Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Beyond the Erdtree
45 Plays1 year ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about what they played in June for this week's episode!
Intro:
- Gundam Wing OST - The Wings of a Boy that Killed Adolescence
Outro:
- Deltarune Chapter 2 - Lost Girl but it's a Lofi Remix
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Festivities
00:00:53
Speaker
How's it going and everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I am joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going so good because I love America and it's America's birthday. It really is. Happy birthday, America. Happy birthday, democracy. yeah Are you still alive? still got that Going around. oh We thought it would be more contagious, honestly, but no, no, we have it contained. We're good.
Fireworks and Local Regulations
00:01:22
Speaker
um Did you set off any fireworks or partake of any explosive behavior? um Not yet. I was debating when it was a little bit darker, taking out a sparkler and seeing if the dog would be like, oh, this is interesting, or dear God, don't set me ablaze. This is how I go. I went to the grocery store, picked up some fruit.
00:01:45
Speaker
Might have some strawberries and cool whip later as a little snack. ooh yeah um but No, I didn't really do anything too official for the day. How about yourself? I also, I also am under stocked for explosives right now. um I don't know local regulations, but no nobody gives a shit. Outside of, well, I'm in a heavily wooded area, so someone may, but sparklers in the driveway, I'm sure I could do, right? Like that that I'm sure I could get away with. um The only problem is if I need to run, I do live here. So that's not, I haven't really removed myself from the ability to attract me, you know? But sparklers, I'm sure, would be fine.
00:02:33
Speaker
Uh, that being said, I didn't get any news. It was just watch a video or something like that, or I'll listen to it. Right. Um, I mean, there's like a dollar, you can get a whole bunch for a dollar. Cause there's aluminum and some, my brain wants to say gunpowder, but I doubt it's that, um, I mean, there's gunpowder and some of it for sure.
00:02:55
Speaker
But probably not the sparklers. No, that would be a lot.
Contemplations on Freedom
00:02:58
Speaker
It just explodes in your hand all at once. It's just like an immediate detonation Roman candle or something. Pretty cool to make your own too. Yeah. Because basically I'm going about to describe like plastic explosives, but having like, Oh, well what if it's like a clay, you mold, but it can also, and I'm like, Oh, that's just C4. Yeah. This episode of Soapstone brought to you by the Anarchist Cookbook. um Use our referral code. No. ah We don't condone anything, I guess, anything? No.
00:03:34
Speaker
i I will not testify for whatever you think in court. I have no stance. if I haven't been able to get my my yellow belt even. ah yeah i'm just imagining um that everyone passively is unconsciously thinking about the way people walk but you see a person walking down the street and they you have you could get no read on them whatsoever it's like it's not a saunter it's not a gate like whatever they have going on there is no stance um but yeah freedom's nice i guess
00:04:17
Speaker
Yeah, I like to believe that I have some yeah and try not to question too, too much. That's the key.
Grocery Store Antics
00:04:24
Speaker
That's really how you can tell that the freedom is abundant. if you don't quite if you we don't We don't talk about it so much. yeah yeah yeah Um, but I did my civic duty in that when I was at the grocery store today, I saw a cop leaving with whatever they purchased and I and glared at them from the distance. Right. ah Some an angle. They can't see you or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure um you turn around real quick and I just heard it whistling and leaning up against the wall. ah The suspicion meter starts to drain. here' just
00:04:59
Speaker
It just, he he he turns around, you immediately blend in with a group of like four monks that were walking in one direction. The world fades to gray. You look, it looks around, you don't see me in the shot and then it goes back to me and I'm just helping somebody bag their groceries. Yeah. Cuts back to him, cuts back to
Gaming Discussions: Elden Ring and Destiny 2
00:05:19
Speaker
you. You are now the person who's being helped with the groceries.
00:05:25
Speaker
ah Uh, games came out this year. That's usually what we talk about for this episode this year. Sorry, this month. Um, sometimes we do research for whenever we have one of these kinds of focused on target episodes. We get a concrete list, we review it, have our editor take a look. Um, typing in the background. I was going to say, didn't do a lot of that. Me typing, what games came out in June? Games for June that released in June. I will say one of them. I don't know if we've talked about it enough yet. So maybe we just really want to focus on that. um Shadow of the Urtree, actually, for Elden Ring. so Oh, yeah. I do want to kind of share some thoughts opinions here. Yeah, yeah. I'm sad because I still can't beat the final boss. um
00:06:23
Speaker
My attempts are in the hundreds now. Yeah, this is, uh, this is going on days. You probably took, you took like some time though, right? This isn't constant attempts. You took breaks. You played other stuff. I'll usually like hop on, um, maybe try like 20, 30 minutes, maybe go harvest souls, try upgrading a weapon to be like, Oh, see how this feels. Oh, it's shit. Okay. Um, a lot of it comes down to. not my damage but i don't have a good way to mitigate other damage right um i'm not gonna tell you more than you want to know in fact it's better just not to mention it here because i don't want have to put a spoiler disclaimer
00:07:05
Speaker
There are all various strategies for the final boss. I will say that. And I've seen, I've seen a lot of them. People are getting a lot better at it. Um, I'm sure that if you saw one of these videos, you'd be like, I did not expect that that was what I could do in that situation. So, um, could follow up on the side or something like that. But I don't, again, I don't want to have to put a spoiler disclaimer. ah You guys can check out our Erdtree episode if you want to go in-depth for that. but um Did you do anything else in the game, not spoiler related, before other than the boss fight? Or is this just pedal to the metal? We're going to learn and and beat this beat this boss.
