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00:00:01
S2 Ep92: Trine 2
77 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they head out adventuring in this week's episode!
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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/
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Transcript
00:00:16
Speaker
you
Introduction and Segment Revival
00:00:37
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Life is a lie. How are you doing? Yeah. That good? It really is. Figured we'd kick off this episode with the resurrection of an old segment that we haven't run since last week.
00:01:04
Speaker
Oh, oh, I guess they canned bread. Canned bread, yeah. Guinevere's canned bread. Which is a type of food which you could eat if you were eating with soap. Eating with soap. Don't have a formalized song for this yet. So it's Dave just riffing on the mic. Sorry. That's good. I like that.
00:01:23
Speaker
I'm going to copy that and put that at the start of every segment. All right. So we're talking food. I have something I want to share near and dear to my heart.
Culinary Adventures and Consequences
00:01:33
Speaker
Yesterday I went to Wegmans. They have these Buffalo chicken patties, which I mean looked kind of decent, whatever. But I just put a little bit of butter in the pan so it wouldn't stick. I cooked them up, broiled them nice. And I ate both of them.
00:01:51
Speaker
And it was so juicy and tasty and delicious. Oh, man. And I have no regrets until today. I have a weaker insides of sorts. Right. And there were severe ramifications for that much richness and flavor.
00:02:08
Speaker
But I would do it again. I was trying to make like a load-bearing gut joke or something like that. I just like the term load-bearing like it's just it's great, but I can think of nothing there. Have you been eating anything exciting or plans to cook anything exciting? No.
00:02:29
Speaker
As your wife made anything exciting. I had some, uh, uh, some fish, um, that was breaded. Just, just fish. Well, it was like, um, some sort of whitefish cod, perhaps. Could be cod.
00:02:45
Speaker
I'm willing to bet you a good $10 right now, a cool 10. It's not salmon. It's tilapia. It's probably tilapia, yeah. Your wife's not buying cod to bread that up. I don't know how fish work. I'm a human. But yeah, probably tilapia, breaded with some rice and broccoli. Breaded with rice, interesting.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah. See, I do know things, but yeah, some rice and broccoli and like, uh, lemon juice on the, on the actual fish itself. Nice. And then I went back and grabbed like a ton more lemon juice and put it on the fish itself. Cause like lemon juice. And what am I going to say?
00:03:27
Speaker
How would you feel about like a lemon type sauce or dressing instead of just the juice itself? Would you prefer that or do you like the sharp tartness of just the raw juice? Right. Sauce I could see probably a little bit more. Yeah. Maybe something like a little creamy. Um.
00:03:44
Speaker
Well, do you like tartar sauce? I do like tartar sauce specifically with the
Exploring the Game: Trine
00:03:49
Speaker
appropriate accompanying foods. Um, fish. Exactly. Cod, I assume. What about fries? Uh, like a fish and chips. They do all right. Um, yeah, I mean, I would dip if I still had like tartar sauce left and I didn't tartar sauce and ketchup. Right. If it was together, I don't know. You're losing me.
00:04:11
Speaker
So you like, you like tartar sauce and fries? You're losing me, Dave. Yeah. I mean, I could, I could eat tartar sauce and fries. You're like ketchup and fries. Yeah. But put your two hands together. That's not how food works all the time though. Not, not always. This is how you get peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.
00:04:34
Speaker
I like pickles and that's where I have to leave it. You never tried to clean it, buddy. I've heard rumors about getting stuck to the roof of my mouth because my mouth would be swelling shut. So yeah, don't do that. Maybe not for me. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'll try it next time. Next time I'm feeling advantageous.
00:04:55
Speaker
Let's talk about food like gloves what game we got tonight Jake we have an advantageous game trying to Which is a side-scroller puzzle light action sequence co-op single-player
00:05:11
Speaker
Back before games had a clear direction, they went with trine. So yeah, it has much more of an arcade-y feel, where it's kind of old-school RPG where you have your mage, you have your beefy guy who only knows about strength, and then you have your sexy-daxy... Which is the rogue in this case. Yeah, the thief.
00:05:36
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it's, it's more platformy puzzle with like some combat interspersed. Yeah. Kind of like break it up, I think. Is that why they did it?
00:05:49
Speaker
It's fairly simple as the design goes and it's not a bad game by any means. But for me, this is such a departure from what I'm used to for complex games where it's like, this is what I am. I'm very high-end graphically or mechanically or just detailed in so many other ways. And this is like going way back.
00:06:12
Speaker
yeah it definitely has that kind of classic platformer feel um in a lot of ways and it's not even it's not even super old um well actually kind of yeah nine years now but uh nine years is not old enough jake i know what they're telling you there's some there's there's good platformers that are like significantly older than nine years
00:06:36
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it's, it has its own kind of slew of issues. I think we can get into, but, uh, it really starts off with, so we played multiplayer with, um, I don't know if we are paid by steam or not, but the remote play is really nice.
