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S3 Ep201: Most Played
74 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they try to justify the games that they've spent the most time on in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Banter
00:00:00
Speaker
🎵
00:00:48
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going, Dave? Yeah, that's fair. Next up on the list of things to talk about. I actually don't have another thing, but I figured I'd try to redeem the intro.
00:01:12
Speaker
I like the idea that like, uh, if I just started berating you for not having another thing on the list, like that was your job. And the fact that we don't have a structure is entirely on you and not both of us and not how it's kind of planned. Right.
Video Games Discussion Begins
00:01:27
Speaker
I kind of jumped into this one too. Usually there's a little bit of a pause before I start recording. And there is, there is an inkling in the back of my head, like one of those Nintendo characters.
00:01:39
Speaker
Um, and that inkling, it's a fear that the very first thing that I said when we opened with the episode is actually cut off and we won't know it until you have the edit. Oh, I would just add a little bit in something for you. That's funny. I go, hi, my name's Jake. That's all the impressions of everybody. Don't feel bad. It's.
00:02:03
Speaker
I'm imagining like you leave because if anything's cut off, it's like the first half second. Mm hmm. But you literally just append the height. My name is Jake. Is it going everyone? You know, oh, no, I stack the audio on top of it. OK, excellent. Good. No smooth transitions here. No, we don't believe in it.
00:02:25
Speaker
Um, I also don't believe in restraint apparently, which is the reason that we played so many video games. That was a, that was my segue. We're not talking about the murders. Okay. Okay. episode tonight, folks. Um, so mixing it up, right. We're trying to diversify away from Elden ring a little bit. Yeah.
00:02:52
Speaker
So I think a month or so ago, I say or so, it could have been three months. Yeah. Time is no meaning anymore. The time, the flow of time is convoluted and the lands between.
00:03:05
Speaker
It's hard. It's really hard when you're in it to just stop and be like, I'm not going to talk about it because somebody can mention one thing and then my brain derails and just goes to a thing and then I'll realize other people are on Discord who don't give a fuck. I'm like, I will tone it
Reflecting on Past Episodes & Dota 2
00:03:22
Speaker
back. How are you? This is just their comeuppance because I know what it's been like when we're talking about D&D or something like that.
00:03:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's right. Fuck all you people. This is my time now. I just don't have anything to contribute to it. And so then usually it's a hey, remember that time when 20 minutes ago this stuff happened? I'm like, I don't know what you want me to do with this. Yeah.
00:03:46
Speaker
Was your game fun? Cool. I don't want to be a grandparent about it. Um, it's like the tunnel snakes walk up and you're like, I'm not, I'm just a vault boy. I'm not a tunnel snake. Yeah, it's uh, it's just, it's just patiently waiting. I would call it. That's fine.
00:04:10
Speaker
But I think it was a couple months back, we did an episode on the least played Steam games. Basically, which fodder we've gotten from either Steam sales or other things on the cheap. And then you don't. We're checking for five minutes. It's kind of just like a money burn. So we're like, hey, let's do the opposite of it. Most played Steam games. Arguably. And I mean, I'm ready to be completely disproven on this point.
00:04:39
Speaker
This topic makes a lot more sense because we basically picked the games that we did not have enough interest in to play and straight up like had an entire episode about them, which doesn't make any sense compared to potentially the games we're willing to put hundreds of hours into.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I get that, but I assume or I hope that it kind of took on that niche aspect of, Oh, I also have that dump shit in my library and never checked it out. Or why would they buy it? Oh, that game sounds terrible. Right. We're typically talking about like good games that we like. Yeah. Hopefully this episode's easier. I should hope. I don't know if that's the struggle with me.
00:05:31
Speaker
But again, I don't believe in restraint, so what's the top game of your list? I'm going to let you guess. I'm going to guess Dota 2. All right, episode's done, get out of here. That was the kill switch. That was it. Can you guess how many hours though? This is tough.
00:05:52
Speaker
Because I don't have access. I tried. And your profile is private. There is a recent reason for that. I picked up something on this theme that I would not want to show my parents, let alone show anybody else. So I want to have that for me time. Elden Ring. They just hate George RR Martin. Yeah. Is that the incest author? And he's not a Christian, man. Right. One of those would redeem the other.
00:06:22
Speaker
I also like the idea that it wasn't one person saying that. It was like, my dad's like, and he wasn't a Christian. My mom just goes, right. Yeah, just has it on tap. All right. Geez, hours on this. You played this game more than I have. But the question is how much more?
00:06:41
Speaker
I'm also, I will throw in the information that like a lot of games, there are many times where I'll kind of walk away and leave the game running or have multiple games running. And I'll be like, oh, we're not actually playing Dota 2, I'll play something else. But it'll still be up. So it's probably inflated a little bit.
00:06:59
Speaker
That's fair. Although I did actually start Dota 2 before you did. I was playing back in the beta and I played, that was where a lot of my hours went in. So maybe that, I played back when it was Dota 1. That's true. Unfortunately, from Valve's perspective, the hours don't roll over. I'm going to guess, I'm going to guess 4,000 hours.
00:07:25
Speaker
That's a lot. That's a little bit high. It's a little bit high. Wait, wait, wait. OK. 3.5. That was going to be my first guess, and then I was like, it's going to be too low. Yeah. Is it actually 3.5? I mean, it's 3.490, but 3.5 is pretty close. Yeah. The reason I guessed that high is because mine is just shy of 3,000, 2,975. And I think I underestimated just how much my hours were inflated by,
00:07:52
Speaker
the summers at college when I didn't have school and I didn't have work or the work was all responding to tickets and things. And the summer of just playing one game, like letting it drain
Exploring Various Gaming Experiences
00:08:07
Speaker
your life dry entirely gives it the summer of six and nine.
00:08:14
Speaker
This being your KDA. Oh, yeah. Now that's very generous. I don't know my feet way more than that. And zero assists is impressive. If I if I'm if I'm in a fight and I can't get the kill, I die. That's basically my point.
00:08:33
Speaker
Um, it's also, that means like you're doing like one V one matches out in front of Roche. You're like, nobody else come here. It's between me and you. Right. If anyone else shows up, you just walk away. So you don't, you don't contribute. Um, but yeah, I guess this shouldn't be too surprising. We've talked about Dota a lot, probably the most second most mentioned. Oh, I don't know. Undertale's up there too.