00:07:44
Speaker
I mean, this is kind of it. I did try loading some other characters to see where the saves were. Brand one, I was like, oh, I seem pretty decently geared. Where's? Oh, this is New Game Plus. So I would have to go through all that content again to get to the point where I can access the DLC. I was like, well, not that character. I was like, oh, maybe I can just start the DLC fresh and other character, kind of like, you know, shake my hands clean a little bit, get myself the right headset before going back and be like, okay, this save beating this boss. Yeah. And then another character was like, I don't have anything. I'm like, okay, that's cool. So right now it's really just the one, just the one. Yeah. Yeah. I only have one save. So I didn't have a plethora of options for that other than making a new character, but
00:08:33
Speaker
Yeah, I said it before, but I might go back through and challenge mode that at some point with, um, now that I know a little bit more, but overall, it's a good DLC. If you like, if you like Elden Ring, you have already played this probably, but if somehow ah it slipped your radar, give it a look. Um,
00:08:59
Speaker
what else? Uh, there's a bunch of stuff I didn't play. I did play Destiny 2, the final shape. Confirmed. i I've seen you um mean on Steam playing Destiny 2. I have nothing to watch you play it. It is. I put a lot of time in. There have been a couple times where I really just know life to Destiny and like I'm starting to taper back a little bit, mix in some other ingredients in the the the time frame, time schedule and stuff like that. But um I have a very holistic view of the
00:09:32
Speaker
expansion and then the first act of the first episode thats launch that launched right afterwards. so um It's pretty good. I heard a little bit about it at dinner last night. Uh, shout out to friend of the show Lando. Um, the only person I know who's more hardcore about the gameplay and destiny shock or Ian is the, uh, special guest. Ian is far more invested in the lore, but Lando is a gameplay God.
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah. He's like, I'm going to do the hard versions of stuff. We're like, why? Yeah. I literally, one of the last times I was talking to Dave, was it Dave? I believe so. I was talking to Dave. I'm Dave. Yeah. i um land Lando came up in like passing conversation and Dave made a joke like, ah, okay. He's definitely holding stuff back or something like that. And I remarked that like one or two hours earlier he was in the master mode of the raid like completing an optional challenge which is just do it under extra constraints basically and it's like yeah no he knows what's going on um but his impressions were what were his impressions
00:10:56
Speaker
Um, he said that the new light and dark subclass was interesting. Yeah. Prismatic. Uh, he said that they helped consolidate some of the resource types. Oh yeah. Uh, crafting things got a little bit easier to do as far as making the gun you actually want. Um, he mentioned something about like, it's weirdly now just like a hundred dollars every expansion. If you want to do all the content, um, what else did he say? they did a they did a similar thing for lightfall i believe but yeah if you want to just get everything that's gonna be in the following year um all the dungeons all the acts all the seasons all of that any expansion it's 100 bucks um which
00:11:42
Speaker
It's actually not so crazy if you think you're going to be playing across that time, but it is pretty crazy if you're like, I'm coming back to this to play for a month. Right. Like a hundred bucks for a month of gameplay is not good.
00:11:58
Speaker
um It's not the worst. I mean, yes, but if we're if we're judging the worst, it's going to be some mobile or gacha game or something like that, but just wants to like a direct link to your wallet. So anytime you think about the game, it takes your money. a But yeah, it's a overall, I really like it. It's a good culmination of the story. There's some really cool stuff in the... um The way they did it is the first people to clear the raid, which is the hardest raid they've ever released, in my opinion, which is is is very cool. It absolutely destroyed us in contest mode, which is the opening 48 hours.
00:12:36
Speaker
um the right as soon as it was completed they unlocked the like epilogue mission which is this grand culminating battle basically where the culmination of the raid was basically getting the witness weakened so that everybody can finish him off in narrative mode so even if you could not do the raid even if the idea of playing hard content in destiny is like the biggest turn off imaginable Everyone got to deal the killing blow basically in this narrative mode, which was also a 12-man activity, which was like... they've I don't think they've ever done a cooperative 12-man activity before, but it is chaos. ah But it does go into that battlefield feel. And it was really cool.
00:13:30
Speaker
um So do you think the the final shape kind of did it justice for wrapping that up? Yeah, I think overall it did. The story kind of meandered in ways that like I don't want to um go into too much detail. There's there's certain things I think places it could have had more focus, but they kind of did a balance between like this is a character narrative and this is also the end of the universe narrative. Um, and I mean, comparing it to Lightfall, anything would look good, but it's so much of an improvement compared like beyond that. The question we were making was, um, is it better than Forsaken? Which is where they introduced the Tangled Shore, the Dreaming City, the Last Wish, um, where Cade Six died.