00:06:54
Speaker
It's convenient in a way because Jake can already own the game. I don't have to buy the game, but I can just join in his session, use a different control scheme. It's like we can't both be on controller, both be on keyboard. Right. But it's like we're doing local play, but remotely, which is convenient. Yeah. We've talked about it before and it's honestly, it's really, really nice. Guess what we're doing for future episodes.
00:07:17
Speaker
I mean, I did look back through my catalog and I was like, Oh, you know, here's some games here that only had a local play. Um, but like, just think about all the savings, think about all the money we brought in. It's just ridiculous. Just thousands and thousands of dollars on platformers, but specifically for this podcast.
00:07:37
Speaker
But anyways, so yeah, we played through like that. And when we started up the game, it gave us some settings options. Like you can choose whether you guys can mirror the same character. So maybe you could both be the thief at the same time. But that's not default. The default is just one of each, right?
00:07:57
Speaker
And you could choose whether the wizard levitation, um, whether he could pick up boxes, he himself is standing on whether you could pick up boxes, your ally is standing on, or whether you can't pick up anything that either of you is standing on. So a key thing to point out, um, wizard is the most broken character because like Jake said, uh, he can levitate things.
00:08:20
Speaker
So essentially, I feel like our setting was, I think the default where you can pick up things that your cohort is standing on. Yeah, we went all defaults. Can't have the same character. Yeah. Can't pick up. So like Jake could be a wizard. I could be the thief and he would just draw a line to make a platform or draw a square to make a box.
00:08:41
Speaker
I would get on top of that and he would move me to where I needed to go. And then I'd wait patiently while Jake figured out how to get over. Yeah. We later realized that as Jake was the host, if I was the wizard, I could move him over to where he needed to go. I could then desync from multiplayer, resync into multiplayer and spawn where he was.
00:09:04
Speaker
Thus the speedrun was literally the drop-in drop-out like thing you're talking about earlier like to the extreme you sees play in the game rejoin the game yep like instantaneously This again reminds me back to
00:09:20
Speaker
I don't know if we talked about in the episode, but Kirby Superstar. Yeah. Where if you were second player, you could just be like, I'm going to D summon. You would just become like a star that swirls behind Kirby and then player one has to go do things. Right. So it's convenient if you're about to die or something, or if you're just a cheeky shit, you can be like,
00:09:39
Speaker
Nah, you do this. Yeah, you could also do that in the Sonic co-op with Tails. Really? Yeah, Tails would just follow behind you by default unless you overtook him with controls and then he could get like lost behind you or stuff like that. I think he could still get hit, but he'll just like fall out of the ceiling every time.
00:10:01
Speaker
He flies down trying to imagine who said he's behind you unless you overtake him, right? That's the most awkward way I could describe it. But if player two starts using controls then oh They start operating his tail. So as a he always falls behind you exactly unless he's
00:10:18
Speaker
So he behaves automatically, unless he's manually controlled, is that what you're saying? Yes, that would be the more concise way to put it. So yeah, we played with default settings and we did use that moving boxes with allies feature a lot to
00:10:36
Speaker
bypass a lot of the puzzles because we were just like, you know, going through progress. And if we have a solution, why should we spend time like figuring out the correct solution? Right. And it seemed to be the final solution for what we needed.
00:10:50
Speaker
yeah um i mean it just works in a lot of cases sometimes the puzzles were a little bit more they were usually something we figured out pretty quickly anyways but maybe due to some physics jankiness it would have been harder to implement correctly um it's not very it's not at all snappy and how physics works sometimes jumps were really imprecise and you wouldn't like there's a um
00:11:16
Speaker
Crap, I keep putting myself in situations where I have to remember this word and I never remember it But when you climb up when you climb up like a ledge, it's not like leging But like it's not vaulting or
00:11:37
Speaker
Gantrain you guys know what I'm talking about. I mean if you are vaulting like a short fence It is kind of like waist height. You're kind of pushing yourself up and over There's a word for it though, and I can't remember what it is. I
00:11:50
Speaker
That's all right. Nobody cares. Anyways, it's hard to grab ledges reliably in this and, um, especially combined with all of the physics on the boxes and your ally moving those boxes. Like you can drop people, crush them, but new things like no, no problem.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's fairly janky in how some of it behaves, but part of that becomes a little bit fun. Yes, actually. So there are some turret plants, which kind of just shoot out like a couple projectiles. I mean, you've played plants versus zombies, you know what I mean? Yeah. But these projectiles, when they're shot out, if you are the knight character, you have a shield, which is directional. Yeah. So you can deflect the blasts.
00:12:34
Speaker
at your teammate. Which you did. So like, the projectiles do not despawn unless they hit a surface. So I would deflect them, which didn't count as a surface, and I'd shoot them towards Jake accidentally, sometimes intentionally.
