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S3 Ep246: Like an Atomic Heart: Legacy
74 Plays3 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about religion (again), Atomic Heart, Harry Potter, Sons of the Forest, and even more February content in this week's episode!
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Intro:
- Beyond Good and Evil - Dancing with Domz
- SilvaGunner - Chaos King (DeltaRune chapter 1 vs Among Us)
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Transcript
Introduction and Health Updates
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry
00:00:51
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. That's a good one, right, Dave? It's going swell. Delightful. Dandy. Peachy. That's a lot of things. I'm out of adjectives. It's, uh... But it's more or less good. That's all right. Yeah, that's good. How are you doing?
00:01:17
Speaker
I'm doing better, a lot better than last week's episode. Now, I thought about this actually in the lead up to this, because, you know, we open with the whole meta, how you doing whatever, what is the state of being well, things like that. But I was thinking like,
00:01:34
Speaker
Crap, I was like really sick for the last one and I'm still kind of sick, still recovering. But wow, like seven days was I sick for no, we recorded we recorded on Sunday. Like not that much time has passed from last record to this record, but I am doing better.
Cultural Identity and Stereotypes
00:01:58
Speaker
I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to also hear that. Yeah.
00:02:04
Speaker
Like you know when you call somebody like, hey, how's it going? And you're just on the phone and you're like, hey, that's the voice you had. You had like the hey voice. I definitely push in. I took the edit and I remember like listening, trying to get the fade for the outro and stuff. And I was just.
00:02:24
Speaker
I was very quiet and like basically on the like the precipice of passing away into the episode, which is pretty funny and very audibly a lot more nasally, which I probably still am a little bit until I'm completely better. But hey, you're speaking as somebody who's canonically Jewish. So I get it. I get it.
00:02:53
Speaker
You don't sound Jewish. No, I don't. Wait. We were having a conversation on the other Discord the one day and a friend who I won't name to throw into the bus. It was Tyler. He said something about like, who do you think like the most Jewish person is? And I'm playing like the card of like.
00:03:17
Speaker
pretending to be offended like, what do you mean by that? But you could obviously attribute some things like, I think this is a Jewish thing. Yes. And I think the argument was, is Ben Stein the most Jewish person? Because he's prominent. He is Jewish and some other things.
00:03:33
Speaker
But then he was like trying to reason with me like out of like the fake hole he was in saying like, would you say that you're the most Jewish person in this discord? It's just like a funny back and forth of people like taking sides of an argument that like nobody was actually having but just for shits and giggles. Right.
Logical Fallacies and Religion
00:03:51
Speaker
I like that idea that like you turn it into like, well, no, I mean, the core traits of being a Jewish person are outgoing and like all these other things. And you're like, and that's best exemplified by this person who is clearly not Jewish in the discord. Yeah. It's whatever the reverse of the no true Scotsman.
00:04:16
Speaker
What is it? A logical fallacy is, um, I just got the phrase, but I don't know. Sorry. So again, I put myself in this position as someone who is still a little bit congested and maybe doesn't have the best comprehension of reality. But, um, so the no true, no true Scotsman logical fallacy, I believe is if you say like,
00:04:45
Speaker
Well, I mean, one of our guys would never do something like that. I mean, if he was a good American and he polishes rifle, he would have his flag up. No American would do something like that. Therefore he can't be an American, right? Like kind of disqualifying someone based off of one of their attributes.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, I this is why I hate talking to people because like they'll do shit like that. And like, I don't know how to tell you that you're dumb in a way that you would understand, you know, it's just you guys can be like, OK, yep. Mm hmm. Cool. You got to let those people go. It's also called, I had to look this one up, so I had to take my first guess without actually googling it or looking it up. Now I have. It's also called an appeal to purity.
00:05:35
Speaker
You're basically saying like, no, no, our group is it doesn't have these traits. So that that can't be part of us. We wouldn't do something like that. So I hate to always like tie things back to Christianity, but it's like such a fun topic to bring up because there's this whole thing of like when I was going through like a questioning period, I'm like, I don't want to be a part of this, the idea.
00:06:01
Speaker
There is the like, if you've accepted Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior type thing, which even saying now sounds fucking mental. Like, how could you not be like good for the rest of your life? Right. And essentially they were inciting, I wouldn't say doubt, but something to that argument of like, well, if you didn't, maybe you didn't truly believe that. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I know what you're talking about. So it's kind of like that disqualifying like.
00:06:32
Speaker
If it's not like actively showing, oh, maybe that was never a thing, right? But it's pretty much an individual experience. And that's a shitty thing to say in general, regardless. But yeah, that is an example of that coming up in conversation. That specific one, and it might be an example we've mentioned before, the specific example I can think of this is like someone who is praying for healing and doesn't receive it. Oh, and they do people that believe in divine healing.
00:07:00
Speaker
That is a problem because it can lead to all of this doubt. Like, well, I mean, maybe you just weren't as good as you thought you were. That is actually a great example of the no tree Scotsman policy fallacy. Um, so yeah, it's, it's fun.
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah. I'm glad I don't talk to as many shitty people now. It does help. It helps mental health, physical health. Um, helps to listen to the music by health. Um, all of that helps. But at the same time, I feel like I need, I don't want to say a whipping boy, but like a boy to whip. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I have all these whips. I have no boys. Right.
00:07:53
Speaker
But I miss having those conversations to a degree. We had a previous coworker who was a, I would say, a devout Christian. And it was fun, honestly, just engaging with him in conversation. We both respect each other's opinions. We weren't trying to shit on each other. But I'm like,
00:08:10
Speaker
logically for how I think I don't understand your belief system. Can you explain it to me? Like we talked over some stuff and it was honestly cool to get his point of view, even though it was, I knew exactly what it was cause I grew up with it. Um, but it was cool to see it in a different light being on the other side of it. Yeah.
