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S2 Ep140: Talkcast - January 2021
76 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they finally get around to their top games of the year for 2020 and touch on some news 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
00:00:02
Speaker
you
00:00:52
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm
Casual Chat & Humor with Guests
00:00:56
Speaker
joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? You know, Jake, I feel like the past two weeks, I've kind of brought up its plight to introduce when we have a guest. But that's not applicable today. I'm doing OK. How are you doing? It would be funny if someone just joined at the last second. They're just like, and I'm here. We're not going to talk about anything. I can't place anybody's audio in at this point.
00:01:19
Speaker
I think I'm doing pretty well.
Politics & Social Interaction
00:01:21
Speaker
It's kind of, I think things are a little more chill right now. It's kind of like. Yeah. I mean, we don't really talk about politics or anything else like that, but it kind of feels like I can sort of like step back and not be like, Hey, what's the next thing that's just going to be like super concerning and terrible. Two to 8% less clenched than normal. Yeah. Yeah. It does.
00:01:49
Speaker
It feels like certain things you're kind of starting to slow down. Like I think I was online talking like some people, I'm just not going to name names at this point, even though everyone's been on the podcast probably. It was like, Hey, what happened with the election? Like, was there any, you know, more fun violence going on? They're like, no, it's just kind of standard boring politics. I'm like, I didn't realize how much I missed that. Right. Yeah. It's just, Oh, if things are happening.
00:02:18
Speaker
okay versus like oh my god what the fuck's happening now yeah no i i was i haven't talked to my parents yet but i was i'm pretty sure i'm gonna be like that's pretty much the stance i'm gonna have on it be like get ready to be bored by everything that like doesn't happen
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. Hopefully things stay chill and don't have to worry about stuff like that for a while longer. We can focus on what's important in life.
00:02:51
Speaker
video
Generational Differences in Online Socializing
00:02:52
Speaker
games, obviously. I mean, it's obviously still like a mainstay for me. My uncle texted me today and we were just kind of gathering back and forth like, what have you been up to? And he was kind of sharing that for him, obviously he doesn't have the same type of
00:03:12
Speaker
environment that we do where it's, oh, friends online will play games and socialize that way. It's nice to be able to fucking see people in person. He's much more of the generation where like, that's how you do it. And you can also like have games on the side for if it's like the weekend and everybody's busy type thing. Like that's a backup.
00:03:34
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah, no, it's kind of like a it's a passive state for us, I think, in our generation. We have discords, you know, we're in these communities. We see people are connected to a voice channel. We can just jump in. It's kind of like having an opt in poker night every single night is probably the way I would compare it to like I would explain it to an older generation. And I have to my parents, you know, it's like this odd
00:04:01
Speaker
like community you can just jump into immediately and it admittedly doesn't have the same depth to like a one-on-one conversation.
00:04:12
Speaker
or like a lunch date or something like that, right? Like those are deeper experiences, I think.
Pandemic's Impact on Society
00:04:19
Speaker
And I think our generation and generations to come are going to need to make sure that they don't lose those, you know, somewhere along the way. But I would say for like the pandemic, it's been really nice that my
00:04:34
Speaker
social interactions really haven't reduced at all. And there's entire other classes of people and like ages of people where that is not possible, right? Like, you're like, Oh, I only meet my, I only speak to my friends in person. I now don't talk to anyone, right? You know, that's gotta be tough.
00:04:50
Speaker
I mean, do you think people in general are going to rubber band back or do you think certain people would be like, I'm used to the client? Right. I mean, from a certain perspective, I don't think things are going to ever be exactly the same.
00:05:08
Speaker
like as it was pre-pandemic because people are just more conscious of, you know, health effects, things like that. Like our generation didn't have a plague where we needed to pay attention to all of this stuff until now. And I think people are going to be more cognizant of some of that. Now I do hope people go out eventually, not now, when it's safe, you know, and re-engage in a lot of that. But
00:05:38
Speaker
it's going to reform at least the tech sector. We both work from home now. Who knows how it's impacted other industries. Some industries just probably won't survive in their current state. I don't see a way that the world's unchanged by this. Man, that got a heavy click.
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely going to be a shake up regardless. I'm trying to preach to a few people in the older generation who I still interact with.
00:06:10
Speaker
Like I was telling my uncle like, hey, maybe try like some cheap or free games online with people and just. Yeah. Yeah. It's not necessarily the activity. It's who you do it with. Right. Exactly. Yeah. We've had this like people in discord when we're not actually playing games or something really common, which I think I wouldn't, might not actually be able to explain to an older generation.
00:06:36
Speaker
is we'll all be sitting in voice chat and none of us are playing games together. We're all doing separate things. And maybe one or two people are streaming and then a few people are watching those people stream. I would equate it back in the day.
00:06:51
Speaker
Did you ever like get on a phone call with like multiple people? Yeah, a group call. Yeah. Or you just, I mean, you had a wireless headset at this point, or just a wireless telephone, and you just kind of just walk around, stick around and go, I'm going to go grab a snack from the fridge. But you're still like chatting with people. It's still online. With the shoulder holding the phone up to your ear, which is kind of, it's a thing that doesn't. That's how I got the crick in my neck, specifically from that.
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah, times they are a changing, but
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, we just need a we need a Discord server for a bunch of people to jump in and talk about how the world's getting to crap, I guess. Those already exist. I don't know. I'm concerned, actually, I'm concerned about what my parents would like, what kind of Discord communities they would join at this point. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't trust my parents to have any fucking clue about what's going on. Like a meme would be like, what is this? I don't have time to.