00:12:51
Speaker
I remember when I gave it past you, I had like completed part of the puzzle or I had gotten past the obstacles and you were just like lagging behind and I kind of like looked to the side or whatever and looked back and like my character dies because the reason you're lagging behind is because you're angling enemy projectiles at me. It's an experience. They do respawn characters really fast though. Like there's these orbs. As soon as you touch them, you get all of your characters back.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a little checkpoints, I guess.
Game Upgrades and Skill Trees
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah. So we came across some bigger bosses, which are big, meaty health boys. And basically, if you get hit once, you're dead. Yeah. And the mage or wazer doesn't really have any type of combat to do at all. The rogue has bow and arrow, which is fine. Doesn't do a whole lot of damage. And the knight, which has a shield and a sword,
00:13:48
Speaker
does some decent damage, but again, if you get hit once, you're dead. And the hammer. Also has the hammer. Also has the hammer, which is more comically animated than anything. It's hilarious. From the top ropes. From downtown. You kind of really like hold the swing as you fall. Yeah. Then you let go. It's like Reinhardt hammer, but it just kind of goes dink. Yeah.
00:14:13
Speaker
But yeah, it's nice to get things back because when we had an obstacle like that boss with a lot of health, we just kept responding and be like, all right, we'll chip them down. Yeah. Some of the bosses are like actual puzzle fights where you just have to like break a platform or like a ceiling support or something. And the boss is like crushed. Um, other fights are just big guys, uh, with a lot of health. Um, you just have to avoid their instant kill attacks, jump over them. They're actually kind of good. I kind of enjoyed those fights.
00:14:42
Speaker
It kind of... It reminds me of older Zelda type games where it's like, hey, we have this one mechanic. Yeah. He's asleep with his mouth open. Throw stuff in his mouth. Don't do this at home, kids.
00:14:58
Speaker
It seemed fairly linear and simple, which there's not always bad. Like I really did enjoy those types of things in links awakening. Yeah. Back to that simplistic RPG sense. Um, it just felt a little bit weird here for how things handle as a slightly fudgy platformer 2d.
00:15:16
Speaker
So I guess my question would be, so given our playtime in the game, would, do you think the experience would have been improved or harmed had we gone back to those original settings and set it so like you can't, uh, levitate objects with allies? Cause that's kind of the default. If you're playing single player, you can't do that for objects you yourself are on, or you could like fly yourself to the end of the game. Right. That's true. Like you have, if you had to solve the puzzles, would the game be better or worse for it?
00:15:49
Speaker
I don't know. A lot of things are just, you can't jump to it. So you need to find some other means you'd have to build a means. Yeah. Or do very specific platforming. Possibly. But a lot of that is really fuzzy. So as soon as you have fuzzier platforming.
00:16:07
Speaker
And it's not guaranteed that my jumping movement, assuming I know what I'm doing, I was going to be guaranteed to get me where I need to go. It just becomes like a trial and error thing till it's like, okay, the game now says I can do it. Yeah. So having a means around that I felt was nice.
00:16:25
Speaker
But because of that, it is, it becomes super broken and usable. Yeah. We basically had always on cheat code for getting past the puzzles, not as they were intended, because we could just lift each other over. But I agreed, like the puzzles in the game, for the most part, there's a couple of cool things with like, uh, portals and some interesting things you could do moving the portals around, like the entrance and the exit to like.
00:16:51
Speaker
create bubbles in a cauldron you'd have to jump on or like other interesting interactions. Like, um, there's these red cauldrons where if there's fire under them, if they're actively heated, they'll continually spawn creatures that you'd have to like fight. But if you can move the fire from underneath it, it stops spawning creatures. I kind of like, I like those interactions. It adds a little bit of, um, uh, not necessarily a time constraint, but a little more stress, I guess, to solving it.
00:17:20
Speaker
Right. But a lot of those things become, if you have the wizard, your problems are solved because the wizard can just move shit. Yeah.
00:17:29
Speaker
And it's definitely true. Like when a character dies, they, uh, are just a skull. You can't select them anymore, but you're, you can pick another character until you hit the next, uh, next checkpoint or go back and hit the previous checkpoint. And there's a lot of those puzzles where you explicitly do need the wizard. So if he dies and you're in single player or something, like, um, maybe maybe I screwed myself over a bit.
00:17:52
Speaker
But as far as mobility, the rogue or thief does have a grappling hook, which only goes to solid wooden surfaces. So a lot of times Jake would spawn a box, fall off the box, grapple under the box, and he would kind of move my possibly T-post body over to wherever it needed to be. There's some fun animations with it, with the swinging.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's not just like your full Tarzan or Spider-Man swing, but you just kind of stop. You're kind of like suspended horizontally, even though gravity would dictate that you be vertical. Right. You're kind of like flying in midair for a little bit.