00:09:01
Speaker
Undertale, Dota 2, anything Dark Souls. Yeah. Probably forgetting some other ones are very high up there. Yeah, those ones. Those ones are some of the big ones, obviously Dark Souls. Dark Souls is kind of a shoo-in and everything Soulsborne. But that's a lot of hours, right? Yeah, it dwarfs everything else I have.
00:09:27
Speaker
probably by a crazy amount too. I'm actually looking, I'm looking this up for you just to let you know. Hours to days. That is 145 days. So I haven't even been playing it for a whole year yet. I mean, that's,
00:09:49
Speaker
I don't know. That's just a whole lot of time. I guess this is the game for it though, right? Like the format encourages you to just cease to exist for a period of time and then emerge from a coma later and be like, all right, honestly. Yeah. Uh, it's very much a binge game where typically if you get on the play with people, you're usually playing for multiple games and they can range between like half hour to an hour, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer. Um,
00:10:18
Speaker
but it's very much each game is fresh. So there's like a lot of replayability. Sometimes you play with different people, usually have like a bit of a group. Sometimes you have some pubs that fill. Um, but like I've enjoyed it enough over time and I just keep coming back to it as like my kind of forever game.
00:10:38
Speaker
Oh yeah. And it's also a social game, which a lot of my games are not. Right. So that is my number one, number one place. What about you? What is your top game? Well, I might've already said it actually, but yeah, Dota 2. Dota 2 is still the top. How many hours did you spend in there? Yeah, yeah. I mean like 3000. It's close to not my top game, but it's actually,
00:11:04
Speaker
Uh, it's not really at risk of being dethroned as I look at the rest of the list and I'm not going to spoil anything, but like I said, when we were playing Dota 2, it was dead. Like you, that was the game, right? Like you're on the computer, you're playing the game. It wasn't, what are you playing tonight? Is it, Hey, are you online tonight? Yeah, exactly. And it's also like, I think something else that contributes to this, what there's the redemption game idea.
00:11:34
Speaker
happen in MOBAs where it's like, oh, that last game was so bad. We can't go out on that, right? It's literally- You can't go to bed depressed because of Dota continues to gamble money away. The college fun while the children cry in the background. There's that aspect. And it's also like,
00:11:54
Speaker
It is fun to play with friends, but it's also, I don't know, it's slightly weird to be the first person to leave. Sometimes it feels like everyone else is up for another game. You're like, ah, okay, sure. There's a whole lot of peer pressure. Yeah. Everyone's like having a beer. You're like, I think I'm going to switch to water. I think I've had enough tonight. And you're like, all right. All right. This guy's getting old. I don't want to be old. I want to be cool.
00:12:17
Speaker
Uh-huh. There's definitely a bit of a group mentality for that. The other thing that a shout out to Griffin, that son of a bitch, will do is if we're like having some good games, it'd be like, oh, we can't leave the table on a heater. You're having like a win streak. You should keep it going. You play the gambler's fallacy literally.
00:12:39
Speaker
That's really funny. It's very much just trying to milk people for as many games as possible. And even when we're playing with some people over in the EU, who obviously are on a much shifted time schedule, it'll be like 11. I'm like, guys, I'm an East Coast boy. I'm getting tired, going to get ready for bed. They're like, let's do one more game. It's already like 3 or 4 AM there. I'm like, ah. If they're staying up, I should too. Right.
00:13:07
Speaker
No, it's pretty crazy. It's definitely it's it's eaten a lot of my sleep. And like you mentioned, the one of the main reason I think it's so massively successful is that clean slate feeling whenever you start a new game, you're like, this one, this one could go anywhere. And then it goes to the same place like the last five games have gone and you're like, I don't I don't like this neighborhood. But next one.
00:13:35
Speaker
Yeah, like I've had some nights where I've just like played completely like shit. I'm like, oh, I feel bad. I feel like I should apologize to my friends for how bad I played. The two days like, yo, where's my invite? We playing or what? It's starting
Destiny 2 & MMO Highlights
00:13:47
Speaker
fresh and it's typically not as bad.
00:13:50
Speaker
Yeah. It definitely feels very dynamic. If you ever find yourself in that situation and you need reassurance that you don't need to apologize to your friends, just remind yourself that they're Dota players and you immediately make lots of them. Yeah, they really don't deserve my respect, huh?
00:14:12
Speaker
Maybe at least they're not league players. Oof. Yeah. Geez. Can't imagine that. Just getting the eyes is what we think about the one person we know that still occasionally plays league. He hasn't in a while. That's good. Shout outs to him. Reforming. A shout out without naming him, which is like... Well, we just like threw him under the bus. Right. That's fair. If they're listening, they already know. They already know. In fact, everyone who's listening knows who he is, so that's fine.
00:14:41
Speaker
Yeah, my number, or she, or she. Yeah. Yeah. Don't know their pronouns. Um, my next one's Eve online, actually at about fewer than a hundred hours less, but this one's, this one's, this one's cheating.
00:14:59
Speaker
And that it's literally because I was literally written a bot to actively do stuff in the game. So you just leave it open. Yeah. Yeah. I think saying like, oh, I've been playing Excel a lot. Uh huh. Please. I should get it added on this card. So it shows up when I have the record. I don't have wallpaper engine in this list. Oh yeah. That's true. I think, um, seem treats applications differently. It doesn't add them to your games list. Unfortunately.
00:15:29
Speaker
Um, well, actually, fortunately, cause wallpaper engine is open like all the time. But, uh, yeah, a lot of hours, mostly the mining bot, although I did play the game a lot. This was another like around college time, MMO, which is the same bucket I put Dota in, even though it's like not an MMO at all. Um, but I mean, this is actually another one I wouldn't really go back to right now. Um,
00:15:59
Speaker
for a lot of reasons in the game. So this is likely to stay at that 2800 hour mark. Not the perfect number. What's your number to look like? Well, first I want you to guess what it is. Because if you got the first one, you're getting the second one. OK. So it has to be binding to Isaac. There's no way it's anything else. I'm not sure if he's quinted. I'm starting to wonder if maybe it's not
00:16:28
Speaker
So binding of Isaac here I have at 192 hours.
