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S3 Ep241: Guess that Game
79 Plays3 years ago
Want to guess along with this episode? Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Mike at https://guessthe.game/?fpg=250
Once that's done we chat about Payday 3, games we're waiting to play, nostalgia and how it impacts future game decisions, and comparisons between the risks indie and AAA game publishers make.
Intro:
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/
Once that's done we chat about Payday 3, games we're waiting to play, nostalgia and how it impacts future game decisions, and comparisons between the risks indie and AAA game publishers make.
Intro:
- Prey - Everything is Going to Be Okay
- Prey - Human Elements
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/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Arrival
00:00:21
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of soapstone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host as always Dave. How's it going tonight Dave? It's going better. That's good. Good to hear. Cause you finally agreed to us having a plus one. Hello Mike. I'll let you know. What did you say? I'm sorry. I said hello Mike.
00:00:46
Speaker
I was just saying you agreed to our plus one. Well, I mean, this is not a rare occurrence. It's definitely happened before, so I don't know what you're complaining about, Dave. Yeah. This is the first time we're recording it.
Podcast Humor and Guest Selection
00:01:03
Speaker
Oh, OK. For public consumption. It's all menu window. We are moving forward with that only fans, I guess. I understand. I feel like we could just make one and make very infrequent posts and be like, ah.
00:01:17
Speaker
three people would sign up for like, oh, I know those people.
00:01:20
Speaker
It's, we just moved the podcast notifications off of Facebook. I'm the only man. That's all it is. It's just a weekly link. Um, I was gonna, I was gonna, I realized you're playing into a bit, but the, the anti joke here is like, we have a list of potential podcast candidates that we are literally cycling through and it's like, are you available? Yes. No. Okay. We'll go to the next person. Um, like on a recurrence. Uh, so it is the most procedural, like,
00:01:51
Speaker
CS101, you can make a for loop do this process. There is no, no heart, empathy, anything like that. It is all mechanical. It is good to know that I am an automated response. Yeah. I mean, sometimes we reach out to specific individuals, you know, for just like, Hey, that one we like, and they're also on the list, but yeah.
00:02:14
Speaker
I feel like we like everybody on the list. It's why they're on the list. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. I feel like we won't put it on the list. It's like, Oh, fuck it. So it's Jimmy's week. No.
Introduction to 'Guess the Game' and Gameplay
00:02:25
Speaker
Could you imagine that though? We're just like we, in a moment of weakness, we added someone to the frequent guest list.
00:02:31
Speaker
And then whenever they came up, it's like, could we just pretend that they said they weren't available this month? Like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll go around one more time. We'll see him next year. Or we consistently have them on just to like vent our frustration on that one person. No, I really enjoyed Elder Ring. You're like, no, what? Actually, I think it was a piece of shit just to like be antagonistic to them. Can you agree? That could be a fun bit.
00:02:56
Speaker
I would have to tell people in advance, though, that sounds. Oh, yeah, like, like shattering. It would be awful to be like, oh, I got invited on this thing. You're a bit of a podcast, though, but they seem fun and they just like rail into this one person. They're like, what the fuck? That was awful. I wouldn't want to actually do that to anybody. Very cruel. But but on paper, very funny idea. Oh, yeah. So have you heard of Guess the Game, Mike?
00:03:25
Speaker
I have. No. Well, let me let me address that with a caveat. I've heard of it in that Dave sent me a link and that was it. Did you click the link? Because if you didn't, it's actually oh, thank God. It's not just me. So it's it's a fun. Are you familiar with Wordle? Yeah.
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's kind of like a same. Well, it's entirely different mechanically, but same idea sign in potentially once a day. It's refreshed every day. And wordle is for people who are good at those alphabet things and putting those in a certain order. I don't get that. That's magic. But I guess the game is like five, six pictures. I think six pictures.
00:04:13
Speaker
of increasing difficulty where it'll kind of like zoom in on something. And the first picture is almost definitely just for decreasing difficulty. Or like you have a photographic memory or something like that. Like it would be the tire from the car in Street Fighter that you punch is the bonus stage. Like that's what it is.
