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Stable in April
13 Plays19 days ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about the Oblivion Remaster, Crime Scene Cleaner, Haste, Duskbloods (briefly), and Helldivers 2 in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Haste OST - Intro the Abyss
Outro:
- Haste OST - Beneath the Roots
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Transcript
Opening: Weather and Humor
00:00:41
Speaker
How's it going and everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I am joined by my co-host as always Dave. How's it going tonight Dave? It's going so good. Nice. The weather is finally at this place where it's nice to be outside in shorts and a t-shirt and it's just pleasant.
00:00:57
Speaker
I don't sweat. I just exist. That's the dream, right? To exist in the world without sweat. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, sorry, Florida dream a little harder. Uh-huh.
00:01:12
Speaker
No, it's, we've had all the windows open today and it's just like air all the way through the house. Cat loves it. It's a great time. I'm on antihistamine, so I'm not like literally dying.
00:01:24
Speaker
um Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had a histamine problem. Yeah, it's true. It's true. Safe place. You know, this is where you admit your addictions and things like that. And I'm addicted to not having i sinus pressure that causes me headaches and congestion.
00:01:41
Speaker
It is kind of crazy how... It feels like a, ah like literally a switch goes on. It's like, Hey, allergy season. You're like, what do you mean? And they just go outside. You're like, ahha what's really cute is like, we'll, we'll be walking outside and my dog will, i mean, to be fair, shove her face in anything that smells like anything.
00:02:03
Speaker
So like we have some like fresh mowed grass that's now like dried out a little bit and it's probably a little bit stinky. She's like just putting her face in it and sneezing. And then separately, I'm also sneezing. So it's a cute thing that we have now.
00:02:16
Speaker
Right. Yeah. You can both empathize over um allergies and honestly, just getting hay in your nose in any situation is kind of a bad time. I think she would love hay. Yeah. Mm hmm.
Oblivion Remaster Insights
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's just advanced grass. That's all it really is. hu But in the world of video games, there is a couple things that have happened since the last time we spoke.
00:02:43
Speaker
um Of note, probably the biggest thing that everybody's talking about was the ah Bethesda drop for the Oblivion remaster, which we all actually knew this was coming because there's been leaks and stuff.
00:02:59
Speaker
Mm It's kind of very funny. Our previous episode, I believe, was on the Switch, too. And it was the same deal. It's like, yeah, when is it going to come, though? Because it's already leaked, like, everything. yeah Similar deal with the remaster um with ah screenshots being leaked, I think, like, the week before.
00:03:16
Speaker
um And... Yeah, no, it's live. Latest Bethesda Elder Scrolls is... four now and they finally found something that wasn't skyrim it was deprecating going back by number decrement instead of plus one for that uh elder scrolls six they quote unquote teased a mountain trailer for going back to four yeah yeah i've i've heard good things about it from general publications stuff on youtube some friends who have picked it up um and i i really just can't be fucked because it's a bethesda thing that i also i want to say i did not grow up with it that's i think a lot of people initially played oblivion they're like oh shit this is kind of like crazy good for an rpg and then time passed now that there's a remaster like oh shit we can go back to that now yeah are you in that camp i think i am i also i'm sort of
00:04:15
Speaker
in a weird spot because I believe late last year I had like ah fairly extensive oblivion playthrough. I didn't finish it and it was modded and stuff like that, but I was just playing the actual old oblivion.
00:04:28
Speaker
Um, for me, this is kind of an opportunity to play an updated version of that because, uh, as many people would expect, a lot has aged like ah Bethesda as they released Elder Scrolls games, they got more and more casual, but also a lot more approachable. And so like in Morrowind, you could swing a sword and there would be a percent chance to hit, right? Because these are coming from like a tabletop game.
00:04:59
Speaker
But in a 3D video game, if you swing a sword at something and it passes through the creature and the game says miss above their head, That's stupid. Yeah, that would be utterly frustrating. Imagine doing that like with Dark Souls. like What's my percent chance to hit? I sure hope I can you know punish during this one window I have.
00:05:19
Speaker
You have a lot of dex and strength. but Have you put any points in accuracy? Yes. 1% accuracy, 100%
00:05:26
Speaker
ah yeah one percent accuracy a hundred percent ah crit chance uh-huh exactly but when it happens when it happens when we happens it happens gonna be impressive it's gonna be super good and then the enemies just scale off of it so like i think that was also an issue in morrowind is some enemies like flying enemies and things like that i think cliff racers uh ridge racers yeah ridge racers i don't know one of these things is like wily coyote ask looney tune it's one of those names um flying creature really hard to hit They learned from that and then they made Oblivion.
00:06:01
Speaker
But that also had a whole ton of issues um and arguably like one of my least favorite leveling systems in any game ever, um which I won't even bore people with the specifics of how much of a pain it was.
00:06:19
Speaker
um But basically, you would need a spreadsheet to do it efficiently. Uh-huh. ahha I mean, what what makes it so bad? It's the last thing I remember from Bethesda RPG would be Skyrim where you kind of just get general experience. Then as you level, what do you want to put a point into?
00:06:37
Speaker
Exactly. tree I'm maybe I'm a casual. Maybe I'm becoming a casual. But like, honestly, Skyrim's pretty good. I like that. um The way it worked in Oblivion, now that you've asked and opened a can of worms is when you did made your character, you would pick major skills and minor skills.
00:06:56
Speaker
And basically the way it worked is you would level up after a certain number. I believe it was 10 level ups in your major skills and your major skills could be anything. It could be athletics from like running or like acrobatics from jumping.
00:07:11
Speaker
ah Hopefully it's a damage dealing thing. You have one of those at least. So like one handed or two handed or like destruction magic. um And the idea was, oh, people are going to pretty much everybody pick the things that they wanted their character to be good at, right?
00:07:28
Speaker
Right. It's pretty intuitive. That's standard. Yeah. um And so that's fine. As you do those things, you level up. But whenever you level up, your attributes could be increased. I think you could pick two ah to increase.
00:07:43
Speaker
And the degree that they increased was between a plus one and a plus five. and Whether it was a plus one or a plus five depended on the level of times you leveled skills that ah were associated with that attribute.