00:16:32
Speaker
That's a lot of hours. If for some reason I cut you off and you meant to say Binding of Isaac rebirth, you'd be correct at a 109, 100 Jesus, 1,927 hours. Okay. Yeah. The thing I wasn't factoring in was the multiple releases of this game. And now it's probably taking multiple slots and you're most played. Cause when I like saw Binding of Isaac, I saw like one and two, I'm like, I know that math's wrong. I, yep, there it is. There's a right. There's rebirth.
00:17:01
Speaker
I mean, it doesn't surprise me too much. I mean, this one also is a little bit of a cheat. Not as much as mine, but you did just straight up leave this game running for some reason for forever. I don't know what it is, but if it's not like a crazy intensive application, I will just.
00:17:17
Speaker
Like right now I'd probably have like seven or eight different applications open. One of those being Chrome, which also probably has too many tabs of things that if I close, I will forget it exists entirely. Yeah. So getting hours on each tab for Chrome. Ooh, rocking these points up. Yo, what up crypto miners, fellow crypto miners.
00:17:36
Speaker
But yeah, it just, again, is another one of those very easy replayability. There's a lot of things in it to unlock. Um, and now at this point with the newest DLC, which I haven't touched for that reason, it basically has like infinite replayability. Um, and I don't have patience for that, nor do I like doing hard achievements because I am a lazy boy.
00:17:59
Speaker
the recliner. Well, those are last boy. People pronounce it wrong a lot, so I got it. I'm sure I've told this story on the podcast, but when we got our lazy boy couches, there was a three-seater, and then there was two with a divider or something where you could put plates or whatever, like some drawers. And as it was being brought in by the people, I was like,
00:18:28
Speaker
it's pronounced last boy. I learned how to read at a young age and explaining it to these people who work for the company. They're just laughing like, ah, this is youth. But I was very frustrated that everyone's pronouncing it wrong.
00:18:43
Speaker
Yeah, I know. I like the way that you described the double with the separator in the middle, because I was just like, they're trying so hard for that not to be a love seat. Like, right? This isn't the Christian or very conservative love seat. Room for a vote in Jesus. But no, they were actually both like rocking chairs. Ah, okay.
00:19:03
Speaker
So like they did have that actual separation and just kind of like hooked in for like, Oh, we can put some cups and whatnot magazines. I'm just thinking about rocking chairs that have like a synchronization settings. Rocking info. That's really funny.
00:19:23
Speaker
Back to Binding of Isaac for a second. I do want to make sure that I don't undermine it too much because I think part of the reason that you've like idled in the game so far to just, you know, cast aspirations on your character at the time is actually just to cover for how much you've legitimately played. So you
Game Anecdotes & Team Dynamics
00:19:44
Speaker
could just be like, oh yeah, I'd sure do leave that game running all the time.
00:19:48
Speaker
There was a point where I didn't need Platinum God because I knew everything. I didn't need to look up what an item did. I knew. I didn't need to look up the probabilities of climbing something. I knew. Yeah. I can attest to this because I have not played... Basically, I haven't played Binding of Isaac by comparison to the amount of time Dave has played this game. I haven't launched it. But when I was playing through it,
00:20:18
Speaker
as a mortal does. I could just ask Dave, like, what does this item do? And he's just like, oh yeah, that's this. And this is what it does. It's like, what if I got that? Well, then it would be like this. And this is what it would do. We're like, OK, all right, I see. Oh, that interaction? Mm-hmm. Just moves fingers to like a cross reference on my wall. Uh-huh. Oh, that would do this.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, just add some chocolate milk. I was looking at this, I'm like, this is easily my most played roguelike, so I thought. I mean, it still is. I still think that. Right, that's good. The next highest for me, at least as far as roguelike, and also comparably, a lot of
00:21:02
Speaker
Actually, no, I think it is just third place. Slay the Spire ate a lot of my time as well. Okay. And the one thing I'd maybe put close to it as far as guessing because I don't have time tracking for it because it's not in Steam is Hades, which I know you have also sank a lot of time into.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean, of those two, Hades is very much the winner, as I think I played, I have like one run. So the Spire is pretty good. It is good. It is good. The music, the character development, you don't... Sorry, I have this backwards, that's not bad. Hades is really good. Uh-huh.
00:21:41
Speaker
I mean, like Slay the Spire is a game I probably could get into. I realized we're like playing ping pong with this topic, so we're not talking about either game. Um, but I have a mixed relationship with Roguelikes. Like sometimes I'm just like freaking Roguelike and other times it's like, eh, freaking Roguelike. Um, but Slay the Spire unfortunately kind of fell into the game that I didn't really get into.
00:22:10
Speaker
And then Hades. Hades. Hades was the one because I know you're not like a big roguelike fan. The same way I know you're not like a big platformer person. Hades is Hollow Knight. Exactly. I was like, this is the one that's going to get them because you're a Supergiant fan. And I was like, oh, they just did it in this format? Yeah, you'll be fine. You'll like it.
00:22:33
Speaker
And then like several other people also got into it. And then like I didn't hear from them for a little bit and they're like, all right, someone like this run here. And I'm like, okay. Like they got into it, which is really cool. People are always, people are hopping online with Discord talking about like, did you hear about this build or you do this? You're like, oh, it's really cool. That's cool synergy. Yeah. Like you get some good RNG and it feels good. And you try and replicate that perfect run of like, I'm going to get all these boons.
00:23:01
Speaker
And it's like, what if we gave you trash? Like, no. I mean, the thing I really love, and we've had an episode on most of the games you've talked about so far, or at least talked about them in some episode. Um, the thing I loved about Hades in particular was like, it isn't really super up to RNG, whether you have a good, a good run or not. Like if you have an amazing run, those happen occasionally, but like.
00:23:31
Speaker
unless you have a bunch of difficulty modifiers in play. Your mirror, light is a mirror of darkness, I think, something like that.
