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S2 Ep70: Talkcast v2
70 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they catch up on what's been going on!
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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
Introduction and Podcast Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to Soapstone. We're really glad you came to hear us talk about the stuff and reiterate our names. We meet each week to record our various ideas and topics until we get a cease and desist demanding that we stop it.
00:00:22
Speaker
We cover the gaming industry and various friends of the show, all directed to the three or four people that we claim to know. But for a custom intro, this has gone on way too long. Now enjoy the episode that comes right after this dumb song. The sound effects of me adjusting a chair. Yeah, that's how we started.
00:00:53
Speaker
All right How's it going everyone?
Cultural Norms in Greetings
00:00:56
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always Dave. How's it going tonight Dave? That's a that's a thinker yeah, you only have seven days to prepare your answer every time I mean, it's not not great, but I mean that's not podcast about right It's not like and then commence one hour of therapy, right? Well, I
00:01:21
Speaker
Things are in general I've yeah, that's good. Well, I mean tight is that yeah Yeah, I mean like very rarely are people actually like oh, yeah, it's good. You know like actually good really good Here are the good things that happen. I'm like, who are you giving me your life? It's like most of the time on average You should be feeling average one would think right like that's how how it's kind of defined maybe your average is higher than somebody else and
00:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's from me. But if you're just like, you know, always depressed, obviously that's bad, but it's also weird how automatic the response is, actually. How automatic what response? Well, like, oh, good, good. Like, it's actually a cultural thing entirely.
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, cuz you assume that people don't want to hear you shit. I think that's a fair assumption for the most most cases Yeah, but I still even do that with friends. Yeah, I might include you in that category one day I don't work your way up to it. All right. It's just like the I Don't know like how much you would like talk about shit. It's like that's good. That's right. I
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, I actually started uh giving the somewhat pretentious but more correct answer well instead of good. How are you doing? Oh, I'm well Well, you know instead of good because like it seems presumptuous if you say like if someone asks you how you're doing you're like good You're like are you really doing good? Like that's nice. You know, it's good that you're out there in the world making it a better place No, that's that's not really what you're answering saying. How are you in this moment? But
00:02:54
Speaker
It should look a checkup thing. I mean it's like you're trying to lie to somebody we also try not to like Lay down people details usually yeah
00:03:05
Speaker
Like, if we were getting together to catch up and have a meal, sure, I'd go into detail about more stuff. But it was like, hey, how's it going? It's going right. Right. You sit down at the restaurant, someone asks you how you're doing, you're like, well, opens journal. Yeah, I mean, it really comes down to, are you asking how someone is or are you greeting them? You know, yeah, most of the time in the US, it's a greeting. It's just a greeting. Yeah. Hey, how's it going? It's going right. It's good. Yeah.
00:03:34
Speaker
Though we do, we probably have like torn it apart at a certain extent just within our openings for the podcast. Like with different answers to the question, or in this case, the meta analysis of the answer. You're welcome, by the way, for giving you such variety and panicking because I don't know how to talk to people sometimes.
Food Adventures and Cultural Comparisons
00:03:54
Speaker
That's fair. We did throw kind of a curve ball in there once where you're just like, Oh, what have you been eating recently?
00:04:01
Speaker
Oh, I can always answer that shit. Yeah, that one's easier. All right. Ask me a question, Jake. Oh, Dave, what have you been eating recently? Well, so last night we went out to see Promare, the trigger anime movie, which was pretty awesome. Yeah. I do recommend. I think it's only like select theaters and select event times and bullshit like that. But it's good.
00:04:23
Speaker
Places with weeb cred, uh, fucking weeds. Um, but we went out to this empanada place, which is right down the road for me. And it was, oh, so good. I had never had legit empanadas. I don't think I've had a good EMP either. You know, it's just.
00:04:42
Speaker
I don't know if I've ever really had an empanada. I think we talked about this a little bit recently. I've had a caramel apple empanada from Taco Bell, which is not comparable, but delicious. Right. I have had that. That's why the word sounds familiar, actually. It's literally Taco Bell. Empanada. Yeah. You know, that kind of Mexican place. Taco Bell. Yeah. Well, they were good, though, you said.
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, what kind of empanada is it like is it like a dinner food or is it still a dessert thing? Like it's usually like a a hearty food thing So if you imagine the one from Taco Bell, but like thicker not made out of like sugary pastry, right but like a nice Corn type pastry. Okay, and that's stuffed with things like rice meat
00:05:36
Speaker
mashed potatoes, whatever the fuck. Yeah. Rachel got like a Hawaiian one, like pineapple ham and cheese. That sounds really interesting. We should have a lot of good stuff. So it's kind of like a deluxe hot pocket almost, but with good ingredients. My instinct is to draw away from that statement because I don't want to offend a culture, but kind of. Yeah. No, it was super tasty. Um, do you recommend? Yeah. And also I don't eat as much.
00:06:04
Speaker
Ethnic food or like food from different cultures outside of like your this is american. This is your standard. This is american. This is americ Italian is fucking everywhere. Yeah, that's very common in this area. They're kind of like I wouldn't say generic indian places but
00:06:23
Speaker
Like I've had a curry here and there. Right. Yeah. No, I get, I get what you mean. Uh, it's kind of funny cause you're describing those as like, Oh, there's not that much variety. There's like only like a tired and Indian and all this. And then what's funny is depending on where you're from, like that's a crazy amount of variety. That's true. But I mean, like where you grew up, did you have, cause I feel like Italian places everywhere I've been, it's like you can find four talking together.