00:18:30
Speaker
It was pretty ridiculous. There was a lot of laughing at some of the animations and physics in the game. Yeah, it felt pretty derby, but that's how I know that we're having fun with it. Because someone will do something dumb, or team killing, or just you keep trying to make boxes with the wizard and dropping them on people's heads and picking them up. And we're giggling a little bit. Yeah.
00:18:52
Speaker
They do have as far as pickups in the world. You can get health after killing enemies and you can get these orbs that give you progress in the skill trees you can buy for each character. And there's some cool stuff in there. We didn't get anywhere near maxing out everything. There's not a whole lot to max out though. I want to point out it's not that in depth of a game. It's not like RPG depth skill trees at all. No.
00:19:21
Speaker
But like one thing that we played around with was at least for the rogue she has fire arrows Which I mean I guess deal more damage or are able to break certain types of terrain. Yeah And ice arrows which we used a lot more Which if it's fully charged up can freeze enemies. Oh, yeah, which then the wizard can pick up and drop which was of great fun yeah, the wizard can also just fucking pick up enemies and
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah, it is an upgrade though. So at the start of the game, you can't do a lot of these things. Like at the start of the game, I don't believe that the thief even has fire arrows. Doesn't even have arrows. Um, but, uh, so I don't recall exactly everything that was an upgrade and what wasn't, but she gains the ability to be invisible, which is pretty useful in single player. If you need to get away from enemies. Um,
00:20:14
Speaker
relatively useful in multiplayer, but less so. Um, the fire arrows don't explode at the very least by default, uh, which allows her to break things that usually the Knight has to hit with his hammer. Like, uh, crumbly walls or roots. Yeah. Rocks. Things you can only break with a giant club, you know.
00:20:38
Speaker
That sound means it's time for intermission where we talk about whatever we
Unscripted Humor Break
00:20:42
Speaker
want to talk about. No rules. It's just, it's just the world we live in, you know, these four walls, one intermission.
00:20:51
Speaker
No ceiling, no, no floor. We're falling right now. I'm actually, I'm stretched out wall to wall, which is impressive for how short I am. And I am suspending myself by sheer strength alone until my knees and elbows give out. Yeah. There's probably a more efficient way where you could record this podcast. Please send your donations to biased chairs. Could use a floor or a ceiling. Thank you. It's true.
Card Game Mechanics: Faeria
00:21:20
Speaker
Uh, the other thing that could use a floor is one of the free games on Epic, uh, offering this week, uh, Faria, where you build out land and then you move your units on it. Part of anything. Yeah. So I know we mentioned the ferry at some point in the past around card games. Yeah. And we might've even had a, just a standalone episode for it.
00:21:47
Speaker
No, no, because I thought we both played it. No. Yeah, you're right. We we did a third person to fact check. That would be awesome. What kind of content do we make here? I don't know. You're right, though. It was part of the collection of card games. Yeah. But what's cool about it is the card game aspect, a cool design and whatnot. But also, if you remember Yu-Gi-Oh! Dungeon Dice Monsters, you can. I don't know. No.
00:22:16
Speaker
So basically on your turn, you can play cards for how much mana you have stored up. You get mana passively if you are built near a mana node. You get two mana nodes by building out land tiles and then placing units adjacent to them. So essentially you can always place your units on tiles that you have, assuming there's not an enemy occupying them.
00:22:39
Speaker
So certain strats like yellow decks are fairly aggressive. They might try and build up to your face. Yeah. And then just like drop units there. So you always have to keep people back to defend or block. But it's always really interesting to get into it because there's I want to say like four or five different colors or play styles. Yeah. I've got like yellow, blue, like yellow, which is aggressive. Like you're mentioning red, which is like a lot of damage, also kind of aggression.
00:23:07
Speaker
Green is your typical green. Yeah, growth. And big fatties. And blue is control, because blue is always control. Is there blue? Yeah. Oh, there is, because it's like the wire and stuff. The wire and stuff. Aquatic. Yeah. And then a lot of like, screw you, buddy, spells and things like that.
00:23:27
Speaker
The cool thing about Fairy and the reason like I still recommend it and the reason we're talking about it longer than any other free game we've talked about on the segment is the, like you're saying, the art's amazing. The audio is super chill and awesome. And it also has basically the best value per money spent
00:23:48
Speaker
model out there, there's like expansions you can buy, um, which unlock full sets of cards that you can then acquire, but you don't buy individual packs. You can't actually, you have to complete quests or do things, or maybe you get a resource to be able to then spend a craft a card. Exactly.
00:24:08
Speaker
Like I've played it enough to have unlocked everything for where I'm at. I might be missing expansion cards. Right. But I got a lot of enjoyment. I think I spent like 10 bucks if that. Yeah. I'm just going back and like crafting different deck ideas and being like, Jake, Jake, so I'm back online. I think my most recent deck was Dead Feed the Dead, where the whole core mechanic is there's this one card.