00:23:43
Speaker
Like the upgrades it provides you legitimately just make the game so much easier to push through and there's enough RNG offerings presented to you. You're making the choices that you want. So you probably end with a good build. Like, yeah, it's, I love that. I think it's nigh impossible to just like get to the end. You're like, I literally, my build is so bad that I can't do any hip hip synergy and like beat a boss.
00:24:10
Speaker
Right. It's very much like you're choosing, oh, I want to boon from this God, which is synergized from this. And you're choosing which slot it goes. It's still based on what's provided to you, but you're still being provided good options throughout a thing.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like giving three choices that were randomly determined is so much more gratifying to me than like a type of game that does have a more truly random play through with fewer choices.
00:24:40
Speaker
And it feels like I'm getting in the weeds on this, right? For Hades. But this is, I think this is fundamentally one of the reasons that like, I didn't get super pissed off at the game and I played it for so long. Also narrative. Right. Also is good. It's, it's also a game, but, um, I dunno, it all fed together to make me really love a game and a genre that I am not usually a huge fan of.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's almost like they're like, Hey, how have other people fucked up? Let's not do that. And maybe one day Nintendo will learn. I actually have to see if it was on my list at all though. Cause I largely did play through until I like finished out the story. I think there's like an epilogue and then I was basically done. I think it's right under. Yeah, it's a little too low to actually show up on my list.
00:25:38
Speaker
Um, compared with some of the other things, such as my number three, which is final fantasy 14, which I'm not going to talk a lot about because it's an MMO, but it's also a really good MMO and I've played it 1600 hours. Oh, damn. That, that actually is much higher than my true number three. Cause I, I ordered these very poorly and that I did not order them. That's good. Chaos mode.
00:26:07
Speaker
Ah, Final Fantasy reference right there. I like that. I like that. I'm going to kill Chaos. So it seems like in general, MMOs and roguelikes, you're obviously going to have a lot of the time because it has so much replayability. Like even it, like we dump on JRPGs for being way too long all the time, because they are. And the stories aren't usually good and the characters suck, but
00:26:31
Speaker
What I'm saying is like you still go through like a full thing of that and it might be as long as like a divinity 2 playthrough, right? And then that's it. Like sure you could go back, but you'd have to like play it like 20 times to like catch up to some of these other things. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it takes a long time to get towards the end of it.
00:26:52
Speaker
Did you have anything you want to like add about or like color for Final Fantasy 14? No, I mean, it's I guess I would just mention, I do think it's basically we're never going to cover it as a game because we don't really cover this type of game unless we both play it. But I do think it's still basically the best traditional MMO on the market. It's got a good story. And I mean, I don't have to sell it on anybody, like to anybody. You already know about this game if you care about MMO.
00:27:22
Speaker
That's enough. Final fantasy. Good game. 14 specifically. The rest of them, obviously. Um, yeah, I don't think people like seven too much. No one likes seven. No one mains the antagonist in super smash brothers. That would be, or the protagonist, to be honest, those are both pretty bad options. Um, I wish he was like a catchphrase, but like weather patterns or something. Uh, you're thinking of the X-Men, uh, storm. Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:52
Speaker
But my true number three is actually PoE, Path of Exile, which makes sense because it's another, hey, do you want to play Diablo for our side? I'm like, yeah, please, please. So that comes in at a whopping 714. That's good. But to be fair, that is now, everything else is like 200 or under.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to drop off pretty rapidly here. I've got one more big one and then there's a massive drop. Give me your big one. Don't isolate that audio. Right. That's why I continually laugh awkwardly in the background so that there's no clean clips of what we're saying. It's actually, I consider it very impressive that I can laugh over what I'm saying in real time too.
00:28:39
Speaker
Team Fortress 2 at 1200 hours. There was a little bit of idling. Yeah, we know how you play spy. I actually don't play spy like that at all. I hate, I kind of hate the cloak and dagger or even the traditional spy watch, but it's better than cloak and dagger. And I dead ring her all the time because I'm the worst person in existence.
00:29:02
Speaker
Real talk, I've only played at LAN parties, so my number is much lower than that. I've also never really enjoyed the game. I do it entirely out of social obligation, but every time that we'd play, I was drunk because it was a social gaming event and there was alcohol involved, always. So imagine thinking that you killed Jake with your drunk ass and then Jake kills you. It is very confusing.
00:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's the roundabout. Why is Dave walking around with the flamethrower constantly on? Oh, no. Yeah. I mean, it was necessary
Gaming Histories & Preferences
00:29:41
Speaker
because you'd have people like Ian who would like, so we do actually, I think, I don't know if any of us really enjoy playing TF2 anymore, which is probably the reason that we don't play it as much even at LAN.
00:29:53
Speaker
But I'll play like other classes, I'll play like medic or something, right? And Ian might try something for a bit, but ultimately he goes engineer. And this is from a historical perspective.
00:30:08
Speaker
This is the Cold War, basically. Because now outside of a coordinated medic demo push or medic plus soldier or something like that, you're not going to break a sentry nest. He's not bad at the game. He's not just going to make it super easy. And so this is a hard counter to any strategy. So now I have to go spy.
00:30:33
Speaker
to try to like mitigate that. But what we end up doing is in our Cold War exchange, no one has fun. We all stop playing anyways. So it's a good time.
00:30:50
Speaker
And Dave's just shaking his head, which doesn't come through well on the podcast. This is why I need like a Chiquita banana hatch. So when I shake my head, everybody fucking knows. Just hear the sounds. I was in two clans in Team Fortress 2 though. This is one of those earlier games.
00:31:08
Speaker
back when people would like join gaming clans like, yeah, I'll put this random prefix in front of my name. Um, so do you remember what they were? One of them was Woof, which is a stupid name. And the other one I can't, can you guess what they're into now? I was right. Yeah, actually no, it was the same clan. Uh, I remember having two tags, but one of them was just the, uh,
00:31:32
Speaker
What's the little up triangle, the very small thing? Chevron. Ah, yeah, Chevron. They worked for the major petroleum company. But yeah, that was for the people who were like recruits, but once they became full members, they could put Woof in front of them. I wonder if there's anybody who's like,
00:31:53
Speaker
Oh yeah, I'm a real member. And they're like, that's a fake wolf. Oh, you would absolutely get banned. Cause these are all community servers, right? Like, yeah. So, um, yeah, impersonating the clan that owns the server is probably not the play, but, uh, what was yours?