00:08:00
Speaker
So for instance, if you wanted to be like really good at strength and you leveled one handed skills a ton and maybe like heavy armor or something like that, um then great, you could get your like high strength result.
00:08:17
Speaker
But you could see how this issue starts to like come to a head. um If you just only increased your major skills, your attributes would be low because you wouldn't get plus fives.
00:08:30
Speaker
And then your level would be high. And the world levels with you. So you could literally end up in a situation where your hero character chosen one basically is really struggling to kill rats.
00:08:47
Speaker
That's stupid. i I really don't like the leveling with you thing that that that stayed true even for the later games but they scale it something like with elden ring is very i would say area based obviously the further you progress um deeper you get into certain areas and the more you travel from the starting point the harder it's going to get right so like you have paths you can take of like i'm still comfortable here but this feels too high level i'm not dealing enough damage i'm dying in one hit basically yeah um so when you progress you feel that you can kind of approach some of those areas you struggled with before because now you're it's more even um as far as stats comparison
00:09:38
Speaker
But it would kind of suck to be like, oh, I've now killed three bosses. Let me. Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. Like if it if it everything just slides together, like if you like you were saying, not efficiently leveling something like that, it you're going to get yourself fucked in one way or another.
00:09:57
Speaker
Exactly. and Like and with abiotic factor, I really do enjoy the hey, you want to get better at something? keep doing that thing right where you kind of get bonuses over time for like oh i'm running around a lot oh my salmon has increased cool but it doesn't that system does not gate me out of anything right because they're not directly tied to my actions in that game at least yeah and their skill tree doesn't generally have things that are just like you deal more damage right so like leveling weapons like ah guns or something abiotic factor range weapons whatever it's called like
00:10:34
Speaker
You get better at it. You might be able to use but more weapons and things, but it's not. Hey, this is the perk point you should definitely get because as soon as you get there, that's 100% bonus damage or something like that. Right. Yeah. um The trick with Oblivion was ah this led to degenerate gameplay where you're like, I'm going to pick the skills that I actually want to do the way that I want to play the game as minor skills and then things that I can very specifically control as the major skills.
00:11:06
Speaker
Because that way you could just level up the things you want to level up until you were like, okay, I've gotten enough points that I should have a plus five bonus in that associated attribute.
00:11:16
Speaker
Then I'll go like, what's a really stupid controllable skill? um Speech isn't one of them. um There's some really dumb ones like mercantile or something like that. Alchemy. Alchemy is a perfect one.
00:11:28
Speaker
You're never going to accidentally do alchemy, right? Like, oh, geez, it stumbled into it and leveled up on accident. um So if you played the game that way, you could have a really busted character because you kind of spun it on its head.
00:11:42
Speaker
um But the game also had the issue with leveling. You mentioned Elden Ring, and I would say that like I prefer Elden Ring's way to do it, but that's also kind of because of the type of game that Elden Ring is.
00:11:56
Speaker
I think if in Skyrim you entered like a basic looking dungeon and there was a really tough enemy at the end that like absolutely wasted you and you didn't really have that much of a chance to beat it.
00:12:08
Speaker
Maybe at that point, the average player would be like, ah, this sucks, right? Like, this isn't this isnt a fun experience. And Alder, ring do you need to expect to get your face smashed into the ground a little bit. um Not to say you can't have tough fights, but...
00:12:25
Speaker
Oblivion did it in a stupid way. It basically inflated health pools a ton. So like, how many times how many times do you think you should have to hit a so a rat with a sword in order to kill the rat?
00:12:37
Speaker
Maybe twice if it's a big rat. Yes. I would accept any answer under 10 as semi-sane. Hopefully under 5. um But in the vanilla game, you could easily end up in situations where 20...
00:12:51
Speaker
twenty 30 times was necessary, especially if your skill sucked. um TLDR, they actually fixed this in the remaster. I didn't expect them to, but they did it in a really elegant way that technically makes the game more casual, but you still like level up um when you level your major skills. so But you always just get a maximize attribute post boost. you don't It doesn't matter what skills you used prior to the level up.
00:13:24
Speaker
It's just like pick however you want to develop your character. you got enough experience to do so. Nice. That's, that's how it should be. The other idea is just terrible and bad. i don't know what to say. Yeah.
Exploring Game Pass Titles
00:13:35
Speaker
So, uh, it was actually probably, I think my first remark when I heard that the remaster happened was like, um, as long as they can like get one of the leveling mods working, I'll be interested in it.
00:13:47
Speaker
And to their credit, they actually, i don't think it was Bethesda. It was probably the developers that made it in a unreal. This is also unreal engine. and Um,
00:13:58
Speaker
i think they I think I'm going to give them credit. Maybe it was Bethesda. don't think they deserve it. i'm going to give credit to the other guys. I'll be honest. When people were talking about it, my first reaction also, you know, because I don't like Bethesda, was just that, oh, hey, like, you might want to wait a week or two before you play that so that, you know, the modding people can get in there and clean stuff up.
00:14:22
Speaker
There's already a Nexus page. There was the first day they had a Nexus page up with some mods. Skip intros and stuff like that. I don't know. I don't have information on how moddable it's going to be. I know people understand the Unreal Engine as well, but a lot of people who modded Bethesda games were able to do so because...
00:14:42
Speaker
it was pretty much always the same engine. So you could make mods in the exact same way. so we'll see, but regardless, I mean, I never thought I'd live to see the day, but Bethesda came out and it wasn't on the game Brio engine.
00:14:57
Speaker
So that's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. It also looks very pretty. They got, uh, Patrick Stewart voiceover for the emperor.
00:15:08
Speaker
it It could just be remastered audio. It's kind of hard to tell. Um, But yeah, no, it's cool. To answer your question, for the people who were interested in it, for the people who played it back in the day, i think this is very compelling.
00:15:21
Speaker
Do you think that they've done enough outside of just visually? Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. There was um ah who was one of the original creators for the game.