00:24:32
Speaker
where it's a one-one, but it gets plus one plus one for each card that is each creature of yours that has died this turn. Yeah. So I'd make all these like cannon fodder things and Jake's like, all right. And I dropped this like 2020. He's like, all right. So you can do lots of cool things with it. And it is free on Epic for a couple of days. Yeah. So should be through next Thursday. If you guys listen to this, the week that it came out, that's a reward.
00:24:59
Speaker
Otherwise, you're getting stale data about free games that are no longer free. And then the other games is Assassin's Creed. There you go. I mean, tape what you will with EA. I'm not going to hard sell that so much. But hey, if it's free and that's your wheelhouse, Technically Syndicate is the brand, the flavor of Assassin's Creed that this one is. Which number is that? I have no idea. I assume 15.
00:25:27
Speaker
Five was pirates. Yeah So wasn't for black flag or was that the that was the Native American? No black flag is pirates. There was a Native American one or like Frontier. Yeah, and then I think the most recent was Egypt. I don't yeah Odyssey, right? Hmm
00:25:50
Speaker
Anyways, it's one of those. You can pick both of those games up for free. I really recommend Faria, and I don't know about the other one, but yeah. I will hype for Faria way longer than I should in a second this short. Next topic! Mountain Blade 2 Bannerlord is starting early access in March.
Anticipation for Mount & Blade II
00:26:12
Speaker
Mountain Blade has had several expansions, but the original game came out literally a decade ago, so pretty good spacing.
00:26:19
Speaker
I haven't really heard too much about Mountain Blade outside of AJ mentioning it. Yeah. Is it a civil war type sim? It's like a medieval, um, like individual blade. Why did I say civil war? Right. You know.
00:26:36
Speaker
I mean, it could be. It's just not the U.S. Civil War. Right. It's not like you'd be riding the horse with guns. Yeah. But it's kind of like it's a simulation for combat mode, which is like siege a castle, defend a castle, fight out on the field. And they have these large macro fights, like macro scale encounters and then a bunch of logistics for building your empire, maintaining your empire, building your army.
00:27:01
Speaker
Um, it's actually the scope of the first game was crazy expansive given that the development team was like a guy and his wife. And that was it. But, uh, I dunno, I spent a lot of time in the first game with a bunch of mods, um, and it was really fun. So I'll be keeping an eye on this to see how it does. Cause could be good.
00:27:24
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. That's all I have to say about that. That's fair. We'll follow up if it's really good. Um, when platinum's got an announcement coming out at some point this month.
00:27:36
Speaker
Platinum, for those who are not aware, have been doing the near Automata, near Gestalt, near the other one. Yeah. Revengeance they also made. Yeah. They basically make all of my favorite games. They have always done amazing things as far as fluid combat is one of the huge standout traits on top of, you know, other great things like storyline and visuals.
00:28:00
Speaker
But whenever they make stuff, I'm always really interested. So anything that they have coming up, I'm definitely at least going to peek and watch a trailer for. Oh, yeah. Because they make really good stuff. They make good stuff like the Germans. You know, they make good stuff.
00:28:17
Speaker
The other item I have here is no man's sky is really seen their living ship update Which is allows you to find an egg somewhere grow
No Man's Sky Update Discussion
00:28:27
Speaker
a ship. They added a bunch of like anomalies in space It's weird. That seems like the worst update. It sounds weird, right? Have you ever wanted like build your ship?
00:28:37
Speaker
What if it was instead of Tamagotchi? You're like, oh, okay. Yeah. It's like they, they, you can look at the trailer because they do make decent trailers, but, um, the very biological kind of almost like a Zerg, right? Like they're, they're Zerg Levi things in space.
00:28:55
Speaker
It's really interesting the the reason I put it here is just because the This is their fourth year that they've been releasing updates for no man's sky and for free since the initial release and I think that
00:29:10
Speaker
That's, that's pretty cool. Um, they've already made like a full circle and kind of redeemed themselves in my eyes. And although I still have my gripes with the game, it's something, if it came out right now at retail price, I'd be like probably justified. There's, there's a lot of content there. It just sucks that they're kind of like working back from that point and we're in that deficit. So I still hope that they are.
00:29:36
Speaker
making some profit off of it. They have to be working on X, Y, and Z.
00:29:43
Speaker
And the last item is on Steam. Someone tried to sell a game launcher launcher for $100 and it's still on Steam. It's the play night launcher, which is freely available online. You can just get it yourself. It's MIT licensed, but this guy was like, since this license is so free, I'll sell it on Steam. And it is totally legally allowed for him to do that. Don't spend a hundred dollars on it.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yeah, also free this week, this forever. Yeah. Do you like the idea of a launcher launcher or just a more comprehensive launcher than Steam? Yeah. For other games you might have like maybe you do dabble in some epic freebies, you have some stuff on Steam, maybe you have an emulator elsewhere. If you can like package that together, convenient for sure.