00:32:12
Speaker
Your next game. Sorry. What was your clan? What clan were you with? Team Fortress 2 for a land party? Team Fortress 2, yeah. I thought you were asking a different question.
00:32:25
Speaker
So if I had to go like fourth down, I'm guessing Hades would be around 200. Uh, but to throw in another, is this strictly steam games or? No, no. Who cares? These are, these are most played. We don't own, we don't have anything. In fact, we've paid them thousands and thousands of dollars. I've definitely paid taxes on all of this. Um, what is the.
00:32:50
Speaker
Destiny 2 I think actually be up there a lot Yeah, this is very that was borderline MMO and we'd play a lot with people So it has to be that has to be over to Hondo. It's my guess Yeah, I can say my destiny too is a nice flat 365 hours which translated to years
00:33:13
Speaker
I have no idea what that is. If it was that many days, that would be one year. Yeah, Destiny 2-2-3. I'm glad it could ration out an hour a day. That's pretty cool. All right, for one year. One-way attempt. Yeah, exactly. If we're lucky, we're going to make people better talking about Radiant and Destiny.
00:33:35
Speaker
It's fun. I still enjoy the rating arc. I do think about it sometimes. Like I've got some Steam friends who still like play occasionally. I see it like pop up and like Steam has that rich presence thing now. So certain games will tell you tell you like Nier was like a great stand out for this. It'll tell you in Nier Replicant, the Steam rich presence is like
00:34:03
Speaker
your character's thoughts at that point in the story is what your status shows up in. Oh, okay. Yeah. I had no idea what you're talking about. I was like waiting for the explanation, but like destiny, it'll show you the area you're in or if you're rating or something like that. And I'm like, Oh man, some of these areas sound cool. I do like that for stuff like a Rolex, like Hades trick. Oh, battling out of this area. I'm like, okay, that's where they're at. That's cool.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah. It gives some context to is playing game. Right. Okay. Yeah. Oh, is there a witch doctor level 23? Okay. That's, that colors it a little bit. Exactly. Um, I wonder, I wonder, Blizzard does do that also, actually. I guess a lot of games have rich presence now. I just never knew the term. Yeah.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah. It's, it's kind of enabled in some random things now. Like I've seen it enabled for like tabletop games and it's like, what is that? What does that mean that you're playing like a level four rogue in D and D like at the table? Like I don't, I don't know how you're like getting the metrics fed into discord at this point, but yeah. Um, destiny though, it's like,
00:35:18
Speaker
It falls into the MMO space, but. Oh, a hundred percent. Like, gosh dang, if it isn't the most accessible MMO type experience on our list, I think. Can you move and shoot or go? It was fun.
00:35:33
Speaker
Yeah. And the abilities are mostly, you probably use them. There's two buttons, right? And then like an ultimate. Very, very pared down, but it didn't seem to really hold the game back. They had to like make up for.
00:35:51
Speaker
The lack, I think of all of that MMO, all the trappings of an MMO by just being like, are these enemies cool? Is this area cool? Is your weapon cool? Yeah, I think stuff for that. And they had a lot of fun cosmetics and stuff you could do. Uh, it just, they're like, Hey, where'd we put the grind? Oh, in leveling up your stuff.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, you know that cool gun you had? Instead of having a shitty gun that's one point higher so it can raise your overall stat to get better gear and you're like, okay. Yeah. The light level grind was pretty, pretty
Mods & Player Creativity
00:36:27
Speaker
obnoxious. It's very much like.
00:36:31
Speaker
It makes even less sense in a gun game. You're like, no, no, this shotgun, this is the shotgun I started with. So you couldn't kill somebody with this. The shotgun I have now is absolutely insane. And it one taps people in PPP. But yeah, if you slide or do some nonsense that their perks allowed you to do. But it's fun. It was fun to get like a God roll or try to like get a really cool weapon.
00:37:00
Speaker
I still remember some of our stuff from like Leviathan. That's really cool. Yeah, it was nice to like have that in your roster. Be like, Hey, check out my cool guns. And then you'd have somebody sitting next to your inventory. And this one and this one. And we had people in our, in our friends group that were just like, they were always running down the PvP weapons. So they had like some actual insanity stuff. But I remember like, what was it? The, um,
00:37:31
Speaker
What was the sniper that like refund refunded a shot? If you hit like a critical point, it was an exotic whisper of the worm. I was apparently the guy that's my tongue. Yep. I was just about to say that, but it's like we all were doing the quest and they're like puzzles and platforming and time segments and stuff. And I was just like, this is a first person shooter. And I think that's probably the reason we stuck with it so long.
00:37:55
Speaker
No, like they really actually added some fun mechanics on top of a pretty traditional model. It's just at a point, if you're not enjoying the grind of whatever it is, it starts to take a toll. Yeah. And I think we were unhappy with some other things as well. So it just kind of tapered off. Yeah, we had the, we had the raid wall in the form of Last Wish and then Season of the Dawn or Season of Dawn, Season of the Dawn, I think came out and
00:38:26
Speaker
the season passes and it became very obvious. Like, here's the treadmill. Get back to it. Hey, do you know what stuff you had? It's not as good as this new stuff. Also, the old stuff you had, it's gone now. You'll never access it again, you dumb piece of shit. Yeah. Give me money. Very specifically, they introduced enemy types that you had to have the new weapon modifiers on to be good against. And it was, I don't know.
00:38:53
Speaker
It's a difficult problem to solve creatively. It's like, how do we not make our existing stuff trash, but continue to incentivize people to interact with the new system? And I think that problem will probably haunt Destiny forever, but I don't know, give us cool raids and it's good.
00:39:10
Speaker
Speaking of, I like Path of Exile's model because they'll just be like, hey, we just had a new shit. So usually just like an extra mechanic for whatever that season is, which is just another way to farm gear in general. And they'll usually add, they'll rearrange the tree again as they always do. So it encourages people like, hey, remake your build or do something new.
00:39:35
Speaker
to try and climb ladder, buy some new fun weapons and you're like, oh, how do these synergize into the billions of other options I have? Yeah. So they don't really ever deprecate stuff, but certain things might just become less viable. I mean, depending on it, yeah, the meta shifts, they might nerf something, might buff something else.