00:04:39
Speaker
I mean legitimately though, I've now, I'm caught up. I've played every single one. There's a decent chunk that are like me just skipping through. Cause like, I have no idea to even venture a guess. Um,
00:04:53
Speaker
But there is some where it is very like instinctual of like, oh, this very like one by one pixel of the ground, I recognize this texture. And you're like, ah, yes, that's the art style of this game. And it feels really good to get it on like a first or very early guess. Oh, yeah. And then for the ones where I completely fail out, I'm like, I've literally never played it or I have played it and I feel terrible.
00:05:18
Speaker
Um, so did you do today's Dave? You said you've done all of them. I did today's. I don't remember what it was because I don't have it open.
00:05:31
Speaker
Mike and I, Mike and I can go through this and you can follow along at home and remember what the freaking number is for this. Please pause, pull up the game and click through with us. Exactly. Exactly. So I'm going to describe for the audience what today's guest, the game is, which will be in the past and we can, uh, we can kind of collaborate on guesses here. Um, I'll put a link to it in the description. This is a follow along at home, fill in the blanks.
00:06:00
Speaker
As an editor's note, we're going to play this game for a little bit. And if you can't play at home, it might drag on. If you want to skip us talking about it, go to 16 minutes, 23 seconds. We plan all of this in advance. This is very curated. Are you loaded in, Mike? Do you see? I am. I am. All right. Would you like to describe what we see?
00:06:21
Speaker
It is a scene with
Math in Gaming and Game Discussions
00:06:25
Speaker
blood splatters on the ground, what appears to be a shadow of a corpse and a woman's leg with a high heel attached. Yeah, I'm seeing it. I actually didn't pick out the corpse, so I'm glad that you have better contrast than I have.
00:06:43
Speaker
Jake just has bodies littered around him. He's not conscious of any of them. So do you have any initial guess here? None whatsoever. My brain immediately goes to Bayonetta, but this this leg is pretty low poly. Yeah. Yeah. Bayonetta. I can see that, but also I don't think the costume is right. Mm hmm.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, this one might be a little difficult for me. Do you want me to take the first guess here? Sure. Take the first guess. So this maybe this is dead rising. It'd be really funny and just destroy the bit immediately if this was correct. But I am incorrect. It is not dead rising. What would you like your guess to be?
00:07:39
Speaker
This whole thing is going to get cut, by the way. Yeah, terrible, terrible. Listen. Yeah, I think Catherine. Catherine, OK. Catherine's actually not a bad guess because of like in the shoe. Yeah, like I played it and that's what I'm basing it off of. Neither have I. I've seen one or two screenshots and that's now is it Catherine with a K or a C? That's the question. I think a C. OK, OK.
00:08:05
Speaker
I think that I haven't also not played Catherine, but I know that that was one of the key parts in the game was like, there's the woman he's with versus the woman he wants to be with thing. They literally just had a letter difference.
00:08:19
Speaker
Was it right? Uh, it was not correct. All right. So I'm going to describe the next one. Got a bunch of like, what would you say? These are masks of some sort on the wall. Yeah. And then like Japanese anime like figures, one of them is a witch hat and Metacritic score 83. This is usually helpful. Um,
00:08:40
Speaker
Dave shaking his head, not helpful. I don't think the Metacritic score has really ever clued me in on any of these games. Really? It has for me. Also, those are luchador masks on the wall, to be specific. Yes, I can. Yeah. So with the body, with the blood, with the luchador mask, maybe a fighting game could be. Could be.
00:09:04
Speaker
Um, I'll be honest. This hasn't helped me at all. I will say I got this one and five and five. Okay. So like, I don't know what the fuck. Oh, and then at that point it felt very obvious to me. And it does look like there's a character with a sword there in the back. I I'm going to do a throwback because I know it's one of the episodes. Um, but killer is dead. I don't think this is correct. I am incorrect.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, there was a game where the main character was a luchador, Guacamelee, but that was a side-scrolling platform, so I don't think that would. Yeah. It's School of Rock, School of Rock, isn't it?
