechanics set up for a complex interplay between the different picks and the different roles and all those stuff. Just two teams camping and messing. Everyone hitting the projectile button. They're all canceling in the middle. Oh, glorious. I hope that's what it is. You wait for somebody to just sneeze and have the momentum shift. Yeah.
00:57:06
Speaker
I don't know. It might have legs if it's legitimately free. I don't doubt you and that it is. I don't doubt your research here. I don't really know of any other game that's going to have mass appeal like that, that you could just pick up and play regardless of where you're at or what computer you have and anything like that. Right now it's still in the same space as the Nickelodeon one, where it's obviously you see it and you're comparing it to Smash, which is the goat, the most prolific name for that space.
00:57:36
Speaker
I think people want to see it do well they want to see other platform fighters do well in the same way that I guess rivals of aether is still a platform fighter but very much its own thing i'm very unique but people want to see those do well because
00:57:53
Speaker
One, they're fun. Two, the communities around them are batshit insane. I don't know if you've ever looked at Arrivals of Aether Mods. Hello. I can play as Hamtaro now. I can play as Ronald McDonald, and it just does some crazy shit. But people really care about it, and then they get really invested in it. So it's cool to see that grow in that space.
00:58:19
Speaker
I don't think this is going to have the same, at least out the gate, modding opportunities or take off. But that is the trick. You have to be careful with your open platform games if you're going to monetize it. Right. Like if you're going to charge for the game release, then you can have people mod it however much they want. But if you're like a free to play game and you allow modding, like
00:58:47
Speaker
Are people just going to make cosmetics that are better than yours? It's like, are they going to do this thing? And who did they have? Yeah, it was for Smash Ultimate. They'll make a mod where Joker becomes Woody from Toy Story, right? How are you going to compete with that? Like, no one's going to play a character other than Woody from Toy Story, obviously.
00:59:11
Speaker
So I guess we'll see with it. A part of me still wants to look into modding my Switch to do some of that. But then again, I'm only going to see that locally. Right. And you're not going to be able to appreciate it if we play online. We'll have to get like a Dropbox folder for mods. It's just like, hey, did you install everything in the folder? I remember doing that for like Beat Hazard or co-op games like that.
00:59:35
Speaker
It's like, Oh, we should play on the same song. Okay. Well, we have to have the same song Dropbox. Um, yeah, that's cool though. It'll be interesting to see where it goes. I don't think it's going to dethrone smash for me at this point, but I mean, we've been playing smash for a long time, somewhere in like the four to five year space. That does seem like a long time. Yeah.
01:00:02
Speaker
Just about as long as I can figure out teching. That's a lie. Dave techs more than I do. Tech series is what we call him. That's true. That's true. And neither of us tarries that much. That's the other thing. But are you OK? What was that? Are you OK? Oh, my gosh. OK, yeah. All right. This is literally a reference that only people who have played with Terry would get. But he says that for one of his moves.
01:00:33
Speaker
I just read natural. You're like, wait, I didn't hear what you said. Uh huh. Well, I heard it and I was just like, did I say something weird? But yeah. Um, and quick succession, some of the other things I wanted to talk about, actually, you know, we'll talk about one of the other things I was going to talk about.
Upcoming: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
01:00:53
Speaker
Uh, Star Wars Jedi survivor.
01:00:56
Speaker
Is it like vampire survivors? I don't think so. Okay. This is the continuation of the Calcastis game. I can't remember. What was it? Star Wars Jedi? Jedi Knight 2? Outcast. It's not Knight 2.
01:01:14
Speaker
It's the latest one, the one that looks really good. And you play as the red-headed kid named Cal. Oh, the quote unquote, the dark souls like Star Wars. Yeah, that's what people called it. That game's really good.
01:01:27
Speaker
I quite enjoyed it. It's a really good adventure game. Um, and I think it's, it's pretty dang good. It's like, it's got the good mix of linear and storytelling and fighting and the fighting is good. Um, so, uh, the next one is going to be called survivor. Star Wars Jedi survivor. Um, and it now has a steam page and a potential release date of next year.
01:01:54
Speaker
And if that gets locked in, I'm going to force Dave to play the first one because it's actually pretty good. I would rather play that than the other Star Wars game that we were talking about playing. What was the other Star Wars game? Battle something?
01:02:14
Speaker
Oh, was it Battlefront? Yeah, Battlefront 2. Battlefront 2, yeah. Yeah. I got into an hour into the story and I was like seething and like, Jake, I hate my life. You're like, okay, you can stop, you can stop. You can stop, yeah. Yeah, I was like, we could just cover like the single player or something. The single player's like, okay, best. I think that's what I was trying to do, is a single player. Yeah. That's what I did too. I did finish it, but it wasn't.
01:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, we're not doing an episode on that. That's all you guys need to know about that one. Cross that off your soapstone bingo card. Not an option. Yeah. We can make soapstone bingo cards. There you go.
01:02:55
Speaker
If you guys have ideas for what should go on the soapstone being, actually, do you have any other topics? Should I go with the outro? I was just going to say, as a very quick mention, um, hopefully we'll have some more news on it at a later point. Uh, but I'm curious about a game called severed steel, which released this July. I forget the actual date cause I've closed the page, uh, but it's a very, very quick, Rudy Tutti shooty. So if you imagine something like.
01:03:25
Speaker
I don't want to say to the degree of overkill, maybe closer to ghost runner, but with guns. I'm already sold. But I think one of the main mechanics besides the design of the game is that you can shoot through walls. Like you can shoot a hole in a wall and like, Oh, it can now move through here. Gotcha. Yeah. It's not like you're playing with just like the, the far side throughout the whole game. Right.
01:03:50
Speaker
But that would be its own fun game called Bathroom Shooter. First up, let's go to the facility. No, we're not going to the facility. Rip perfect dark out of the console.
01:04:04
Speaker
That was going to make a joke. Wasn't a good one. Uh, remember that bullets can't sever steel beams. That was the joke. Uh, yeah. I hope they put that in the game. Yeah. Well, they probably want decent reviews. But, um, if you guys have ideas for soapstone bingo, what should be on the cards, uh, feel free to send those ideas in or.
01:04:32
Speaker
You can post them to the Bingo aficionado site, um, Facebook. Our email address is soapstonepodcastgmail.com. The Facebook is facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. It's always in the description also. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. No, that's not right. Wait. Uh, and as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.