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S3 Ep214: RSS - June - Mike
74 Plays3 years ago
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Mike as they chat, chill, and break down what they've been playing in this week's episode!
Intro:
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Intro:
- Deltarune Chapter 2 OST: - WELCOME TO THE CITY
- Deltarune - Smart Race (JP Version)
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Cultural Icebreaker
00:00:57
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. It's going. It's going. All right. It's going better, though, because we got special guest, Mike. How's it going, Mike? Hey, yeah, it's like you said. Yeah, it's going. Mike has replaced Mike and then we're asking Mike. Really? Mike.
00:01:31
Speaker
It doesn't really tell me anything, but well, actually, by deduction, I know it's not going great because usually I guess one day then people call it out. It's the the typical response when you don't want to say, oh, let me tell you all the things are going awful. It's going. Yeah, don't ask. Yeah, it's fair. There's actually.
00:01:52
Speaker
Well, I'm glad that it's going for you guys.
00:01:58
Speaker
We probably covered this at some point because the amount of meta commentary we've had about asking how people are doing as part of the intro, it's a recurring thing in the show. But I remember reading about how Americans confuse people in other cultures because they'll ask how it's going and not expect
00:02:21
Speaker
a story of whatever is going on in the day or whatever. And I think that that's hilarious. Yeah, it's it's very much an American phenomenon as far as culture goes. Yeah, it's like it is very much surface level. Yeah, I mean, you have to be pretty good friends with somebody to expect them to respond with anything that's not just like
Humor, Trauma Bonding, and Boundaries
00:02:50
Speaker
a top level wellness check. You're like, haven't ended it yet? And you're like, great. Talk to you later. Oh, well, then I am, I'm very guilty of, of breaking that rule as far as, uh, as culture goes is, uh, I frequently say things like that too, especially coworkers. They ask me how it's going and I say, Oh, well, you know,
00:03:15
Speaker
I've only downed half the bottle of whiskey instead of the entire bottle of whiskey. We're improving. I know exactly where the edge is to where the line is. It's like I'm still here. That's that's exactly on the line. Anything darker than that. And it's like a little bit too dark or a lot too dark, depending how far you go. But that's 100 percent the threshold.
00:03:40
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I'm lucky in that I have at least a couple of co workers that appreciate that kind of humor. So even if I am not necessarily joking, I am
00:03:53
Speaker
also not breaking any sort of social rules by being extraordinarily dark with my response. Right. They won't interpret it. Sorry, go ahead. Honestly, it's just a good place to be because I think a lot of my co-workers, I've never met them in person. So if I were to make a darker comment like that,
00:04:15
Speaker
They would either laugh it off very quickly as like, Oh, he's so crazy. Um, or they'd be like, Oh, really? Like, what's up? And I'm like, we're not close. I'm actually gonna tell you what's going on. Um, but you did ask and I felt obligated to say something outside of just, yeah. Right. Yeah. I think the, um, we're gonna, someone's gonna, one of you guys come up with a term for it, but they'll like shared.
Workplace Dynamics and Story Toppers
00:04:43
Speaker
ennui of employment. I don't know. It's something that exists in the workplace. It used to be a lot more prevalent when years back at like my current job where we basically it was more or less a depression circle jerk. Trauma bonding. Who's having a worse day?
00:05:06
Speaker
go back to times where it was really bad or anything like that. I find that really fucking annoying now. I might have done it a lot back then, but if you're like.
00:05:21
Speaker
Someone's like oh, I had like trouble sleeping last night. You couldn't sleep now. So I'm gonna tell you I haven't slept ever Right you complain about like the weather. It's ago. You think it's hot in there. I was like, why are you just taking it away? Bring something like yeah, I sympathize. I also feel similar because of the thing I was about to mention Yeah, there's definitely a line between
00:05:44
Speaker
trauma bonding and one-upmanship, like a story topper. Nobody likes a story topper. Yeah, right. I know at least one story topper personally. We're not close people, but like I know one. Not a fan. Not a fan.
00:06:00
Speaker
You're just like talking about a time that you got injured doing something dumb and they're like, well, yeah, I died. That's it. Got my appendix. Have you had an appendix? All right, Mr. Money Shoes. Born with a silver appendix.
00:06:21
Speaker
In his mouth, oddly enough. What type of ritual was going on in this delivery? This is before we came up with circumcision being cool, I think. It's still in the works. It's been cool for a long time. I think it's falling out of vogue in Western civilization. People go on vacation, they're like, wait a minute.
00:06:50
Speaker
I don't know where I don't I don't even track that one exactly where people go on vacation. You might have to break that one down to me because my brain immediately went to like home alone. I was like, that's not right. This is not the connection. Like Kevin McAllister is left. Kevin McAllister's mom was a fucking European guys European as a culture, typically not circumcised. Gotcha. OK, that makes sense. I don't remember that part of the movie.
00:07:24
Speaker
Oh, man. I love that feeling where you hear a phrase and you're like, this is this is the time to jump and then everybody has the same feeling. Love it. It's like here. Here's the prompt and everyone's very like, all right, got the got the call. Call and response. That's what I was going for.
00:07:43
Speaker
Colin Farrell, Colin Mockery. Mm-hmm. Speaking of Mockeries.
Gaming Favorites and Indie Highlights
00:07:50
Speaker
Um. I actually don't have a segue for that. Very interested to see where that was going to go. How do you feel about X? No. Um. Actually, no, I don't have anything. I was I was about to be like, should I commission a game? Now we already covered that. Nobody cares.
00:08:11
Speaker
Hey, beyond a state of being, what's been going on with you guys that you care to share with the internet? Oh, um, if it's pointing to me for the time being, um, recently been trying some rogue tower and a little bit more very passively, um, doing some Dota two again as my social game, some other games that I can't mention in public ever. And, uh, that's the other podcast.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's soapstone podcast after I picked up Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. I played it for like 20 minutes. We'll see where it goes. I don't know. It's I don't think going to be the best entry in the series. It feels going to be very JRPG'd up, if you know what I mean. Yeah.