00:14:20
Speaker
What? Right. We also made that joke in the discussion. so I mean, I really did enjoy Last Wish. Pretty cool exotic it has. um Yeah. I also made the same joke last night. Still got a thousand voices. um
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I thematically really liked Dreaming City. I also can't speak to the newest content because I've been out of it for a little bit. I mean, it seems like it's see at least in a good place. Yeah. It's got a lot more to do. um A lot more activities like in the world, because a lot of the, unfortunately, a lot of the time Dreaming City was cool, but why would you go back outside of like targeting a specific quest or something like that? There's no reason to run around. They gave you a lot of reasons to run around. and a um
00:15:16
Speaker
It's called overthrow. It's in all of the areas, but um basically there are a bunch of mini many, challenges or quests or puzzles or stuff like that, where um you complete them and it builds progress to like level up the difficulty in that area. And you do that three times, then there's a final boss, and then it goes into cool down before it like resets for like five minutes. um But because of that, it's like, They finally realized, this is the thing, they finally realized that basically their high point is
Destiny 2: Raids and Challenges
00:15:50
Speaker
when shoot gun. Do you know what's crazy? mean Everybody else has known that the entire time. Yes. But they're like, let's just like drown you in ad density. Let's make you do mini raid-like mechanics to solve um all of these challenges to progress overthrow. And it's like it's really engaging and you can just do it solo.
00:16:16
Speaker
You don't need anybody else for it. You could bring them in and run with multiple people, but it's entirely balanced so that if you want to run it also, you can. um
00:16:28
Speaker
And that's, that's good. Um, man, I hate to be wanting to do like some type of activity and just like, Oh, which is me. Uh-huh. Or just having to go into pubs. Yeah.
00:16:42
Speaker
There's one other thing, and i ah this one I'll tell people before it's a spoiler, so you can just skip ahead if you need to. But they added like the best standalone mission that they've ever added to the game. And it's called Dual Destiny, which is, I hope, just to play on Destiny 2, right? um But it's a two-person forced cooperative mission. You cannot load into it with three. You can't load into it with one, which a lot of people were pissed off about, but it literally is just go through this gauntlet of kind of raid like encounters that are just designed to be puzzles and obstacles for two people. Um, and there's, there's specific requirements on it because of it without going into a bunch of detail.
00:17:37
Speaker
One person has to be a light subclass, one person has to be a dark subclass, or you can both be prismatic. um But it feeds into the mechanics of this intertwining of light and dark that is going on in the um the Pale Heart and the Traveler. So it's really cool, and it's necessary to unlock the exotic class items in the game too.
00:18:05
Speaker
And it ends, it ends in like an awesome way that I can't even spoil. I'm not even, that I changed my mind. I'm not going to spoil it. I don't want, again, I don't want to have to put a disclaimer, but, um, like pound for pound, it is challenging. It's mentally engaging. It's impossible to be a background player for it because it's two people and it's, it's great. It's excellent. Well, I'm glad they started adding good content after I left. Yeah, that's what that's what it took. They're like, OK, we've gone too far. And Dave's got the game.
00:18:42
Speaker
So, yeah. We'll see how long it kicks. I don't think I'm going to be playing it like forever at the the same pace. And it's already starting to like dial back a bit. We're we're just doing like weekly raids now instead of daily. It was it and it was never quite daily, but. um The raid when it was really challenging, when we were still learning it and stuff, it took us about seven hours to clear. And you can't do that on a work night, comfortably, starting at seven. um The math just didn't check out. Just say you're sick. That's the go-to. Make sure that the other people are also not calling out sick. If you happen to work together, cough, cough. You also don't want to call out if it's like, this isn't the launch of the expansion, right? Like this isn't the opening raid weekend. This is just clearing it.
00:19:37
Speaker
this But we did get that out we get we did get that down to four and a half hours, which is more doable. um Is that still one of the longer ones, I assume? It is, it is, yeah. It's very challenging as it's main thing. And so there's a lot of encounters where even when everyone knows it, we may make some mistakes that cause us multiple attempts. It's not forgiving is a good way to put it. If someone makes a mistake, a lot of times that just leads to a reset. Oh, well. Yeah. Um, but based off of popular response, a lot of people wanted that and I kinda understand it. Um, but.
00:20:22
Speaker
I also, there's people who I want to play with who don't want to do the hardest content in the game, right? um And we can definitely clear the raid, but it's, it goes back to what we talked about in the podcast, right? Like how do you get people with the same expectations and then line them up so they're going to get rewards, but also, um, not turn people away who want to have fun. Right. Like that's important too. And the reality is right now is if there's any other raid on rotator, any of them would be easier than salvation's edge. So it's hard to manage that across such a wide diversity of game skill or game interest.
00:21:17
Speaker
Cause like I'm somebody who, if I get into something I'll typically want to do, not just the most basic stuff, like in Dota two, there is a turbo mode where everything's twice as fast. So you don't feel like you have to sit there for a very long time and you can just ramp up quickly. and just be doing actual character stuff. Yeah, you get through the tedious parts of the game. Yeah. But I get no enjoyment from that because it feels like a ah child's game in comparison. Right. They skip to dessert rather than yes earning it through. I mean, in the same way, though, like if they made a more difficult content or more difficult version than just standard games, I also probably wouldn't be drawn to that as well. Yeah.
00:22:03
Speaker
um I'm usually. At like a mid level of interest for trying on something, if it's something I play a lot. Yeah. Um, how did you like, how did you like dungeons and destiny from, from your memories of playing those, or do you remember? I like dungeons and I like more structured content because a lot of the things that they're going to have, I forget, you're off to remind me of the name, ah but you kind of just go do a quest on the world. Mm-hmm.