00:15:34
Speaker
I think they were a designer, and then they worked on ah Skyrim. And they left the company during Starfield. I don't remember the fellow's name, unfortunately. um But he was like, it seems wrong to call this a remaster. It really feels like Oblivion 2.0. And I'm like, that's got to be a really high praise. You know, if you came in to remaster a renowned, nearly 20-year-old game, and one of the creators is like, kind just seems like you did better. you know
00:16:05
Speaker
I think that's pretty good. Well, yeah, in general, I'm glad for the gamers um that it's happened and being so well received. um Because, yeah, it's it's not for me, but that's fine. I was never going to be the target audience anyway. um But I wish them success.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah, seems like they're doing right. It's on Game Pass also before people like run out and buy it on this kind of vague. Neither of us have played it yet. and Sort of recommendation vaguely, but like it's on Game Pass. 50 bucks on Steam.
00:16:41
Speaker
Otherwise. um It's I mean, I feel like Oblivion is worth 50 bucks as the DLC built into it. So Shivering Isles was also great.
00:16:53
Speaker
um Yeah. Hope it's good. I'll play it at some point and maybe I'll have like more impressions, but um yeah, kind of continuing the trend of like pretty good remasters actually.
00:17:07
Speaker
That's good. Yeah. Well, if you have been playing the Oblivion remaster, what have you been playing? and Thank you for the segue. Excellent. ah Immediately prior to this podcast, Crime Scene Cleaner, which is also on Game Pass. I'm also playing incidentally because I saw it was there when I checked Oblivion.
00:17:26
Speaker
um And that's a pretty fun one. um But it's also entirely for the people who like simulators. And you're like, I am going to spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes.
00:17:40
Speaker
spraying walls, putting detergent in a bucket, cleaning out a mop, stuff like that. um But within that space, that's cool. You're kind of a simulator fiend, I would say.
00:17:53
Speaker
I guess it's fair to say. Yeah. Well, I've out of all my friends, um, you're the one who I see playing the most simulators and varied types of simulators as well. Well, I mean farming to drug to drug is different. That's just so I can get a professional experience farming. I think we were both in the same boat for that. That was, that was special guest to mooch. Uh,
00:18:17
Speaker
helping motivate new and exciting types of games for us to play. Trying to seed the podcast, if you will. That's good.
00:18:29
Speaker
Checks out farming. But as somebody who's not um versed in it as much as an outsider, I would see this as just a reskinned power wash simulator.
00:18:41
Speaker
Yeah. um I guess that's fair. Power washing is like one of the tools that Like you get access to various different tools to kind of like help you with the crime scene.
00:18:52
Speaker
Like the idea all right. At the high level, you show up at the crime scene and you get to explore it. You get to find the corpses, figure out what happened, clean up evidence. There might be like text messages on phones or like audio tapes and things like that kind of telling you what happened. So there's a bit of a story behind it.
00:19:13
Speaker
Um, And your job is to clean as thoroughly as you can, basically, so that when the police or whoever arrives, it's just like, well, I guess they skipped town. there and There's nothing else. Nothing else going on. So you're not working with the police. You're specifically trying to cover up. oh You are a criminal.
00:19:31
Speaker
Because I was imagining just as a joke, somebody like just casually whistling and just mopping through like an active crime scene. Yeah. Don't mind me yeah it's ah It's very much a plot point that you are on the the other side of the law enforcement fence ah for this one.
00:19:48
Speaker
um Because the the plot is your like daughter has an illness and it's very expensive and you're like a teacher or something like that or like a janitor. um and so you don't have enough money to pay for it. And so it's like, okay, you're compelled basically out of necessity to work for these criminal figures in order for high payouts.
00:20:10
Speaker
um Which is that's fine enough fluff. That's more fluff than I expected to justify the type of game that it is. um It's got skill trees. So as you get more money, your money directly drains into like skill points at the end of ah I was going to say heist. It's not a heist at the end of a job.
00:20:28
Speaker
um and the skill trees can like improve your various tools and give you access to like oh now you can use two detergents in your bucket at once and that sounds like the lamest thing imaginable but within the context of the game that's actually pretty helpful so yeah it's neat and is this also something on game pass if i want to check out okay Yeah, it's ah it's right next to ah Oblivion. i think I think it's the lead up, right? It's it's the opening act for her for Oblivion.
00:21:03
Speaker
I might need to sign back up for Game Pass at some point. But yeah, I just... At some point, there weren't games that actually... It's like a Netflix subscription, right? Yeah, exactly. It's like, hey, there's some stuff i' interested in. This is going to be cheaper in the long run. Let me do this for a month or so.
00:21:20
Speaker
Yeah, they don't have any loyalty bonuses. No, there's no reason to stay signed up if you're not using it. Peak every so often for the rolling catalog. Like maybe maybe once a season, right? Mm hmm.
00:21:32
Speaker
Could do that. Yeah, exactly. um i don't know how much that game retails for, but I'm going to guess $30. I'm going to guess $30. In my mind, it's like all games are 60 or 30 and 30 is if it's, you know, not AAA. Yeah.
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, I was playing that. That's fun. Sometimes it's good to have a like turn brain off type of game, um especially if you're like tired during the work week or something like that.
00:22:00
Speaker
And there is no better turn brain off type game than non-timed repetitive task ah gradually getting some sort of novelty sort of game. So what about you, though?
00:22:15
Speaker
what you What have you been playing? So if we look towards the camera, we're going to be talking about like um something I've been like binge playing to the point where I just need to like stop mainly because I beat the game um and the extra content.
00:22:34
Speaker
um I got addicted to haste. Yeah. Do you know what that is around? Plus two AC? Yeah, Class two. I think you watched me play some when I forced you to.
00:22:47
Speaker
yeah um I am familiar. don't think we talked about it much, though. I don't think we did. But made by the same people who did Cluster Truck, which is There's a whole bunch of trucks. Parkour, speed, jumping game.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah, and usually like the trucks will like hit stuff and you have to deal with like different angles of things. It's a lot of trial and error. But it's very fast-paced and entertaining, and I i like that. yeah um ah Haste is...
00:23:19
Speaker
similar to that in a way where like speed is a good thing, ah but your motivating factor is basically and this also ties into the loose air quotes plot, which I was not personally interested in.