00:06:50
Speaker
Yeah, I don't actually think there's much in the way of Italian and like Washington State there was like a fair amount of You know all the standard fast food things, but then like Mexican restaurants like really good Mexican restaurants authentic Mexican cuisine some would say
00:07:06
Speaker
We're gonna go out west Northwest here. Here's the spot Well, it's kind of it's kind of like a line up essentially so there is it's a diverse area, but it was mostly places you could find around here West Coast Pacific locations and then Mexican as far as like Authentic cuisine beyond that not a lot more than like your standard like Panda Express type Chinese plays and then you know, whatever else you have
00:07:35
Speaker
And then like olive garden, which is not Italian It's not but Like anybody I would still have the unlimited soup salad and breadsticks Yeah, cuz like I think their cell is the first salad. I really like liked it's really good I was like, oh salad can be a good thing and not like a punishment before dinner Yeah, and then salad works and then like my mom made some type of salad which I stole the recipe and I'll still make occasionally
00:08:02
Speaker
And the breadsticks are also really good, too. Yeah. It's just the salad and breadstick. Like, I don't care about the soup. You can just leave that. I don't even remember what the soup was like. It's okay. It's not like, holy shit, but it's not bad. Yeah. Like, you can get a Tascana or an Italian wedding soup, and it's pretty decent. Yeah. Compared to, like, whatever drug they're using to lace the breadsticks and the salad, the soup just can't hold up. It's just, like, a garlic butter. Like, here you go.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah. Do you remember the one time we went and like we left with like probably two pounds of breadsticks? Well, we had, um, they had like a take home sale, right? Like where we ordered our entrees and then they gave us frozen entrees to take home.
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah, it was like uh Some joint meal thing. Yeah, but then we also had like breadsticks with that. We had some other type of appetizer Yeah, they like filled the bag. They're just like bread. They're like also do you want some bread to go? We're like, okay Then we got a shit ton of those little uh, I always want to call them thin mints Yeah, but the andes mints like the little pillow mints for hotels. Mm-hmm
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, no, that was a good experience. I don't think i've ever I haven't gone to All the gardens since then and hadn't experienced that good So it was kind of like you shouldn't start with the peak You kind of got to build up to establish an average have the peak go back to average I was like if it's always like this then I'll always have your uh third act be bread
Gaming Transition and StarCraft II Discussion
00:09:27
Speaker
related. Yeah
00:09:29
Speaker
Um, but, uh, I guess there's a couple of games here on our list to talk about things we usually talk about. Um, so I misspelled watcha, I think. Watcha, watcha. I don't even know if that's a.
00:09:43
Speaker
They can't see the notes, Jake. No, that's fine. But I've got my standard arrangements of games I've been playing recently. StarCraft II, which we've talked about. We had an entire episode. We had an episode on original StarCraft, not actually StarCraft II, did we? Yeah, that's why I gave you the look. The side eye. Don't lie to our listener. How dare you.
00:10:06
Speaker
We'll have to do that at some point, but most of the time I just play. I'll let you do a solo F. I'll kind of hang back. I probably could just sit there and talk about the Commanders. So is there anything going on new with Soul Calibur II? Yeah, there's a couple of people looking for the sword in Soul Calibur. I think that's mostly the plot of that series. I haven't played a lot of it to be honest.
00:10:29
Speaker
That's entirely there. Yeah It's like Soul Edge or something like that. Yeah, I don't know but as far as in the Blizzard world for Starcraft They're having WCS right now, which is their like world championship for Starcraft And we're spelling that out
00:10:52
Speaker
Oh wow. I literally. I thought you were actually just explaining the acronym. I was like, that's informational. Cause I didn't know what WCS stood for. I didn't actually either. And until you said that, until you actually pointed out that I was connecting the dots. Yeah. Now I know what WCS stands for. Thanks. Um, but anyways, they have a, um, a, a war chest you can kind of, you can buy.
00:11:14
Speaker
And then as you get experience for either watching WCS on Twitch or completing games or playing co-op matches, it fills out like different, it's the same thing as like battle pass, whatever, you know, for whatever game. But you get some sprays and pictures and custom skins for the armies, which I don't know if I get to use in co-op because people kind of have distinct units anyways. I only play co-op.
00:11:44
Speaker
But maybe it would work for like the new, the original commanders like Rayner and Kerrigan. This is like a cool idea as far as cosmetic goes. Yeah. It's like one of the few things they really have, right? It's like, Oh yeah, you can change the look of your buildings, your units, some sprays, and then get some, some chat emotes. Um,
00:12:05
Speaker
I don't know. It's nice. I don't really need an excuse to play more Starcraft. I'm perfectly fine. What was that third person MOBA I was playing that Epic had? It was Paragon. It's called Paragon. I never would have gotten the name. I just remembered when we played it for like
00:12:27
Speaker
four days yeah and then i continued to play it though but only versus bots like because it was just relaxing to me it was kind of just fun doing that against bots is cathartic and it was fun and interesting enough to dive in for like 30 minutes at a time
00:12:44
Speaker
but it's kind of like a just load it up, play a match, then do whatever else you're going to do with your night. But that's your like, um, unwind sort of reset to default state game when you get home from work. And that's Starcraft kind of fills that same role for me.
00:13:00
Speaker
But again, I only play co-op games, so I don't play a real Starcraft. That's fair. I mean, I can't get into real Starcraft. I've done some co-op with you, but it's not my forte. It's just like it's fun, but then really quickly for me, it feels repetitive. Yeah. Because I'm just not an RTS guy at heart. I think the thing that really draws me in is the need for attention, like the constant attention.
00:13:29
Speaker
you're like if there's ever something that you're if you ever find yourself just watching the map i guess in starcraft then you're neglecting something and if you're actually doing something you're still probably neglecting something um so it kind of like warms me up to playing games and things like that i appreciate it for that i also hit a lot of buttons unnecessarily but that's what the pros do
00:13:54
Speaker
I'm I haven't hooked up so I can like type insults in game, but also message my friends and type insults to them. Yeah It's just all applications that can accept text. It's like hey, it's up you dumb piece of Hey, look this micro skyrocket. Oh, it's so good
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's pretty crazy. It's been around for a long time though The co-op mode. Yeah, so if you play on the hardest difficulty, which is brutal A lot of times you run up against other people that are like prestige level You know 300 or whatever something that basically equates to thousands of hours spent in co-op
00:14:34
Speaker
And then they like memorize all the maps and like the enemy spawns and all the objectives I had a guy that was just spawn camping all of the places enemies would just drop on the map or warping and then he just afk'd like left his army in place didn't move his screen at all because you can see where they're looking on the mini map and Just like his army was just killing enemies as they came in and he was not like at the keyboard. He's just gone and
00:15:01
Speaker
it was it was amazing we won like devastatingly devastatingly well cool but at the same time like what do you get out of that if it's like a full afk yeah i don't know i actually i don't know what people really get out of it at that point anyways because they've already seen all the maps hundreds of times the commanders stopped receiving upgrades at this point because there's like a
00:15:24
Speaker
There's level 15. I think is yeah 20 maybe yeah 15 you start getting mastery points and then those cap out at like level 90 or something and then there are people who were like level 1000 and It's harder to level up every time like
00:15:40
Speaker
I feel like at a point you're just doing it to do it. Yeah. It's like, well, I'm level 3000. I'm like, oh, wow, this guy's level 3000. Yeah. Same time you're like, all right. If you want to spend all your time doing that, if you enjoy it, who gives a shit?