00:22:35
Speaker
and so ah there is yes that was a very broad statement on my was like i'm not sure exactly where' and going with Like they have like rotating missions that you can do oh, yeah, ah but those are exotic rotator That's an example of it. Those are probably actually even more in-depth. Or are you thinking of strikes? Yeah, just strikes. A lot of those are just fairly linear. Whereas the dungeon stuff, it is actually encouraged to, I mean, a lot of times you have to work with other people and do some mechanics. Yes. And it's nice figuring that out and then working as a team and succeeding versus me just going in. It doesn't matter. And I'm just trying to get a weekly pinnacle.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of the issue that the game has had, I think. It actually has, at least from what I've read, an abysmally low adoption rate for raids. Like a very small portion of the player base actually does raids at all. Um, which is funny because raids are also like kind of one of the selling points. If they didn't have raids, the the game would be a lot less compelling.
00:23:48
Speaker
Um, went to a planet, shot some stuff, went back and slightly upgraded like one gun. Yeah. Like, yay. Occasionally you get a good mission or like a good dungeon, but the raids are like the closest thing to large group activities that they have. Mm-hmm. um And they really have not they've done a pretty miserable job actually of providing an on-ramp for that experience Admittedly, they released like LFG you they had LFG in the game now, thankfully So that's like you can actually be like, oh I want to do this thing with other people. Let me join a group Yeah, you don't have to take your phone out for it, which was the way it used to work Yeah more of that should definitely be baked in. Yeah, cuz like if I started playing destiny 2 today and I'm not going to know too much about what is available to me. Let's just start doing things randomly, like exploring through story mission, maybe doing a strike. And then if I were to jump into something like a raid without that type of heads up or something, I'm probably going to have a bad time and be like, oh, I'm not doing that. yeah Or I might try it again if I have like a full group of people I know. But maybe even having just like a a demo raid,
00:25:08
Speaker
to be like, Hey, this is how this works. You have a team of six people. Uh, it's going to be challenging and you have to work together. Here's an example of something like that. They absolutely, that's such a good idea. I know they would never do it. Like, like literally that idea is. It's baked into other games that I've played that have rating, notably Final Fantasy 14, where it's like everything that you're doing, dodge the fire on the ground, dodge the AOE, heal the person after they get hit with a tank buster, all this stuff, do mechanic.
00:25:43
Speaker
It's not overwhelming, but it's introduced in dungeons. Yes. And then by the time you get to the harder content, the big boss fights, the raids, the extremes, whatever stuff beyond that, which I'll never see. Maybe you could even have like a. Hey, boby thank you very much. Over there, please. um It would almost make sense to as a possibility, essentially lock people out of some content as far as like, Hey, you want to do a raid? You have to at least have done two dungeons, right? You want to do the dungeon? You have to at least, um, just to make sure like you're ramping up instead of just going into something randomly. Um,
00:26:28
Speaker
But also just giving some people like a little bit of context, even if you're like selecting a character in Elden ring, you're like, what do these classes do? They have a nice little brief summary. Like, Hey, this is the kind of play style. Right. Oh, do I want to look into this type of content? Oh, here's like a little brief cut scene being like, Oh, it'll have some of this stuff like that. So people don't have to like look it up and be like, what is it? And then you have one, one monitor with like several tabs open for destiny questions. Yeah. I don't know if they can ever escape that. Cause even some of the, most of the quests are guided now, the content for the expansion, but they do have their hidden puzzle nonsense for the people that want it, the people who want to do hidden puzzle nonsense and figure it all out.
00:27:15
Speaker
Go Big Brain. um They still can, but it's not necessary enough. But there's, like you said, there's no on-ramp to ah rating experience, um which is why so many people never do it.
Industry Trends and Destiny's Future
00:27:29
Speaker
um But I don't know, overall it's overall it's good. I'm not a huge fan of some of the the content since the expansion, but that a lot of times is pretty weak. so I don't think this was, this is what we talked about before it dropped was, is this the death knell or the death kill for, for destiny to get a head shake from dan right on target. Um, and maybe we're gonna start kind of Petering down at this point. Cause they're not going to be adding more things.
00:28:06
Speaker
um I mean, like there was a good chance that if they screwed up this expansion, if it was another light fall, that's it. The IP goes to Sony, right? Especially with like how the industry's been doing, which is not super good and everybody's cutting back like everywhere and then taking that money and throwing it at i AI for some reason, but it'll solve everything. Don't worry about it. Ask them questions. Just believe it's basically a religion and he pretty much is. Yeah. But I don't think that's how dire the circumstance was. This has been really well received um beyond like the early server issues and stuff like that. um But we'll see where they go from here because this is.
00:28:55
Speaker
Bungie is so good at never telling you anything. That's the way that they like to tell stories is they just little question marks, interesting question marks all over the place, but they never fill that in or they really don't like to. And they had to put a cap on it for this, for a lot of storylines. Um, so the question is, where do they go next?
00:29:18
Speaker
I mean, you just add in something like, remember that thing that we mentioned like 17 seasons ago? There's a planet for that. It's called Titan two. And the water is actually fresh water instead of salt. Oh my gosh. We're going to get swimming. That's what they're going to add. Beach emotes. Let's go. But I mean, you can't you can really just keep expanding your universe in that case. You can. Yeah. So I mean, if they needed to, I don't think that they're really backed up into anything. They're not. But the question is, is the next thing going to be as interesting as the war between light and darkness, which at some point was kind of retcon slash refined into the war of pretty much everybody who's not the witness versus the witness. um And I don't know, you know, I feel like you'd have to give it a little bit of time.