00:08:32
Speaker
I can empathize with that entirely. The first time or the last time I had more of a religious conversation with a stranger, I actually recall this because I had this sort of like it was just very memorable. I was boarding an airplane or getting ready to board an airplane.
00:08:48
Speaker
and somehow struck up conversation with some guy. And yeah, he was just like very obviously Christian. And we got to talking about theology a little bit. And I had a moment in the conversation where I realized like, wait, am I just talking about religion in public with a stranger? And I looked around for a second. I was like, OK, yeah, that is what is happening. And I mean, we obviously had different seats and stopped the conversation or whatever. But that was that was kind of the end of it. But it was.
00:09:18
Speaker
It is refreshing to engage with someone who is where you were at in a way or it's almost kind of like looking at your looking at your past or alternate world line for yourself almost way like if I continue to believe maybe I would be where you were at right now.
00:09:39
Speaker
Now I kind of just I'm just like, oh, that's like a picture of me when I was younger, but not like in a not like in a belittling way. Right. This is a separate person. They have their own beliefs. There's no reason to say like it's less important. They're less important than you or whatever. But it's more like you're on the outside looking in.
Transition to Gaming News
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:03
Speaker
Everything we say here is obviously with peace and love. Christianity is a cult, but I mean, do with that what you want. So, but peace and love. Yes. Peace and love. Yeah. I'm not.
00:10:15
Speaker
I I'm trying really hard not to like derail to fully describe my belief system and why it is what it is. It's been talked about. We can move on. It's fine. It's all right. We have we have one episode every month where we do a deep dive on a religious background. It's it's pretty common.
00:10:39
Speaker
But every Sunday, my parents would take me to the urge tree. And it's just that's just what we did. It wasn't weird. They T-posed complete order. Yeah.
00:10:52
Speaker
The fact that that's the animation also, by the way, just the best. Like one of the primary animations is half a T pose. The other primary animation is the other half a T pose. And then the complete animation is a full T pose. The full animation was actually really hard because with the rigging,
00:11:12
Speaker
The arms actually just moved with each other at a 90 degree angle. So that's where you got praise. The sun still at the 90 degrees. Yeah. Mm hmm. They just had like an off by one half, I guess, error because I think that would be what, 45, 45 or 30, something like that. If you raise your arms. Can't remember exactly. Someone do the math on. So it's keeping in line with my joke. It would be 45. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. On either side. Exactly.
00:11:40
Speaker
Now that we've described enough geometric shapes to lose the entire audience and move them away from the religion chat for a bit.
Atomic Heart: Reviews and Comparisons
00:11:47
Speaker
There's some stuff that happened in gaming in February, which is actually what this episode is about. Haha. Got you. You thought it was a religion one, but it's not. But it will probably be enough so to put it in the description, at least. If not the title, that'd be funny.
00:12:07
Speaker
Anything fun happen in February in gaming for you that you would like to discuss or at least pretend that it applies to you and engage with the content in such a way? I mean, everything's the second because a lot of these things I'm either actively watching to that either just came out very recently at time of recording.
00:12:27
Speaker
And I want to get more feedback on from the community or it hasn't come out yet. Or I just don't give a fuck. So I'd say it's probably like an even third on each of these. But I mean, honestly, the most recent one that I was kind of actively following was Atomic Heart. Yeah. I know we've talked about that quite a bit.
00:12:49
Speaker
as far as that looks interesting, that looks like Bioshock. I wonder what they're going to do with it. I sure certainly haven't seen too much in the trailers and whatnot. Yeah.
00:13:01
Speaker
I don't think it's doing too. Yeah, it's it's it's not. So I posted on Discord that it was kind of getting hit and in reviews, and maybe that's like too much of a take. It's not doing great, right? Like open credit currently has it at 74, which is a fair.
00:13:22
Speaker
But I mean, I think we talked about this a little bit in the past with our discussion of review scores when you see a 74. Yes, that represents a game that is good. Like literally that represents good or fair. But so many games come out that are worth playing and are good or great or excellent or maybe support superb.
00:13:46
Speaker
Like, a good score is kind of bad. Like, it's kind of bad, right? By just comparison of what we could be spending our time with. So you'd call atomic hard an LA-5? An LA-5? I don't know what that is. So I wouldn't say I would say that. So I guess the running thing is
00:14:10
Speaker
It's not uncommon for people to like rate somebody's attractiveness on a scale of one to ten. Ah, OK. So maybe in like your rural area, you're like one of the hottest people in town. But if you go to L.A., you're in L.A. five. I see what you're saying. You're not everyone else to change body. Yeah. Yeah. OK. I mean, that's that's at least what the reviews are kind of saying there, but it's polarized is probably the other way to put it.
00:14:38
Speaker
There's a lot of people who are playing the game and having fun with it. And there are a lot of people who say some of these core things it's missing are the reasons that I'm giving it a negative review.
00:14:51
Speaker
And so like the ones I recall from the reviews I had seen just real quick off the top of my head, the things against it were kind of like the lack of engagement in the open world gameplay, the fixed FOV, which is kind of big for me. I don't really like that sort of.
00:15:10
Speaker
Like I'm playing a console shooter and I can't see to the sides at all thing. Like I normally dang near max out FOV sliders unless it's like ultra kill where it's like, it goes to 240 where like human perception is 110. And like, yeah, and there were some other things like that as far as
00:15:36
Speaker
some issues with the writing, some of the characters, the super titulating robot crafting station where you make your upgrades. That is just like, I say titulating, but it's supposed to be like the most vulgar thing ever.
00:15:57
Speaker
Um, like incredibly just, this is a sex bot. Like, ah, that's all of its vocabulary. Um, I mean, that's fine as a gimmick. Yeah. But yeah, a lot of the trailers I was, I shouldn't say trailers, some actual like snippets of gameplay now on YouTube, like, Oh, somebody's going to play through. It seemed to be very triple A.