00:23:32
Speaker
um i just like the gameplay a lot, but the world is kind of like decaying and destroying behind you. So that's why you have to go fast. Right. And if you're like, oh, like Sonic, yes, like Sonic.
00:23:45
Speaker
um So basically you run around and as you land, if you land in a way where you can keep your momentum, AKA landing flushly versus, you know, just slamming into a wall, it'll kind of build up this energy meter and then you can use that to gain some extra boost in speed.
00:24:07
Speaker
um Like star power in a guitar hero type game. You're getting a meter you can spend to yeah overcome obstacles. And you're like, okay, that seems cool, I guess.
00:24:19
Speaker
What's the interesting part? The interesting part is, a um the levels are procedurally generated. So you're never going to play the same thing twice unless you input a specific seed.
00:24:32
Speaker
And... the levels get more difficult as far as like terrain layout. There might be obstacles. There might be giant gaps you have to clear. There might be active train tracks going on where you can hop on the train tracks to boost and then get off. So you don't get it by a train.
00:24:49
Speaker
Um, there's lot of stuff going on. sound Train tracks work. We all use them for a little bit, but you can't sit stay on too long. You, you will die. Um, but,
00:25:01
Speaker
The music for it is really good. um And it just fits into the gameplay so well, in my opinion. And then also on top of that, it is a roguelike. Yeah. So when you go into each level, you basically get to choose your path.
00:25:15
Speaker
As far as i want to do a standard level, I want to hit a point to heal and get a life back. I want to go to a shop. And shop also implies items. Right.
00:25:25
Speaker
So you can collect, um I think they're called sparks in the game. And usually the sparks are laid out in a way for, if you're going off of like a certain ramp, you can kind of follow the trajectory and it will usually lead you to a good place as far as landing.
00:25:43
Speaker
Right. But that is your currency, which you also get at the end of the level. And you can use that for different items, whether they be passive, like, oh, on cooldown, this effect's going to happen.
00:25:56
Speaker
Or maybe it's triggered, like, hey, if you have a close call, like you are way too close to an object that you almost hit, that bonus might happen. Or you might even have an active item.
00:26:08
Speaker
of But there's enough variety between the items and the roguelike and the procedural where it just it feels fresh every time. And they also have an endless mode, which I've also sunk too much time into.
00:26:22
Speaker
Right. Yeah, i I observed you play this for a brief period of time. And I had just finished playing Sonic the Hedgehog CD. And I was like, this kind of just seems like the fun parts of Sonic.
00:26:38
Speaker
It really like for people who played Sonic games, sometimes the most interesting parts are the places where you can go really fast and not when it's like forcing you to platform.
00:26:49
Speaker
um And this game is all just go fast, basically. yeah And then decisions, I guess, like you mentioned for the shops. Yeah. There'll also be kind of like split second decisions throughout a level.
00:27:03
Speaker
So like, let's say I'm going really fast and I launch off of something. So at a point I need to pick where I want to land because I want to keep that momentum and not land against like an uphill slope and then just kind of trip and have to get my speed built up all over again.
00:27:21
Speaker
um But depending on your trajectory and how much air you have, you might not be able to pick a good option. So you have to pick the least bad option.
00:27:33
Speaker
Right. um But you have a decent amount of maneuverability to turn around or maybe I've sometimes been like, oh, I can't go straight for a flush landing. I'm going to go sideways briefly. And then I land and then I do a quick pivot.
00:27:49
Speaker
But yeah, it is really just a lot of fun gameplay that is like the fun parts of like Sonic Adventure or Adventure 2 where you're just running around. Yeah.
00:28:01
Speaker
It feels really good. And there is a demo, I want to say. Which is rare. Sold by my impassioned five-minute speech. I would say it is definitely worth checking out.
00:28:14
Speaker
I don't think it's necessarily episode-worthy to have as a standalone thing. Right. But I will push it on you as well. That's fair. Yeah, I think I remarked I was going to have to add it to my wish list. I can't recall if I did or not, but if it not, I still have to add it to my wish list.
00:28:30
Speaker
um You also mentioned, or I saw that the game also has boss battles, um which is really cool. It's cool that they could fit that into the format. Yeah, I legitimately did not know what that was going to be.
00:28:43
Speaker
um But i kind of wish this was how Sonic was as well. And maybe it is with Frontiers more so. um But basically, you're just in a very, very large circular area.
00:28:57
Speaker
You still have like a terrain hazards or other things going on. And I think right now there's three different types of bosses. But basically, you just kind of have to run into them.
00:29:12
Speaker
ah The first one you can run into them anywhere. um The later ones have specific weak spots. Right. um But for the first one, you basically just have to run, build up speed, dodge the projectiles because like it's shooting missiles at you from a distance.
00:29:28
Speaker
And then you just run into it and hit it. And then it jumps over to the other side and you have to go do it again. And usually each time you hit it, more bullshit you'll have to deal with. Right. um But again, you can so you still have your items that you've accrued through the level.
00:29:45
Speaker
So hopefully that can give you enough speed or get you out of some shit. Yeah, yeah it's just it's really fun. Oh, yeah. It's not often that run to a game where i'm like, oh, oh, no.
00:29:58
Speaker
Uh-huh. it's a it It definitely evokes that like mindful indie space where their first concern was, can we make the gun the game engaging and entertaining?
00:30:12
Speaker
um Rather than anything else that they could pile on, they're just like, well, it's got to be fun. um And like they're completely different games, but as I was watching you play, it it reminded me of like um ah BPM bullets per minute.
00:30:28
Speaker
um which is a completely different game. They're both roguelikes, but like completely different. But I got the vibe that it's like the people who made this game knew that they had a really fun idea and they just built everything else around that instead of trying to like force it. Like Starfield. It was all Starfield.
00:30:48
Speaker
I'm just kidding. Haste looks good, though. I'll have to check it out. Please do, listener. Mm-hmm. We get kickbacks on every purchase. Dave made Haze.
00:31:03
Speaker
Man, I wish I made Haze. I will say there are already some stuff in the community tab on Steam. Like people are making Peter Griffin skins. People are making Sonic skins.