00:07:55
Speaker
I feel like certain things that like come up and like, this is so a part of what I'm used to in my culture or whatever the fuck. It's just so ingrained where someone's like, what is that? I immediately go like, I don't have the time to explain it. It's just, if you don't get it, you don't get it. Move on. Yeah. It's kind of like back when instant messaging was a thing, like lol or haha or whatever, like
00:08:17
Speaker
They never really meant I'm laughing out loud about what you just said or like I'm laughing about what you just said. It's just like, I have received your message and I have nothing to contribute right now. Like feel free to proceed if you wish. I may have something to say later, right? You know, it's just the acknowledgement and yeah, I don't know. There's still, there's still some things that are changing there, I guess.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, I like the evolution of how it changes. You used to be lol. They're like, well, it's funnier than lol. Oh, laughing my ass off. Oh, no, I'm rolling on the floor laughing. That was an actual laugh. I'm on the floor laughing my ass off.
00:08:59
Speaker
like rolling on the floor laughing was the only one for me that represented like, oh, that's funny. Yeah. Right. Like that's actually actually literally funny. But it it's always felt like too extreme to put in. Uh huh. Like what what does anybody ever say? You were like, that's that's a full raffle right there. Yeah. I mean, you never it's always down tiered one. Right. So if you're if you send rolling on the floor laughing, you're like, oh, I could audibly laugh at that over what you said.
00:09:26
Speaker
Um, and if you said laughing out loud, it was, I would not laugh out loud. I smiled briefly. Yeah. I don't know. We'll figure it out. In the meantime, we'll just, you know, keep playing games on discord, uh, fostering meaningful relationships and friendships, um, as best we can in this pandemic and beyond and try to not be douchebags to each other. Life goals.
00:09:58
Speaker
I had you up until the last one.
Game of the Year 2020: Hades
00:10:02
Speaker
So anyways, that's all we had this week. Um, thanks guys. One of these days we should just have like a nine minute episode. But, but pad out the audio or something. Yeah. It seems like a good April fool's one, especially if we didn't prepare anything. Yeah. Just tons of April fool's jokes in the bag. Um,
00:10:26
Speaker
but to return to regularly scheduled programming.
00:10:31
Speaker
we alluded to and then had several episodes, I think, in between talking about what our game of the year was for 2020. And we usually do that on our recap episode, but I forgot about it entirely. So we just talked about the games we covered and we're like, yep, and those were the games we played. Have a good day. So I think it would be valuable to our listeners who obviously care a lot about our opinions on things.
00:11:00
Speaker
against all reason. If we touch on maybe some of our favorite games, top game at least, for 2020. And if there's nothing there, just pick something that you really like that's still a really good game, I guess.
00:11:17
Speaker
The thing that's sad is like whenever I pick my top, whatever, whenever I look at like the games list, I'm like, didn't play that, didn't play that, didn't play that. And it's like out of a hundred games, I maybe played five and of those I pick one. Right, exactly. So yeah, this is very subjective in our selection. Surprise, surprise. Mine's pretty objective. Well, I mean, it is objectively good.
00:11:46
Speaker
You don't even know what game I'm looking at yet. I'm looking through the list. I'm like, oh, watch Dogs Legion? No, no, it's probably not. Let's do a countdown. They'll say it at the same time. Ready? We'll say our game of the year. OK. 3, 2, 1, and then go. 3, 2, 1, Hades. Hades. Yeah, it's Hades. Oh, no. I'll sync up the audio later. Don't worry about it. It's anti-climactic. For me, it came through at the same time. Could be a little bit of lag. I don't know. But why was Hades?
00:12:15
Speaker
If you were to try to explain why Hades was your game of the year for 2020. I'm going to edit in the whole previous episode on Hades. But like the game has been solid from an early access standpoint and they kept adding stuff to it until actual launch. But it's fucking smooth as butter. Combat's really tight. It's really easy to like pick up and go back and play and have fun runs.
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah. Music, art, design, everything. Everything about it is just, it's really good. And everyone who I've talked to, who has played it also agrees, which is nice because a lot of people haven't necessarily grown up in Supergiant games. They're like, oh, I've heard of one or two. But then they tried Hades. They're like, that's some good shit. And it is. It absolutely is.
00:13:07
Speaker
I agree entirely. I'm fairly certain I said this in the episode for Hades as well, but even if you don't like 10s or like end quotes, like perfect games, even though there's no perfect game, a 10 in my mind is like genre exceeding. It's something where it's like even if you didn't like this type of game,
00:13:29
Speaker
you should probably check it out because it might either get you into the genre or it's just going to be like it's so good within that genre you wouldn't need to play anything else anyways, right? And like Hades is...
00:13:43
Speaker
a hundred percent that. It's just I don't traditionally like roguelike games all that much, even if it's a theme I really like, like FTL. And I don't usually play them that long. And then Hades is just like slap that down on the desk and I'm just going to read the lore through playing the game for a long time. Also, there's no downsides. Mm hmm.
00:14:10
Speaker
Like just looking at the quick Google list of like top games of 2020 for the ones I have played for each one, I can, I can bring up a fucking list of gripes with them. Like they really should have changed this or this kind of sucks with names. I'm like, no, no, that's good. Thank you.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree entirely. And that does really help to the game of the year selection, when you're like, I don't actually have major drawbacks for this one, right? And that is 100% Hades. The other games on the list I enjoyed, or my contenders, I would say, I enjoyed, but not holistically like Hades, right? It just hits it from every single angle.
00:14:57
Speaker
Do you have, um, so I have like a couple that I would really consider in the running. Um, probably like a top five, probably like a top five or four, five is a better number, but I don't know if I can come up with five. Um, do you want me, do you want me to kick it off? Yeah. So I can copy some of yours. That's fair. All right. So this one surprised me because it came like late. Um, and it's not.
00:15:24
Speaker
For reasons, I think a game of the year itself contender, like you would never fully take the spot, but it's always going to approach it.