00:16:23
Speaker
Mm-hmm and like I Really want to say that like the new Wolfenstein the first one not the second one something I played that one Right like it was fine for how they did it But at the same time it wasn't its strength
00:16:38
Speaker
Like I didn't care to talk to NPCs or like have somebody lay down a dialogue or have like my main character do it back and forth. And they're like kind of a quick witted, a jabby person. Oh, OK. Cool. Right. Like we've all seen an action hero movie now and again. But it it falls under like too many tropes in my mind for me to be like, yeah, that's the thing. Yeah. Again, like part of Bioshock's appeal was
00:17:07
Speaker
you're alone, you have no inner thoughts, no inner monologue, you're exploring this place, it is spooky. You have to figure out what's going on and why.
Immersion in Gaming: Is Bioshock the Best?
00:17:19
Speaker
So you get immersed and then interested in that because it's interesting versus just laying out everything to people.
00:17:29
Speaker
And I think you described Wolfenstein and that I would contrast like how the Wolfenstein reboot sort of handled BJ and like eventually his daughters and the whole wherever that whole series went. Oh, yeah. Right. And then people don't like to remember that that was what I didn't play it either.
00:17:48
Speaker
But yeah, that was not reviewed very well versus like doom right doomslayer straight back to a silent protagonist But they did injected a bunch of lore about him for the doomslayer, but holy crap It was all super cool at least for the first like two games I don't know the DLC didn't review as well, but like
00:18:10
Speaker
In either case, it didn't get obstructive. And from the impressions of Atomic Heart that I've heard, this protagonist is very much in the vein of like super machismo, constantly angry, eternally cursed with stupidity, like trope of shooter protagonist guy.
00:18:34
Speaker
Like to the point where if the player is figuring out what's going on the story It really doesn't matter because protagonist will not until he's slapped like over the face with it At least that's what I've heard again I haven't played the game so I don't have my impressions there and the counterpoint to all of this is It still has I think very positive reviews on Steam
00:18:54
Speaker
a bunch of people that are playing the game enjoy it, and apparently it runs decently on slightly more dated hardware compared to everything requiring a 4D series.
00:19:06
Speaker
That's positive because obviously like when they show trailers, you're showing very high fidelity graphics. I was like, God damn, it looks pretty. It's not going to look that pretty on my machine. But the fact that it can support lower things better than Cyberpunk did at least is always promising because it did look kind of cool.
00:19:27
Speaker
Yeah, for me personally, I mean, I could spend more time watching reviews. I could do whatever. But what I'll probably do is it's probably in the wait for a sale thing for me. None of the impressions have said that it's going to be like.
00:19:43
Speaker
It's going to have the draw or the immersion of something like Bioshock or really the immersive sim nature of some of the games that I adore, like Prey. So that's kind of enough to keep it from being a must purchase for me right now. Do you think that
Personal Gaming Choices
00:20:04
Speaker
Bioshock is the most immersive sim? This is a water joke. It is a water joke. It was a water joke.
00:20:14
Speaker
I don't actually know what the most immersive sim is, though. I don't think it would probably be. The most fun one. Because you know, the most fun one is probably prey, but that is just because of my bias. All of it's all of the elements base game, Mooncrash, all of it, it's all done. Freaking love it. Glorious. Arcane can do no wrong.
00:20:42
Speaker
They did some wrong, actually. It's in the other series, but the. But, yeah, that's my thought on atomic heart. Is it on your must buy or something that you're looking to pick up sooner than than Christmas? It's one of those if somebody buys it for me or if it goes on sale for pretty damn cheap. Maybe check it out. Otherwise, I'm not. Like you said, there's a lot out there.
Yakuza Series and Gaming Controversies
00:21:12
Speaker
A lot of times I just like stare at the wall at the end of the day. Like I'm not actively needing to do something. I don't have the brain capacity to be like, oh, let me just play games. And it's like, I'll just hang out. Yeah. So I don't need it at the moment. But big, but like a like a dragon, Ishin is probably something that I would pick up sooner than never.
00:21:36
Speaker
because I'm enjoying those games. I've only recently, very recently got into trying out some of them with Yakuza Like a Dragon. Right.
00:21:47
Speaker
So I do want to see more about this. I actually haven't watched anything about it outside of the initial trailers. Yeah. I will say. That also just came out. A lot about it looks very good. There was one there's one poison pill, one one Sekiro suicide pill hidden amongst the way that they released the game. That is a very bitter pill for me to swallow because it would kill me.
00:22:17
Speaker
Um, and that is the collector's edition has like a bunch of nice little additions where it's just like, Hey, this is in-game content for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Cool. Whatever. What the crap. Um, the, what they don't tell you is that all of that stuff is used once per save. So like, if you make a save game.
00:22:42
Speaker
and redeem all of that content, that is only for that save game. And you have to buy that to use it in a different save game. And it's not really clear if it's like loot box type content type stuff you could get in the game normally, or if it's some extra stuff on top of that. But it's super bad, super, super bad. And it's not at all clear on the storefront that like the collector's edition content is only for one save slot.
00:23:11
Speaker
Um, the fact that it's not for an account is insane. Yeah. Like if you're ever doing anything and getting like preorder bonuses, what have you, which I'd say don't in general, but that should be mine. I've paid money for it. I should permanently own that thing that I paid for. Not. Oh, did you want to start a new a new run? Uh, try a different build or something. What? It's gone insane. Yes. Yes.
00:23:42
Speaker
No, there's no there's no redeem redeeming factor on that. It's just a bad decision that funds over your players. Some of the some of the the reason for this is because like. So I'm going to just describe this, right? Like you can buy support. It's called like growth support kit, upgrade materials kit, upgrade materials kit, stuff like that. That's all there in the
00:24:10
Speaker
about this game thing for the deluxe edition. And it's also just stuff you can buy on the side. And so it's almost kind of like a loop boxy in a way. But it's a single player game. And why would you ever want your second save to just not have this stuff that you paid for when you bought the game?