00:09:03
Speaker
I have a segue for this, but I need you to buy time, Mike, so my segue won't make any sense. Sure. Yeah. I've been playing mostly indie games, as is my MO. I've been playing 20 Minutes Till Dawn, really enjoying that. They've made a balancing pass, so that's, it feels a lot more balanced at this point. You know, the standby of Binding of Isaac.
00:09:33
Speaker
Oh, classic. Yeah, I've been doing runs with the hardest character, which is now tainted lost. If you hit it lost before, it's much worse now with tainted lost. Isn't lost the one hit lose? Well, so yeah. Do you ever say something? Technically, yes. It's the one hit lost character, but there are ways you can mitigate that. Tainted lost takes away a lot of the ways you can mitigate that. So yeah. That sounds patently unfun.
00:10:04
Speaker
It is, but the character is also guaranteed to get better items. So it's easier to get a busted run, and then you just have to survive. Yeah. Hard spaceship breaker. I've been playing a lot of that. It's effectively just a 3D puzzle game, except you're taking ships apart in orbit.
00:10:33
Speaker
Were you here when we were talking about I know I know we mentioned it on an episode or we talked about it before an episode. But the story I saw, it was posted to Discord, the tutorial segment. No, OK, I'm going to restate it. It's fine. If you guys already heard it, you can walk away and make coffee and come back. But it was like it was a streamer or someone who was doing the tutorial section and it got to the point of where they can pull or repel themselves.
00:11:01
Speaker
using grapple or something like that. And they repelled a piece of debris while the person's talking in the tutorial voice explaining mechanics. And it bounces off the wall, ricochets back at them, hits them, which does a minor amount of damage, not a big deal.
00:11:19
Speaker
But the velocity, it propels them straight into the incinerator. And they just die. They burn to death instantly in the tutorial. And it was a good time. Yeah, it's definitely one of those. The number of ways you can kill yourself in a tutorial are very high. You can do a lot of things to kill yourself very quickly. Most of them shattering your helmet, but yeah.
00:11:49
Speaker
So is it just like slowly assembling pieces in space, but needing to be mindful of if you set something in motion, it will keep going? Yeah, disassembly. But yeah, breaking a ship apart. It starts very simple, just cut here, cut here, cut here, and then send it on its way to the processing points.
00:12:19
Speaker
Yeah, the physics gets real weird. You do have to keep an eye on stuff that if you detach it and don't tie it down, it will have a tendency to just float away. As the ship gets lighter, the entire chassis of the ship will just start floating away, which is a little strange, so you have to be really fine. Doesn't have gravity anymore, enough mass? Yeah.
00:12:47
Speaker
You start out not being able to pull the entire chassis with your grapple, but you can later with upgrades. So like if you accidentally grab the chassis with an upgraded grapple gun, you could just like rotate the entire ship like in 360.
00:13:05
Speaker
sick, all six axes. So you could really, really mess with how it's oriented and accidentally send it into the wrong processing point. So yeah. Then you lose your job. The ultimate game over. No, it just gets added to your, your, um,
00:13:24
Speaker
You're dead. Yeah. The gameplay itself is fun. It's enjoyable. It's very chill aside from maybe setting off a nuclear reactor. We've all been there. The story is very dystopian and I've had to pretty much ignore it because it's just
00:13:50
Speaker
Future worries of this is where we are headed. Yeah, so yeah, I Was gonna say it sounds kind of like Animal Crossing if it's just like a chill environment in a game But the main motivation is paying off your debt Yeah, sounds like the backing themes are a little different there though. Yeah Yeah, I mean there there is a story to it So, you know if that's what you you want to get out of it There's a there's an easy mode where you don't really have to worry about anything
00:14:19
Speaker
If you just want the depression. Yeah. Yeah. If you just want to be, lose all hope for the future. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. I was going to hand it back over to Dave because I don't know. It's been a while since she said anything. He asked a question.
00:14:38
Speaker
Well, I was actually going to prompt Mike with another question because I know the answer to it. What have you been playing this
Gaming Platforms: Steam Deck vs. PC
00:14:44
Speaker
on? Have you been doing this just on standalone PC? For the most part, like Shipbreaker, I've been playing on PC, but indie games in particular, I've been playing on Steam Deck. Nice. They work particularly well.
00:15:03
Speaker
It's mostly not because of hardware power, that things like Shipbreaker, Shipbreaker is just, it's not verified as working on the platform, so the controls may not work the best with the steam duction controls.
00:15:20
Speaker
Correct me if I'm wrong, it's laid out kind of like the switch when it has the Joeycons attached. Yeah, it's like a larger screen controller. Yeah, it's probably a good two or three inches wider with the controls attached. Although, you know, with Steam Deck you can't detach them, so it's all just one.
00:15:41
Speaker
It's a PSP on steroids, effective. People love the PSP. Yeah, I mean, a surprising number of people have nostalgia for it. I mean, it was like the first handheld, correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm just going off of GameStop memories. It was the first handheld really off of
00:16:05
Speaker
Past Game Boy? Like, there might have been something by SEGA at a point, probably after PSP, and it was like a shallow attempt. Yes, Game Gear. I had this exact conversation with somebody, it might have been... It was me, Jake. Yeah.
00:16:24
Speaker
Yeah. Are you guys podcasting behind my back? Yeah. So someone after, after dark. Is that all? No, we were actually sitting in your apartment when we had this conversation. It's actually true. Yeah. Oh, shit. Was I there? You very much were. I mean, physically. OK, there we go. That's where emotionally tapped astral astral plane visit, probably. Yeah.
00:16:49
Speaker
You could put a full-on Sega Genesis cartridge in it and play full Sega games. Yeah, that was the one difference and probably the one improvement that the Game Gear had over the Game Boy. Game Boy had its own cartridges, but the Game Gear could play Sega Genesis cartridges. Yeah. Not very well, but it could play them.