Praise for Ghost Runner and Doom Eternal
00:15:32
Speaker
This is the sidekick in the, uh, in the, uh, shown in anime or whatever. I don't know, but a ghost runner, which I loved like for just fun.
00:15:43
Speaker
Ghost Runner is so freaking good. Fucking told you like that. And like I did like not like speed running, but like time trial runs in Ghost Runner. Right. Which I never do for any game, because I find that completely pointless. But for like an indie tied me over until Cyberpunk sort of thing, like Ghost Runner actually hit a lot of points that I absolutely loved.
00:16:12
Speaker
And exceeded cyberpunk in some ways, as it turns out. So better than tonic gameplay. I'll say it. Um, yeah, that was really good. It's something I could see going back and doing more time trials just to try and beat some of your times. Um, I have to be sober when I try and do it. That'll help me a lot. But again, no, that's a great example of very tight platforming, very snappy. And like when you do an action or you cut down enemy, it feels good.
00:16:42
Speaker
It feels visual, it feels very quick. And then you just have really cool level design throughout a couple of different areas. Then bam, got yourself a game. It's like a first, like I think we described it or I described it as like a first person futuristic hotline Miami. And like, I was going to like that. That's a good formula for me. Yeah, that was definitely up there. I didn't see anything in a blank. What was that? It's still worth mentioning Last of Us 2.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's fair. I mean, obviously there's some gripes, like it wasn't as heteronormative as I was hoping. Like it's still a solid game. It's never going to take the place of the first, but I still enjoyed it. Yeah.
00:17:28
Speaker
But I think for production value, that was probably like, not to take anything away from Hades, but like sheer just pump money into this production until it's unbeatable for production value. Last of Us 2 is really freaking clean.
00:17:47
Speaker
It's just the story, you know, lacked a lot or just took some different directions where I didn't think it necessarily needed to go. But still, I liked it and I can't say I did not enjoy it. Yeah, I would definitely recommend that one. That's a good, that's a good mention. Now you pick one.
00:18:06
Speaker
My pick is, and I'm going to always state the disqualifying reason why it's not like a game of the year, I guess, for me, but like Doom Eternal is everything I ever want in a sequel. Like it's kind of funny because you just came off The Last of Us 2, but like Doom Eternal was they're like, we really nailed it with the formula.
00:18:29
Speaker
Let's just not screw with that, right? Like our one main gripe. And maybe it sounds kind of derivative to say that, because I don't want Call of Duty, right? I don't want like a new Doom with the same mechanics every year, same levels or like new levels. But like one of our gripes was the camera, the name of it, that enemy that had a shield and he had to like very up the way you actually attacked him, like dodge to the side. Roger. Roger. Thank you.
00:18:57
Speaker
So like, I don't know, the core is just so fun to play still that Doom Eternal is pretty high on the list for this year for me. Yeah, I'd still think it.
00:19:13
Speaker
I think the main reason it detracted is it wasn't as mind blowing as the jump was from Doom 3 or wherever the fuck they left off before making the jump to Doom 2016, which was revolutionary. That's like an impossible jump to actually make again though, right?
00:19:32
Speaker
I liked that they expanded on like the scope of stuff. You're like learning about these other planets. They're filling in the lower, still making it like pretty optional, but there's a lot more of it here. Um, mechanics like all of them too. You had like swingy bars. You had, yeah, with your fucking metal mitts. And I just added like more options, which is it kind of like fleshed out the arena levels. Yeah. Where you had more mobility options. It was just cool. Yeah.
Fall Guys' Success Formula
00:20:02
Speaker
But it's not going to be a holy fuck. I have to go replay that. Mm hmm. Yeah. It's like I enjoy the time I spent in it. I actually bought the DLC and I have every intention of going back and playing it, but I have not yet. I was just like the gods deals here. I think so. That sounds right. It was like one of the steam sales or something like that. I was like, oh, yeah, there's DLC for this game I really enjoyed. I will revisit this in a year.
00:20:30
Speaker
I wish we played more together, but I understand why we didn't. And it doesn't have a lot of DLC, but they added a lot of content. Follow guys.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah. That has taken, I mean, outside of Among Us, the world by storm. Yes. Yeah. Having little jelly bean people go through a MXC style challenge. And it's just kind of silly and fun. Occasionally it's janky. I don't want to scream at it because too many people are jumping when I'm trying to jump, but it's still a game where I can, I feel like I can pick up and play with friends. Mm-hmm.
00:21:07
Speaker
It's definitely a lesson that having a core gameplay concept and loop and just idea, you really don't need all of that other superfluous stuff. Graphically, guess what, guys? Not that impressive. It was a very cartoony, playful art style, but it works and that's very fun and lighthearted.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah. Their strat is called brevity and levity. Make it short. Make it fun and upbeat. Go. Pat on the ass. Give you some tunes. They're pushing people off ledges like a sociopath. Yeah, that's definitely something I think you can emphasize in game design is like you don't have to do 10 things well.
00:21:58
Speaker
It's much better to do one thing like great. If you're going to like really focus on one mechanic, if you really have a core part of your game that's fun, screw the rest of it. Focus on the fun. I've been trying to convince my boss of that specifically. Listen, it is one thing really well to really have to do all this other stuff. Come on now.
00:22:20
Speaker
There's the Reggie quote. It's like from Nintendo. It's like, if it's not fun, why bother, right? That's just, I don't know. I think that that's a key that's really exemplified by games like Among Us and Fall Guys where they have a specific focus for exactly what they're going for and they just push that. Apparently that still works because those games exploded this year.
00:22:50
Speaker
Thank you, Twitch. And I definitely spent more time earlier in the pandemic, but I did get a lot of value out of Animal Crossing. Yeah. I'm sure I'll go back and do some more at some point. All right. Now I'm, I'm good. Cause they'll just add like a couple of seasonal items. I'm like, I have to do what? Nah, that's okay. I don't really need it. But it's still very fun and Animal Crossing-y.