00:24:32
Speaker
It's dumb. It's entirely dumb. It just feeds back into the, uh, it really reminds me of, um, uh, deus ex, uh, wasn't, was it mankind divided? I think, uh, was the one that had, um, practice you could buy with us dollars. Yup. Um, and, uh, metal gear survives purchasing save slots. Like.
00:25:03
Speaker
It's just these have been part of the completed game experience for so long. Why are you trying to introduce this to the single player game? The answer is obvious. It's money and some people will spend money on it. But it's just it's it's like you bought a pizza and like 25 percent of the pizza is already gone. And they're just like, if you spend more money, you can have the other 25 percent of the pizza. Right. No.
00:25:31
Speaker
terrible. Don't do this.
00:25:33
Speaker
It's like buying pizza with the crust cut off. Mm-hmm. And you just kind of have to like palm it so you don't get cheese everywhere. Yeah, right. Or it's like, in this particular case, it's like they're treating it like it's something that they're throwing in almost, right? It's a digital deluxe edition. This could be the reason you bought the game. But it's like, oh, yeah, your first purchase, it comes with crust. Follow-up purchase?
Early Access and Game Development
00:25:58
Speaker
I mean, well, you're addicted to crust at this point. You know that we got those herbs and spices, right? Like, no.
00:26:03
Speaker
buttery crust. Now that I've said all of that, game looks good. It's kind of, it's not modern though. This is kind of back to olden style Japan style for a Yakuza game or like a dragon as the series will be called in the US now.
00:26:25
Speaker
feudal, but they started trading with other countries. So like guns are a thing like simple, simple gunpowder shit. But no, every time that they've had a game like they theme it so well, they make it interesting and fun and then also can layer in as you're now playing and seeing a lot more of like, I think you said you like you put down the controller for cut scenes because you're like, oh, it's going to be a bit. Yeah. Because like they will have exposition at the wazoo, but they make it good.
00:26:56
Speaker
Like, I've definitely had like sit through some cut scenes and games from like, Jesus, fuck, I do not care. And I'm just here until the gameplay happens again. And you actually just walk away. You're like, let me know when. Yeah, this is the type of game where it's like, oh, nice, a cut scene. I can. This is my restful period. I'll set the controller down, you know, like pull my knees up and like just sit there like like like like a good child and observe until it's done because they're engaging.
00:27:26
Speaker
And also freaking Yakuza zero massive recommendation to everybody, including Dave. Um, I still, I can't remember. I know we talked about it. I can't remember if I bought it for you or if I thought I bought it for you and then we looked and I did not.
00:27:43
Speaker
But one of those things is true. It is in my library, so I will assume that you bought it for me. That's good. That's good. I'll take credit for it at least. No, I have not played it in four years. It's still it still holds up. It's one of the new ones. It's not because this is all part of their like we're in the age of the remake.
00:28:06
Speaker
All of this stuff is basically the content that they're revitalizing from the Yakuza series for the Western market to a certain extent. I don't know if Ishin is the same, but like Yakuza, Kawami, I think was also a remaster thing. Okay. I did not know. Yeah. And it's,
00:28:33
Speaker
I if you're playing like one of these, a lot of these games, they have some differences, but they have so much core content that it feels very much within the same sort of genre and universe, even when it's a JRPG versus a fighting game, which is what Yakuza zero and Yakuza like a dragon are. Yeah.
00:28:53
Speaker
I will say one thing I like that they do is if you look back at old plays like the original when people were doing just stage acting, it didn't matter who you had fucking play the character. You knew the character by how they looked. Like, oh, that's the gesture. They're there for comic relief. Oh, this is like the the the sad main character. Oh, that's the hero. Right. Oh. And they carry that over usually with the same characters, but like
00:29:20
Speaker
Majima shows up fucking everywhere. Like they will bring some characters back into the series or because this is a different time period, they will have, oh, that's kind of like so and so. Right. Which is just nice because like you know what to expect at that point.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah, I have I have heard that this one has a Majima equivalent character, if not literally Majima. I'm not sure I saw that. I'm not never said it. Just it's just Majima. It's just the time traveling. That's the other reason to play Yakuza zero is you get the origin story for Majima, which is pretty great. Freaking Goro.
00:30:00
Speaker
This one, despite this, I mean, my takeaway for this is I'm just not gonna buy the digital deluxe edition. That's my way of not interacting with this. Hey, I'm not gonna buy pointless consumables that are only good for one slave slot. There you are. I don't have to boycott it or do anything else. I'm just not going to make the purchase that you guys are gonna be gathering metrics for and call it a day.
00:30:28
Speaker
How do you feel about Sons of the Forest? So I'll be honest, I'm kind of in the dark on it. I don't know a whole lot about it. I checked the Steam page just to see.
00:30:44
Speaker
whether it was early access or not, and it is. So I got an email today, because I had it on my, oh, it's on my wish list. Please notify me of stuff that's happening with this game. They're like, cool, we'll do that. And I got an email. It's like, hey, Sun of the Forest is in early access, and it's on Steam. And I was like, OK. I didn't know it was going to be early access, but thanks for letting me know it's out. Literally like the same second, just afterwards, but like one second.
00:31:11
Speaker
some of the forest is now out of our steam early access. And I'm like, what? Okay, that was a very quick early access period. And so after work, I check and it is an early access. It is a 30 dollar game versus a full price. But I don't know if they talked about any of that with the marketing.