00:15:56
Speaker
I assume that has to be the case. I saw a guy once that didn't actually show a level. It was just a star, which means he actually hit maximum mastery level possible, which is a thousand. And it's just it equates to months and months and months and months of literal play time and go out matches. Yeah, so I don't do that.
Exploring Blasphemous and Game Comparisons
00:16:20
Speaker
That's good. Um, but I have seen you playing a particular game recently. Started to talk a little bit about it. What game is that? It's, uh, whatever it is, it's blasphemous. So we obviously can't. You should not say it. I shouldn't use the name of the game. How's that game been holding up? You put some time into it now.
00:16:41
Speaker
Oh yeah, I think I'm at the last boss now, finally. And the only reason I know that is because it's, surprise, multi-phase. But it's been pretty good. I really like the, I mean the main draw has been the art style and the theming. What kind of game is it, I guess?
00:17:04
Speaker
Castle it's a metroidvania. Okay as far as style you have platforming you have combat But everything is done in like a very Spanish Catholic horror type way like everything is super brutal and violent like Gothic Yeah, yeah, so like
00:17:25
Speaker
Pretty early on you have like a tutorial boss and you have like a sword and you're kind of like a dude, nothing crazy. And they teach you like some very basic abilities. You kill this big monster and then after the fight there's like this little pixelated animation of you kind of like slit its throat, blood starts pouring out of its throat. You take off your giant like cone helmet.
00:17:47
Speaker
Fill up the helmet with blood put it back on and just kind of like put your hands over your like Masked face. Oh geez, that's pretty much the game So it's really cool though As far as style and theming. Mm-hmm some of the areas feels a little bit like Tristram Okay, as far as that
00:18:09
Speaker
Kind of a lonely wanderer feel. Yeah. But there's like different areas and mechanics and unlocks and hidden gems, et cetera. I'm not great at the game, but it's fun. Well, you made it to the final boss, so you got to be doing okay. Yeah. I just beat my head against things until.
00:18:30
Speaker
I get enough blood to kind of like moisten the stone and then work my way through, you know? Right. Not really. It sounds like it's got some interesting, so you described this like ritual or something after you beat the first boss. Is it like blood-borne thing or is it just kind of in your face or is that more mechanic?
00:18:52
Speaker
I think it was just like to set the tone of the game because basically like something happened which is called like the miracle and it manifests itself in different ways but everyone is kind of like
00:19:08
Speaker
Like a tortured soul in a way, like horrible things are happening to them, but they're also like, but I'm serving God thing. And they have like some NPCs throughout the game where you can like complete quest for who will give you items. So I guess a little bit of that is a little bit like Dark Souls. Interesting.
00:19:27
Speaker
Oh, one of the main mechanics though. So obviously if you die in Dark Souls, you die in real life. Right, as everyone knows. But you have to go back to reclaim your souls. Otherwise if you die again, fucking forfeit. But if you die in this game, it leaves your kind of like ghost body there.
00:19:45
Speaker
And you don't lose your souls currency. Yeah, which you can spend on upgrades it stays But if you do not go back for your guilt as it's called Yeah, it makes the game harder because it will kind of like limit your casting ability cap and you'll just take more damage from things and
00:20:04
Speaker
Gotcha. So like the more guilt phantoms you kind of have out in the world The harder the game gets and they'll show on the minimap. It's like you fucked up here You went back to try and get that you fucked up here again That's kind of like in super meat boy after you beat a level all of your failed attempts like cascade at once But in this case in this case, they're actually interfering with your escape
00:20:28
Speaker
But the Super Meat Boy thing always reminded me of like a genetic algorithm. Yeah. Yeah. OK, we're going to have 100 of these things and just see which one learns over time. But it's just all at once left to right across the screen.
00:20:40
Speaker
It's fun to try and track like, is this the me that gets it? Oh, nope. That guy hit the spikes and dropped. Yeah. No, it's, it's really cool though. There's been like, we played like another game. It was kind of a 2d dark souls ish style thing. I got, I had you play it for a long time. Yeah. Solid sanctuary. But is it, it feels so flashy because it is like kind of a flash animation style. Right.
00:21:07
Speaker
Which what would be, what would be the major, um, what would you say the differences between the two games are? Cause they both are very, from what I know of them, very Dark Souls inspired. Oh yeah. That's all sanctuary was a ripoff of Dark Souls and 2d mode. Um, this one doesn't look like shit.
00:21:29
Speaker
It just feels more cohesive overall. It looks nice. It feels nice and handles well. Yeah. It has good music and like interesting designs. The other one just feel certain sanctuary just feels so janky to me. Yeah. Kind of clunky. Yeah. So like, uh, did you play Hollow Knight at all?
00:21:48
Speaker
I played probably a couple hours. I'm never going to beat it because that game looks hard as shit. And I'm just at the age where I'm like, I don't know, guys. I know. Yeah, I'm kind of guilty of that too. But I hear that is I hear Hollow Knight held up as like a pinnacle of movement and platform. Oh, yeah. It's super tight controls. And I guess similar to blasphemous.
00:22:12
Speaker
Actually, even less than Blasphemous, you just kind of have strikes. I don't know if you get combos later, but it's like you go in for like little jabs with your needle. Yeah. And that's it. Whereas Blasphemous, you can kind of upgrade some combos over time or you might have like a plunging attack. Right.