00:17:15
Speaker
I feel like a lot of the other games could have actually benefited from that because obviously things like GameCube, Xbox are very heavy and a pain in the ass to kind of bring around. I mean, with GameCube, they had a handle built into it, but you couldn't just prop it up and
Nostalgia and Building with Lego
00:17:33
Speaker
play. You needed external stuff. But a lot of things would have been fun to play just in a more portable fashion. Yeah.
00:17:41
Speaker
The downside was that the battery lasted until you unplugged the AC adapter from the wall. Portable if you're buying outlet. They didn't get batteries like what they had for phones until much later. I know that there's some PlayStation bias in the room.
00:18:02
Speaker
virtual room, not the logical room. But do you guys remember the N64 adapter that let you just plug in a Game Boy game? Yep. Play it on N64. That was mainly sold to me through Pokemon Stadium. Because like, hey, you can bring your Pokemon into the game. And you bring your level of 99s, and you're like, yeah, fuck them up.
00:18:31
Speaker
I don't know what other things you could have done with it. I think you could straight up play Game Boy games. I was just doing it through the console itself. Yeah, it was like literally just an attachment on the back of the controller and Game Boy games were so rudimentary. They're like 64 bits is plenty. Let's go gigantic pixels. It was actually the resolution was not upscaled in any smart way. It was pretty ridiculous. It kind of reminds me of
00:19:02
Speaker
Sega Genesis had a similar thing, but it actually plugged into the cartridge slot on the system called the 32X. It took it from a 16-bit system to a 32-bit system. You can still play Genesis games, but there were games that were specifically made for the 32X, which was kind of wild. I remember buying one.
00:19:27
Speaker
as Sega Genesis was effectively being taken off the market. So I got a cheap. That also reminds me of Game Shark when you're talking about intermediary, you know, cartridges where it's literally just like the technology is so basic, we can just literally put something in the like literal plastic in the middle and it still works. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of wild when you think about it that, you know,
00:19:52
Speaker
Putting something like that between the hardware and the cartridge had to introduce some sort of latency, but I guess maybe it didn't particularly matter because. No online. Yeah, no online. I guess as long as, yeah, I guess as long as the throughput was fine, it wouldn't have really mattered. Well, it's not actually blocking the cartridge in a console, correct? Right.
00:20:21
Speaker
You're just making a tower. Legos, basically. Cartridges is what we're describing. Or Lego, excuse me.
00:20:29
Speaker
I know our listenership. Duplex, if you will. Since you spoke of Lego, I've also been building. It is Duplo. It's OK. I have been building more Lego. The application expands. I've actually gotten Annie.
00:20:53
Speaker
I bought Annie. Annie is my wife for people who don't know that. And you bought her, okay. I got her from Lego. Oh, okay. That's good. How many pieces? Is that too personal? Surprisingly one, yeah. That's an anime. I bought her...
00:21:22
Speaker
It was a set of succulents. So like each bag was like one or two succulents that would fit into like a plant pop together. That she has thoroughly enjoyed putting together.
00:21:38
Speaker
has been her after work relaxing activity, which has been really nice. I also bought the Lego Optimus Prime, whose key feature is that it transforms without having to take it apart and put it back together. That's impressive from an engineering standpoint. Yeah. I kept saying to Annie, you know,
00:22:08
Speaker
get out. I kept saying get the fuck out. Like every time something new that I discovered, it was like, Oh, this is how they did this. That's brilliant. Get the fuck out. Like just purely at the awe of the engineering that went into making it. It was just, it was really enjoyable to build. Yeah. Lego's one of those companies that's been like pushing, pushing the envelope on imagination. Like Disney watch out.
00:22:35
Speaker
Um, even though their position is literally imagineers like Lego since like freaking mind storms, uh, has been doing ridiculous stuff. Didn't they have like a, a console game come out recently or is it coming out? Yeah, I think they've had a.
00:22:54
Speaker
Well, I mean, they've had all of the, like, the Lego Star Wars, like, Star Wars. Yeah. Sorry. I meant more of like, um, like they're actually giving you scenarios of like, Oh, we need you to build this where I can tell you what to do, which pieces, but like find a way to do it. Yeah. Yes. It's like you said, it's either come out recently or it's coming out soon. I've seen advertisements for it.
00:23:20
Speaker
I can remember last time I played a LEGO game in the sense of like a LEGO Star Wars, but I always remember them being entertaining. And the humor is just like it's in the same way you watched like a PG-13 like kids movie, like maybe something from Disney. You're like, that's it. It makes you smile. You're mad that you're smiling. You're like, that was actually really good and clever. Like LEGO movie was peak that, but it was just actually perfect.
00:23:48
Speaker
And you got the the Lego Yoda death sound out of it. So that was that was enough in its own right. I don't know if I remember. No. OK, it's I mean, so all right, I'll make a note. We'll put it in the podcast right here. Yoda death sound. But you don't recognize it, I think, if you heard it, because it's used in a lot. It's very over the top.
00:24:18
Speaker
I also wanted to mention on the LEGO front, we covered a little bit in our Flash Games episode, but I used to play tons of Flash Games on the LEGO site. And they had a bunch of really cool stuff back then. A lot of them made it into the Flash Games collection, actually. I think that might have been...
00:24:40
Speaker
a little before my interest in LEGO. That's fine. Yeah. I never really had that many LEGO actual toys. So this was my opportunity. Also, I spent a lot of time on the computer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, growing up, we never had sets. We just we had the the multi-purpose bucket of just a thousand pieces. And then you just made with it what you could.
00:25:06
Speaker
It's like the two, uh, what is it? Two by four pieces on the side, one in the middle, one on the top to make like a claw looking thing. It's freaking great budget. It's a budget tie fighter or something. I don't know. Imagination makes up like 90% of it.
00:25:25
Speaker
I mean, it's also fun to take like the preexisting sets and like you made them and then you just mantle them. It went to like the the all purpose bucket. But then you're like, oh, I want to make something. You're like, oh, I can use this thing. Like a lot of the shields and like weapons and make cool little guys.
00:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was a big part of my childhood of just taking a multitude of pieces and just turning them into something and then being really proud of it. And then one of my brothers breaking it and not being able to put it back together. So yeah. Then you get to make something new. Yeah. The dream. Me looking for the silver lining of your brother being a dick. All right. So thank you for buying me time there, Mike.
00:26:11
Speaker
Going back to things we've seen recently. Dave had mentioned Dragon Ball, which reminded me of a video that came out yesterday as a recording, maybe the day before, but it was for DBZ Fighters.
Overpowered Characters in Video Games
00:26:31
Speaker
The 2D fighting game, which honestly, if you look at it, it looks pretty good. It's got cool animations and everything. It's a 2D fighter, so I'm ineligible.
00:26:40
Speaker
But it does look cool. But the video was entirely about this latest DLC fighter that came out called Labcoat 21. And so Capcom does this thing, and I think we actually talked about it previously, where they just released overpowered DLC to sell it.
00:27:07
Speaker
And I don't know how into fighting games you are Mike so this might just be a segment for Dave you can you can come back if you need to but This character is like absolutely busted like There's not there's like three or something like wake up Offensive moves for someone who's grounded in the game. Otherwise, they're basically invulnerable unless you hit them with a super and
00:27:30
Speaker
And she just has one. She's just like, all right, you can just heal stomp them, which then pops them up into a combo so you can continue. And then there's a bunch of other stuff in the video about how her frame data is broken and there's all this stuff. And to cap it all off, I'm not going to go into crazy amount of detail. She has a special move that is a command grab that reduces the damage the opponent deals by 21% for the entire rest of the game.
00:28:00
Speaker
and buffs all of her specials for the entire rest of the game. What? Uh-huh. And they ran a tournament after she came out, and the only person who didn't have her in their roster got sixth. Everyone above that had her.
00:28:17
Speaker
And it's just, it's absurd. I fucking hate shit like that because I'm by no means a fighting game purist, but I respect like the art to a degree and like balance patches. The reason that they do balancing is so shit like this doesn't happen.
00:28:36
Speaker
Usually, if a new fighter comes out and somebody does really well with them, it's because, oh, people don't want to play against them yet. Right. So if you spend a lot of time working on that exactly, he's definitely not doing good right now. That's an inside joke for the Smash community. He's doing pretty well for the people who know him. He's dominating tournaments now.
00:28:57
Speaker
But like if people spend a lot of time, you want to be rewarded for that. Like, oh, it's my skill versus your skill. Not, oh, this person is literally fucking broken because usually like new characters come out and you make them overpowered to make them exciting initially. And then you balance them before like it goes into actual standard play. So people still care, but it's a fun, but not completely broken character. Otherwise, why not everybody pick that character all the time?
00:29:25
Speaker
Yeah, Capcom's been hitting it from both ends, apparently, because for their previous character, they actually, like, nerfed all of the characters in the roster regarding a certain mechanic, which is, like, I think the ability to hit somebody after Super or something like that. And then they introduced a new character who was able to do it. They, like, removed it from, like, everybody else, and then they literally launched a character with it, and it's like, this is choice capitalism. I hope their new Street Fighter sucks, and they don't get any money.
00:29:55
Speaker
Yeah. Mike, do you have any hard opinions on fighting games? I mean, I'm always willing to play them, but I'm always bad at them. So yeah, kind of an indifference, I guess. So you'll get roped in at like one of my parties, but you wouldn't seek it out on your own. OK. Yeah, not necessarily. I think the last fighting game that I bought was probably
00:30:25
Speaker
Mortal Kombat X, like the first remake. Yeah. That's a good one. But only played against the AI, never against a human. They're the worst, as it turns out. Because they're the best. I just like being able to swear at somebody. It's not the same fits the computer. Right.
00:30:55
Speaker
You can always just swear at somebody. You don't have to be playing a fighting game to do that. That's true. It's like a kid's summer program happening at like a gym nearby me. So they're out for most of the day in not my yard by any means, but like a nearby field. Someone's yard. God's yard. God's yard.
00:31:22
Speaker
Takes good care of it most of the time. Temperatures usually a little bit hot though, I'll say that. Yeah. I was sitting outside a little bit actually right prior to this because the UV index was like one, which is really low. The estimate was you'd have to be in the sunlight for like an hour to get burned. Damn. But it was kind of nice, you know, just sitting out on the patio, get like a breeze coming by and just like, hmm.
00:31:48
Speaker
I get it. I get it. We get it. You own a house. Come on. It could just be a detached patio. Somebody else's patio. Do you have the rocking chair outside yet? Or just a rocking chair at all? We don't have a rocking chair, unfortunately, but we have patio chairs. They couldn't have the rocking chair because then they would squish the chipmunk. That's true. Fred would not appreciate it.
00:32:17
Speaker
You just have to like look under each time before you rock forward. Mm hmm. Look again for your back. You actually ran ran away when I went outside there. He's just like, oh, OK. Runs around the outside of the house. You guys are that close yet.
00:32:31
Speaker
Not yet, unfortunately. He was actually outside of our window this morning and I was taking pictures of him, which are like not at all going to show up here, but he actually does. That shows up pretty well because he's just sitting on a rock.
00:32:48
Speaker
for the listeners, you can't actually see the pictures. He's just chilling here, like eating stuff. And Jenny's legitimately like, I don't remove weeds from this area because he eats them. So confirm, Jake, not a Disney princess, but Jenny may be a Disney. I think she's working to be one. Yeah. Uh huh. Intern internship.
00:33:13
Speaker
Well, I remember as a youth, like reading some books of like, uh, I forget who it was, but there was a fictional character based on a true story of a young boy who went to go like live out in the woods and like stole a peregrine Falcon and like trained it and all this stuff. I'm like, man, wouldn't that be cool?