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Especially with so many launches out there right now. This started out as a joke. Coursera made a joke about it. The Coursera game launcher and laundry. Um, and it's reality. So welcome to current year.
00:30:50
Speaker
Right. Traditionally. And the wizard can only like make one box at a time and he can't pick anything up. He's actually really limited until you get some of those upgrades. But by the end of it, you can make like four boxes or planks at a time and pick up enemies and like levitate them and just put them down in front of like when you were on the thief, right?
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah, Jake was fucking playing Mario Maker by the end of it. He's like, oh, I'll build us a solution. I'll be like, I'm just going to hold right and see what happens. It was pretty funny. There was a couple of times where if there's only one character left, then the end, um, I guess I wouldn't know what would happen if you allowed clones in multiplayer, but we didn't allow clones. So you couldn't be on the same character. There's essentially a single player game with the other person watching.
00:31:37
Speaker
It was an ethical choice we made. No clones. No clones. I don't want them to have to do my chores or for us to have sex or fight to the death. Begun the Clone Wars have. Um, but, uh, like Dave would get off screen a little bit or like messed up camera, get hit with a projectile or something, die. Then it would recenter on me and I'd go through and like have to actually solve the puzzle until I got to the next checkpoint. Do my jumps and stuff. Sorry, my depth's impeded you so.
00:32:05
Speaker
There's a huge difference between playing in multiplayer and in single player for a game like this. But single player shows I feel like all of the faults of the game, whereas the absurdity carries it really far in multiplayer.
00:32:20
Speaker
Also, anytime you have some slight jank and something that supports multiplayer, like if we had a third person, everyone was like a specific role. Yeah. There'd be some dumb, good times for sure. Yeah. But like going back to older days of more just combat side scrollers. I remember, I don't remember the name of the game. Sadly, what I know of it. Probably not. It's like a really old.
00:32:46
Speaker
I'm either Nintendo or Sega game rise from the grave. Yeah, I'm not familiar with that. Golden Axe. Oh, okay. Or something in the style of Golden Axe. Where's the side scrolling platform? You had some upgrades, but that was more of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade beat up versus something like Ghosts and Goblins, which is more of a platformer. They're like those pseudo 3D games where you just move left and right and then closer and further away. When you move up and down into the screen. Yeah.
00:33:14
Speaker
Am I punching them? No, they're not in my direct line of sight. Hold up. Are they kicking me? I guess I'm in their direct line of sight. Cool. Yeah. Do you prefer that or do you like the, the puzzle combat aspect of this to something? Well, I mean, so trying didn't age as well for me. I had fun due to the co-op aspect, but the gameplay I think was not super.
00:33:42
Speaker
It wasn't super inspired or engaging or there was, there wasn't like aha moments to puzzles for the most part. It just felt like, Oh, I'm making progress through the game until the next obstacle. Jake asked me if I'm doing my best. Are you doing your best to him? I'm trying. Ah, that's what I feel like the game sets. Honestly is, uh, it's more of an older style type thing. It's not.
00:34:07
Speaker
it doesn't excel at combat or puzzle. But it's more of like a fun arcade blend of both. Yeah. But there's a lot of good games out there. So it's like, I don't know, I find myself less inclined to give people leeway if your game doesn't have something that's inspired. Right. But how old is this versus
00:34:30
Speaker
The golden axe or something like that, right? I mean golden axe I feel like is probably better remembered Right, but that's trying would be that's a at when it came out. It was Kind of bright new and shiny. Yeah for where it was in that space Whereas crying when it came out. They're like hey remember this thing. We're like yeah, we stopped playing. Yeah
00:34:51
Speaker
I mean, it's not terrible. I don't want to rag on it too much. The graphics are pretty... pretty. And it's not like... There's way worse games out there, but...
00:35:03
Speaker
There's way better games, too, in the space. And I'm already, like you guys know, I'm not super hot on platformers. So they get no default points. Guys, I love with you. Jake is pretty super hot. Super hot. That's not a platformer at all. There's a compliment. You asshole continue. Yeah.
00:35:23
Speaker
And I don't know I did beat it the first time I played through this time kind of lost interest a bit I think that
00:35:35
Speaker
I don't know. It's, it's kind of tough. I don't know if, if I was coming in to play one of these types of games in current year.
Reflecting on the Trine Series
00:35:42
Speaker
So they released trying three at one point. Right. And that one was not received well at all. It was like 64 and Metacritic. Pretty freaking bad. Um, and then they, and people said it was like too short. The developer was like, it would take us another like $15 million to add content to this game or something. Yeah.