00:10:04
Speaker
That's right, that's what I was thinking of I mean, I'm just gonna throw like a wild guess in here and say This is like a Street Fighter game
00:10:16
Speaker
Like this could be you Vegas dojo or his his his house Then the question becomes which one I will say this is advice for people who do guess the game at home most often It's early in the series. It's not like that. I've never been hit with like this one's make a man six, right? So what you did ever just make a man. It's really far down there It's usually like one or two
00:10:43
Speaker
So I guess Street Fighter II, and that was incorrect. All right. Well, how would you describe our very helpful third image here?
00:10:54
Speaker
It looks like a feature slide of this game has lawn mowing. But it looks to be just the outside of a house with blades of grass flying through the air as you are mowing them. Yeah. And apparently, the original platform was Wii. OK. Yeah, I've already lost. They've got this in five.
00:11:19
Speaker
I didn't pay attention to the original platform. I will say that that is definitely more helpful than the Metacritic score. Yeah. The console can help a lot. If you see like PS2 or something, like let's freaking zero in. But so my immediate brain, I was like, Oh, it's for the Wii, Wii Sports Resort. And then I go back to the stiletto and the body and blood. I didn't play Wii Sports Resort, but maybe not that.
00:11:48
Speaker
I'm going to start getting Dave to actually narrate the pictures if he's following along. Oh, so I can actually like weigh in. We plan this in advance. You should have spoken up then. I've been missing all of my lines and that's on me. All right. So do your guess first. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Dave. Lawnmower Supreme.
00:12:11
Speaker
OK, that's my guess. Do you want to guess, Mike? And then I'll take the second guess for this one. I mean, I want to say it's one of the farming simulator games, but again, the body. Yeah, that doesn't make it hard. You just didn't specify what you're farming. Right. Which Mario game has corpses? Yeah, I mean, I'm really drawing a blank here, so I'm going to,
00:12:42
Speaker
Can I give you guys a weighted clue? Sure. Because I feel like if you're familiar with the game, you can actually get it in forward. I'm stupid for not getting the fourth slide. I will say there is a reason it's on the Wii. So motion controls. Yeah. But that doesn't help me because I didn't have a Wii. Neither did I. If you want to pause, we can all do like a quick pee break.
00:13:11
Speaker
But that was a second hit. That was almost definitely a second hit.
00:13:14
Speaker
No, that was a joke on, I didn't have a Wii. Ah, right. I see. Very lowbrow here at this. The only piece of Wii trivia I have is actually really sad and that there was a contest. Hold your Wii for a Wii and then a lady died and she had kids. She was trying to get the Wii for it. So don't do that. Well, she died, comma. She separately already had children. Right. Yeah.
00:13:42
Speaker
I presume they got the console in the end though. So I mean wait wait your benefits and cost benefit analysis. Yeah Well, what was the one? the zombie survival game that it was like 360 and
00:13:59
Speaker
Uh, dead rising, dead rising. Yeah. What was the original plot for me? Oh, you did. You did guess. Yeah. Dead rising. Just cause I saw a corpse and I was like, there's a chance. There's a bunch of psychopaths in that game. But is it dead rising too? It could be. I don't think that came out for the Wii though. I think it was not dead rising too. Yeah.
00:14:22
Speaker
I'm going to take my guess. Coming off this dead thing. And I also don't think I'm getting it on this. So I'm going to go with Dead Space Extraction, which I know is a Wii game. And I also know is not this one. OK. Color palette alone. I would say that that is wrong. All right. I'll feel dumb. I think I know what it is after, but I'll let you take your guess because you're one back.
00:14:48
Speaker
Oh no, I did guess Dead Rising 2. Okay, so we're all on slide four? We are all on slide four. Give us the audio video. So this is a bit of a sunset shot. There are some trees and there's a building and there are two characters walking within the shot.
00:15:10
Speaker
One of them seems to be a little bit shorter, has white hair, kind of like a cape or a scarf. They seem to have a sword and like black pants or leggings. And the other character seems to have like a red shirt, jeans. Their hair is kind of, it's black, a little bit frazzled, and they seem to be wearing aviators.