00:22:28
Speaker
Oh, I got to say the plumbing attack. Um, you have to be high enough for it to go, but you jump all over somebody and you then do down attack. And then you kind of like grab your short spin around in air and then you're holding it like you're pulling it up out of the ground. Okay. Just in midair and then you just fly down. That's metal. So cool. I kind of like flashy, um, flashy sword use. Um, we were playing, uh, a Guild Wars two a little while ago. Yeah.
00:22:56
Speaker
That one day. Yeah that one day. Well, I played like I played not that much longer maybe an extra couple days But at least I have the character established now so I can go back to it but the plane is a mesmer with a great sword you just kind of They're just like how do we make someone use a sword in a very very Non-conventional way and that's entirely that like very rarely are you holding the sword?
Guild Wars 2 and Humorous Concepts
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah, you'll kind of like hold your hands in front of you like you're doing a hadoken and
00:23:25
Speaker
And like, just like fingers open, the sword will spin in place, like the hilt between your hands and you'll fire like a beam attack from the sword and all this other nonsense. It's freaking great. Or you throw the sword at them and it like turns into a, a phantom, a phantasm and returns to you.
00:23:43
Speaker
Fucking love throwing swords in games. Mm-hmm. I I've only done it in real life like once or twice and it was a mistake, right? It's just such a cool thing because it's not like It's not a weapon that's meant to be thrown It's meant to be held and you're like you strike things right there Yeah, and if you like go of it, you don't have it anymore, right? You're down a sword at that point But at the same time it's like a heftier weapon. So if you're like chucking it at somebody hmm, it's gonna deal some damage
00:24:10
Speaker
It's an all-in strategy, really, if you throw your sword at somebody. So when games give it back to you like a boomerang effect, that's really nice of them, considering. I'm just imagining there's like some medieval squire or something like that going through some training. But then no matter what anyone tells him, he always opens up practice by throwing his wooden sword at the opponent. No, I got this. Yeah, I was like, what? He runs up and just punches him in the dick. Oh, man.
00:24:40
Speaker
That'd be a great opening for like a period game for medieval. That'd be awesome. I think it'd be like a funny little sketch to do things with that character. Yeah. Like we'll call the guy Raymond for lack of a better name. It's like Raymond learns to play chess. The guy moves King Pawn Up 2. Raymond chucks his sword and then punches the guy in the dick. Yeah. This is why nobody loves Raymond. It's really where we're at.
00:25:08
Speaker
Side comment. Have you listened to everybody loves Raymond this song? I don't think so. No, it is a lemon demon song actually. Oh, is it like one of his originals or Not that old. It's probably third or fourth album Interesting. It was on the same album that had two trucks I apparently have not listened to many of his tracks
00:25:32
Speaker
Two trucks is a great song by the way. Uh, I will not sing it now for copyright reasons, right? Right. This is the point where we draw the copyright line actually just lemon demon front of the show. I hope so, man. I hope so. We should plug you like besides lemon demon in that, uh, parody space mock song space. I would even, would you call it parody music? I kind of, kind of do.
00:25:59
Speaker
I mean, I guess he's, so he kind of transcends that a little bit, um, because he has original, um, original tracks. Yeah. He started out doing like some smash mouth covers, like at a point he had some things here and there, but it always seemed comedic in a way or.
00:26:23
Speaker
So he went from, so he also changed his, his title. Like he stopped making music under lemon demon originally, right? Or eventually right. And went to Neil Sisaraga, please say his name. I guess Bo Burnham probably the other person I'd put in that space. He transitioned out of music entirely, but as far as like original tracks back in like early YouTube days, I think he would do my other pick. I think the first one I saw of his was, uh,
00:26:53
Speaker
Math. Yeah. I feel like the full full name of the song is like, it's just math or simple math. It's just math. It's just math. It's math. Yeah. But now they're, they're really.
YouTube Evolution and Fan Creations
00:27:09
Speaker
I guess I have that like pinned as early YouTube in my brain because it's very different now. Like there's a lot of, there's a lot of channels out there that make songs like, you know, Brittle Floss, all these other people, but none of them have the same kind of feel as like a kid with a basic YouTube or like, like a piano or like a reason, uh, like audio tool. And then that's it.
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah, everything like, uh, the technology is definitely upgraded since Easter just be like someone had a webcam. They're like, all right, fuck it. Yeah. You have to put a flash animation on it now. That's the thing, like to, to even be competitive with any of that. It's a little unfortunate. There's good stuff out there for it though. I mean, like I'm still a fan of flash animations and YouTube. It's the only time that like, you'll see flash anywhere, right? Game Grumps animated. That's freaking great.
00:28:05
Speaker
It's so crazy what people can do and, well, I mean, like stay focused to do. Like, okay, I have an idea and like to come up with this art style to express something that you just heard. And you're like, oh, it's these two people talking. Oh, but like now every time you go back to that scene of like the game where I was talking about this, you're like, I only see this. Right. Yeah. You see the animation.
00:28:27
Speaker
And I think like they're kind of exceptional in that because their fan base was so is, I don't know, so like ravenous and like invested in the show that without prompting, you know, fans were going out and making animations of, like you said, clips from the show.
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah. And I wouldn't even do that for somebody who I knew and loved. Yeah. It's like a significant amount of effort for literally no pay. You just hope for some recognition or you'll get like featured, you know, in one of their compilations or something.
00:29:03
Speaker
No, it's, it's freaking great. And I think part of it is also because their personalities fit so well to like, you can imagine, you can mentally imagine characters matching those voices that they're making like, um, like toad war, you know, like, you know, that's one of my favorites.
00:29:23
Speaker
My favorite though is also when people who do the animation take liberties With like what was going on in the video at the time like there'll be like a background sound or something So they'll throw a supporting character like into the animation There's there's a lot of cool things. Check out game grumps animated. It's good stuff.
Deep Rock Galactic and Co-op Mechanics
00:29:41
Speaker
That is or check out og game grumps The sonic series. Yeah goes forever
00:29:51
Speaker
Um, there's some other stuff in here. Deep rock galactic. I do want to mention, we played that a little bit. Yeah. I'm, I'm an advocate for this game. I think it's, it's actually quite cool. The whole thing is you can have like these different classes of dwarves where they each have different, like primary, secondary weapons. And then. Yeah. We need to plug the laptop in. It's gonna, it's gonna die. Yeah. I forgot to plug it in down on my side. Anyways. Yeah.