00:23:18
Speaker
I know I'd be concerned getting into Animal Crossing because it has the obsessive, accomplish this goal, set a new goal, accomplish this goal, set a new goal that tends to subsume my life when I experience that. I'm specifically avoiding it actually because I think I'd like it. It does that for a period of time, but then I guess it would be the end game where you don't have expenses come up and you're designing your island however you want.
00:23:47
Speaker
Yeah. There's a crew and stuff. I think the biggest thing is if you and your wife were both actively playing it, you'd probably grab a second switch. Yeah.
00:24:01
Speaker
Yeah, that would be that would be a little bit of an expense for largely just this specific game because we do share the switch right now and There's not really any contention. You can live one One island, right? I think I think you can technically have multiple people on it based off what I saw from like girlfriend reviews But there's enough downsides to it that they're like Nah, just make it other island and if you're gonna play at the same time get another switch and so
00:24:27
Speaker
not quite ready for that jump yet guys are looking for easter guests for jake throwing it out there switch wouldn't be too shabby just give me give me a switch i guess for this game that i have not played yet yeah anything else you want to mention on other other games that were good but not not as good
00:24:51
Speaker
I think those are, those are most of the key ones. Um, I played some other games that were like fun that year, but I think for the purpose of mentioning just some of the best ones, I think, I think those were largely, largely as I look through the list frantically, seeing if there's anything else that I'm just going to really regret not mentioning. Um, if only we had a platform to mention it in the future, worst case. Yeah. Technology doesn't exist yet. My friend Pedro, obviously really good. Um,
00:25:22
Speaker
No, actually, I did end up playing and beating Karian. Buying playing and beating Karian. And we didn't talk about it at all, because I'd never mentioned it until now, I guess. This is literally news to me. But I had played the demo, and I was not fully sold on it. And then I went through and playing the single, the actual full game. I enjoyed the pacing a little bit more.
00:25:48
Speaker
It doesn't belong on this list. This is like an honorable honorable mention just because I found out that I don't like the classical metroidvania there's a large world map and you've Like reached the end of a path and you don't know where to go now and this game a hundred percent does that So zero at a time
00:26:14
Speaker
says the guy who proves to saying, I really like Hollow Knight. The nice thing about Hollow Knight is that they at least had the indicators for like, oh yeah, areas of the map you haven't explored yet, right? There's a connective area here or there's macro, like here's the temple of the egg. I feel like it was laid out a little bit better or more intuitive, I guess. Or that should be biased.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, it really seemed a lot better. It is also a bias, but I agree. It's freaking great. And Factorio, bonus mention, officially launched this year. So if Hades qualifies, then Factorio qualifies. I don't believe in automating anything, so I didn't play it.
00:27:00
Speaker
But it's fair working in technology and don't believe automated anything. Bold stance. I specifically write things out on paper and mail it into the office. I will say something on this list that I've actually been playing recently, which would probably get up there. Ghost of Tsushima.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yes. I want to play it. There were some trailers back in the day were like, oh, that looks good. And to be fair, it does look fucking gorgeous. I think my initial fear is that it was going to be kind of bootleg Sekiro. But they play very differently. This is an open world game. So treat it like you're Breath of the Wild.
00:27:43
Speaker
It's good. I'm enjoying the combat. Occasionally you can have like duels against enemies, which kind of more leverages when you need to use special combat skills instead of just dragging out enemies one by one. But the main thing I think is just the aesthetics of the game. So at some point when I finish it or I just get tired, I will probably just give you the disc. I threw it as well.
00:28:12
Speaker
Cause I think you'll like it. I probably will. I played like open world games toward the end of the year, Far Cry 5, which it was not a 2020 title, but I enjoy Far Cry and as it pains me, I enjoy that Ubisoft style open world explored like clear bases and like
00:28:32
Speaker
not necessarily get collectibles, but a lot of that other stuff. And from what I've heard, Ghost of Tsushima is really good for that. It's like, according to Skill Up, at least, it was like basically peak traditional open world style game. And so I'm like, OK, I have to play it, I guess. Right. Like I've had several friends say it's really good. This is going on. It's on the list.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah, future episode, TBD. But for sure. Yeah. You been playing anything recently? Just really one game. Can't say 14. Not 14, yeah. I'm pretty much always playing 14. But the most recent thing is early access game, I know. Judge me. On Steam, called Invisible Strain.
Spotlight on Invisible Strain
00:29:27
Speaker
And there's some other stuff there in the title I don't think that
00:29:31
Speaker
I think this is like the second game or something or survivalist invisible strain. That's what it's called. Okay. Didn't want to misrepresent it, but it's like a co-op sort of survival zombie base building type game. Many of these horsemen.
00:29:49
Speaker
I know you're familiar, Dave, because we've literally talked about this. This is early access, survival, crafting. So before I label you a heathen and cast you out of the church, what's the redeeming quality? Why does it have you interested? Why do you keep playing? So it's cell shaded, which is interesting, kind of like off the bat for me. I kind of just like that art style.
00:30:15
Speaker
Um, not like wind waker full on cell shading, but like, uh, have a black border around every border, like object or person or whatever, huh? Like border lines.
00:30:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, much like Borderlands. Borderlands is a really good comparison. The other thing is there's like the right side of your screen is, and I wasn't sold on this, but I came to like it, dedicated to some menu of like a description of whatever you're looking at and a camera view up in the top right. And if you're not targeting anything,
00:30:50
Speaker
It's just like following your player character, like an action shot. And if you target something, if you look at something, then it follows them. So if you're like looting a building, it'll like pan around the building, kind of like showing the building. Nothing else. It doesn't like give you extra information, really.
00:31:10
Speaker
Or if there's like a zombie, it will like pan around the zombie as they're like running at you or whatever. And it's kind of an interesting like little gimmick, I guess.