00:15:35
Speaker
So I almost I like 99 percent know what this one is. Do you have any idea, Mike? Well, I don't even see the second character that you're talking about. I see the guy on the right in front of the what appears to be a building. But yes, there's there's a character to his left with the trees in front of that character. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm.
00:15:57
Speaker
Honestly the first time I looked I did not see that character either and this one says action adventure beat him up I'm pretty sure I know what this is. I'll be I'll be very surprised if I'm wrong. I Honestly, I still have zero clue as to what this is Okay, so there was a recent game that was added and is probably the reason that I know what this is But I'm pretty sure this is no more heroes
00:16:21
Speaker
No more heroes. Freaking got it. When you said you also got it at 4, Dave, right? Yeah, don't go back and listen. This whole thing's getting cut. I kind of like that though.
Disappointment in Gaming Experiences
00:16:41
Speaker
I do wonder if this format for this particular minigame is the best for people at home because what if they're at four and they're just like, I don't know. Let me click through real quick. No pause. But this is the demo. That's the game. My wife will do like Wordle.
00:17:01
Speaker
oftentimes in the morning. And then she guessed like two letters and they're in the wrong place. And she follows up with the exact right word. And I'm like, and then after that, in order to make me feel better, she goes to the words or guess the game. Yeah. So are you better at guessing the game than she is or? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I have no life. Yeah. I'm very much very much that style of mortal player.
00:17:33
Speaker
You've optimized it. You got the efficient start and whatnot. Yeah. Well, oftentimes Annie will come to me and she'll have gone through a couple of guesses and gotten a couple of letters right. And I'm like, Oh, it's this word. And then she
00:17:48
Speaker
you know, does various religious signs to ward off demons and then I do like that there is a metaphor it because it is like process of elimination. Like your first guest really just has to be kind of like five distinct characters. I always put anime.
00:18:07
Speaker
And then after that, you can either do like another entirely distinct five set of characters or based on the information it's giving you. I mean, obviously like weigh that into your future guesses. But there's only so many five letter words. It is five, right? Not six. Yeah. OK, six. Six would make it a lot harder, actually. Yeah. Yeah, there was a. There was a.
00:18:34
Speaker
a YouTube channel that does a lot of stuff about math. I remember early on in the Whirlpool craze, they tackled what is the mathematically most helpful word to start with. Just looking at some of the code for the script for determining
00:18:55
Speaker
letter values to eliminate versus confirm and it was like it was 25 minutes and it was honestly 25 minutes I could probably have used for something better but it was it was it was still pretty interesting to see this mathematical approach to finding the best best possible first move.
00:19:15
Speaker
I think I saw that on YouTube. And it was a very interesting video. I don't even recall what the word was. For this one, it was irate. As a first guess? Probably because it gives you a lot of vowels and R is pretty common plus helpful. Same with T. I could see it. I do penis for a similar reason.
00:19:39
Speaker
Are we still talking about Wordle? What's Wordle? Yeah. I do like that there is something like this though, because similar to you, I'm very bad with words as far as like, it's, it doesn't spark anything for me. Whereas like video games, I'm like, ah, my wheelhouse, we should be good at this.
00:20:03
Speaker
So growing up, there is a game called 24. Do you guys remember that? Yeah. 24 questions, right?
00:20:10
Speaker
No. No? Is that different? I think so. You're thinking of the TV show 24. Easy mistake to make. I'm just going to mute Jake temporarily. But basically, it was this small, I guess they had little cue cards, but they had four numbers on it. And you had to essentially use either just basic arithmetic of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
00:20:35
Speaker
to get to 24. So you'd see the four numbers and be like, oh, three times eight, we're done. I don't remember if you had to use all of them or if you just had to get to 24. But like we played it enough around the house where like. We put down a card and like within three seconds, like somebody would have the answer. You're just like, oh, it has to be one of these finite amount of patterns and you become really good at it. Then it's no longer fun.