00:31:16
Speaker
Of course. yeah I think there is some quality of life mods as well. I haven't really looked into what those are. um i think some of it is also like re-skinning some things in the levels um gotcha so it's got to be like unity or unreal or something like that to be moddable to the point people can just drop stuff in don't know if you know maybe that's a segue to nothing i'd have to launch the game again to see what it tells me to not remember offhand that is cool though that they're developing a community
00:31:47
Speaker
um Sonic has enough fans. You can find them online. I'd recommend you don't. oh That's cool.
Unique Melee Combat in Rivals 2
00:31:59
Speaker
Speaking of another community game. Yeah. I'm going to keep this much briefer. um I have been playing some rivals too. furry game. Yeah. It's furry smash and it's more so furry melee than smash ultimate. Yes. Um,
00:32:16
Speaker
So there's definitely a learning curve there. And I suck. I suck so bad. um But it is it's been fun to learn some stuff. I've been playing against two people in one by one Discord.
00:32:31
Speaker
That's why it's tough. It's a 2v1, Dave. this is Out of the two people, the one that I can like beat 50-50 is 16-year-old. but I mean, that can be its own accomplishment because...
00:32:44
Speaker
like They're young. They have faster reflexes. They have faster reflexes. We're getting old. The brain don't work so good. That's what I'm saying, dude. That's why Evan Maining locks a dot.
00:32:57
Speaker
Because the elephant never forgets. He's like a... He's like a mammoth. As far as lot of his smashes. Mm-hmm.
00:33:08
Speaker
You're like, oh, I don't think I got hit by that. You're like you got hit by that. But you did. Yeah, oh ah yeah i haven't I haven't tracked Rivals a lot, but I do know that when Rivals of A32 came out, like um a lot of people in the Smash community um that have been playing you know Ultimate, but definitely Melee, ah made the jump.
00:33:34
Speaker
Or at least ah diversify a little bit. I think diversify. Because like Mango, very famous Melee streamer, obviously still does Melee, but...
00:33:48
Speaker
He could also like play some rivals and stuff. Yeah, i think he won a tournament like a couple weeks ago. but like that yeah um i think it is ah really transferable if you were good at melee to play rivals because i have a friend who plays a lot of melee and he kicks my ass.
00:34:08
Speaker
To the point where it feels like I'm a bot who's not putting in inputs and they never stop putting in inputs. Yeah, I mean, that's that could be like the fighting game diff type thing. If somebody if somebody really understands the the timings, the the end lag, the frames, the distance. Yeah.
00:34:30
Speaker
Yeah. The impression that I got was... um Rival seems like it was developed to entice and seduce to the furry lifestyle melee players.
00:34:42
Speaker
um Away from kids, two furries, right? It's an upgrade. More morally acceptable.
00:34:51
Speaker
I see. If people don't know what I'm talking about or that seemed really off the cuff, just search melee controversy. That's all you got to do.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, but that aside, I'm not trying to put that on rivals ah rivals. um Really speaking about like the the meta interactions between the games and things like that.
00:35:15
Speaker
Smash Ultimate was not meant to be. Necessarily a sequel to Melee. Melee had a lot of more mechanical interactions and things like that with were very demanding.
00:35:26
Speaker
And they were probably glitches. Like I'm sure most of them were unintentional. 90% were glitches. Yeah. But they also became like pretty core to the way that especially professional players play that game.
00:35:41
Speaker
Right. They play melee. um And on the other hand, when Ultimate came out, they were like, oh, yeah, i guess we had a lot of glitches in melee. I guess we just fix all that. And so for the most part, there's a couple things they kept.
00:35:55
Speaker
But for the most part, um, entire mechanics like wave dashing and things like that don't really exist. Um, and rivals kind of, I think was more tapped into the heart of what players wanted. It leaned into all of that.
00:36:12
Speaker
Yeah. Um, but I don't think they have any specifically broken characters except for Olympia. um Who's their newest one that they added? Right.
00:36:23
Speaker
Gotta get the DLC. I do think it is some of that DLC privilege at the moment. um But each of the characters that they have, it's a very small roster in comparison.
00:36:34
Speaker
Right. It's like... I feel like 12 too many. Yeah. It might be 10, but each one is... entirely unique there's not like oh this is like the other characters no no no um they don't have anyone else plays like l'oxodon yeah there's no mirror fighters there's no chaff in that way and there's still technically three other fighter slots that are probably going to fill at a point in rivals one they had some uh indie game crossover characters in the forms of shovel knight and ori
00:37:14
Speaker
Which is very funny. Ori is incredibly funny. But I don't think they're going to have the same crossovers in this one. Right. They're not going to do a original characters. They're all here.
00:37:25
Speaker
no Rivals event. Yeah, okay. ah But we'll be curious to see um what they come up with. And also, at some point, because they did this in Rivals 1, they're going to do in Rivals 2, allowing for custom characters Like a Mugen fighter thing.
00:37:44
Speaker
I mean, a little bit. I played as Hamtaro in Rivals 1, so... it is It is possible. I don't think it's going to be for, like, competitively an option, but... Right.
00:37:57
Speaker
No, that's fair. I mean, that is cool, because... how that you It's definitely the case that Ultimate doesn't have any official modding capacity. There are a lot of very funny unofficial mods.
00:38:10
Speaker
ah Usually Donkey Kong reskins and things like that. But um I'm trying to think of the funniest one offhand. And I can't, unfortunately. um ah yeah, it's it's really good to see. i mean, like Nintendo, as we've covered many times...
00:38:28
Speaker
is pretty much known for being out of touch with their community. That's actually like, it's one of their core traits is that they don't tend to listen or notice what anyone else is saying or doing.
00:38:40
Speaker
um And sometimes that's to their benefit and other times it's to their detriment. When AAA gaming goes off the rails And Nintendo just doesn't notice. They just keep making like decent Mario games and things.
00:38:57
Speaker
But that's not how fighting game communities want to roll. No. um And so, you know, Rivals of Aether has a really good opportunity to kind of continue to expand and fill this gap.
00:39:15
Speaker
And I mean, if they can... the other The other big question here, right? We're talking about the future of platform fighters. Which, by the way, at this point, Rivals of Aether 2, I think, is kind of the sole platform fighter.