00:39:53
Speaker
Um, but that game was like very much, uh, the butterfly effect in motion. You're like, Oh man, they really nerf this node. So it's like, like five less manner than it used to be. So my entire build is going to shift to 90 degrees to the right in this constellation. But those are people who are like trying. That's true. And by that, I mean, people who have YouTube videos about the builds that they made and those other people who just have the game and I'm in the latter portion. Yeah.
00:40:22
Speaker
But if you want to check out my YouTube, I do have some builds over there. I'd love for you to try it out. No, that's fair. I am. I am a little jealous because I played like, I know Diablo is not going to be on this list because, you know, not Steam.
00:40:38
Speaker
A lot of Diablo 3, you know, you also played a lot of Diablo 3 probably around the same time as you were playing together, so that would make sense. I'd
Gaming Milestones & Achievements
00:40:47
Speaker
still put it around 200 I guess. Yeah, that sounds about right. But it never, it never popped off like Path of Exile did. No. Not even close. I mean Path of Exile for me didn't even pop off like Path of Exile did for you.
00:41:03
Speaker
So Path of Exile for me is like, you know when you start playing Skyrim again? And you're like, oh, well, that's my weekend. That's me with Path of Exile. I'll be like, well, it was kind of fun getting to level 40. Oh, I need to get to level 56 to start using this unique? Ooh. And then it just goes. And then I'll have 15 tabs of like build ideas. Uh-huh. Yeah.
00:41:25
Speaker
Um, I'm going to combine a couple for my next one, uh, cause my next one's factorial. So that's 450 hours. Um, a lot of those are different modded playthroughs, things like that. I'm going to take, I'm going to grab satisfactory and also throw it in here because they're one of them's 2d and the other one's 3d and there's some other differences, but honestly, they scratch the same itch. So like, um,
00:41:52
Speaker
Logistic types games. I would, I would put in here very easy to dump tons of time into weirdly enough. I'm going to combine risk of rain and risk of rain too. Oh my God. Hot take.
00:42:05
Speaker
I actually looked at my satisfactory and I think I only had like 40. Granted, I wasn't playing with people. I hopped on that train. I never got to that tech very late and I played some of Justin Rachel. I did some of my solo stuff and it's very fun. I did get into it, but not to the extent as everyone else. Yeah. Because like it is nuts how much you can do in that. It's really fucking cool.
00:42:33
Speaker
I do think that like, maybe they've changed a little bit. It's been a while since I've played it, but even though Satisfactory is like the tactile one, it's like, you have feedback. You're a first person, it's a first person game. You're running around doing things. I kind of liked how more management based Factorio was. Cause you could just accomplish things faster. You're just like, oh, you just rewire all this stuff. Here we go. Awesome.
00:43:03
Speaker
And it takes time to actually run around with your puny worthless human legs and our other forms of mobility and satisfactory. But it's a fun one. Oh, what was your, your next game?
00:43:20
Speaker
Again, I really should have put these in numerical descending order. That would have made sense. I can buy you some time if you want. No, no. Force is dead silence. The Binding of Isaac, I said it was at 192, but I kind of already mentioned that with the other Binding of Isaac. But at 193 and 191 are separately Divinity Original Sin 2, which has definitely had at least three playthroughs, and then Payday 2.
00:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, these are, I have a lot of time made it to apparently, but my divinity is a little, about 30 hours shy of yours, which makes sense. You had a completely separate play through for me. Actually that doesn't account for 30 hours. 30 hours. You had your own solo play through. That's what it was. Yeah. Apotheosis.
00:44:10
Speaker
It's real dumb, but for anybody who doesn't know and doesn't want to listen to the whole fucking Divinity 2 episode, which is fair. We disagree politely. It's very much just like an RPG and it's just super fun and it's the closest I'll ever get to D&D.
00:44:29
Speaker
Until they make the actual, they finished making actual ball. I'll probably try and rope you and Jenny into that. Yeah. And if he's willing to do it again, maybe. Yeah. But that'll be cool. But there's not as much diversity as far as.
00:44:50
Speaker
Like it's the same game. You get to choose how you approach it for how you build and how you interact with people or make certain decisions, but it's a straightforward in that way versus payday too. You still get to kind of have your bill for your character, but it is actually no, even the levels are still kind of the same too.
00:45:12
Speaker
You mean for divinity or payday two? I was saying for payday two. Oh yeah. I was going to contrast them as, oh, payday two is more RNG, but no, not really. It's actually kind of like the same levels. Shadow raid, right? Like we learned it. We had people in distinct roles. We would be talking about something else in voice chat while we were
00:45:30
Speaker
synchronizing going across this area, taking out people. It was great. I still remember always going low through sewers. I went to the office. I'd get the guy around the corner. I'm like, do you want me to knock him out? And I'd charge up my wad of money and then beat the guy unconscious with it. Yep. Get the pager. It's freaking great. Yeah. Those are some good times.
00:46:00
Speaker
Payday, I have a lot of time in. We brushed over divinity so quickly, but it's all right. There is a separate episode for it. Payday, actually one of our first episodes is Payday. I don't know if it made a jump when we changed the name or not. If it's still, don't listen to that one. If it exists, just pretend it doesn't. I'm gonna look while you're talking, but it is old and bad. Yeah, I had 347 hours in Payday too, which is,
00:46:26
Speaker
quite a lot, but it basically played like an MMO when we were there with it. We engaged with it a lot, like a bunch of diverse builds, you could have like a doctor sort of build, like the inspire team lead sort of build, you could like bring ammo.
00:46:45
Speaker
be better against drills and stuff. Yeah, it was fun to have like, I like a dedicated role games for sure. It's not like you switch up the role, but usually people would kind of filter into what they were most comfortable with. Right. I think usually I would go like heavy. I remember you going heavy. You had like centuries. I had the Thanatos rifle. What was my alt weapon? Street sweeper shotgun?