00:30:17
Speaker
Cause if you just imagine like an anime arc, as soon as like that one ends, that major story point finally got resolved. The big boss was defeated. You don't want to have very next episode. Like I am that guy's father and I'm here for revenge. Right. And. You want to have some stuff in between before you start building up, um, some type of antagonist or overarching goal not for players. Cause otherwise it's just every, let's say every month was their release cadence. You're like, who was the new big bad guy this time i mumo versus there's a lull for a bit. And then there's like a server-wide message about like.
00:30:58
Speaker
Oh, that callous is back again. somehow alls returned Yeah, they did a little bit of that through the campaign. They have like these mentions for threats, but they basically acknowledge it. They're like, Hey, right now we're trying to present prevent the finalization of the universe. We're going to focus on that now. we'll follow up to see what's happening over here when this is all taken care of. So that's what the the first two episodes, um because that's their their structure, I think, three episodes per expansion, something like that. Anyways, that's what they're focusing on, but I don't know.
00:31:43
Speaker
As with anything, the reality is I cannot play a single game forever. I will get burnt out. I'm going to check out some other stuff. Um, and let some of that content redevelop, come back. I just have to get all my red bird red borders first. That's the essential part is I have to have these craftable weapons.
00:32:05
Speaker
um That's all I heard about back in the day. Glad to know that that's still alive. They did, ah if if you really hated it, if you really hated the craftable weapon system, the one improvement they did make this expansion is most of the things that drop in the world, you can also just level them up and enhance the perks and they'll just be as good as craftable weapons. So it's just like if you have like, oh, that's a nice pet rock or something like that. I want to improve this rock versus start with a craftable rock.
00:32:37
Speaker
You can just slap paint on it and do all that stuff until it's as good as a craftable rock. You paint on it the ah Dragon Quest slime phase.
Game Sales and New Titles
00:32:51
Speaker
But that's probably enough about Destiny. Have you played anything else recently or did anything else come out in the last month that really grabbed your interest? There's the Steam sale going on. That is true. um But weirdly, no, nothing. It's been a lot of like occasional Dota 2. I mean, definitely more before Elden Ring came out. Yes. A lot of Elden Ring. Hades 2 I haven't touched in a bit. I know they did have a decently sized patch recently. So I'll probably check that back out in a little bit.
00:33:31
Speaker
but Nothing from the steam sale. Really? A lot of the stuff that I have on my wish list are. Hey, theoretically, possibly one day, but when it's on sale, I'm not like, yeah, I'm like, I would buy and play this. It's just like, I could buy this. It's like, if somebody were to gift it to me, I would check it out, but I don't feel the the urge to go and buy it. Yeah. And also it was like on major sale type category.
00:33:58
Speaker
Well, that was your opportunity to get word count in the episode, Dave. um Stuff I bought on the Steam sale. No, I'm just kidding. But actually, yeah, that is my second way. um I bought the DLC for Oxygen Not Included, which I do want to try out at some point. But admittedly, if there was a slider here of, will I play the game that I just bought? It's not that far. Maybe someday. um About dusk, largely on your recommendation um and seeing the gameplay there really sold it for me. I need to go back to that as well. I ran into a ah difficult boss, died very quick, and then just like, oh, I'm good here for right now.
00:34:45
Speaker
So what you're saying is you're actually at the same place in shadow of the urge tree, the same situation. you You just go between, you got to switch back and forth. That's how you do it. Yeah. And then I'll load up armor course. Oh, no, I beat that. You that. You beat that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Easy mistake to make. A lot of people didn't beat that one. Um, I will say, uh, just looking at this the seam. So here I do see something that would peak your interest, but I'm not sure if you've picked it up or looked at it at all tribes, three rivals. I have it installed. I was in the open beta, but, um, or as I guess it's like an alpha, but I have not played it because they only brought the servers up at specific times. And however they notify people that the servers are coming up to actually have like a testing period. Um, apparently not subscribed to that. So all it did was take disk space. Um, if it's purchasable for money.
00:35:43
Speaker
then that's further than I've gotten with it or cut kept up. Well, it looks like it's 10 bucks currently as a 50% off. Um, another one that's that just came out or even maybe even hasn't come out. It's crazy. That's that inexpensive. No thing we were talking about last night, but my money is on. You probably would not enjoy this sure because it's a, it's a co-op experience. Um, it's called chains together. Yeah.
Crime Boss: Rockay City - A Critique
00:36:14
Speaker
So by the same person who made Only Up, which is like a single player, super crazy platforming type thing, where you just keep going higher and higher. Yeah. Now imagine that, but you're playing with other people and you are chained to them. That sounds like a friendship ender.
00:36:36
Speaker
It's a $5 friendship vendor. um And you basically have two modes, ah one where people are kind of chained in series, or one where everyone's chained together kind of like a square. So you kind of have to move as a unit versus going in order, technically. Gotcha. That's interesting. Yeah, that um basically what I'm trying to say is ah I'm at least going to get AJ to play it because AJ would have fun with that and it would have fun making somebody not have fun with it. So he's the perfect target demo for that. That is true. yeah The game was made for him.