00:33:33
Speaker
I'm not sure if the look is like that sounds familiar or it doesn't sound familiar at all. It does sound familiar. It kind of sounds impossible also. Yeah. There's certain things like that. I think we're definitely, uh, some liberties were taken, but I always liked that idea of, Oh, maybe I can actually like go sit outside with just like bird seed in my hand and like wait for a couple hours each day. I realized I never had the patience remotely, but if you become enough of like a stable fixture, they're like, Oh,
00:34:04
Speaker
There's food there consistently. They're thinking it's not moving. Probably safe. Yeah. I mean, that's how I befriended a squirrel at our last apartment. It would just come out onto the balcony and then we started putting out peanuts for it. And eventually it started allowing us to sit on the balcony with it. And then it started climbing into my lap to eat peanuts. So yeah. That's actually amazing.
00:34:32
Speaker
And then it got hit by a car. No. It was, it was a nice story while it lasted. Yeah. Why'd you put peanuts in front of the car? It's the betrayal. Trust no one. If I can share one cute animal story, I know it's like the only one I have. So I know I've told it over the years, but, um,
00:34:58
Speaker
Many years ago, back when I grew up with my parents, there was a park down the road. And my mom and I would go there sometimes and play tennis. And the one time there was like a squirrel just on the tennis court, like, oh, that's cute. But it was kind of not running away so much. It would kind of like walk a little bit and kind of like chill.
00:35:16
Speaker
And then like kind of like startle itself and that go again We eventually found out that it was a narcoleptic squirrel or something else is wrong with it But we were able to like go up and pet it Which I don't think I was supposed to do at the time probably like oh, it's nature. It's here. It's so cute and present
00:35:37
Speaker
Literally go like five feet and then kind of like doze off and then just become a mobile and they'd be like, oh shit I was doing something. What was that? Well, it was cute though It was pretty cute I'll be I'll be the Debbie downer and say to the listening audience if you see animals behaving oddly Don't pet them probably disease rabies is like the worst thing imaginable So if there's a chance that you know
00:36:06
Speaker
They have it, but don't. Um, not to change the topic to rabies, but it is pretty messed up. I'm not, I'm not an expert on it, but you can just go to Wikipedia and you will be an expert and you'll never, never touch up here. Touch a weird squirrel again. Wasn't that a Genesis game? Rayman raving rabies. Yeah.
00:36:31
Speaker
He died, actually, after that game. They never made another Rayman game. Rabbids had to go on without him. Yeah, they went on to... Didn't they have a game with Rabbids and Mario, but it was designed like XCOM? Yep. Yep. And nearly every fight you could win in one turn or something like that.
00:36:59
Speaker
I wasn't sure of the difficulty, but I know they won an award for it. And like the creator of it, like cried at the game awards. It was like a very touching moment because they just like, we're so invested in the game. You know, sometimes people still make games as a passion, you know, thing. So God, it's rare. You see, it's weird. Mm hmm.
00:37:24
Speaker
I don't know where it started though, the idea of mashing up Mario and Rabbids. Nintendo's done that a little bit more recently, right? We talked about it just very briefly, Cadence of Hyrule and some other games where they're like, hey, yeah, sure, whatever. You can use Link or Mario in your game.
00:37:45
Speaker
I'm trying to think of another instance. I know way back they had Mario and Sonic at the Olympics, which was a big crossover for the time. I think that was post like Sega's downfall though, right? When Nintendo was absorbing Mario, or Mario absorbing Sonic into the fold. They were taking a
00:38:08
Speaker
a literal and in-game victory lab. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's crazy. I still love a good crossover, but it has to be of like two IPs I like.
Game Crossovers and Preferences
00:38:25
Speaker
I really don't like when they take a character I do like and they shove them into like a shitty IP. I'm like, why'd you do that? So what I'm hearing is Doki Doki Literature Club and Huni Pop.
00:38:39
Speaker
If they did a crossover, that'd be insane. Yeah, I don't know what the genre of that game is anymore. With that crossover. I don't know. I guess it's still a match. It's still a match three and still a dating sim. But if if you if you lose, the consequences are much more dire. Yeah, I guess so. Oh, man.
00:39:08
Speaker
Uh, I also, I appreciate honey pop because it takes all of the, uh, you could just reference that game. Right. It's just like, okay, haha. You want to like reference weird steam. It's honey pop. Someone's playing something weird on steam. It's honey pop, you know? Yeah. It's a great gather the entire, uh, scope of weird steam stuff and be like, that person plays honey pop. It's like calling video games. Are you playing the Pokeman's?
00:39:38
Speaker
Mm-hmm and to like the onlooker. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. It's pokeman's. Mm-hmm. Meanwhile, you don't tell them what it actually is a Connect three game the worst thing imaginable
00:39:50
Speaker
Well, I know Davis played honey pop. The way it sounds, have you also played honey pop, Jake? I can not confirm or deny any Connect 3 game progress ever made. Boggle was a very formative time for me. I realize it's not Connect 3, but it's still Connect the orbs.
00:40:14
Speaker
But then I saw people straight up lose their minds to Candy Crush. And so you got to swear that stuff off. To be fair, those are... Go ahead. No, you go ahead. I was just going to say, I would like to apologize if I have unduly outed you, Dave. I apologize. Oh, no, it's... He has the adage. He has the adage. Oh, yeah, I'll edit this out. Sure, sure.
00:40:43
Speaker
But it's definitely not the worst thing I've played. I also don't think it's the worst game.
00:40:49
Speaker
Like it is mildly entertaining for what it is. But I do not enjoy match three as a format because it's just very tedious in my eyes. Yeah. I also think I actually know something about honey pop. The version on Steam is not like an adult game per se. Like it's one of those games where like in the comments for him, it's like, hey,
00:41:16
Speaker
You could patch it if you want, you know, if you want things to go a little bit crazy. But it is also like legitimately just a Connect3 game, which I assume is the version Dave's played all these hours. Yeah. I don't have a follow up to that. That was just me throwing the lifeline and then
00:41:40
Speaker
I've definitely never played a enhanced or modded version of any game. Payday 2, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3. Mods are great. They're the best. I was actually listening to our Divinity Original Sin 2 episode because I sent it off to someone this week.