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah, I just expected power to to Ambiently flow into the the power cord and power the laptop, but it didn't happen that way We're not professionals now. No if there was doubt Yeah, like four different dwarf classes
00:30:39
Speaker
And then you also have a couple of other things, like everyone has a support or utility item. So like I was playing as the, the driller or the tunneler. So I have these big melee drill fisticuffs that's kind of like push into terrain and we'll kind of tear for amount of stuff. Sometimes that'll lead to secret passage. Uh, other times it might just be like, Hey, I'm going to make a ramp this way, which is really cool.
00:31:08
Speaker
They're all really cool and they contribute something. The game has problems you'll encounter, so the goal is drop on a friend. Let's talk about what the game is going for. Yeah, it's technically a first-person shooter. Although shooting is part of it, but not massive. You pick four dwarves, you drop on a planet that's randomly generated with a roughly linear path through some caves.
00:31:33
Speaker
Um, sometimes they're like really large caves. Sometimes they're really small caves. Um, and you have to gather either alien eggs or specific minerals or all this stuff, uh, from the environment and then, uh, call for evac escape, uh, to the evacuation, like drill that basically drops through the crust. Um, and then mission complete, you get your currency and you can upgrade your dwarf.
00:32:00
Speaker
But the cool thing is that it looks really pretty as far as how the caves are laid out and the different ores you'll have. Also just attracted to shiny low poly things. But then also on top of that and navigating the terrain with some of the support things like
00:32:18
Speaker
Having not a pulley python cords. Yeah, you have the zip lines the zip lines. Sorry Jesus Or you can generate platforms or you can tunnel or you have some guy who's just chucking flares everywhere. Yeah for visibility But then you'll intermittently get attacked by these cave bugs mostly like like giant if you think of ant lions from half-life They're basically the same thing
00:32:41
Speaker
But it's really cool because they'll kind of just come from everywhere. So yeah, we'll come through terrain. You're like, oh shit. Yeah. We had one time we were like in a cave and the, the, the hoard rush kind of started and we started like, it's playing engineer. So I put down like a century, you know, like start repairing and stuff. And we hear this like rumbling and then a giant, um, I'm trying, I don't know if it was a fire creature, exploding creature, but it like ripped a hole through the ceiling and came down on top of us.
00:33:09
Speaker
And that's freaking awesome, I love that. It just burrowed to us to actually make the attack. And that's really cool. It just feels nice entertaining, the ambient music.
00:33:25
Speaker
is kind of chill, or if it's during an attack phase, it makes you feel amped. It's like a budget payday. I just really like that. I have not sunk that much time into it. Max may have played two hours, but I'm looking forward to hopefully playing some more of that within the next week or so.
00:33:46
Speaker
Yeah, we, it's, it's a game where it's really good to have four people, um, for the full co-op squad and then one of each role because they all can work together in cool ways. And they'll like, the game will give you problems. Like here's a mineral patch, but it's high up on a wall and it's in a large cave.
00:34:06
Speaker
If you don't have a scout, you might not even see it because they have like flares that illuminate massive areas. But even if you have the scout, you're like, well, I can't get up there. The scout has like a grappling hook. So like he can grapple up there, but you can't mine, you know, while suspended in the air. And then if you drop from your grapple, uh, you can't regrapple for a time. So you don't want to be just stuck up on the wall. Like you'll fall and die. Yeah.
00:34:32
Speaker
Um, but if you have the, is it the engineer, the engineer platforms, you can just kind of like spawn little discs of terrain. Like, there you go. Yeah. Or if you have the driller, you can like drill, like drill a hole up the side of the wall and just make like a natural ramp up to it. Um, there's like, there's synergies there. So like if the scouts up, uh, if you have an engineer at a scout and there's something up on the wall, the scout can grapple up to it. And then the engineer could just build a platform underneath them. Just boop.
00:34:58
Speaker
Just shoot a little platform out and it's super, super cool and efficient.
00:35:03
Speaker
Or if I dig a hole straight down on the ground, you can bury me alive. Yeah, true. Accurate. It was ours, Jacob. But it's cool, because even like the combat class, the gunner, he was like a massive chain gun, basically the heavy, more or less. He's the one that has the zip lines. So if you need like a lot of vertical traversal or like across a chasm or something like that, he's the ideal character for that.
00:35:30
Speaker
It would take tons of platforms to build a bridge And it's like a waste of resources and time so Game also lets you pick difficulty so like we were playing on not easy mode But like kind of normal and the higher difficulty you pick the better the rewards are so you can kind of like all right, let's do this we got this we got the synergy and I'm into it. I really like it though
00:35:53
Speaker
I'm looking forward to maybe grabbing a fourth and playing through more. Yeah. Cause I definitely want to level up my driller. Yeah. Cause I just want to look at a wall and like, just with my eyes, fuck a hole right through it. I mean, you got to use your arms, but yeah. Uh, yeah. So hopefully we can, uh, revisit that. That's probably like a fair amount of in-depth discussion. So I don't know if it would ever get like an episode, but man, I would consider it deep rock is deep rock is fun.
00:36:22
Speaker
There's also like, so you collect these minerals, obviously from mining and it kind of gets stored on your person and like a little knapsack. You have a cap at a point, so you kind of need to deposit it. So there's like this like little mining cash robot you kind of just go and like dump stuff into.