00:31:30
Speaker
I didn't think they did. Maybe I missed it. Again, this is kind of like more of an indie game and they don't have the type of publicity that some of the other bigger ones would have. But I mean, they definitely couldn't afford putting that in any of the trailers and the trailers this weird. I mean, it's also so I guess. Should should they or or or is it bad that they didn't maybe to evaluate that?
00:31:59
Speaker
I think it is bad that they didn't, because for everything that was marketed, you're like, oh, this is a full release game is coming out at this time. If they said like, hey, we will have release date at this time for early access. OK, now people know versus everybody assuming that it's something else. And now it's not that right. Maybe people are happy to get in on the cutting floor a little bit early now, realizing it's a cutting room floor.
00:32:28
Speaker
Um, and having it be a cheaper buy-in at least at $30 versus 60 or 70. Right. Yeah. I don't remember what the, I don't recall what the retail for the forest was back then. I don't think it ever got higher than 40 tops, 40 tops. Um,
00:32:46
Speaker
I just asked the question for content. I agree. If you have a release date, people should expect that's not a release into a beta, which is basically what early access is. Dinner's at six. Oh, awesome. Are these fucking, it's only the advertisers? Well, yeah, it's still in the oven for like another three hours, I mean. Right, yeah. They don't know about secondary.
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's so here's here's the thing. The first forest game was in early access for a long time, and it made a lot of progress in all of that time. And we played that game. I think both of us enjoyed it. We brought in some friends they didn't enjoy as much. And that's OK. But like, I thought that once all of that was done,
00:33:36
Speaker
that the lessons they were learning in Early Access and the money they were making from the sales of the game was going to lead them into a closed development for an extended period of time leading to a full game release that you could just pick up and play.
00:33:51
Speaker
Instead, they're basically doing the same, like you can read their early access rationale there on the Steam page and it's the same thing. We were so successful. We got so much feedback on the first game's development. We want that same type of organic growth cycle here for the second game. And it's like,
00:34:07
Speaker
But no, you could have launched in the early access at any point, 100 percent, and then just been like it's not a full shadow drop if you launch a beta for your game. It's not like this is high five rush. There were there were trailers like two years ago, Grant. It was just a cinematic teaser. Yeah. Oh, OK. I'm on board. I'm interested.
00:34:28
Speaker
You enjoyed the first game, excited to see where this goes. And then for everything else, we're like, here's gameplay, here's some stuff, here's yada yada. And I was like, OK, like, don't show me like a 20 minute thing of a guy talking in like a very mellow voice, just explaining mechanics of the game. And then later be like, it's really access. Yeah, I thought you knew what you were doing. Why do you want me to tell you now?
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, right. And I think the most generous interpretation I could give this is this is the point for the game where they think that it's worth playing. It's in a state where it's worth playing and they have a lot of future plans for it. But I don't have that information as the consumer. I just see early access game that comes with a lot of baggage.
00:35:20
Speaker
Maybe I should just wait a bit and see how the reviews pin out. So far, it looks like it's very positive. People are enjoying it. But. People also give early access games a little, a lot more leeway than they would other games, right? Because every little flaw that comes up is this is something that is because the game is in beta, it'll be fixed. So have you ever have you ever talked to somebody who says, like,
00:35:48
Speaker
I'm just an asshole. And then you seem to be doing asshole behavior. And they're like, well, you know, I told you up front what I'm about. You know, I just, I don't follow the rules, man. I call people whatever I want, man. It's whatever. And like, no, you're a shitty person. Was that close? Was that a close impression? It was between him and like Fonzie, but yeah. I got to work on that. But yeah, it's why? Why would you?
00:36:19
Speaker
It's just misleading. Yeah. That all being said, I'm not massively hurt by this. This is another thing where it's like I keep an eye on it where I might have picked it up immediately.
Hogwarts Legacy and Consumer Responsibility
00:36:31
Speaker
Well, now I'll just maybe pick it up later. I just don't really. I don't have that survival crafty.
00:36:40
Speaker
like a need bar filled to 100% where it's like the Sim will die if they do not consume survival crafting content. And if that happens, then maybe I'll opt into the early access version of this game. Or I'll just go back to a different game. I have a lot of survival crafting. There's so much. So we'll never be grounded. And that one did have a full release. That did have full release.
00:37:10
Speaker
It's not a February thing, but at some point I could see going back to it and playing with that same group. I don't even own it. I just played it for the very weekend. You don't have to buy it when it's on sale. Hogwarts Legacy came out. That's kind of a big one. That is a big one.
00:37:34
Speaker
Right, next game. I'm just kidding. So I have this one tagged with controversy because I wanted to at least mention it. I like how for each of these games, like what came out? Here's something about it you might not have known. It's just what are the mechanics like? Yeah. Well, I mean Hogwarts. So as a game, this is an open world Harry Potter game.
00:37:55
Speaker
where you fight against goblins and you learn the three unforgivable curses, apparently, over the course of the gameplay. So I don't know why that's the case. People there's actually was an article, I think, on Kotaku that's like it was either maybe it was PC game. It's just like, gee, Hogwarts legacy sure is violent. But there's there's a lot of that.
00:38:21
Speaker
I mean, I'm fine with violence or whatever in it. Um, but I mean, from people who I've talked to, I seem to enjoy it. I mean, a lot of people are like, Oh, I enjoyed Harry Potter.
00:38:34
Speaker
It's cool to now play that as a game and to actually live out the world versus like PS2 hybrid, which is like the iconic, the polygonal, big ass motherfucker. He is a platform, I think is how I described him. He's actually an aesthetic background. Right. Yeah, I think the high level impressions are that as an open world game, it's good. As if you're a Harry Potter fan, it's probably great.
00:39:03
Speaker
There is a lot of baggage on this one. The internet is a fire because unfortunately, the person who owns the rights to Harry Potter is to the JK Rowling, who is very vocal and very obviously against trans rights.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah. Do you want me to summarize for you? She's a con. She's a con. Well, yeah, it's true. She's a very hateful person for many different groups of people. So the question becomes, do you buy the game to possibly support her or support her ideas?