00:42:08
Speaker
I don't know if you're, I think it might be the one game we played modded where you're like, ah, but otherwise I think they generally hold up. Yeah, I still love that game. I think I've played three separate campaigns.
00:42:23
Speaker
But I know when we did the modded one with Justin, it was a buggy nightmare. And I'm sure Mike remembers when we had long fights where we would lose for either the game crashing under, quote unquote, normal circumstances, or us just losing. It was a pain in the dick to go back and do some of that. So just so he could turn into a fucking bear, Justin, you fucked us. Still a solid game. Still an entertaining mod though.
00:42:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think those crashes after long sections of not saving definitely killed any joy for the early game for me.
00:43:07
Speaker
I'm really surprised that their default auto saving policy isn't more aggressive. I think it does sometimes around combat, but I don't think it's consistent. So you could sometimes lose progress up to even beyond.
00:43:24
Speaker
the breakout of a combat encounter. I think if it like always, games should auto save pretty much like at combat, in my opinion. Because if you're going to save scum, it's going to be here. If you're going to be upset, if you die and lose progress, it's going to be here. Put your saves right at the beginning of combat. Life advice. But then that would have to change for hardcore. Like if somebody's playing hardcore, one life and then your save file is done.
00:43:55
Speaker
I mean, that's that sounds like the right way to do it and shouldn't be safe, safe, scummy and hardcore theoretically. I don't think I could play that game hardcore, though, like if you have crits. Hardcore is. It could be a bad time.
00:44:14
Speaker
Yeah, there'd be one time I wouldn't factor something going horribly wrong or just not turning the camera and seeing one enemy or maybe an enemy hasn't even shown himself yet. And you're like, oh, my people are way out of position. Oh, they're dead. Yeah. But thankfully, like you can revive and other things to mitigate. It's like it wouldn't be like a full party. But I have have either of you actually played any games on like a hardcore mode?
00:44:45
Speaker
I think we talked about this yesterday. No, no, no. Last episode, we were talking about death. No. We talked about video game death. And we talked about hardcore a little bit there. Well, now this is awkward. No, it's kind of funny. Well, no, I'm glad you're keeping up, right? You're like, hey, relating to that thing you guys talked about last week. Yeah, that's totally where it was coming from. Yeah. Uh-huh. Now, I mean, I'm not hugely into it because,
00:45:11
Speaker
Maybe if I was younger, I'd enjoy it a little bit more. But I don't know. I don't want to be frustrated with the game. And so I'm more likely to cheat at a game than I am to play hardcore mode, if that makes any sense. Yeah, no, that makes sense. You want to get enjoyment out of the game and not the frustration that you may or may not experience in real life at work. Yeah.
00:45:40
Speaker
Because, you know, playing on that kind of a difficulty level is effectively work. Like you have to do so much more, you have to put so much more focus and more energy and more time into making sure nothing is going to screw up. And just, I would agree that it seems like it's more work than what it's worth.
00:46:02
Speaker
I want to append though, I do enjoy survival modes a lot of times. Like Fallout 4 had a survival mode eventually and add a lot of mechanics. If it's just like changing the gameplay style up and then difficulty is a side effect of that, then I might be on board for it if it's a more immersive experience, but not just make it super, super hard for your partner's sake.
00:46:25
Speaker
I was more like you're doing a run of something. And it's assumed that it's it has like a fixed time somewhere versus you just straight up losing all the progress because you died once. So like Nazi zombies back in like the college era was amazing because you get everybody together like you'd see how far you could go. But you knew at some point there was going to be an end of the road.
00:46:52
Speaker
It's vampire survivors. I was going to say vampire survivors 20 minutes to dawn. I have grown to appreciate the fact that a run is going to take a very specific amount of time. You know, oh, there's half an hour before I have to go do anything. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to run this 20 minute game and that's it.
00:47:12
Speaker
death will cut me off if I am tempted to go over. Which also applies to real life, actually. So that's nice.
00:47:25
Speaker
That will be my out if something's running too long. Well, no, I say if you're ever just like, yeah, I think I was just like live forever. It's like, no, limited run. Oh, yeah. I just keep forgetting to put points into like progression or anything that's going to help my stats. It's very common. I'm just playing a survival game at this point. Metal Gear's subsistence.
00:47:55
Speaker
Was that what it was called? It was the distance was the, I won't say the director's conversion, but it was like the enhanced version. So I think they did change some things, maybe add a skin or two. I forget what the, maybe some graphical stuff, but that would probably just cost more money. It was the same game. Honestly. Was that PS two or PS three? Two. Okay. Two. And I only remember that because.
00:48:22
Speaker
There was a specific, I don't wanna say glitch, but exploit you could do with the binoculars and zooming in and then quick switching to your weapon. So your reticle being the exact same point and you could like snipe people with your pistol and like tranquilize them from like a mile away. It was so good. But I remember the specific hand configuration on the PS2 dual shock for that.
00:48:44
Speaker
That's actually a recurring thing in games. That was in Dark Souls also. You use Binoculars first to get your reticule right exactly here and that's where magic would go or whatever.
00:48:57
Speaker
like binoculars in one hand and wand in the other hand was a legitimate magic build. I can't imagine using magic at least especially older Dark Souls types games without targeting and just being like, oh, I'm gonna line this up. Well, the targeting only went so far out, but you could line up shots even further out with the binoculars.
00:49:20
Speaker
Oh, it's like outside of aggro range. Yes. This isn't something you usually do in combat. This is because you're cheesing the game, right? Like, what is it? Manus in DS1. You can like, snipe him from the top of the pit. You're just like, find somewhere down there, there's some red eyes, and we're just going to take that health bar to zero before we drop down. Then he just dies.