00:36:02
Speaker
I would do that for a lot less. And I think I could do it. Ten million dollars. I mean, graphically, this isn't like Ori and the Blind Forest quality, but they both go for a very hyper fantasy saturated look.
00:36:18
Speaker
Well, yes. I'm going to argue though that Shrine seems a lot more cluttered. Yeah. And it's like, hey, there's all the shit in the foreground and the background and another layer of background. Yeah. And yeah, it looks pretty, but it's not as cohesive as something like Ori, where it's really distinguished what is the foreground, what is the background.
00:36:39
Speaker
And also, as a platformer, or as tight as fuck. Yes. And tight platformers are always going to stick better because you're like, oh, I remember playing this game and my moves were really responsive and I liked how it played. Shovel Knight has really good reviews for the music, the style, and how it fucking handles. Whereas this does not meet the exact same mark, in my opinion.
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I agree on those points. It's a kind of game where it's like once I was done, I think I did play one back in the day and I played two. Once I was done with it, I was like, ah, if three's great, I'll play it. Otherwise there's no real need to jump into it. It has a plot, it has like a book, chapter, narrator between levels, but nothing that really matters so much. You can kind of just go from encounter to encounter.
00:37:33
Speaker
And there's not there's nothing to draw me into it or get me like really engaged in it. There's no progression. Yeah. And it's like making the encounters easier by leveling up your characters. Like I was looking at some of the things we could have had for the night because I had no upgrades on him. He could have had a frost shield that freezes people when they hit him. But, you know, similar to the thief could have had a fire sword. I'm always a fan of those.
00:38:02
Speaker
And you could have got a charge, which I think actually would have been hilarious. Just for the potential to charge into death. As soon as you said that, I'm like, I'm hitting spikes. I see it. I see it right now. But it's like, those are examples of some of the upgrades. They don't, they just make the game a little bit easier, a little more, you don't have to switch between characters as much. Maybe you can clear gaps, but all of the faults of the game are still there, like at its core.
00:38:26
Speaker
Um, kind of like uninspired. Yeah. Like moment to moment gameplay, the fights are something I kind of wish there was more of when people had to like watch each other's backs. And I was like frantically building like walls with platforms. You're like staying behind this. He blocked arrows or try and push enemies back.
00:38:46
Speaker
Oh my gosh, yeah, it was fun. It was fun for like, uh, Dave would be on the thief for the night and like hacking away at people or shooting arrows on the ground. That'd be like picking up enemies and then moving them in the way of archers, arrows and things that has been cushioned.
00:39:01
Speaker
Like that we're just like studying though up to me Yeah, like I would line up these like frost arrow shots and then Jay would just put a guy in front of me and like nice with the Archer at least when I was playing on the controller is There's technically 360 degrees of angling. Yeah, but it felt like I had eight
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah. It was really hard to get like in between like, Oh, I need to line up a shot at like 30 degrees. So normally I'd get in like one fixed position and then move left or right to be like, here might be good. Yeah, it's, it's something where like, I had probably more fun with that than the puzzles. And so I wish that that was more of a developed aspect to it. Like a co-op kind of Adventury physics based fighter.
00:39:52
Speaker
I don't know, could be like an interesting game, but it just...
00:39:56
Speaker
Doesn't have it here. They come close on a lot of ways, but like there's a certain bucket of games I think are fun for like hey, we're gonna get the boys online the boys boys all of the boys But just like getting some friends together maybe like having a drink or two big Hey, we're just gonna clear this game tonight I guess our Friday night plans and like it would be a good memory a good time But then you don't go back to it right doesn't have a lot of replayability per se
00:40:24
Speaker
And intonation is very important there. It's like, like get the boys online, get the boys online. Hey boys. Um, so yeah, that's, uh, that's trying.
00:40:40
Speaker
Yeah, in particular I thought that the first one didn't have co-op but and research that apparently does yeah Not gonna really go back and play it Maybe we'll find a like a better platformer or something with combat. That's more engaging than trying
00:40:58
Speaker
So how many trends do they have currently? There's four trines out there. Wow. Yeah. I think it's canonically the same trine object in each one, but there's four games. The last one came out in 2019, which was previous year. It did better than three.
00:41:17
Speaker
What's crazy to me is like, when you have a formula or a formula game like that, why would you not change it up a little bit? Like in the same way, um, what's the game? What was Grim Dawn's predecessor? Um, Grim Dawn's predecessor.
00:41:39
Speaker
You're not talking about Diablo, you're talking about. The Grecian one. Oh, right. I was literally just looking at this Titan something. Titan Quest. Titan Quest, yeah. So like there, it's the same formula of game, but it's different settings and you can play on different things with it.
00:41:57
Speaker
At its core, still the same fucking thing. Slightly better graphics and whatnot, but it's at least changing the theme. Yeah. So maybe instead of a exact rogue, you have something else in a roguish or dexterity space. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You could do other things with it.