00:31:23
Speaker
But the game is not like a first-person shooter. It's much more traditional Deus Ex sort of have you increased your skills, your stats by like picking up books and just doing things to get that experience type. And if you have not, it'll take you forever for like the little reticule to zoom in for you to actually get an accurate shot with like an arrow or a gun.
00:31:50
Speaker
And I don't know, it scratches that itch, I guess, for the base building thing. I don't know how multiplayer works. I haven't tried multiplayer, but you can switch between any of the members of your group.
00:32:06
Speaker
Um, at any time. So you can just like pause the game and be like, I am now controlling this one. And the guy you were just playing as we'll go on to AI behavior for like managing his job or doing whatever. So that's for final fantasy seven remake out of from gotcha.
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So let's play it. Let me let me stream snipe. Share on Discord. Yeah. So I can see. I mean, it was awesome. Or I'll be like, it's kind of fucking idiot. I just want to play it. Yeah, it's really cheap. It's like eight bucks. And I think it has potential. But I want to see where it goes out of early access. I think it's just like a single developer.
00:32:51
Speaker
Which is always like borderline sus because I don't know the health of this person. Hopefully they live a long time. But if they just drop into the game, also just drop, right? You need two people. You need a backup developer.
00:33:06
Speaker
Oh, so it's kind of like the George RR Martin thing where you're like, please don't die before you finish the thing. But to be fair, like Toby Fox did Undertale. That's true. Now, to be fair, some other people help draw the art stuff, but 99.99% of the game is him. Um, took him a long time, obviously, comparatively, like if he had a team, but
00:33:30
Speaker
Hot damn. Just imagining like half of the game's done and then Timmy came in to finish the story. There you go. Actually, the whole outro sequence for like the last two hours, that was Timmy, not. Yeah. Things get real weird.
00:33:46
Speaker
But yeah, it's an interesting game. We'll see how it develops, but I'll let people know I guess. Have you been playing anything recently? Or are you just keeping up with Dota and stuff?
00:34:03
Speaker
Have you abandoned Dota? Taking a couple day break. But I mean, probably tomorrow night, someone messes me up like, you'll play. So most recently, Mike got me RoboQuest. Okay. Which as far as you're concerned, it plays a lot like Gunfire Reborn, where it is a roguelike first person shooter, done kind of like a Unity engine style. Mm hmm.
00:34:29
Speaker
But we've gone through that a couple times. It's been fun. Music's much more getting your blood pumping. Right. Kind of synthetic or something. But for where it's at right now, there's not a whole bunch of content. So after you like a couple of runs, kind of fuck around. It's like, OK, I can I can wait on that. But I do like.
00:34:51
Speaker
that more people are exploring this type of game? Because something really took the time like, hey, here are the good qualities of these other types of roguelike first-person shooters. How can we make the best one? Maybe you get a studio that has money in versus something that's very small or a single person.
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like you could have something very juicy and awesome on your hands coughed off super giant I called it they're making the first-person shooter next let it be this genre We definitely made jokes about that yeah, yeah, so think it could happen we are the insiders obviously for super giants plans and
00:35:34
Speaker
The other thing is I've been playing almost neurotically. I'll do like a couple of noita attempts. Yeah. I see the, I see the launch every time I, every time I launch, it's like, fuck. Do you know what it is? Is it because the main process quits out or something like that or restarts? No, it's just more like a mental thing is what I meant, but what? Oh, okay.
00:36:03
Speaker
That was a great 10 seconds of audio. Um, do you know what noise it is though? Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, we've talked about it. So you don't, you don't need to describe it to the audience at all. All right. No, they know. All right. Wait, no. What? What's noise? So it is a rogue like 2d platform dungeon crawly type thing. Yeah. Where there's like enemies in the dungeon. You kill them. You have one that has spells and then you have like a,
00:36:34
Speaker
a bottle or a potion, and that's pretty much your kit. And you kind of are meant to go and explore. If you get to the bottom of a certain area, there's a portal, which kind of brings you to a little intermediary space to like use your money to buy shit and then go to the next area. And it gets progressively more bullshit.
00:36:53
Speaker
The game is always out to kill you. And this is mainly because everything in the game is a simulated pixel. So each thing has specific properties. So fire spreads on wood. You can also spew oil. You can kick stuff. You can kick an explosive barrel and then shoot it.
00:37:17
Speaker
The wands and spells essentially act like guns, but you can get different wands, different spells and customize them to have whatever fucking shit you want. And some of it gets really crazy. And I haven't even seen half of it at this point. Yeah. But typically you find a cool combination of some stuff and then you kill yourself with it because that's the game. The only secrets I've found so far have been through sniping on YouTube. Gotcha. Okay.
00:37:47
Speaker
But man, that game is, it has a lot of stuff, but man, I got my ass kicked. Yeah. I only, I think I watched you play for one session and it looked absolutely brutal. Like a lot of, a lot of like roguelikes are like, all right, your first level is like pretty much going to be a cakewalk. It's just you determining whether your build's viable or not. And then we'll actually start to throw challenges at you. You know, that's pretty standard balancing.
00:38:14
Speaker
And it's like, I think for the most part, yeah, you were kind of making it like through the first level or whatever. And then you'd step on like just the second floor. And it's just immediately eviscerated by all these enemies. Okay, guess the build wasn't viable or whatever, you know? It looks really hard. And I need meta progression to like make up for skill deficiency. That's one of my requirements of Roguelikes.
Roguelike Mastery Through Failure
00:38:41
Speaker
I mean, it's fair, but I think somebody said it. I think Albino, who's a YouTuber whose video is watching about this, said like the meta progression you get is knowledge. Cause like you learn like, oh, you can't electrocute water. And if I'm in that water, fucking sucks. I learned certain attack patterns. You learn how to move around a little bit better.