00:39:29
Speaker
And the other ones that, like, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network did... mean, that was dead. I'm sure they might still exist, but, like, I haven't heard anything. Yeah, the ah the Cartoon Network one's gone.
00:39:42
Speaker
That was... um ah the the studio that managed it. yeah yeah that one's That one's completely gone. In my mind, at least, I'm sure there are other ones. It's like Smash and Rivals of Aether.
00:39:57
Speaker
um But Smash Ultimate, i there's no real hints about that there's going to be another Smash game.
00:40:08
Speaker
People hypothesize there's a lot of lot of spilled characters on Reddit and stuff like that about, you know, what's the next Smash game going to be? Is it coming out? Oh, the Switch 2 got announced. When are they going to come out with Smash? All that stuff.
00:40:20
Speaker
They kind of don't have to. and if they did, it might not be Sakurai. And there's no way they're going to get all the characters. And there's all these other things that would actually make the next Smash game pretty hard to make.
00:40:33
Speaker
And it's not like it's aged either, to me at least. True. I think Ultimate holds up really well, but also I've been playing it for half of a decade at least.
00:40:45
Speaker
Yeah. So for me, I'm very used to how it looks, how it plays. shihi She, shi she, she. Uh-huh. But I'm sure if they did come out with a new one, I'd be like,
00:40:57
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Hello, shiny new thing. but I think they can. It's just whether or not they... want to pursue it because like if they made a smash game it would sell yes I don't think they have concerns about that I think it would be good for them to have at least other launch titles for the switch to because right now it's like okay well you want to play $90 Donkey Kong or $90 the other one like yeah ah there is a correction the Donkey Kong game is 70 bucks
00:41:34
Speaker
Oh, OK. okay And none of them are supposed to be. Well, 90 UK dollars, but $80 is the retail for Mario World if you get it outside of the console bundle, in which case it just increases the price by 50.
00:41:48
Speaker
But regardless, I take your point and I agree they're very expensive. um I wasn't trying to make a comment on the price as much as they need more launch titles to drive them. Oh, yeah. yeah do like Half of them are like remasters or just yeah unreleased games that came out for other consoles.
00:42:05
Speaker
Because they have a lot of IPs under their belt. I would argue the most popular IPs are owned by Nintendo. Yeah. Yeah, Mario's big.
00:42:16
Speaker
Kirby's So i think they just need to leverage that a little more. Mm-hmm. We really didn't talk all that much about the FromSoft game, actually, that was coming out for for Nintendo.
00:42:33
Speaker
Duskborn? Duskborn. We mentioned it. I didn't understand what it was when we talked about it. And I have more information now, and I'm less interested in it, which concerning.
00:42:45
Speaker
But it's a PvEVP-type game or PvPVE-type game. Yeah. So, you know, did you ever play like any of the extraction shooters? Yes.
00:42:56
Speaker
Yeah. There you go. Yeah. I don't want that. We talked about it for marathon. Copy paste. I don't want that. I think it's an interesting angle to go.
00:43:11
Speaker
Because like with Night Rain, obviously you kind of have like that closing space over the three days and you want to level up your character, get whatever weapons, and then hopefully be able to defeat the final boss with your team, right?
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah. And this just feels like...
00:43:30
Speaker
i guess I'm not sure currently what the end goal is. Yeah. Like what it looks like to hop in, do a thing, and then leave. Like what is persistent versus not.
00:43:41
Speaker
um But I really just like the idea of a FromSoft thing because any of their designs, i'm like, I'm in two.
00:43:53
Speaker
It's going to have a lot of mobility options. So there's going to be like a pretty sizable area or areas. And then their combat has always felt good.
00:44:07
Speaker
So with those things alone, I'm intrigued. That's fair. But I am curious to see, like you were saying, how it's going to actually... play out because if it's like yeah structured exactly like an extraction shooter know i wouldn't be camping somewhere for two hours and be like they're near the whatever the equivalent of a helicopter would be they're near the worm
00:44:31
Speaker
There's the the giant doll grabs you and takes you out of the world or something like that. You're like, OK, sure. Why not? The way you actually leave is ah you have to put points into insight. You see the insanity.
00:44:45
Speaker
amygdala will grab you. That was a good joke because it references Bloodborne, which is a similar name the game we're talking about. The game that people wanted. Yeah, honestly. I was reading comments after I kind of figured out what it was, where people basically, I wouldn't say leaked to the community, but they revealed, you know, were spreading the threads, basically identifying that the game was a PvEVP game.
00:45:14
Speaker
And i so many people were like, oh, thank God, I really didn't want to have to get a Switch 2. And it's just like, that's a rough comment. You're from Soft, Reddit, Red or whatever.
00:45:28
Speaker
But I mean, it's very funny to me. There are a lot of people who absolutely adore PvP in Souls games. But... that player base is also incredibly supplemented by the people who have no interest in PVP whatsoever.
00:45:45
Speaker
And the people who are kind of interested in occasional PVP, but they want to see their own progression. And progression is the thing that extract it's anathema to extraction shooters.
00:45:56
Speaker
They literally will just do a season reset to take your stuff away. um And all you have to do is die in a match to lose everything you ever owned or your parents gave you anyways. So like, It might not be that. I suspect it won't be.
00:46:10
Speaker
Right. We'll probably try to change it. But... Like, they have to put their spin on it. That's my hope. Yes. I think... If I had to make a call right now... I think it's more so going to be like... Instance-based...
00:46:29
Speaker
Encounters where... Maybe there's like... Multiple people who are like... Hey, ah you have to... kill this boss and maybe you have to race to do it. And then maybe if there's other people in your way, you have to kill them along the way.
00:46:42
Speaker
Something to that effect where, right. There is something that you need to do within the world. Um, but there's also going to be other people who have goals that conflict with yours.
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah. I'm curious. I mean, I want to get more information, which is not a bad place to be. Um, And they're not Kojima, so they won't leave me in that place up until and past the release of the game or up past the conclusion of the game once you've beaten it.