00:36:40
Speaker
But you can call it over and it's like this little cute spider bot that like walk over to you Yeah, and a little like plop down you can just dump the minerals in and if combat ever breaks out We found out it will actually like move away and hide Like there was a swarm that came in we're like, all right, that's done. Let's deposit some minerals. Where where is it? It's just on the underside of something just like
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's it's freaking great and the game's still this it's still under development It's an early access now and it was when I got it originally like a year ago, but it's um, it has a lot of content. Yeah for Being worth it. It was just on sale for 20 bucks a little bit ago. Yeah, I don't know if it's back up to 30 now probably But I'd recommend it on sale is fun. Mm-hmm
Kind Words: A Supportive Social Experiment
00:37:28
Speaker
There's another game that I've actually been playing here. So there's there's a couple more on the list, but This one I added like last minute because I played it this week. I thought it was interesting. It's called kind words. I know nothing about this game
00:37:42
Speaker
Didn't even did you see on the same store at all? Are you completely blind to all Jake is now playing kind words? Like what does that mean? I hear about it eventually. Yeah, so now you're gonna hear about it, but it is not really a game All right. Thanks
00:37:59
Speaker
So it's interesting. It has a very interesting premise. Basically, the way it works is there's very few functions to the quote unquote game. You see like a character in a room, that's just a visual doesn't have anything to do with anything. You can make a request, which is just post a message. And then other people who are playing the game can see it. And the other function is you can make a response, which allows you to like go through messages and you can choose if you want to respond to one.
00:38:29
Speaker
Um, and that is, oh, and you can, um, post little encouragement airplanes, little like fly through basically like a room kind of floating in the void and like stars behind lo-fi music, like chill music plays constantly. These planes will fly by and they're just whatever people have written as encouraging things. Um, but there's no gameplay. It's just.
00:38:58
Speaker
Is this, is this a chat room? It's basically a chat room, but it's, it's very limited. So if you post a request, people can read that and they can respond to that. And then that's it. That's just, they can read request, respond with response done. So the idea was it should be encouraging like kind words is literally what the name is.
00:39:18
Speaker
Right. So people will be like, Hey, someone will have a request and they're like, Hey, my girlfriend and I got in a fight and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just don't know what to do. Like that's really common. And so you can be like, Hey, you know, type up whatever response you want, send it off. And they're pretty like aggressive about, um, like washing, uh, like negativity or toxicity and things like that. Cause it's not the point of it. Uh, but it is basically a chat room.
00:39:48
Speaker
And there's interesting implications to what it actually is.
00:39:54
Speaker
My eyes are very skeptical as some of you may hear from the tone of my voice. Yeah. Um, how much is this game? Five bucks, I think. Okay. So it's not, not crazy. What do you get out of it? So what did you like about it? I mean, it's, it doesn't play as a game at all. It's just like a chat room substitute, but it is kind of.
00:40:21
Speaker
It's, it's interesting. That's the, that's an important question because you can't get anything out of it. Like you can put into it, you know, well, here's the thing.
00:40:33
Speaker
So if there was feedback for answering requests or whatever, there's any sort of progression, people would game the system or they would sign in for something other than just encouraging other people or giving life advice or whatever. So by basically removing all of those gamified payoffs, the only people who are on there are people who are either absolutely
00:41:02
Speaker
just doing it for benevolence or just straight malice. And the people who are doing it for straight malice would just get banned really quickly. You can collect stickers. So when someone sends a response to you, they can send a sticker. And when you get an account, when you create an account, like at the very start, you get one sticker, one random one. So theoretically, after a bunch of interactions with other people, you can complete your sticker collection.
00:41:29
Speaker
But that's the only forward progression the game has. It seems more like a social experiment to me. Yeah, it is. I like the idea of it, like to encourage positivity.
00:41:45
Speaker
It kind of it's it's if you don't get anything out of anonymously encouraging people on the internet, then it's a complete waste of time and money. This is I talked about implications before. Here's the problem. It's not therapy.
00:42:01
Speaker
And whenever people put in requests, there's a thing like, Hey, if you actually need therapy, here are some like contacts you can get whatever. But it's close enough to therapy that people may use it instead of seeking therapy for like serious issues. And sometimes I was like looking through requests and I was like, I'm, I can't touch that. Like I'm not touching that at all. This is like a hundred percent therapist territory. No one on the internet is going to be able to help you with this particular issue.
00:42:28
Speaker
But sometimes you kind of do just want some type of positive feedback from somebody, and it almost always feels more validating coming from somebody who you don't know. So if you were to compliment me...
00:42:42
Speaker
You're cool. Thank you. Jesus christ It's not the same because it's kind of expected, right? Like we have we know each other we have this rapport over many years And if you say something nice i'm like, well, yeah like chicken are your friends. That's not uncommon, right? If you went up started thinking like really shitty things to me i'd be like What did I do to jake? But if somebody who you don't know is like sending positive vibes away or giving you a compliment or just encouragement
00:43:11
Speaker
It goes really far because you're like that person did not have to do that. They had no obligation. They don't know me. Exactly. I actually use that argument in one of the requests because someone had a request that was like, I find it hard to believe that any of the platitudes people are sending my way are because they actually care about me. Basically in a follow up to a previous request. Theoretically, I was like, I sent a response to that one and I was like, Hey,
00:43:36
Speaker
People could be doing anything with their time. Like they get nothing out of this. Like I don't need to send, you know, like no one has to send these requests, but we're taking time out of our day after, after work to try to encourage you. And that in itself like should mean something.
00:43:53
Speaker
But I mean not everybody's in the headspace to actually receive encouragement. That's the concern That's where you need to be in therapy instead of in this. Yeah Um, but I get that to a degree like if you're in that mindset like anything somebody says you're like
00:44:08
Speaker
Your immediate reaction is like yeah, but you don't know me Yeah, you say that because you have this false sense of i'm a good person or i'm normal or good But i'm actually like a dumb piece of shit And when you're in that mindset and somebody says something you're just like Yeah, you just full duck back that and deflect it off yourself
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, the other the other unfortunate thing is depression is like there's a lot of people on there who just feel beat down by life and so like words of encouragement are Good, like it feels good to receive that but eventually you need to seek help for depression and there's this is the trick this is what so I was talking to my wife about this and I
00:44:51
Speaker
She was hesitant to like she didn't like the whole idea of this game because like one thing Like psychologists and therapists learn is like the first couple of years of being able trying to help people you're learning how to listen and
00:45:08
Speaker
Yeah. And then, and then you learn how to ask leading questions. And then once you're like a freaking master, Jedi master of therapy, then they let you respond to what someone's actually saying. And this is just a game on the internet and people can say whatever they want. So maybe, you know.