00:39:05
Speaker
It's okay to jump into fire because you're using your water potion to pour water under you so you can collect the gold that enemy dropped. You get better at certain little things or you learn to explore over here and you know what's over here. You can't go over here yet because it'll kill you type things. Gotcha. No, I do like that. I do like games where passive knowledge accumulation helps you in the end.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah, the game is still, it looked hard, but it's still fun. Like it, it's in that space where I feel like all roguelikes should aspire to be where after you have a good run or a bad run, you're thinking I can, I could do another run and it's going to be awesome. Or like this next one will be the one for sure. Right. Something that brings you back to the gameplay loop. Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker
And knowledge can definitely, or having the ability to learn from your experiences in a roguelike is also key to lending a sense of fairness, I guess. Because that's something that's pushed me away sometimes is if I die and I'm just like, oh, I just freaking got cheesed by something, right? It's the equivalent to running past a wall in Dark Souls and you get backstabbed by somebody, right?
00:40:25
Speaker
I don't really particularly think that was fair. I'll like put this away in my knowledge banks and never let this happen in this particular location again, but it has to be fair for me to, or feel fair at least for me to really enjoy it. And if you can die and then be like, I know exactly why that happened and try to avoid that in the future. That's, that's good gameplay design, I think. Yeah.
00:40:54
Speaker
And sometimes just your build sucks. That's just where you're at. Sometimes you're like, my damage is low. Let me take something that spews fire. Why am I taking burn damage? Can I get mom's knife? Mom's knife in here? No? No? OK. Throw it out? Oh, it comes back. Nice. But yeah, those are some solid games. And I think it's kind of funny that several of them
00:41:24
Speaker
We didn't even really cover ghost of Tsushima. I guess we didn't play. So we can't say whether that's a contender for the other thing. Also, I think I mentioned to you offline, I did play one shot at somebody's recommendation. That's kind of small, short and cute. I don't know anything about it. It's one of the things that I don't want to comment too much because
00:41:53
Speaker
Part of it is the experience. Right. Yeah. It's one of those. But it does share some elements of other games that. I think you'd like. Gotcha. Yeah, I might have to give it a look. See, I have a couple of things on the list right now in the uncategorized because I bought them and haven't played them things or in the will of the Wisps. Nice. There's another one which I must have actually categorized because it's not here anymore.
00:42:22
Speaker
I have Lisa now, so... You picked up Lisa. Yeah, I apparently also have one shot about that in December and forgot about it. So legit, when you start playing Lisa, can you let me know? Can you stream that? I'm very concerned. For an RPG, it's definitely the most unique RPG I've played so far. And I still need to go through and actually continue where I left off and beat it. Oh my gosh, yeah.
00:42:52
Speaker
Oh, and I picked up Destroy All Humans for some reason. Oh, why? That was an Xbox 360 game, right? It's a remake. Original Xbox. I mean, back in the day, the first one. Yeah, it's a remake of the old one. I don't know. We'll see if I play it more. And then one that a lot of fans have been wanting us to play for a long time, so I figured I'd pick it up. Dink and Rompa, Ultra Despair Girls.
00:43:23
Speaker
Is that a sequel to the ones you guys last played? I think it's three. It's like ding and rump. Another episode. Did you guys play three or four? I played one. Oh, we've actually played. Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
I remember like you guys like binge over weekend. You're like, we love this. I was like, Oh, nice. And I hadn't really heard of it at all, but just know you guys like playing it a fuck ton. It's basically like visual novel plus a mini game and a little bit of walking around, but it was fun. I don't know. Enjoy it. I'm a sucker for dark anime stuff and that's basically what it is. Yeah.
00:44:03
Speaker
If you want more of like a lighthearted anime novel, I recommend hot shit. What's the name of the poetry club? Doki Doki Literature, Literature Club. Yeah. Easy recommend, honestly. It's lighthearted. It's nice. Yeah. How do you feel about subversive games in general? Do you prefer them or do you just appreciate them as they come up?
00:44:33
Speaker
It's a tough topic. Doki Doki is free. That's the reason it works, right?
00:44:43
Speaker
If it was actually a dating sim, visual novel type thing, and there was no subversion, people would legitimately feel ripped off if they paid money for it and then got blindsided by all this stuff, right? Cause you're buying into the concept. Yes. And so like, it kind of makes subversive games really hard to actually market because by definition,
00:45:11
Speaker
If you're selling it, you're selling them, you're selling the consumer something different than what they actually think they're getting, which is not usually good. That's true. I guess the only rule like tag that you can do, it's like, here's the initial setting, but not everything is as it seems. And then you leave it at that because I say, same thing with like pony Island. Did you ever play? Uh, yeah, I think I'm pretty sure play that. Didn't we talk about it at one point? Probably.
00:45:42
Speaker
Yeah, I played two hours, which I think is the entire game. Like it's really solid and it gets out there more than you would expect, I guess. Yeah, it's very meta and manipulative and
00:46:00
Speaker
I think in general, you need the wealth of games in a certain genre to exist for subversion to be possible, obviously. I'm calling it a first person shooter and the second person is like, I'm going to turn it on its head. And people are like, what? I wonder what this first thing is.
00:46:22
Speaker
So like for Pony Island, I just I brought it up because I was looking at it in steam. Like the opening trailer kind of has some glitchy niche glitchiness in the splash screen. And like you get the impression that things are like not quite right. And then the description is Pony Island is a suspense puzzle game in disguise. You're in limbo trapped in a malevolent and malfunctioning arcade machine devised by the devil himself. It is not a game about ponies. And so I think that's the right way to do it. You're like,
00:46:50
Speaker
you are purchasing a game for the credibly expensive price of $5. And we're going to tell you that this game is not what you like actually would expect if you just looked at like the box art, right? Or like the splash screen. But we're not going to tell you what it is. Something is mysteriously wrong here. And you'll play the game to figure out. Okay. I gotta say overall, I'm definitely a sucker for
00:47:20
Speaker
not specifically subversive games, but stuff that does get a little bit meta or things that break fourth wall. Yeah.