00:47:14
Speaker
But it's very much like waiting for like the big guy to come and I'm like, I'm in charge of making sure that guy doesn't fuck us up. It's like, all right, for next one, we'll do a stealth mission. And then Dave was like, all right, there goes my bill to get over a suit. You know, he has really good. Payday two was actually our first episode.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds about right. I think we might have talked about something beforehand. It may have even been Payday 2. I think that the very first thing we recorded was lost, but... Or we just decided not to go forward with it. I don't know. It's so long ago. I'm getting head shakes from the audience.
00:47:53
Speaker
See, you're commenting on a thing that I've neurotically memorized, and that is our first episode was Payday 2. We released that. Our second episode ever recorded was Overwatch. I forgot to say it in my audio. That's right. And instead of releasing a thing of Just Jake, which we thought would be funny,
00:48:11
Speaker
We held off on that. And then we later, when we weren't, it wasn't immediately fresh in our minds. We're like, all right, let's actually do Overwatch again. Right. It was that was the right call, I think.
00:48:25
Speaker
But yeah, this game's been around for a long time and overkill, like they've made some other games that are bad. And I know that they say payday three is under development, but like, I don't have any faith in it actually coming out until literally it comes out and I'm ready to be proven wrong. And you know, all of that, maybe it'll be awesome. The third coming, but it's like,
00:48:48
Speaker
I don't know. It's tough. It is like there's not that many people who are willing to make a shooter in multiplayer where you play as a criminal and you kill thousands of police officers. I would say this is a niche genre for that. They're just playing that game again. Yeah. Paydays. Paydays up there.
00:49:14
Speaker
We'll have someday a refresher episode. We'll go back and we'll be like, there's a lot of problems. I just remember the host versus client thing being very buggy. In the same way, if you remember Halo 2 days of like, oh, who's hosting the Juggernaut thing? Oh, oh, okay. And this game also had Juggernauts actually, so it's applicable. Did I have a Thanatos rifle? Yes, which is very important.
00:49:44
Speaker
Yeah. If you were doing like a stealth mission and you were not the host, like just chop a couple of stars off the game, honestly, because the difference between having like plenty of heads up about whether you're going to be detected or being instantly detected was literally, are you the host or not? And the worst case scenarios. And that was rough.
00:50:06
Speaker
Yeah. There's a lot of times like you'd see somebody, you'd see the meter start to build like one, 2% and then it's like a hundred and you're like, huh? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's crazy. But that was a shit game. Um, yeah, with great memories, maybe, maybe not the best game in retrospect. So it's for, so good. I was saying before I get into some like,
00:50:32
Speaker
100 ish and lower. Weirdly, I guess not weirdly, but very much sitting higher up. I really should have ordered these numerically. I'm so tired. Dark Souls 3, 255, Dark Souls OG, 164. Yeah, we have about a 100 hour difference. Well, Dark Souls prepared it by edition specifically, I guess, but that's probably the same one. I think I got upgraded.
00:51:01
Speaker
I had 269 on that one. Do I even have Dark Souls 3? Oh yeah, absolutely I do. 191 in Dark Souls 3. Okay. And Dark Souls 2, it says like no recorded hours. Let me find Scholar of the First End, because that's going to be the one that it has to be on here. I only took the top, what is this, three by one, two, three. The top 30.
00:51:29
Speaker
Actually, I don't know if it's up here. Mine's down at 54 hours. 175 hours. This is probably the biggest gap in our hours played in a Soulsborne game. But again, I'm a Dark Souls 2 apologist. Yeah.
00:51:49
Speaker
Um, I mean, I'm going to rapid fire a couple of these on, on mine to catch up until we get to some stuff we can discuss together. I mean, obviously dark souls, but we talk about that every, every
Gaming Legacy & Reflections
00:52:00
Speaker
episode, um, fallout three, 384 hours or sorry, fallout four. I don't know how many I have for fallout three. That was like games for windows live, not steam. I have it on steam too, but I'm not going to play it that much now. Um, planet side at 275.
00:52:19
Speaker
Rift, which was another MMO, but you can tell how I placed it because it's like really low on this list by comparison, 246. And then you mentioned, you mentioned Skyrim. Yeah. Earlier. And I almost segued straight to Skyrim. Skyrim, specifically special edition, which is the one that's like the 64 bit, 195 hours.
00:52:48
Speaker
I know that there's time across the other editions. I also have the anniversary edition. It's Skyrim. Do you have it on your new fridge? The fridge is not smart, unfortunately. Here's what I'm curious though, because I suspect my hours are higher here, but Metal Gear 5.
00:53:11
Speaker
has to be on your list. It is. You definitely are going to beat me on it because I think I played through the game and then did a little bit of extra shits and giggles just kind of messing around with some stuff. But I think you did a lot of messing around. So I'm a hundred hours. Yeah. I'm at two thirty five, which is I don't know how I got that high actually in this game.
00:53:36
Speaker
Probably the sending people on missions and farming and stuff, but even I can't actually think of a justifiable reason I mean you were definitely doing some stuff just for fun. I'm sure trying to maybe approach a Encampment in like a very specific way or making little challenge runs for yourself like I'm only gonna fault these guys out or gonna make them all sleep or how many times can I fill that mission for throwing grenades at orphans like
00:54:01
Speaker
Right. You know, just standard things. Boss, you've killed a child. Great work. That's why you're the best. I laugh every time I see the edit. It's freaking great.
00:54:16
Speaker
It was a really fun game. At least as far as how you wanted to approach things, you had a lot of options. Whoever your companion was, if you wanted to go full stealth or you wanted to go full loud, if you wanted to fucking bring in vehicles, what your intro music was on the chopper.
00:54:35
Speaker
It just, it made it fun to do the thing. And even if you were like fucking up and you got detected, you had ways to like mitigate and kind of get away and come back or get like a slow mo thing to like stun somebody and run off and do something else. It just felt very fun to approach any situation because it was always going to be fun or weird or bad, but always fun.
00:54:57
Speaker
You're literally scanning people so you can abduct the smart ones and stuff like that you know normal normal Japanese game. No it's it's basically instant classic really enjoyed that but it's how she breathes.
00:55:13
Speaker
Mmm, okay. No, I guess that's fair as I was scrolling through the games like oh mgs5 that has some a hybrid of like hundred hours second screenshot was of a Quiet in the chopper leaning over looking at you. So just like ah the boob shot. I got it, right?