00:37:16
Speaker
um I bought other things. What did I buy? Man, you'd think I would remember because I must have had at least some interest in them. um there's I bought the game I've been playing recently, and I could briefly mention the gameplay for that, but one of the first episodes we had for the podcast was Payday 2, long time ago, and don't listen to it. It was garbage. But there's a game that clearly, generously, you could say, was inspired by
00:37:49
Speaker
Not so generously, you could say directly rips off, um, called crime boss, rock Hey city. Oh, I remember trailers for that. Yeah. And it was panned on launch. Like IGN gave it a four. Right. Like, and there's water somewhere in the game. So usually get, I get to at least a five at IGN, but like, but too much water is is also a problem. Um, but it's seen a lot of development since it initially released. It has a really cool um rogue light single player component um and then a good chunk of multiplayer stuff and it's basically like
00:38:32
Speaker
if there was a divergent path for Payday. Payday 3 became more simulation-based and less arcadey. It takes more time, it's more serious, stuff like that. And this game is if we went even more arcadey than Payday 2. And so sometimes the heists are very fast. um But it's really fun. andm I'm having a good time with it. Nice. I'll be honest from the trailer, I expected absolutely no good things from it. Um, I can tell you a lot of bad things. It has, um, well, these aren't in their own bad things, but as voice acting and character likeness, Chuck Norris, Danny Trejo, Donald Glover. Okay.
00:39:26
Speaker
um vanilla ice exactly we're back back to the snickering um and uh the protagonist i can't remember his name but the protagonist from gta five the the main guy um trevor not well he's technically correct i'm just i got a name i don't know they have a triumvirate protagonist but the one that you start playing with Uh, the guy, the guy who was like a little bit pudgier in the face and he has ground here. I don't know. Um, not Trevor and Trevor's the really recognizable one and it's not, not him. Um, but the voice acting is absolutely the worst. Uh, the dialogue is the worst. The writing is.
00:40:13
Speaker
irreconcilably bad, like irredeemably. um It's so bad, it's so bad. And it's it's so bad in a way that like only occasionally wraps back to being like, this is so bad, it's good or campy or entertaining. Most of the time it's just like, that doesn't mean anything. Whatever you just said, that's that's just vulgarity and it doesn't mean anything. um Yeah, as soon as they started like
00:40:46
Speaker
They showed like, you know, like a pre-rendered cutscene of like people driving around late night in a city, which I guess is rock a city. Rock a. m um But like the other part of the trailer was just like, hey, here are all these famous people you recognize. I'm like, oh, oh, oh, it's a it's a sellout type game where they're going to be like, hey, you kids like this, right? um We need a hook. Oh. famous people you recognize the people right yeah good read uh you're right on the money um but clearly however much they were paying people to get like these celab celebs uh they paid for single takes like
00:41:34
Speaker
A couple people really try. So many people do not. um And i i I don't want to single out one of these people and say like, oh, it's just this person's funding it in. It's clearly a production issue because it's across the board. um But thankfully, for the most part, that's not the gameplay. It's just really funny when You're constantly like yelling at the top of your lungs telling people to get down while you're still in stealth. youre just And they they swear so much, right? Like Dave knows I don't swear that often and it doesn't bother me, but like the ratio of other words to vulgarity is there is more vulgarity than normal words. Samuel samuel L. Jackson in this game.
00:42:30
Speaker
A man, I bet they tried. I bet they tried really hard, but he wanted like at least a hundred bucks, so they they could they couldn't get him.
00:42:41
Speaker
ah Vanilla Ice wraps in this. Beat boxes, I should say. Beat boxes. No, it's still bad. It's so bad. He's also a gang leader. Of course. Yeah. So it was Danny Trejo and yeah, it's, and, uh, Oh, they also, most of their characters, uh, their character name is just basically their name. Like Chuck Norris plays a sheriff named Norris. Cool. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Donald Glover. He, uh, his, his pseudo name or nickname is clubs.
00:43:22
Speaker
Um, creativity right off the vine. Right. I feel like it could be a fun thing if you leaned into the camp. Uh-huh. Um, not in a, let's see the game. It's not GTA.
00:43:39
Speaker
Perfect. Oh, Saints Row. Saints Row. Thank you. Um, like Saints Row definitely has a more comedic approach to what they're doing. Oh yeah. Um,
00:43:50
Speaker
Yeah, just lean to something like where if you want it to be like a B rated thing, really lean into the B rated thing to make it kind of over the top bad. Yeah. to where it's fun because like everybody has a for anybody who likes shitty movies will have a soft spot for movies like the room or trolls to troll to because it just has such quotable scenes where you're like, what the actual fuck? ah Why did somebody put this into a script and pay people to film it? And so like it just so out there and
00:44:24
Speaker
you could do something like that. You could be like, yes, it's intentionally bad versus trying and then being like, oh, yeah, yes, was was a joke. Mm hmm. Yeah, it's I think in a couple of cases, you can get away with like just bad writing that somehow became campy. But you can also have what this game has, which is just bad writing that doesn't make sense a lot of the times. um And yeah, it's it's pretty ridiculous. the The game I think about when you describe like talking ah talking about using the writing to make it campy and stuff like that, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. Oh yeah. Perfect for that.
00:45:10
Speaker
They knew exactly what they were doing. Is it cheesy AF? Absolutely. Are you like flipping people off with a literal action key that they added to the game with your cyborg arm? Absolutely. I don't think this is serious, but it's hilarious and it's awesome, right? Like.