00:47:29
Speaker
Back when we played Talos Principle, when you have the other AI that's trying to convince you one way, whereas Elohim is trying to convince you another way. They're both speaking directly to me as the player, not necessarily the in-game character. It's like, what do I do? I really like stuff like that.
00:47:53
Speaker
If you if you can allocate the right amount of weight to it and like make it internally consistent sort of like with the feel of the game Those can be really cool moments. Yeah
00:48:06
Speaker
It kind of adds like that layer of depth slash, if it's your first time with something like that, blows your fucking mind. Yeah. Like for a lot of people back in the day, it was obviously going to be Metal Gear Solid and them reading your memory card. Yeah, exactly. Psycho Mantis. Yeah. So you like to play Castlevania. That's some wild shit where like, if you went into like, I know what video games are, that would still blow your fucking mind. Mm-hmm.
00:48:33
Speaker
Now that's really cool. It's really cool game design. I know that this is not the subversive games episode, but I realize you've opened like the treasure trove of discussion, I think here. And another one that has to be mentioned is Undertale, which of course we come back to all the time. But that's the perfect example of a subversive game where
00:48:54
Speaker
like the tagline for that game is it's like 8-bit or like pixel RPG where you don't have to kill anyone, right? And you're like, that's interesting. It's a shit tagline. Right. Well, it's hilarious. I mean, it's interesting because it's like,
00:49:16
Speaker
There exist plenty of games where you don't have to kill anyone, and they don't market themselves as games where you don't have to kill anyone. So what's different about this one? That they're taglining it as such, right? And that hides the subversiveness of it. And that if you play a game, if you play this game where you're trying to kill everyone,
00:49:36
Speaker
It is a really dark experience and I cannot emotionally do it. Um, and, but that's not what they sell you, right? They sell you neutral and pacifist. Yeah. But it's cool because enough gaming history has happened.
00:50:01
Speaker
where you can essentially plan out paths, like there's going to be these types of players.
Subversive Gaming: Undertale
00:50:06
Speaker
There's people who never want to hurt anything and they read that tagline. They're like, okay, cool. I won't. There's people who were like, Oh, I didn't really read the tagline. It's kind of doing whatever. And you have like your new Troy 50 50.
00:50:18
Speaker
And then you have people who are like, I bet I could break this game. It's like, you think I won't, I'll show you. And they'll specifically do the thing because it's an option. And then each path is accounted for, for like how the game responds. Yeah, like we don't have time for another. But literally, like, as you're describing this, I remember in our episode and like I was I think you were watching me play the game the first time.
00:50:48
Speaker
And they got to like, I'm really voyeuristic anytime somebody plays Undertale. I mean, it's fair. You really want to see what people do. And it's like, okay, name your character. I'm like, haha, Dave is attached to all these characters and I'm an edgelord. I'm going to name myself like murder. And then the game's just like, that's a bit on the nose, isn't it? I'm like, this is going to be one of those experiences. It's just so good. So good. Yeah, I need to.
00:51:18
Speaker
Maybe this weekend or sometime in the near future, I need to get Stevie to play it. He said he'd stream it for myself and his friend. I don't remember her name, unfortunately. She was cool. Friend of Stevie. Friend Stevie. Oh, that, that old term. Yeah.
00:51:38
Speaker
No, that's cool, though. I do like the concept, though. I mean, we've played tons of games, and subversion can be a very powerful tool if you earn it in the game that you're playing right. You won't be subverted. You won't have your expectations subverted if the game broadcasts what's going to happen. If it's not fun, nobody cares. You got to do something to get there. And so subversion is kind of
00:52:06
Speaker
That's the same reason humor is funny because it's reality adjacent, right? Or there's truth of reality in it. Subversion can be interesting because the base game has already gotten you invested. It's cool. I'm squishing my eyes to that analogy. I get what you mean.
00:52:26
Speaker
If you're not invested in reality, humor is not funny. That's basically what I'm saying. If you have no investment. I find humor funny, but... Reality sucks. And that's funny. What I just said is obviously funny.
00:52:42
Speaker
because everybody knows reality does suck. The discussion is meta, bringing it all back. Yeah. Anything going on in a gaming news? I know we've kind of been just catching up on some stuff. No, it was fun. No, there's nothing in news. OK, cool. I'm looking through the news thing, and I'm like, eh. A lot of the topics I picked out, dude, any of these,
00:53:11
Speaker
Do any of these really matter? Okay, I'll mention this one because it's like ridiculous and our most affluent, maybe not affluent, our most prominent podcast listener is in a similar boat with me. New Way Granaraffle, where the winners of the raffle itself, won the opportunity to pay full price for Ryzen 5000 CPUs and RTX 3080 graphics cards.
00:53:41
Speaker
That's where we're at. I don't know why they thought that was a good idea. Like, I understand supply is limited, but hey, you and Ralph, you have the opportunity to buy this. Okay. I mean, I guarantee you so many people entered this. Oh, yeah. It's literally just a lottery to get something people have been waiting for for.
00:54:02
Speaker
three or four months or whatever. If you could have gotten a Tesla early through something like that and you had the funds to do so. Yeah. Like I can see somebody doing it, but that's just not me. I immediately like knee jerk at that sentence.
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah. I think everyone should knee-jerk a little bit because this is not the way reality should work, right? It's just like a great cryptocurrency is exploding right now too. So that's another reason graphics cards will never become available and freaking sucks.