00:21:06
Speaker
kind of sounds like um, countdown in the UK. The maths problems where you have to
00:21:14
Speaker
You have six numbers, you have to hit a target goal. And sometimes it's wild how they get there. But yeah. Yeah. Get as close as they can, right? And try to hit it. Yeah. Like having to know your 73 times table. Yeah, that's not. I knew the first instance of the 73 times table. That's about it. 73. Yeah. 73 to the 0. Or is it 0? Yeah.
00:21:42
Speaker
I want to say as an aside that people that own 24 game or at least the website for it
00:21:47
Speaker
Uh, if you were to want to play it online, they have a subscription based model, um, for six months, 12 months. Uh, it's like, that's so targeted to boomers. I don't really like to play games so much, but like, there's just one game on the computer that just play, you know, religiously and do nothing else with my time because I don't have a phone. Otherwise it'd be mobile games. It's just like,
00:22:14
Speaker
yeah you get a discount if you purchase three or more subscriptions at once so watch out for that but i mean don't don't do that god i like that though um those kind of uh deduction games and the one i was thinking of was not math related but i was probably thinking of 21 questions i think is what it's called
00:22:36
Speaker
which is like you think of something. We'll just play the game right now. Well, you have to you have to deduce based on like, is it mineral or you're just asking questions to narrow down what it is. Is it a person? Yeah, stuff like that. I think there's like a very popular and very popular at one point, maybe known genie game for this as well online. I don't remember what that's called. I can I can envision it.
00:23:03
Speaker
Yeah, Dunkey did a video on it at some point. And I remember the bit at the end was he was like... I bet he can't guess literally me, like, video game Dunkey. And then... I mean, watch the video yourself, I'm not gonna spoil it, but it's good. Do you guys find yourself using math or deduction in, like, other video games?
00:23:31
Speaker
Outside of like, I was playing more Elden Ring today because I'm back on a kick. And I do notice myself, it's more of like building the habit of like, these are the attack frames. Oh, I can punish in this window. It's just learning the patterns and then exploiting them. I'm trying to think of like an actual example outside of that, which is like pattern recognition. Yeah.
00:23:58
Speaker
I mean, Elden Ring, I probably played that, I play that game more intuitively because it's also in that genre of games where they don't normally give you hard numbers, right? It's like you equip a magical ring and it's like, it makes things lighter. And you're like, what the, what does that mean? What does that mean?
00:24:17
Speaker
I mean, there's always the almost age old answer at this point, something like a factorial or a satisfactory where it's nothing but bath where you have to figure out what your input is and then
00:24:36
Speaker
go down the line where you eventually have exactly perfect output, so there's no wasted inputs. Yeah. I've never done that in Satisfactory to my great shame, my great chagrin. But yeah, I will start a base and be like, oh. And then I'll realize things you're backing up and like, there's probably a better way to do this. And then I get distracted.
00:24:59
Speaker
just kind of like address it one thing at a time. You're like, oh, that's not enough input. Add like a little bit more. It's like, oh, that's too much. Add a little bit more processing. Yeah, I've done that, too. If the game had like a little thing at the top of like how many resources you've essentially wasted or like you haven't put in a thing, I would love to see that because it's got to be comical. That would be the opposite of the title of the game, though. That would be unsatisfiable.
00:25:29
Speaker
to just like constantly looming over it. The numbers should get larger as it actually increases too. So eventually it's just filling the screen like you have wasted 50 million units of oil or whatever the heck. That'd be good.
00:25:46
Speaker
I was going to say I was playing Astroneer some recently similar thing there. It's like going to a new planet. How much can I load up on my shuttle? Okay. I have like three large slots. I can put like one medium storage and a bunch of beacons or something like that. Like, but not like hard math. It's more like things that fit in that could be numbers. Right. And that's more of a tessellation thing. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:16
Speaker
I need to play more of these crafting games. I feel like Astroneer is at its core, it's a good game. But you can tell that it was very buggy in its life cycle and continues to have very buggy moments, especially in co-op.
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, we experienced some. For the most part, it was pretty stable. I think there was a couple. I was playing with Ian, friend of the show, especially guest Ian. And I think he crashed out two to three times across our full play session. We're mostly complete. I'm actually getting further than I did in the base game. I will say that they added content to it. They had a train update and some other stuff over the years.