00:45:29
Speaker
Conversely, taking a bunch of actors who do not have any other gigs, getting them to record a line, and then throwing it into a script that was like- Yeah, they also had- That's bad. I forget, it's Michael Somebody, but he was in the Kill Bill movies, and he was another crime boss. I'm like, this guy hasn't doing much, huh? Uh-huh, yeah. Oh, no, that's the guy I'm thinking of. Yeah, yeah, he's also in GTA, GTA 5. Okay, yeah That was a better performance than this Also Kill Bill yeah, he was the the guy in the trailer I remember his name. It's like Benny or something like that
00:46:15
Speaker
fanny ah But otherwise, the game is pretty cool. It's got a lot of content. On the Steam sale, it's 15 bucks, which is like 50% off or something. it It includes all the DLC.
Gaming Stories and Strategies
00:46:30
Speaker
So um I'm enjoying it. I've been playing it with ah our friend Dan and um Currently there's room for four spots if it if I keep playing it over like a couple days I'll start considering buying somebody else a copy or something, but I don't want to um Basically like drop the anvil on top of them by just being here's a game and then just leave. All right We need a third and a fourth play is one day. All right. Bye
00:47:02
Speaker
ahha The last time I bought people games, it was um just for an end of week puzzle for them all to collaborate crab collaboratively solve in Discord. And I never actually launched the game. Yeah, I got one of those games, which meant I had one of the puzzle pieces. um And then ah Mango messages me like, hey, did Jake value this game? I was like, yeah. Can you tell me what the message says? Sure. ah hu I think I was busy at the time because I came back to 100 to 200 messages. Yeah, people kind of popped off a little bit.
00:47:46
Speaker
Some people couldn't engage as much for completely valid reasons or they were doing something else. And there was no way I was gonna line up the timing so everyone would be available. And then it had to be spontaneous. It was literally just, this was the puzzle actually, I'll tell you guys, was um I bought a lot of copies of Killing Floor 2. Because they were like $2.50. That's value. ahha And I was like, this is inexpensive enough that I can actually use this as a medium for something else. And, uh, yeah, the, the thing that it was, was, um, uh, each person got a word in the steam gift description. Cause no one ever reads that. Right. And that remained true for the start of the puzzle as well. A lot of the people accepted this game and completely ignored the text. That was just your word is, uh, when, or your word is the, or your word is grow. Um, but.
00:48:48
Speaker
with a couple red herring esque things. Like someone got a double word. It was like your word is the twice or something like that. Eventually everybody put it together and it was a, what do you want to be when you grow up? And that was the phrase. They had to figure it all out. And if they started to put the words together in the right order, I would respond with a check mark in discord. Um, and it was a fun little mini game.
00:49:17
Speaker
Uh, outside of this specific instance, what's the most time you've spent for another game where you did something that was so much optional, but you went and deepened the paint for it using an example of, uh, back when I played Diablo two, uh, we once, cause you can drop items on the ground and it takes up space. And if you keep dropping items, it'll kind of fill around you. Like, Oh, how much gold will it take to fill the rogue encampment? So we would drop a single gold and we did it a lot. It took like two hours. um And it was a fun thing to do. I took a screenshot of it on any machines thing back that was made in like 98 type thing. Yeah, something that has actually no value, but you you had fun just putting a lot of extra time in.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's oof that's an interesting one. I probably have a better example than the one that I thought of because the one that I thought of did actually provide value. My issue is if I'm playing the game, I want to optimize things. And unfortunately, optimization usually relates to some sort of payoff within the game. I'm not screwing off just just because. um But the thing that I think of is when I was playing Subnautica, I like to the mineral to the copper. would calculate exactly everything that was needed to make a new base. So that I could just have all of that exactly on hand fly out, build the base, and then just you know go back to main base or whatever if I had to, but I had a spreadsheet for it obviously.
00:50:55
Speaker
um That was fun. I enjoyed that. It's not as crazy as filling the rogue encampment with gold, though. It seems like you actually got something out of yours, though, as far as game efficiency. Yeah. Most recently. and No, actually, that's that's pretty much the best example I can think of because everything else relates to trying to accomplish something in the game. um and order halo to I also wasted so much time trying to go outside the map Based on YouTube videos that had a breaking Benjamin backing track ahha I still remember a good handful of them. Yeah No, that's fair Yeah, my stuff is mostly personal challenges not just for fun things I
00:51:47
Speaker
Like i've played I've played a lot of Payday 2 solo. Like a lot of Payday 2 solo because I was trying to prestige as much as possible. Like Infamous 7 or something like that. i don't I don't know. And there are people who are way more than that, but that's because they actually played the game. This was just a dedicated thing. um
00:52:12
Speaker
I don't know for fun though.
00:52:17
Speaker
What about like something in the Skyrim? I know people would try and ah stack objects on top of NPCs or do trick shots with apples into buckets. I think back, it wasn't Skyrim, but back in Oblivion, I did have a cheese wheel collection at some point where I was just like, what if I just grabbed every single cheese wheel that I possibly saw? Apparently this is a fairly common thing also that people did in these games, which just shows the degeneracy of the human mind, I guess. Putting a simulation, they seem to collect cheese wheels.