00:54:35
Speaker
Yeah. I guess I'll keep playing my, well, I guess I'm done playing janky cyberpunk for now. I'm going to revisit probably when there's patches and stuff and at least a year for me. Yeah. And that I will forget. And then someone will be like,
00:54:52
Speaker
Hey, did you hear that that's like, like, yeah, okay, cool. Well, I'll check it out. It'll, I guarantee it'll be really nice for me, like a year from now or whatever, where I'm just like, I don't really feel like I don't have anything to really play. And I'll go look and be like, oh, there's all these cool cyberpunk mods, the community made and all this stuff's fixed. Slap that in and really enjoy the game. But.
00:55:14
Speaker
Two vaginas. Holy shit. Character creations off the chain. This other one I thought was pretty funny as far as news is concerned. Auto Chess developers are switching focus to development on a new MOBA based off of the Auto Chess universe.
Auto Chess & MOBA Industry Challenges
00:55:35
Speaker
So Auto Chess is specifically under Riot.
00:55:38
Speaker
So this is the, this is the actual split off auto chess. So Dota auto chess was created right in the timeline. And Riot was like, it got big. Obviously a lot of people plan it. Riot was like, we're going to make our own version. Um,
00:55:58
Speaker
And Valve was like, hey, let's talk to the people who are actually making auto chess. Can we get them under our umbrella? We'll get an official version of this released. And that didn't really happen. It didn't pan out, fell through, whatever. Valf went on to make Underlords, which is Dota's auto chess official. Riot completed their auto chess official. And the people who are working on the mod in the workshop for Dota went off and made auto chess the actual official standalone thing. So this is that team.
00:56:28
Speaker
And then having finished their development on it and their investment on it, whatever, they're like, okay, let's now make a MOBA based off of our split off game. Based on a MOBA. Based on a MOBA. Yeah. Which I just find hilarious. Yeah, it's.
00:56:49
Speaker
I can't imagine like making a character for a MOBA when you already have such a huge cast. Let's say just in Dota, there's 120 ish. There's a lot. There's a lot. I don't even know of them anymore.
00:57:04
Speaker
And like through all my years of playing, like I could tell you what each one does now, but they're all very distinct and like making something that's new and unique in that. That's also not a copy of the other three or four Mova's. Yeah. Like I always feel like there's going to be, it has to be some overlap, but man, it's, it'll be interesting to see what they do.
00:57:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think League probably reached this point first where like it felt like, and I could be wrong because they do have some interesting character designs they come out with, but there's just a whole lot of characters and their focus on skill shots kind of like in particular means
00:57:46
Speaker
Like there's not really a crazy amount of variety or it's like, let's introduce a new character. And they're completely different from everything else that exists. Right. And then Dota reached that place too. They had this like Archer like character that came out. I don't know about, was it, was it Twitch or something? Hoodwink. Hoodwink. There you go. I don't know why I thought Twitch. I was like, that seems like Twitch is the rat Archer from League of Legends.
00:58:10
Speaker
Oh, OK. Thank you. The way it went on, it started on a hosting platform. Anyway, Justin.tv is what that one was called. But yeah, I was looking at this and I was like, this person, this looks a lot like Wind Ranger. And some of these skills seem pretty derivative just from Dota itself. It's not like they're out there copying smite or whatever, right? I know this is a
00:58:36
Speaker
Crap. I was trying to think of a God and I immediately went to Zeus who also exists. My point is made. Yeah. So I think anything that's made now is going to immediately be called out as derivative and whether it's true or not, it's going to be partially true. Yeah.
00:59:00
Speaker
I know it's, I guess the same thing we said about like music, movies, works of literature or smut as I call it. Bible is a pretty good piece of smut. As long as almond. Literally though.
00:59:18
Speaker
But it's always cool to see what people come up with. Because in the same way, this is me bringing it back, we had online language develop from like, lol and raffle now. And how we express things with the modicons and how like the language itself develops. And like what we do with it. We're all
00:59:40
Speaker
kind of like a symptom of our past, but a catalyst to the future. So like things will always shape in an interesting way. That was, that was a surprisingly deep line. Not saying it's surprising. I was off of it. That was, that was very interesting.
01:00:11
Speaker
So anyways, that's why we play video games because we're scared of the catalyst. Who knows what real life will turn into. Or if you're Ian, you're allergic to catalysts. Or if you're playing Destiny, the catalyst never drops.
01:00:28
Speaker
I'll also throw in Gennaro as allergic to catalyst, gentle complete. Yeah. This is, oh, gato. Yeah. I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha. I didn't realize he was also really cute. Um, Metroidvania, you've known ice. You're not big on it. Gato Roboto translates his cat robot. Yes. Or the listeners. Yeah.
01:00:52
Speaker
I'm the background, so they appreciate that. Acting Spanish translator for the episode. We have a lot of listeners. That's a lie. We have listeners. Someone will listen to this, but within a week. We have listeners. No, but I was going to say we have listeners all over the place. So I don't know what languages people speak.
01:01:14
Speaker
I don't actually think we have a lot of listeners and they are mostly focused in the US, but sometimes we get people accidentally clicking our podcast in other countries. So thank you to those people. Yeah, that was a fun message a year ago. Yeah. Shout out to that person. Hopefully still listening. Commitment to the cause. But yeah.
01:01:38
Speaker
Now we've, I think fulfilled our, our obligation to at least talk about our game of the year, uh, eligible picks and ultimate picks for 2020. Um, which I think is, is good. That's a habit or a tradition. Obviously we want to continue because it's, uh, it's, it is content. Um, and if we don't talk about video games here, what do we even do? So, I don't know. I don't know.
Listener Engagement & Feedback
01:02:06
Speaker
Jake, no thought scares me.
01:02:09
Speaker
Me too. If you have any other thoughts that are scary to us and they're, you know, it could be existential or just games you want us to play that we really don't want to play, you could send those in to soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you could join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.