00:49:49
Speaker
Again more likely to cheat I Think at one point I did try Diablo 2 hardcore Hmm, but I only got to like level 30 or something before I either died or quit out of just sheer anxiety. Mm-hmm Everyone's fought rockin issue and shit their pants. You know I'm saying like it's just rockin issue
00:50:18
Speaker
Yeah, the anxiety is the big part. Like, it's the main reason I can't play XCOM in any mode, essentially. It's just like, I feel like this is sub-optimal, sub-optimal things happened. And so I'm working my way towards defeat in my brain. And that just makes it unfun for me. It also has an Iron Man mode. There's no way I'm touching that. Like there's a negative chance.
00:50:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's strange that even on the easier difficulties, XCOM is still such a brutally difficult game. It just feels like the game is just trying to give you the middle finger the entire time. Yeah. It wants to make the experience harrowing by making close calls happen, even if you're prepared.
00:51:13
Speaker
Or sometimes you just get screwed, you know? Like that's the game. Fire the soldier that missed the point blank shotgun shot with 99% accuracy or whatever. Seriously? That would break my heart. This is a war they're very clearly inhaling it.
00:51:38
Speaker
Like, when a game gives you a 10% chance for something to happen, I don't even think about born. It does happen. I'm like, yeah, RNG, what up? But if I see anything that's over 50%, I'm like, why didn't that happen every single time? It was guaranteed. Right. Feels so bad. Yeah. I'm forgetting the game, but there was a game where the way it handled luck and something else
00:52:08
Speaker
you could continue to stack past a hundred percent and the further over a hundred percent. So a hundred percent, you would always fire two bullets. And if you went past 150%, you were guaranteed to fire three bullets. And beyond that, like the scale got smaller and smaller for stacking higher and higher. And you would, you could eventually be firing like 10 bullets from a single shot. If you really stacked block.
00:52:38
Speaker
It just made me think of that. Now I'm going to have to find that. I always like when luck actually becomes a value stat versus being such a throw away. Because I will gamble with RNG if I know the odds could be good. But if it's just like, hey, your item finds better, I'm like, oh, I don't care. Yeah, it needs to actually have an impact versus
00:53:04
Speaker
just being a very, very passive ability. That's one of the things of, like, luck is a really common dump stat in the Fallout series, but you can also very clearly see what you're missing by not having luck. Like, yeah, the crit chance is somewhere in the background and whatever.
00:53:23
Speaker
But like in Fallout 3 and New Vegas and 4, if you come up against the requirements for like a luck perk, and you don't have enough points in luck, you specifically see like this is what the advantage would have been. Like I'm more a fan of them giving you the information and allowing you to build around it. It's still a very common dump stat, that and charisma. Oftentimes take
00:53:46
Speaker
A big hit in those games, but um, at least it's an informed decision instead of I don't know You're gonna slip on a banana pill at the midpoint in the game because you didn't 20 points of luck Yeah, it's Better to show everything up front and even decide like oh for this playthrough. This is my character who I will be. Mm-hmm
00:54:13
Speaker
But also knowing the benefits of it versus just, I hope I can talk my way to all situations and hope there's never guns involved. Yeah. Also like rounding stats. Hmm. So much better. Oh yeah. Like if once that applies to multiple things versus just one singular thing. Yeah.
00:54:32
Speaker
It's good to double dip if you can. Speaking of talking yourself out of all situations, though, and guns and things like that, I have been playing Griftlands recently. And that is a game that has those things.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah, I watched a fair bit of it when it was first out in Early Access. It definitely was interesting. It just was not something that piqued my interest, but it seemed like it was... I mean, it's a clay game, so it's...
00:55:08
Speaker
It's going to be very well thought out. The art's going to be good. The sound design is going to be good and the world's going to be interesting. I think I was a little burnt out on Slay the Spire at that point. Yeah, that's not the time to pick it up. Yeah.
00:55:24
Speaker
For the listeners, the combat is Slay the Spire. And the negotiation system is adjacent to Slay the Spire. It's Slay the Spire plus some other mechanics. But no, it's really cool. Yeah, the comparison to Slay the Spire is probably not.
00:55:44
Speaker
A hundred percent fair. It's a hundred percent fair. Well, it's a deck building combat game, but it's not a vertical climbing system like you see in other games like Peggling. It feels like there's actually a world there instead of just this nondescript path forward.
00:56:11
Speaker
There is, but they kind of just hide it a little bit, right? Like in Slay the Spire, you see the branches ahead of you. And in Griftlands, it's like as you progress through the day, different missions are available and they might come from like a random pool. They might be encounters you saw from like a different run, but you get different choices.
00:56:30
Speaker
So they kind of like, if you were to collapse them in a computer science-y way, it probably would form a similar structure. Yeah, exactly. So it's just a more immersive style of Slay the Spire. Yeah. But mechanically, you're saying it behaves the same? Yeah. It is more narrative, though. It's a decisions matter game, going back to that old Steam tag.
00:56:58
Speaker
where every single person you run across basically has a buff if they love you, a debuff if they hate you, and loot if you kill them. So for a given run, in order to populate all that information, you need to make everyone hate you over the course of however many runs, love you over however many runs, and kill them over however many runs.
00:57:24
Speaker
So so do the relationships persist between runs? Is that the meta progression? No, but it is it is a longer run game where Like we're talking about vampire survivors cuts you off at 30 minutes grift lands It pushes up against the boundary of how long I want a given ratchet to last Almost like a darkest dungeon kind of length like you could yes, you could spend up three or four hours Easily, oh, yeah
00:57:56
Speaker
very much like that. But it's really good, though. And if you played Slay of the Spire, it has the, you know, like 70 percent of the mechanics off the jump, but it's still really good card art and all that stuff. I don't want to talk about it a bunch because this isn't me. They haven't paid me anything. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Optimism is key. Got to put it on your vision board. Make money from talking about video games. Uh huh.