00:55:32
Speaker
And Kojima is just like, you guys are going to feel so stupid when you realize once you learn the story and you realize this is all justified. She's not just fanservice. The story is she's fanservice. I don't know if you remember MGS4.
00:55:48
Speaker
I never played it, but I did watch the whole thing because it was on like, I think PlayStation 3 at the time. I didn't, I was never going to get PlayStation 3, still not. I think it's the same experience from what I've heard though, to actually playing the game on YouTube. I mean, it was like eight hours of a Saturday to teenage me. So it was a lot, but a lot of the main enemies or boss you had to deal with were like,
00:56:17
Speaker
Half woman, half tentacle, half clothes type of thing. Right. Half clothes is part of the group. Well, they were all like mechanical octopi women. Okay. Like, you know how they always have like some type of like weird attachment for humanoids. Yeah. I can confirm, I can neither confirm nor deny. Just Google woman and tentacle.
00:56:41
Speaker
once again earning the exclusive rating on the podcast listing.
00:56:48
Speaker
But it was an enjoyable playthrough for sure. And VS5. Yeah, for sure. I definitely enjoyed it. It was good. I don't know if it'll ever beat out Revengeance, which unfortunately is not on my list, but it's high up there. I say this just to hurt Dave. There's no other reason. This is basic. It's Dark Souls 2. Revengeance is Dark Souls 2.
00:57:15
Speaker
Uh, but a couple other ones on my list real quick here, uh, until I dropped below the 200 hour mark fallout, new Vegas classic, no man's sky got better. Um, it's really close. How close, uh, dark souls three and two actually are in hours, but in seven days, um, I have a lot of time, a lot of that recently, not, not recently recently, but like, let's say a month back, if you were online playing that a lot of times.
00:57:44
Speaker
It's basically like a local or it's like small party MMO, surely what it kind of feels like. And that's really cool. Um, so, I mean, we literally had an episode on that. You can check that one out too, but, uh, the second one, shout out to Ian. Um, so you'll give him like three seconds to guess what it is. Secret world legends at 170 hours. Damn.
00:58:19
Speaker
I remember playing that MMO. Yeah. End of sentence. That's about it. No, that's good. If we ever have an episode, I'll refuse to talk about it until we really need the content and then we'll have him on as a guest again. You and I can like just take a break and go like grab some food. We can race on a pack of cigarettes. Um, I do want to, I don't want to like dominate this list, but I do want to mention one more. I'm skipping past call of duty too.
00:58:38
Speaker
Then I get to infinity.
00:58:49
Speaker
Modern Warfare 2 specifically. I didn't play Call of Duty 2. Nobody did. But 155 hours, relatively recent release, Eldren Ring. Heard good things about it. I was worried you were going to beat me on that, honestly. So now you're playing a lot recently. And I have a slowdown. 184. Dang. That's more than any other. To be fair, I got your amount of time.
00:59:17
Speaker
after like four days probably. We binged a lot early.
00:59:25
Speaker
I'm running the math on this on four days. Whatever I say is a lie. I got a lot of time within like the first week or so. Yeah. That's crazy. I put a lot of other of time in games like Behind Us, Rust, Cyberpunk 2077. Rust is up there for me. But like legitimately Elden Ring more time than Left 4 Dead, Supreme Commander.
00:59:51
Speaker
I've spent more time playing Elden Ring than I have Monster Hunter World on PC. If we count PlayStation as well, it probably would add up. That adds another hundred hours or so because you're mostly playing at the same time. I've also played Talos Principle more than Monster Hunter World, but I feel like that has to be skewed.
01:00:11
Speaker
Yeah, I don't actually know how that's, you love the game. I'm imagining that you love the game and you're terrible at puzzles and that's the reality where this number makes sense. It's just like the simple puzzles like put block on platform like.
01:00:28
Speaker
What do I do? He's sitting there with an unplugged controller. Jump over the wall. That's like waist height that you can't jump over. Uh, the, uh, games reviewer, uh, wall. You can't make it through. Yeah. But now, I mean, that's my list. Uh, any, any remaining standouts on yours, final mentions and the countdown.
01:00:56
Speaker
Hollow Knight is 124 probably. Dang. Also always a shout out to Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. I'd have probably still inflated, but I've definitely at least played through twice. 92 hours. 92 hours in Blood Dragon?
01:01:13
Speaker
How is that possible? That game's like six hours long, Dave. I enjoyed that game. And Bobby left it running, like I said. That must, that has to be inflated. Cause it was like, I could think that that's one of the shortest DLC they've released for Far Cry. But it is really good. It's the only Far Cry I've really, truly enjoyed. I wish I could be more offended by that, but I'm really not at all. What? What? You like six? Oh, you didn't buy six. No, not six.
01:01:44
Speaker
I did enjoy five and then there was a story and I stopped enjoying five. But yeah. No, I mean, these are, this is it, Dave. This is like the last several years of our lives. Have you had up the time? Probably not too far off the truth. Put this on my tombstone. How much time I've accomplished in certain games.
01:02:11
Speaker
binding device. What we'll do is it'll be a one of those like digital clocks, counting up like seconds will be time spent binding binding device. Actually, here's my rule, right? If I die, big if I want you to take the hours I've spent playing, let's just say in games from this list. And that's how long you have to wait before digging up my
01:02:40
Speaker
Not corpse, what's the, uh, flattery? No, there was a.
01:02:45
Speaker
What's the thing that people used to bury and dig up in seven years for no fucking reason? Time capsule. Oh, time capsule. Yeah. It'll be a time capsule of my remains. Basically, in two years, just dig me up. Is that what I'm saying? That's good. There's probably been weirder. Flattery. Yeah, I was hoping. I appreciate the reference though. I was definitely not thinking about that.
01:03:11
Speaker
I'm not sure if I were to play out this sequence now. I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense. Because if your phylactery is going to die. Because if I'm dead, dig up my phylactery. Right. And then turn it in for the warranty because clearly it didn't work because I died. No, that's fair.
01:03:36
Speaker
But if you have any phylactries, yeah, you could send those in. Wait, I don't know how you could, but you could send those in to soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you can join the discussion about on life and also games that you've played a lot at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one.