00:39:48
Speaker
Right. I don't give a fuck. I truly don't. I'm not saying these aren't issues you shouldn't care about. I'm saying that like if somebody has a shitty view, like perfect example, I love the movie Jungle Book growing up. The music is great. That's pretty much it. The animation is good, too. Like I appreciate some of the old Disney. But Rudyard Kipling is a known racist.
00:40:14
Speaker
Right. Okay. Fuck him. I'm going to watch the movie though, right? Like, I don't want to have his shitty behavior, soil, everything else in the same way. Like if you're enjoying this game, I'm not going to judge you for it because JK Rowling's associated with it. Some people just want to play a game, right? They want to like be girlfriend reviews, put it best when they had that diagram of like all of these different, uh,
00:40:44
Speaker
companies and then who owns those companies and who owns those companies. Right. Yeah. It's like how do you people have done shitty things, right? So I don't think you're always tying your boat to something just by spending money.
00:41:01
Speaker
I think that's I think that's a fair take. I mean, the the counter argument is just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you should do nothing. And if something is important to you, then, you know, I think that it's still it can still be helpful for the individual to follow their moral compass about their purchasing decisions. As long as I don't want to even add this qualifier
00:41:29
Speaker
of as long as it's not interfering with others' behaviors, because sometimes you do need to interfere with others' behaviors. Sometimes other behaviors are the problem. Other people's behaviors and their rejection of acceptance and things like that are the problem.
00:41:48
Speaker
For the most part, I think I agree. It's a video game. If the words per minute could be that Reddit had created over this whole thing, specifically which is versus the patriarchy subreddit and gaming circle jerk subreddit are the two I know.
00:42:11
Speaker
really got involved with it. If that energy could have been funded into fundraising for trans people, it would have been massively world changing compared to just a whole lot of bluster about a game that's ultimately going to be very commercially successful. And it also doesn't help to necessarily
00:42:39
Speaker
I don't want to use the term like overreact, but putting an irrational amount of weight to what a purchase would do, right? Like JK Rowling will see a portion of it. Um, but there was a comment on the internet I read that was like,
00:42:56
Speaker
if you buy this game, just know that you're funding, you're killing trans people. This is one, one thousandths of a trans person, basically. And I'm like, this is absolutely the wrong take, right? Yeah.
00:43:11
Speaker
She can have bad takes for as long as she wants. And by the way, she's made of money. If she could just like, you know, like be like, hey, we're going to just populate town square with guillotines and all the trans people like if you could make that a law and that's what she wanted to do. And that's what she had the financial capability to do. She would just do it. Right. So it's not like it is that cut and dry for some people. This is just a video game.
00:43:39
Speaker
And there are a lot of other people involved in it, right? Like maybe you don't want to support it because you want your voice to just be, I am against anything she does. That's, that's fine. Like good on you. Um, maybe you know, someone who was involved in the making of the game and you want them to see success and that's, you know, fine. Good on you. Right? Like it's not that these are.
00:44:05
Speaker
it's not all or nothing. It's not black and white. People can have different rationales for why they make decisions in life. Yeah. Like we have two friends, one friend got the game, another friend did not get the game. And they had the reasons in both cases. I agree with both of them. Because again, I don't give a shit. It's
00:44:28
Speaker
do what you think makes sense. But yeah, to what you said, I think it is more constructive to spend your time doing something positive for a community versus just saying, don't buy this one thing. Okay, the thing's gonna get bought. So maybe do something else. I don't know.
00:44:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean like you want to donate to the Trevor project? Absolutely do so. I know like my wife did. I would recommend people to consider it. That's going to have a much more positive impact on the world. And then this is kind of the direction I'm sort of coming from here.
00:45:07
Speaker
negative force or like aggressive force against something sometimes is necessary. But when positive, it's really good if the swell behind that can be filled with a reinforcing of some kind. And I'm using like really hippie words, which I don't really like, so I'm going to replace those with capitalist terms. If you're exerting your energy against something, that and oftentimes it's necessary.
00:45:37
Speaker
But are you hurting people in the long term at the end of the day or individuals, even in the case of the streamers and people like that who may be harassed?
00:45:48
Speaker
And is the outcome of that worth it? Right in the religious terms, what fruit does it bear to go back to the beginning of the episode? Mm hmm. Preach. Yeah. And maybe if you want like a more holistic karmic balance meter, you also donate some of your time, donate some of your money to the individuals who who need that support and either your local community or maybe nationwide.
00:46:16
Speaker
There's other ways that are people who, if you're invested in this, if this is something that you want to pursue aggressively, then find ways to be productive about it as well as tearing down the opposition. Yeah. Like, I'm not going to rephrase it. That's correct.
00:46:37
Speaker
That was a little bit more impassioned than I intended, but you know what? I had a warm up talk, so I'm going to think my wife. And JK's trans people. Oh no. It's not true. Not true. That would be, that would be a really hot take though. I'm just like, Hey, you know, consider donating to the treasure of Trevor project. And then it's just like, it's just closet, the most bigoted person. Yeah, probably not.
00:47:03
Speaker
Everybody is multifaceted. So don't be a shit to other people flat out. Like if people want to play the game because they enjoyed Harry Potter because it was a part of their childhood, let them do it. If you want to have a discussion with them about something important,
00:47:22
Speaker
By all means, do so. But don't put your beliefs in somebody else's brain for the sake of like, you have to do the thing that I'm doing because I think that this is right. And if you don't do that, you're wrong. Right. That that doesn't benefit anybody. I have a fucking conversation if you want to try and convert somebody to your belief system and your own actions. Right. Yeah.