00:45:28
Speaker
It's like that meme, like we have not yet awarded you the title of master. He's like, but I'm here answering requests on kind words. How could I not be a master? That makes sense to a degree. Cause let's say you were going through something and you were like reaching out to me, I would try and give you the best advice I knew at that time. Yeah. Um, but obviously if I didn't know enough about your experience or share a similar experience,
00:45:59
Speaker
I'm going to give you something more generic, like hang in there or there's still anime or it's something. And it's, it's hard when somebody's going through some shit to reach out to them and like hit them in like a specific way where it's like, Oh, I fixed it. Cause you can't like ever, I think really it's just the gesture of being there for that person.
00:46:26
Speaker
just knowing that like, Hey, somebody gives a shit. That's really it. I will say that the requests have to be very short and the responses have to be very short as well. There are like 14 short lines on a little notepad. Um, so you can't throw a lot in there. I've only put one request in and what's your favorite Overwatch character. Sometimes there's non serious ones and I kind of appreciate this too.
00:46:51
Speaker
Interestingly enough, I don't know if you can derive anything out of this, not statistically significant. Most people that were plain, kind words picked Lucio. Overwhelming majority actually picked Lucio.
00:47:05
Speaker
Fucking scrunch. But that's that game. It's an interesting experiment. I don't know if it's healthy or necessarily good. Hopefully net better than not. Net better. I'm confused with nut butter. That's something else inside. Peanut butter, yeah. Yeah, almond butter. But yeah, that was my experiment this week. I also played Borderlands, but who cares about that? We'll get back to that eventually.
00:47:34
Speaker
Okay. Have you been playing anything else near? Is there anything else going on with you? No. You want to? Okay.
Upcoming Game Releases and Expansions
00:47:44
Speaker
No, I think that's, I think that's most of it. Um, kind of some destiny getting, getting ready for the, um,
00:47:51
Speaker
the new season, it's gonna drop in probably about a week after this podcast goes live. Is this the new DLC? Yeah, this one's Shadowkeep, which is another raid, more content, light level goes up to 950.
00:48:07
Speaker
Motherfucker. Yeah, i'm With other things that are going on and coming out i'm not sure if i'm gonna have time for it. Yeah Because I literally today I got links awakening when I came home from work. I started playing I ate dinner Uh, and then your ass showed up. Yeah, so I just I've learned how to pick pick your front door. Like very proficiently at this point jake. Not now
00:48:35
Speaker
I don't know, Link's Awakening looks gorgeous. I really like that art style.
00:48:41
Speaker
Let me play it a little bit before this. I forced me to play it. I was going to be generous. Jay played this game. I was like setting up the laptop and like going over and shuffling notes. I closed the laptop and I gave you control of like touch it. Yeah. I was briefly confused too. Cause I have like my own controller for smash. I'm like, why did you hand me your control? But yeah, it's really good. Uh, kind of classic Zelda feel for those top down, um, game boys, all those.
00:49:09
Speaker
Yeah. And I haven't really actually fully played and beaten a Zelda game. So maybe this will be the first. I don't know. Have you played other Zelda games in the past?
00:49:19
Speaker
I mean like some ocarina of time. Yeah. Because that's the one that everybody's played. But it was like at a cousin's house so I didn't beat it. It was just like I had some time like oh yeah. It's always awkward when you beat it at a cousin's house. Walter there watching. Giving you helpful tips and comments. You can maybe try this.
00:49:41
Speaker
oh man but yeah that's i mean the thing is uh if we went back 10 years i would find it harder to believe that like you hadn't beat a zelda game but now with the amount of free time that i like basically don't have i fully understand not beating the zelda game it's like beating a final fantasy game like it's it takes time to get in there
00:50:06
Speaker
Right. But I beat divinity too. That's true. But you also were very invested in it. That's true. Occasionally I get really involved in like a immersive story. Yeah. And then other times I'm just like, Oh, eventually beat Witcher three. Right. Yeah. Good luck on that. Like I did play like a straight week and I'm just like, I need other things in my life. Yeah.
00:50:30
Speaker
No, it looks good. I don't know if I'll pick it up or not. Did you buy it digitally or did you get the cartridge?
00:50:41
Speaker
This is plastic rustling. Okay, so he has the cartridge for the listing. There's a pause there. So maybe I'll borrow it once you're done with it. I have like three or four other games from you that I'm currently borrowing. I guess maybe just two. Two and Preacher, volume two. I still have not returned two.
00:51:05
Speaker
you don't need to i read it like for me i'm not going to go back and reread preacher but like i haven't gotten any comics or manga in a while but occasionally i just like to go through one i'm like yeah but then i've consumed it and i don't have a need for it anymore i think it's just sitting like on a bookshelf in my apartment it's like i'm using it as decoration at this point as though i own it and i don't actually own it
00:51:33
Speaker
That's what adults do like look at these books. I oh it might have read Yeah, also check out these candles from Bed Bath and Beyond don't they smell I won't light them. Yeah, don't they look and smell nice Yeah candles are not for lighting everybody knows this
00:51:49
Speaker
In gaming news, there's a couple interesting things that came up. We're not going to talk about those, though. Instead, we're going to talk about the fact that Civilization VI is apparently getting a Battle Royale mode, which basically means everything has a Battle Royale mode. This is a turn-based strategy game, and they're like, hey, 20 people on the map, Battle Royale. I don't even know what that means.
00:52:18
Speaker
That doesn't make any sense, does it? No. So I guess it's going to be faster and not be limited by turns. Like everyone would be going simultaneously. I think you can move in combat. You can move at the same time, then combat happens simultaneously.
00:52:36
Speaker
But I guess you're moving towards a central point that you can test over. Yeah. But it's not like you're not building cities or territory. You're like, why is this a battle royale game? That's my question. It's because everything is. That seems wrong to me.
00:52:50
Speaker
Yeah, me too. What do you, what do you think it's admire? What are you thinking? Additionally, discord nitro is removing their free games from their, uh, subscription service. So if you weren't aware previously, uh, Dragon Ball, which, I mean, I, I was, but I didn't use the free games at all. Apparently that wasn't just me. Um, what do you get out of discord nitro?
00:53:15
Speaker
You gain the ability to use animated reactions to host them on your servers and some other stuff. Oh, snap. Hope he did. Otherwise he's getting a joy con.