00:47:14
Speaker
really really just want you have an understanding. Jordan Peele. Yeah. just I want to know what any of this means, actually. Why did I drink four monsters before I left the bunker today?
00:47:26
Speaker
um I pee lot. know It's a meter I need to take care of. i can hear it through my controller. Death Stranding, heck a game. but i sorry we kind of dove off on this for a little bit, but I wanted to ask you what other games you've been playing. Oh, yeah.
Helldivers 2: Strategy and Satire
00:47:46
Speaker
ah The other one is big.
00:47:48
Speaker
I've been putting a lot of time into it. Helldivers 2. um i was not part of the opening salvo uh, the people launching from the super destroyer, um for hell divers to at all.
00:48:03
Speaker
I think like a year passed before friend gave me this game and I've put so much time into it. Um, I, uh,
00:48:14
Speaker
i There is a group of people who are like in our friend group and admittedly, a lot of them are like ah parents or something like that. They don't have the same time to play. I've blown past all them, not just like in game time, but like, here's how i can solo the hardest missions in the game. type stuff um and It's not necessarily like a pure skill thing. It's just people want to shoot the enemies and sometimes it's way more efficient to run away and hide.
00:48:42
Speaker
um But It's excellent. Helldivers is very fun. I'm going to ask as the audience and also as somebody who's not actually played, and only kind of seen some gameplay.
00:48:55
Speaker
yeah It is a horde shooter, is that correct? i Some maps are, but it's very mission dependent. um so It's more like an extraction shooter if it was PvE only, like only co-op, um and you didn't lose all your stuff if you die. In fact, dying is one of the least...
00:49:20
Speaker
costly things you can do other people will just throw a magic pokeball and you'll drop another soldier from a pod and be like for super earth and then go off and kill more aliens or whatever um so would you say it's you could liken it to left for dead 2 it's tough because kind of not right like left for dead 2 is very When I say mission based, like Left 4 Dead 2 took you through like a brief campaign and it would be more. i mean, all the levels were the campaign levels. Yeah.
00:49:53
Speaker
Helldivers is a lot more like, I guess, like Battlefield type games. um The idea is you pick a planet somewhere that is you either have to defend or something like that from one of the three factions you can fight against.
00:50:11
Speaker
and then choose a mission on that planet, which could be part of like an operation. So it's like a group of three missions or something like that. And if you do all of them, you know ah to complete all of them, you get bonus rewards, but you don't have to.
00:50:24
Speaker
um And you look at it, and you can see what the mission type is, and then pick a spot on the map in order to drop. Everybody drops. They'll start punching in like DDR codes in PC. It's ah hold control and hit WASD for different arrows.
00:50:40
Speaker
ah DDR codes to basically like call in your support gear or stuff like that. that You'll use like jetpacks, personal shields, big, heavy support weapons, things like that.
00:50:52
Speaker
um And then you complete your objective. um And there's a bunch of other stuff you can do on the map for like points of interest. ah There might be like optional objectives and things like that. And sometimes, especially on the higher difficulties, the game will be like, and here's the BS and just introduce some ah things that you didn't know would be part of the fight.
00:51:13
Speaker
Like, the bots might have a stratagem jammer that keeps you from using your Collins at all until it's destroyed. Uh, if you get too close to it, um, or other things like that.
00:51:24
Speaker
But the goal is basically work together against whole bunch of enemies at times, um, using airstrikes and napalm and sentry turrets and jet packs and shenanigans.
00:51:36
Speaker
Um, and hopefully hopefully succeed to some degree by the end of it and not all die miserably um and it's fun thanks so and and I Still hear left for dead.
00:51:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean like which is like which is not a bad thing. Yeah for dead I think is the first horde shooter
00:52:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think the difference kind of is for Helldivers. It's because it's open world that changes the dynamic a lot. And all of the factions have some way to call for reinforcements.
00:52:16
Speaker
um And there you also have ways to shut that down. For bots, it's their like really humanoid, basic, low health grunt type units. They can shoot like a flare up into the air and then call in drop ships.
00:52:28
Speaker
um For the ah Illuminate or the squids, they're called. Yeah. They have a bunch of zombies, basically. They are they are your Left 4 Dead equivalent in this case. like they their foot Their shock troops are zombies.
00:52:42
Speaker
um But they have these like seeker drones that's just like an an eye, basically, of light coming out of it. And you can see it like on the horizon or come over a building or something like that.
00:52:53
Speaker
And if it sees you, it'll fire like a distress ah beacon into the air and all their UFOs will come in. They're War of the Worlds type stuff. um And then the bot or the the bugs are which are literally just stolen from Starship Troopers like one to one.
00:53:08
Speaker
um As a lot of things are stolen in this game. Heavily inspired. um They have like small bugs that release pheromones that will cause other bugs to breach from underneath the ground in an area and try to overwhelm you.
00:53:23
Speaker
So.
00:53:26
Speaker
If you are just fighting them and not preventing them from calling reinforcements, it just literally turns into a battle. It's just waves of enemy coming at you and you got to try to survive.
00:53:39
Speaker
um but you can also try to play it like more like a gorilla fighter and pick your engagements retreat when you need to get to the objective, complete the objective quickly.
00:53:52
Speaker
um I kind of prefer playing that You up, you throw a grenade in the Terminid bunker. They'll go, lo and then it explodes. You're actually correct. This is it literally how it works. Wait, there's actually a Terminid bunker? Well, they have they have bug holes, and that's like they can spawn out of them, and you close them by throwing grenades in. I know it's ah an adult's podcast, but come on. Come ah But yeah, they'll spawn from it and it'll be like in a big nest.
00:54:18
Speaker
And you can also close it by using everybody gets a support craft called an eagle, ah which is just a just a fighter jet, basically. um And you your loadout is your main weapon, your secondary weapon, your grenade, um and then whatever call downs you want.
00:54:36
Speaker
And you only get like four of them. And so so much of your build is what call downs do you take? um So you could take an orbital laser that is just... God has decided that everything in this path will die, and it will literally just track priority enemies and obliterate them.
00:54:56
Speaker
But you only can use it three times per mission, regardless of how long the mission is. Okay, was going to ask, is it like limited use or just cooldown based? Uh-huh. Both for the orbital laser, because it's really good.