00:58:26
Speaker
Pray to the vision board every day. I think that's how it's supposed to be. I just prayed a vision, the Marvel character. Yeah. See, can I go directly to the Mind Stone? I mean, he is pretty bored that you prayed to him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's been the thing, though, and then trying to make more progress in Death Stranding really recently. I did see you launch that, like, right before we recorded it. I was like, is he going back?
00:58:56
Speaker
I mean, my opinions of the game still hold true as far as the things I find tedious and the things I find entertaining or cool about it. I just haven't found it in myself to go back to it yet. Yeah. I mean, you beat the game though, right? No, I think. No, you didn't. Never mind. I think I made it to the last area. So towards end game, but probably still like 50 hours off because, you know, Kojima.
00:59:24
Speaker
Mm hmm. It's our own PC now. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm playing it on. Gotcha. So you didn't make it through the Mountain Dew, uh, fountains level. That makes sense. Okay. I believe that's the thing. It could be in the game. I believe it's the thing. No, it's, it's something silly. You could say there's a mission specifically about pissing in like certain locations. I'd be like, yeah, believe it. Mm hmm.
00:59:54
Speaker
It's such a weird game. When I started it back up, there's actually like dialogue for certain characters where it's like, wow, it's been a long time since I saw you. And I was like, I don't think that's true. Thanks. Fragile. We should talk at some point, not this episode, but like about internal clocks. Cause I know, uh, Animal Crossing obviously had that.
01:00:21
Speaker
I just, I think that's an interesting thing for the game to keep track of. Yeah. In the case of Animal Crossing, it matters for like holidays and like events and other stuff. And then building that relationship with your NPCs, but you don't see it too, too often. More games should let you be a time traveler just by adjusting the system clock idea for a
Innovative Game Ideas and Comparisons
01:00:43
Speaker
game. So let's get this into the podcast. So if someone makes it, they always royalties.
01:00:49
Speaker
It's one of those games that plays with your perceptions of what's going on in the game, what's not, where you are required to adjust your system clock to see future and past events. Interesting.
01:01:06
Speaker
This will be basically unplayable for anyone who isn't pretty proficient with computers or doesn't have admin access. And I guess it rules out consoles as well. Although I guess you could, yeah, you could theoretically adjust the time on a console as well. God damn right you can. I've definitely done it in Animal Crossing on Switch. There we go.
01:01:26
Speaker
What you got to do is screw with the permissions in the game itself. So the game has the permission to change your system clock. There you go. Why does this game require admin? I have to put a pin in it for when we talk about Pony Island one day, but I like stuff like that.
01:01:50
Speaker
We'll have a good fourth wall break. Sorry. I know we're coming up on time, but Mike, I want to ask how are you enjoying 20 minutes to dawn compared to a vampire survivors, which we have all sunk a fuck ton of time into more than 20 minutes. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's enjoyable in its own right. Um, I think it's still early enough in its development that there's a lot of room for growth and improving on certain things.
01:02:22
Speaker
But yeah, I would say I would still prefer a vampire survivors over it just because it seems like there's very limited room for meta progression right now. There's a darkness system that makes the game harder like Ascension.
01:02:39
Speaker
Slayer, but beyond that there's not really any sort of meta progression. There's runes that are like permanent buffs and you can select different combinations, but there's no like unlock system, there's no
01:03:01
Speaker
There's no system for reaching certain goals to then unlock more characters. All the characters are just unlocked from the start. It's got to see some more development. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see where it goes. But as is, it is a thoroughly enjoyable game. And I think it's less than $5. So it is enjoyable for the price.
01:03:30
Speaker
I do have a critique of this game, though, I think a very massive misstep and I don't own it, but they released a demo and they did a really cute thing, which I thought was funny, but also dumb, which was they named the demo 10 minutes till dawn and it's a separate game on Steam. So I was like.
01:03:54
Speaker
Right. That game. Maybe I should look and see like how much it actually costs. And if you go to like the store page to now purchase the game, it just says this game is no longer available because they made the demo temporarily available and it's a separate title. You can't have it be called something else. So for anyone who played the demo and just can't remember that it was actually 20 minutes instead of 10 minutes, they actually potentially lost all of those people because it looks like the game is not on Steam.
01:04:22
Speaker
So the funny thing about that is there is the actual ability within the game, the full release or the 20 minutes version, to only play a 10 minute run. So the demo functionality is in the game. So I'm wondering why they would have done, other than just they didn't have time to properly code a demo, like to cut functionality off.
01:04:48
Speaker
Steam lets you have different like distributables though, for like a demo and like the full release. Right. So I think they did it literally for the gag for the joke of this is 10 minutes to dawn. Maybe. Because it's not a full 20 minutes to dawn. Interesting decision. Run that one by marketing.
01:05:12
Speaker
Do you think if they make a third get, sorry, increment intervals of 10 minutes, 28 weeks to done. I was going to say at some point we're going to get to seven days to die. That's going to go from a 2d to a 3d game. What if they're set in the same universe?
01:05:38
Speaker
That would probably not be set back in the timeline. Well, I would like to extend our thanks once again to Mike coming on here being a guest on the podcast. Always a pleasure to have you. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
01:06:01
Speaker
Anytime that you come up in rotation. No, I'm just kidding. Regardless of what Jake says, I'll have you anytime. Anytime in two weeks notice, yeah. Yeah, we do try to give people more heads up, but Mike, I'll shamelessly shout out is good at filling in sometimes. If we have complications or scheduling conflicts, things like that. He's a trooper and he's jumped in to save us.
01:06:28
Speaker
much appreciated. Dave does know that I am good at filling in. Yeah. I wasn't going to do a second one, but I was like, I see it. I see it there. I'm going to gloss over all the innuendo. But if you guys have innuendo that you would like to send to us that relates to video games, I guess, recommendations,
01:06:49
Speaker
I don't know. Send that in at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com, or you can join the discussion on Facebook. I recently started talking to a couple people there. I'll try to get them off the platform and onto other things. Facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:08:00
Speaker
you