00:53:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's life sometimes though. You know, sometimes life hands you Joy-Con or as other people call them, lemons. But yeah, apparently nobody was using this subscription service for games. Same reason I understand this. I recently dropped Humble Bundle Monthly because I have all of these games I literally have never played and they're just sitting there unredeemed, not even in my Steam library.
00:53:56
Speaker
Um, this again, it comes back to like not having the time or just oh, I didn't know that was a thing Okay, there's also just so many games out there like even if I had time to play games every night Like there's so much so many good games or games I'm particularly interested in that a random game you just put on my doorstep. I'm probably not gonna play
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah there are times like I just don't want to play anything Yeah, I just kind of like sit and exist and like this is enough for me right now
00:54:29
Speaker
Speaking of random games that you could be put on your doorstep that you may never play, on the Epic Games Store, there are games this week where the Bark Man Arkham, Batman Arkham series, the Anthology, which is like Arkham City, Arkham Knight, Arkham Asylum, I think were the three. And the Lego Batman games.
00:54:53
Speaker
And it kind of i'm surprised that they gave away all three of the arkham Games because those were usually pretty good higher selling. Yeah Well, we're sure like the first arkham game is like now five bucks Yeah, but yeah the other ones i'm sure were still up there I think msrp for the bundle is probably like 30 bucks now, but it's it's not bad for a free game. It's definitely better than just like Gutter trash like a humble bundle filler, right? Like yeah
00:55:24
Speaker
But yeah, a lot of people still don't like Epic Store, which I understand. That's a different argument for a different day. Anything coming up that you're interested in news-wise?
00:55:39
Speaker
I mean, there's some games coming out in like the next couple of months, but I'll probably talk about them more. So closer to those dates. Yeah. Or I mean, if you watch any of E3, you probably have an idea of what some of those are. Yeah.
00:55:54
Speaker
Or listen to our coverage of E3. Probably know what some of those are. Yeah, well maybe like next episode we can set aside some time and talk about the upcoming games. But we already talked about Link's Awakening and Shadowkeep. And those are the things that are immediately going to be out like close to this episode.
00:56:14
Speaker
Anything in the Dota space happening? I know you're still taking breaks from socializing in our Discord to cheat on us with other Discords.
Midas Mode 2 and Community Involvement
00:56:26
Speaker
Yeah. Um, Midas mode two is starting in a week. Yeah. And this is a technically a third, a non-valve run tournament, but it's by the moon duck studio people, uh, headed by, I guess co-created by, but fucking headed by Sir action slacks who's a fucking nut job, but really passionate about what he does. Um, as a really cool take on Dota two, or like they add a bunch of laid back meme challenges, but they have like pro teams.
00:56:56
Speaker
Have this fake currency and they can earn more currency. Are they called moon bucks or is it actually is it something else? Because they should be called moon bucks. I think they are moon bucks. Yeah But basically they can do dumb challenges like 360 no scope or mr President or a clock clock or you have to like go and roach with your courier and defend it for 45 seconds These things are like they break meta entirely. Yes, it makes the games more relaxed and interesting and fun
00:57:26
Speaker
But teams that have to use those moon bucks to draft for characters that they want to pick in their games or ban somebody or do something else. Everything costs money.
00:57:38
Speaker
And like meta heroes are more expensive, right? Especially as it goes on And then like if somebody's getting picked a lot and doing really well, like everyone's playing Drow Ranger Drow Ranger's value goes up and the economy shifts Is it still like so I remember from like the first Midas mode once a character was picked they couldn't be picked Again, they were just like out of the pool Or my misremembering that i'm thinking of a different tournament captain's dress
00:57:59
Speaker
Well, there's Captain's Draft, yeah. But I remember that there was a... It might not have been Midas mode, it might have been something else. But once characters were picked, they couldn't be picked in a subsequent round of the tournament, subsequent game. It was something other than Midas mode, I take that back. Captain's Draft?
00:58:17
Speaker
well isn't captain's oh okay yeah captain's draft okay my brain associated with captain's mode which is just the competitive picking mode i get your saying all right yes yes that's what i was thinking of but yeah there's really cool things like i think one of the pro teams i don't know if it was eg or someone
00:58:36
Speaker
They're like, oh, we're going to buy cliffs. So like they modified the map. So it would actually have cliffs and different locations like they could use. Oh, well, something that they're doing now for Midas mode two, uh, is they are allowing teams to like buy other things, like specific, weird cosmetics to help contribute towards the tournament.
00:58:58
Speaker
Yeah, or there's like now fan interactions for like being able to control rosh or creeps Mm-hmm, but that's actually like people spending outside real-life money Towards the tournament. Yeah, but I think it yeah was eg who they wanted to remove all cliffs So that our TZ would not keep getting cliff. I remember correctly. Yeah
00:59:16
Speaker
It's really it's really freaking cool the like one of the original trailers for it my favorite thing Without going into all of the specifics of what you can do in minish mode best thing was like it was like if riot pays us Like a million dollars will advertise for like League of Legends all over the map for the tournament I'm like, please please right? No, but they could easily spend a million dollars and be fine. I
00:59:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think dota would probably come out ahead and write realizes that like That would just be an advertisement for dota more than it would write so
00:59:51
Speaker
Really cool. I'm glad that it actually worked out and that they can move forward with the tournament. There was some, some drama about whether Valve would kind of, uh, have a, it wasn't like a semi-final, but basically they're semi-finals. They're, um, they're major qualifier, I think around the same time. And, uh, yeah, normal Dota two pro season starting up again.
01:00:13
Speaker
Nobody cares about that. Compared to Midas Mode, it's just vanilla Dota. Who cares? They worked it out and it's moving forward.
Podcast Conclusion and Engagement
01:00:23
Speaker
Props to all involved parties to not strangle Sir Action's Lax and his dreams.
01:00:35
Speaker
Oh my gosh, it's a doorbell. That doorbell means, it's time for us to call this episode. As always, you can reach out to us at our Gmail, at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com, or join the discussion on Facebook, at Facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. Dave's not sitting in his chair anymore, so I'm just gonna say thank you guys for listening, and we'll see you in the next one.
01:01:33
Speaker
you