00:42:14
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah. No, it's, it's a fair criticism. They really didn't change their formula much. It's always just kind of the three characters. And it could just be a mark of like, this developer hasn't had much success with other games that are outside of the trying series. They had, they tried to do a, um, I don't remember, I don't know the title of it, but it was a stealth game where time only moved when you did. So kind of like super hot, but like for the stealth genre.
00:42:45
Speaker
I was like, Oh, you know, that's interesting. Like it, it, it's not an immediately bad idea, right? Like maybe you couldn't see it work. And I got like a 50 on Metacritic. It was, it was really bad. I would just put a turbo button on my crouch and play it like a normal game. Just teabag your way through the game.
00:43:05
Speaker
What's on the distance? I don't know a guy's vibrant gonna control Probably just the wind So if it's a thing like paying the bills, you know Maybe it's not just Call of Duty that has the Call of Duty syndrome where change is dangerous, right? Got to keep people employed
00:43:26
Speaker
Yeah, but it's I always believe in changing the formula up a little bit. Just because I like confusing my baby. What is this? Don't worry about it. Chocolate milk. It's monster. It's bang energy. It's AMP. Remember AMP? Yeah.
00:43:46
Speaker
Oh man. This OG surge. I think that'd kill a baby. That's too much sugar. Yeah, don't give a baby soda. As a rule. I guess good advice. Which brings us to our life advice section. If you were to give advice for parents out there, Dave, what would you give them? It gets better. That's good advice.
00:44:13
Speaker
It's kind of like this, uh, this to shall pass catch all thing. Yeah, it really is a catch all. It's just more of an outlook thing at that point because a lot of things are temporary situations and they might suck, but they're not permanent. It's true.
00:44:31
Speaker
I'm not saying having a kid is a permanent situation. But they might suck. They might suck. But usually a lot of times kids are planned and hopefully that was a choice you made and wanted. Yeah. And something you'll stick with and raise that kid so they're not shitty.
00:44:49
Speaker
right i mean someone has to play them and call the duty eventually right and i don't want them saying we fucked my mom that's a that's a right reserves exclusively for him to say an over voice chat to other people yes yeah okay to their kids yeah yeah it's you saying it sorry yeah i guess there's a voice chat i fuck my mom that's
00:45:14
Speaker
I don't want to convey that even as a joke and that's something I do. Oh my gosh. That's actually great. There was a, I was reading about, um, it was on Reddit or something. Someone got upset and was having the recipient of road rage and to help diffuse it, they just got like really weird, really quickly. They're like, Oh, like you can't kill me. I'm going to kill you and eat your girlfriend or something like that.
00:45:42
Speaker
You say something super weird and super out there So the other person has to pause and they can't be angry because it doesn't make any sense And it's it's an interesting like psychological strategy You basically use confusion to diffuse anger And that's what I think of when I think of that line just like you can't f my mom Only I could do She's booked on the weekends
00:46:12
Speaker
Uh, realistically, that when's the last time you used voice chat in a game? Uh, I use it in Overwatch, like pretty much all the time. When's the last time? I guess outside of.
00:46:26
Speaker
When have you played a game alone with other strangers where you've used voice chat? Oh, okay. I was going to say if that was the question. Like a group of friends and you have like one pub on your team, you might use voice chat to include them on something. But when's the last time you were just completely out and about in the wild? Yeah. I thought you were going to say, when was the last time you were playing a game alone and you use voice chat? And I was like, Hey, you peek at you. Thunderball.
00:46:53
Speaker
But, um, probably Dota. Yeah. I think Dota would have been the last one, um, before all my faith in humanity was shattered. But by Dota or related? By my own behavior in Dota actually. Um, but yeah, with, with, uh, actual randoms, you know, much more likely to go out there and socialize.
00:47:18
Speaker
You know, start talking about my mom, you know, gotta be defensive on that. No, I don't, I don't know. The internet's a weird place. It is. I might elaborate on that depending on how much time we have left. I don't know. I think we're basically, we're basically at time. Do you guys want to listen to us anymore?
00:47:42
Speaker
All right. Vote now on your phones. America's next top model or whatever it is. I don't know. Idle. There you go. That's one people loaded on with their phones, I think. I don't know how TV works. You don't know pop culture. Neither do I. I just feel that it's wrong. Yeah. It could be right, though. Well, nobody responded, so I'm just going to end it.
00:48:06
Speaker
As always, uh, if you guys have feedback for these episodes and the podcast in general, or you feel really offended by our, um, coverage of Trine, uh, you can send that in to our Gmail at soapstone podcast at gmail.com. Or you could join the discussion, which is guaranteed to be full of triny thoughts on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always,
00:48:35
Speaker
We'll see you in the next one.
00:49:28
Speaker
you