00:47:45
Speaker
I think that's a pretty fair take. And as I think we've mentioned before, the only thing that you can be
00:47:53
Speaker
Tolerance of things except intolerance, right? That's the one secret kind of like, haha, this is how fascism gets in sort of thing or how people get discriminated against and minorities and things like that is you can't tolerate anti, like people who will not tolerate others, basically. That's the one thing you got to exclude. But otherwise, yeah, I mean,
00:48:21
Speaker
Take a step back, breathe, touch grass if you need to. Consider your interactions with human beings, because most oftentimes it's not a bot. Sometimes it is a bot, but that's the internet for you. And say, like, am I hurting another person here? And is it worth it? And if everybody asked that, the world would be a better place.
Nintendo Highlights: Metroid and Kirby
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:52
Speaker
But I digress. There's also a remaster for Metroid Prime that came out for Switch. This is the only one I have on my list that was a Switch game. But I never did the whole GameCube thing outside of in Walmart, I think. So I missed the 3D shooting Metroids, which I'll be honest, and this is a little, I'm putting myself out here,
00:49:21
Speaker
I don't care about 2D Metroid at all. It's fine. I guess it looks fine. I might pick up Dread if it's ever on PC and on sale for five bucks. Okay, for five bucks. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. But like Metroid Prime for the Switch.
00:49:42
Speaker
with like improved graphics and controls and now it's a twin stick shooter instead of being one where you have to like stand stationary in order to aim because it was like that at launch like I don't know I have in my notes here I looked at the IGN review for it and I mean IGN you know
00:50:04
Speaker
Take take some salt with it, perhaps. But the reviewer was just like, this could be one of the best first person shooter games of all time. I'm just like, I don't know. Metroid's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. I didn't grow up with it. I've never really been a Metroid fan. I like playing against Samus and Smash, particularly. I like the character design. I like the music.
00:50:33
Speaker
I know Dais picked this up when he was playing. I think he enjoyed it. I don't know if it's something for me. I'm glad that it's... I mean, people who liked Metroid loved Metroid Prime. Like, that was the biggest game of the series, I think as far as a change of what they were doing. A new format that they fucking loved. It's because 3D games are better than 2D games. It's an extra D. Like, it's right there.
00:51:03
Speaker
I'm going to you don't get to play so anymore. You're out of here. You're done. But yeah, it is. It is huge. Again, it's like what we talked about with a new replicant or trying to think of other demon souls. It's nice to have some of these old games that were like revered as these classics that a lot of people missed to have brought back into the limelight to have people exposed to again and have a chance to play.
00:51:33
Speaker
And also, you know, improve some things while you're there, too. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there was a Kirby game that came out. It's always also on this list, actually, return to Dreamland Deluxe. And I spent more time watching. Like, I don't know why I read like a comparison about what was changed in this, because I don't really play Kirby games. We talk about Crystal Shards and I use it for all of the intros and outros. But
00:51:59
Speaker
like Nintendo actually added a lot. They added like two new power-ups and then just didn't really mention them. And they added like new levels and like a post game and this kind of like, I don't know if it's a roguelike mode or it's just you play as a different character afterwards with different non Kirby abilities and stuff. And it's like
00:52:19
Speaker
All of this crap was added on top of it. And it's like, this is much better than a graphical bump re-release, right? Is it a re-release of Superstar? It's Kirby's Dream Land. Oh, and then Kirby's Return to Dream Land was the remake of that. And this is the Return to Dream Land Deluxe. So this is the third iteration of that return, Kirby's Dream Land.
00:52:49
Speaker
Is Dreamland the first or second game? And it was very early. Yeah, it's I couldn't tell you, but it is incredibly not even color yet, I think. Mm hmm. Yeah, really old. But I like it. It's again, this is these are the better examples in our. We're in the the remaster or remake age of gaming right now. I'm real excited about it.
00:53:21
Speaker
Yeah, me too. Colonel is coming to PC. Yeah, it's I think it's out now, I believe. But now it is. Yeah. Yeah. This was, I think, what, PlayStation exclusive previously? I think five or four and five. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it was five. Hmm. Somebody will fact check that for us. Yeah, it was some sort of console. It's impossible to know.
00:53:50
Speaker
So this would be a third person shooter bullet hell, like Returnal, but a lot more bullet hell and roguelike. Yeah, this one was like.
00:54:02
Speaker
It's on the list. I don't want to talk a ton about it, because I don't have too much to say. But I mean, console gamers are just deprived of good games all the time. And this one was apparently pretty decent. So they're like, it's freaking great. And then it'll come out on PC. And they'll be like, it's OK. It's good. PC Gamer, push up our glasses. One day, you'll learn. Yeah, right. But no, it was supposed to be pretty good. And I am all for.
00:54:31
Speaker
you know, eventually getting those games that came out on console to also come out on PC, you know, good ports, not just useless, terrible, unoptimized. You have to play it with the controller anyways ports.
Game Pricing and February Releases
00:54:45
Speaker
And someday Bloodborne. Please just give me Bloodborne.
00:54:55
Speaker
Yeah, I don't have anything else for Returnal, though. No, I didn't play. I didn't hear too much about it outside of some generally positive things. Yeah, I have I have like a couple here that I wanted to mention just for individual traits about it. It's kind of like basically fodder for a talking point that has nothing to do with the game. One of those is Wild Hearts.
00:55:22
Speaker
which I've seen some friends playing recently. It's kind of like a Monster Hunter-esque game, but it has building, not like in a Fortnite way, but it does kind of look like Fortnite when you're actually watching footage of the game for the way it works. It's like put down a structure that you can then like vault on top of and like jump up for like a smash attack or build a wall that the monster will hit or a giant hammer that hits the monster and stuff like that.