00:52:55
Speaker
um Yeah, not not too much that I can think beyond that there used to be um There was a uh, there's some of these old youtube videos like 2008 I want to say around then like this is close to the launch of youtube people used to have um crazy crisis videos where they would set up like a massive, massive, massive explosion or 20,000 cardboard boxes stocked stacked on top of each other and stuff. And then they would just render it like frame by frame over the course of four days because that's how long it would take to resolve. um And then smash it all down in Movie Maker or whatever they used.
00:53:41
Speaker
I wish I had a story like that, but I've never done that. I mean, every kind of did that, uh, in Minecraft to a degree, which kept spawning in TNT. They're like kids ever hear about lag. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, it's fair. Well, I think a lot of games are not as open for that type of thing as much like in Souls like games, I'm typically going to try and roll through things like a bunch of pews in a church or a bunch of like stacked barrels. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because there's just something mildly gratifying about it. Yeah.
00:54:22
Speaker
Um, you're like, oh yeah, let's do it and stack those sound effects and break breakable objects Um, but those are kind of just littered about I I don't even think there would be an instance of something I could do Like trying to stack items Um, occasionally trying to parkour in games. It's common where you're like, oh, yeah, I wonder if I can try and no clip through here just Jump into a death plane that's true actually I have done that tried to do that sometimes in destiny because they they tend to screw up their level geometry and it's it's nice to do that you talked about rolling into stuff though and that reminded me when I was playing through Shadow of the Urd Tree
00:55:04
Speaker
There's like, there's areas that have weapon racks, like with a whole bunch of pole arms and stuff. And I saw a message in front of them that's just like, try rolling ahead and let there be chaos or something like that. yeah And you could just roll into it and it's just like, but all of the props and everything just explodes out.
Indie Games and Market Timing
00:55:24
Speaker
And it's very satisfying. There's a reason that it's a, uh, pretty much a meme for a link, uh, to like inter pot makers house or something like that. And the guy just knows that his livelihood is over instantly. As soon as he sees you spent years, uh, enriching the earth to make this type of clay to then do this and let it hard and over. Yeah. I'll hide in here a single rupee. Uh-huh.
00:55:53
Speaker
link severely lacerates his body rolling through all of these pots. Most people breaks my, Hey, nobody, nobody touched the shards links. Like, I don't care. Um, um but yeah, that's, uh, that's most of June. Other stuff came out, but I didn't play it. Luigi's mansion, super monkey, monkey ball, banana, banana rumble, crab God. I don't know what that is. Dark and darker. I've heard of dark and darker. It's supposed to be like a first person dungeon explorer. Oh yeah. I actually think I have dark and darker on my wish list. I know it was a big thing on Twitch. I just was outside of it. Yeah. So I never really looked into it.
00:56:42
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I do know that, uh, a game called the blood came out this June, BLUD. And it's something that I actually saw at magfest a couple of years back. So it was cool to see somebody who was being, Hey, check out our indie game to then see it's actually and now an official game release. Huh. Interesting. I think it's very cartoony as far as its art direction. Gotcha. Yeah, no, it's always good to to you ah to see them succeed and go gold, though. Bold move to release the same month of Shadow of the Urtree, but you know maybe maybe the rest of the year is competitive, too. I don't know. um More competitive than Shadow of the Urtree? Why? I mean, no. really I was trying to give him some rope there, but realistically, no.
00:57:40
Speaker
this is This is the big one. It makes every other week in gaming for that month, or I should say a little bit more difficult, is this one is just like Erdtree. The difficulty in this case is after we finished talking about the DLC, I was like, oh yeah, I didn't talk about like the NPCs that much, and this other thing, and this other thing, and this other thing. We already went over on time for that, so um too much is concentrated in June as it turns out.
00:58:12
Speaker
Still Wix the Deep also came out. That's a good name. ah Based off that alone and knowing nothing else, um probably Lovecraft. Yeah, music sayluja immediately. no No reason. Yeah. That's OK, though. Nothing wrong with that. um And then Monster Hunter. There's another Monster Hunter game.
Civic Engagement and Conclusion
00:58:35
Speaker
so um Any, any words of wisdom, any life advice as we wrap up the episode? What would you tell our listeners if you could tell them something on this 4th of July or they're not listening, but however many days after 4th of July for them. Um, if you want your right to bitch about whichever candidate got elected that you did not like, um,
00:59:05
Speaker
It's going to go a lot further if you actually voted and towards that. So if you don't vote and somebody gets elected, you don't like me, we're going to complain anyway, but at least be part of the process and then complain. Yes. Exactly go vote. That's that's our advice and for for this For july, that's that's your homework. It doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter when your elections are vote now And if you're somebody who doesn't know anything about politics or how to vote or like where you stand ah socially on some issues ah Just close your eyes and think for yourself
00:59:46
Speaker
Um, would you ever vote for somebody who had a felony? so know let Let alone, let alone 34. Um, that's pretty good number though. It's all Adam together makes seven. and Um, that's fair. 34 is the rule, right?
01:00:08
Speaker
If you guys played games that you played in June, you can feel free to send those in. Maybe we missed something. Maybe we're we were too busy beneath the shade of the earth tree. Um, but send in the games that you played soapstone podcast at gmail dot.com or join the discussion on Facebook. It has a bunch of games I hear. I think like zombies versus ninjas and Farmville, I think, but it's been a while since I checked at facebook dot.com slash soap zone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night, America.
01:01:21
Speaker
you