00:55:10
Speaker
But for the Eagles, um you can outfit your bird with like whatever arsenal you want. It could be strafing runs. It could be smoke. It could be ah an airstrike. It could be a 500-kilogram bomb.
00:55:22
Speaker
And once you've ah used all of those options, or you tell it to rearm, it'll just go back to your super destroyer, which takes like two minutes. And then it'll come back rearmed, ready to go. You can just go through the whole lot again.
00:55:36
Speaker
Love that. Eagle's such a cool idea. um any time it's blocked by bots, anti-air turrets or something like that, you're like, I hate that specifically, and I'm going to remove this from the equation.
00:55:49
Speaker
Editor, please put in Eagle from Scrubs. Yeah. But yeah it's it's a really fun game. It's really fun co-op. It gets intense.
00:56:01
Speaker
um friendly fire is always always gonna happen to some degree um you just pray it's not too bad um you call out the explosives happening and you try to to shoot them in the back there's plenty of times we've just been in discord and I'm like I threw because all of your stratagems you throw basically like pokeball, a grenade type thing.
00:56:27
Speaker
And then wherever it lands, that's where the area of effect will be. Basically, it's support gear. It'll drop like a pod and then it'll be like, here's your jet pack or here's your rocket launcher or whatever.
00:56:38
Speaker
But if it's an orbital bombardment, a 380 millimeter orbital bombardment, massive area, some of these things you cannot physically throw it far enough to get out of the danger area.
00:56:53
Speaker
And so it's important to communicate, hey, ah I just threw a thing. If you're not paying attention, um that's just a massive napalm ball like bomb on this entire area.
00:57:05
Speaker
And I'm sorry if you're not paying attention. But here's your warning. um
00:57:13
Speaker
Or like friendly turrets will just like cut you in half, basically, as they're switching from one target to another. oh and they don't stop firing between targets. um But...
00:57:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's incredibly fun. They have good meta progression for unlocking all of the gear and upgrading your you super destroyer. um And behind it all is the galactic map where the developers are basically putting forth narratives for what's happening. Like right now, as of recording, there's a black hole that's like slowly being powered by dark energy from the Illuminate to like make its way towards super earth.
00:57:52
Speaker
And any planets that are in the way um are being like ripped into pieces and you can just go and see like the remnants of the planet, um which is really cool.
00:58:04
Speaker
So yeah, it's, it's kind of like a role play campaign in that regard, which is really nerdy, but it's also just fun to play.
00:58:15
Speaker
I mean, from what I've heard about it from people and what I've seen, it seems like the best version of, team horde shooting like i mean i enjoyed back for blood to a degree definitely more than other people did but um it was very much like left for dead's cousin yeah um it's like this is the model we're going after um but also starship troopers being like
00:58:47
Speaker
already a heavy space parody. It's nice that they kind of took that angle. It's so much ham. there is a I'm just to tell you a couple mission types because I find them funny.
00:58:59
Speaker
One of them is um you have to deploy, call in a flag for Super Earth. And it's just like a flagpole that slowly extends vertically.
00:59:10
Speaker
And a bunch of enemies will just drop all around you or but emerge from holes or whatever their faction specific entrances. And you got to like defend the flag while this is happening. Basically, um they can't damage it, but like they'll stop it from progressing if they get too close. So the idea is to like fight them off.
00:59:30
Speaker
um ah this is a slow process. This takes like two minutes in the game of just watching this flagpole slowly extend. And there's a little drone like from earth with a camera attached to it. That's just like spinning around, giving like a panoramic shot of you fighting all the bugs and things like that. While the flagpole slowly rises.
00:59:49
Speaker
And if that's not hammy enough, because what a useless objective, right? Like from a practical non it universe thing, useless objective. People are dying for this. Um, If you salute the flag, it raises faster.
01:00:03
Speaker
So if you're just, if you can get your whole team to just sit there and salute the flag, maybe they've defeated enough enemies or something, or they just don't care if they get overrun and they salute the flag anyways, it'll go up faster.
01:00:18
Speaker
And it's just the stupidest, hilarious i agree stuff. There's a civilian extract type mission, but it specifically calls out that they're priority citizens.
01:00:30
Speaker
You're not just helping anybody. You're helping like the VIPs. You're helping the rich people get up. Um, and it's just, it's very, very much like starship troopers was like, it's supposed to be satire.
01:00:46
Speaker
Right. But a lot of people didn't get it. It's impossible to miss that. This is very much satire. um you You fight for managed democracy, which is the right to vote, where voting is filling out a questionnaire. So you can provide that questionnaire to a machine who should decide who you vote for.
01:01:11
Speaker
Yeah. The zombies are called voteless, by the way. They're literally like it's so baked into everything. Well, I'm glad they have like ah thematic.
01:01:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah. It's just layers and layers of camp. um So yeah, it's all divers. Really recommend it. It's also like 40 bucks, like retail full price. um Cross-platform. It's only on PlayStation and PC because it was was made by Sony or like published by Sony. So this is the one you won't find on Game Pass anytime soon, I suspect.
01:01:48
Speaker
Unless Microsoft gets a lot bigger. Well, it sounds cool. Yeah, definitely. I might have to pop into Discord to at least watch some some gameplay at a point.
01:02:00
Speaker
If you ever want to see my like solid snake esque espionage, highest difficulty missions, let me know. Cause, uh, they're very fun.
01:02:11
Speaker
Um, I have a tremendous time with them and people who are used to playing the game conventionally. um We don't always get along 100%. They'll be like, why are you not helping me fight? And I'm like, why are you fighting? We're over here. like I got this.
01:02:30
Speaker
ah Yeah, it's a fun time. It's all for democracy. So thank you guys for listening um and doing your part for managed democracy. um If you have any feedback, feel free to check out the socials. They're all there in the description. We're on bluesky.com.
01:02:47
Speaker
And that's about it. has't Technically, there's the Zencaster link to various other feeds you can subscribe to. As always, thank you for listening.
01:02:58
Speaker
And we will in the next one. Have a good Bye.