00:55:51
Speaker
But they're trying to get some optimizations in there, which is good because Monster Hunter has like
00:55:57
Speaker
a thousand releases, and they've changed two things about it before Monster Hunter World. And they've changed two things since Monster Hunter World. Well, they made the graphics worse, I heard. They did. They went back to Switch. But I mean, it is primarily a handheld series. When I looked at it, it was mixed on Steam. But the talking point I want to jump off on here now that I've given it full credit,
00:56:27
Speaker
was it's a $70 game and what are people doing? What are people doing, Dave? The thing is somebody just has to do it and people have to accept it and then other people will start to follow suit. And they'll make whatever justification of like economy. And I'm like, no.
00:56:50
Speaker
I think it's mainly EA right now. EA, maybe there's another publisher who's kind of doing a little bit more, but they're trying to push their games up to the $70 mark. Then you have to make a fucking $70 game, my guy. A lot of these things, you're just not. Like, again, it's like a lot of things can be good, but we need them to be great.
00:57:14
Speaker
One is just I want good things. I want to experience good things at a higher quality. Right. Because I value my time, even though sometimes I stare at the wall. Yeah. But just making a triple A game that like you have the budget for, but like not making it good does not make it worth more money. Yeah. It's got to be about 15% better. Right. So.
00:57:40
Speaker
That's 15, 15 points higher on Metacritic. That's not how that works. But yeah, I, I have heard the argument about why it's changing. And that's because like accounted for inflation when games were like $50 to now.
00:58:01
Speaker
If we kept the price equal with inflation, games would be like, I think it's 86 bucks. But counter argument, here's my argument. I'm gonna pretend to be an economist for a moment. The gaming industry has literally never been bigger than it is right now, right? When people were selling that $50 game, they're like,
00:58:25
Speaker
I hope my two friends can be scammed by ET for the NES or whatever.
00:58:34
Speaker
That that is what gaming was back then. You're like, I hope we sold 100,000 copies right now. That's like we have to close the studio. And back then, it's like, how did you get every single gamer to buy a copy of your game? Right. Because there wasn't as much access to information or the Internet or people doing review is it just, hey, do you want this new thing? You're like, yes, I don't want to be left behind your camera. But yeah, like for how bad games were when games started out,
00:59:03
Speaker
we should be charging less money for video games now to match. Yeah, like in quality, quality can could definitely be a consideration. I don't think they'll ever have the introspection or drive to really adjust the price that way. But just by just by quantity of sales, right? Bandwidth is cheap. All of these games are digital or like almost the entirety of their sales will be digital, like
00:59:31
Speaker
You just are not putting the money into these games that justifies this going up by $10. And if you are, you're spending too much money on these games, right? Make a good game, not an expensive game. Those don't have to be the same thing.
00:59:49
Speaker
I don't mean that entirely. There are good expensive games out there as well. Yeah, but like one does not equate the other. Yes. And when EA of all companies posts like, you know, however many millions or perhaps billion of dollars
01:00:08
Speaker
in profit, you know, at the end of the year, because again, gaming is bigger than music and movies combined. I think tripled is what I heard. Like, yes, it's incredibly big. Like, yeah, you're making bank. I don't think you need to charge people a little bit more, especially when everything else is getting more expensive. That's my argument.
01:00:38
Speaker
I disagree. Yeah, right. That'll get us the last nine, nine seconds to our minimum quota for time. Was there anything any any thing we didn't mention that you think really should be mentioned for the month of February? I don't know when Pizza Tower came out, but Pizza Tower came out. I keep hearing good things about it. And then Polygon had a video on it.
01:01:08
Speaker
today. So it's on my radar. I'm curious to check it out. This doesn't this game sounds like it's nothing. I know that you've literally told me about it, but the name continues to make me think that it's nothing. Like if a game is called Pizza Tower. Oh, the initial release date was 2018, and I think it's had a lot of revisions since.
01:01:31
Speaker
OK, well, in Steam, I see it as January 26 this year. OK, that's like the official Steam release. Yeah. This is a 2D game, Dave. I don't know how to break it to you. OK. Now, it does look like it has a lot of character. It's kind of got some like Renin Stimpy energy. Oh, I see that. Yeah. Well, it's based, I think it's
01:01:59
Speaker
Initially based off of a Morio world or warrior land. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Huh? Interesting. This does look like it's got a whole lot of effort. I don't want to say like production value. People also ask is pizza tower a real game? Yeah, I think that might be that might be some of the worst. Maybe not search engine optimization.
01:02:25
Speaker
But you don't have to have your game be the call of the void, the brass return, edgelord, whatever the crap. But Pizza Tower also just does nothing for me. That's too far in the other direction. It's just like, are you multiple pizzas? OK. But I think that this is going to be the indie darling that you'll keep hearing about. Gotcha. OK. I have to listen for it.
01:02:54
Speaker
If you pick it up, let me know. It looks like it's 20 bucks on Steam, though. And let's get indie games. The standard has been 15 dollars. We got to stick it 15. No, I'm just kidding. But we'll we'll see for this one, I guess. There's some weekend I'll check it out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully you guys have had a happy, healthy and wholesome February.
01:03:22
Speaker
I had like two out of three, but that's okay. I'm getting better now. And if you guys have any news, things that you want us to talk about, we're always willing to suggest or accept suggestions in the form of news. We can just talk about whatever as we often do, but if you have something that is very heartfelt and you're like,
01:03:48
Speaker
It really bothers me that you didn't cover it when going through the news for February. Man, this whole segment has fallen to pieces. Send that in. Just send us anything. Soapstonepodcast.gmail.com. Legal. Please keep it legal. Soapstonepodcast.gmail.com. Advertisers, no more advertisements, please, for this month. We've got enough to vet through, but we'll resume later.
01:04:14
Speaker
Or you can join the discussion at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. As an outro for anybody who's still listening, when this episode comes out, it is in fact Jake's birthday. So go wish my happy birthday on Facebook. Bye.