00:27:09
Speaker
I think the last I played was right around when they added automation. Which again, it's nice to have in there, but it is very janky in multiplayer. It wasn't too bad for me, but I was hosting. Just like in Payday, I had the advantage.
00:27:36
Speaker
Speaking of Payday, I mean, we've all played Payday 2 a fairly substantial amount. What do you think of Payday 3? Skeptical beyond belief. We've talked about this a little bit as far as Payday 2 and Payday 3, similar to Overwatch 1 and Overwatch 2.
00:28:03
Speaker
where's the line of this is an entirely separate game like with at least like fighting games or other stuff like hey this is an entirely different one we'll bring over some of the core cast we'll change some other things up but it's always different like it's always built upon whereas Payday 2 they've never really changed anything instead of like here's another custom pack for like a level or some
Regional Rivalries and Personal Stories
00:28:25
Speaker
skins or a character
00:28:28
Speaker
So with three, what do they actually carry over? Because if you bought everything in Payday 2, you have Sims 4 money, is all I'm saying. So as a consumer, I would want a lot of that to carry over. Or at least have a graphical engine update. Or maybe it's hosted on dedicated servers. Something to warrant, this is new. This is going to actually have me buy into it.
00:28:58
Speaker
What about you? Um, I think, I think I have a little bit of hope in that it's a new, it's a new developer, correct? New developer, new publisher. Is it? I do not recall. Honestly, I just saw the number three and I never looked into it. Yeah, I think it is. I'm going to look this up because that would change my approximation potentially dramatically.
00:29:26
Speaker
I think that would be a good shift for them to whoever owns the IP.
00:29:34
Speaker
I can't remember the initial studio, but it's not like they were bad by any means, but the game definitely did have some issues and does need quality of life improvements because like the core gameplay mechanic, very fun. It's a good co-op experience. Music's good. You got your tension. You got your all out guns ablaze. And again, shooting cops is always a delight. So again, the core bits are there.
00:30:03
Speaker
It's a different publisher. It was acquired. The IP was acquired for $30 million. That's my initial response to that. But the developer is the same, still overkill. But maybe a different publisher could give them some direction, right? They confirmed it's going to be Unreal, which is a better engine than whatever they were using, even with all the faults Unreal has.
00:30:32
Speaker
Just unequivocally, it doesn't even matter that it's a base image. If it didn't have all the features of Payday, it would still just be better than what they were using. Which I think was like Source 1 or something. It wasn't. It was like homebrew, but man. Freaking Payday. It was a game engine called Diesel. Ha.
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not familiar with that one. It was, it was an in house. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. The game bureau special. Yeah. That's kind of the problem though. Like Dave was talking about it. Like they had so much of the ecosystem built in literally payday two, like the jump from payday one, which is game I did not play to payday two.
00:31:21
Speaker
was some new features, whatever the heck, whatever, but it was like not this massive length of time that two has been a game as a service. And I mean, I'm of the, I'm of the like spend however much white mana is necessary to just like clear the board for payday three. Is it four? I've been getting it averages. Most board wipes are four mana from my rules lawyer on the side that it's four. Um,
00:31:52
Speaker
Because specifically, I already said this line, but there's too much DLC, even if for the characters I like. Wipe it away if they reintroduce it. Because what they did with one is they released all these missions, two came out, and then they front ported.
00:32:09
Speaker
the missions. So you could buy them again if you never played the first game, but if you had played the first game, you got it for free. And I think they would have to do something like that because there's zero percent chance that they have like perpetual rights to John Wick characters. Right. Right. No. So. Or age three, age three. Yes. Right. Ethan and Ila. Incredibly litigious, as we know.
00:32:36
Speaker
I feel like at that point, if you just have that much DLC, especially when a lot of it is coming in from third-party IPs or other things outside of Payday 2 universe, original characters.
00:32:51
Speaker
Like maybe if you've been playing for years, you can appreciate a little bit, but you're probably going to be playing with like the latest and greatest of something of like, this is my flavor of the week. Um, but I feel like you're not going back or like, Oh, I got to go back and use this skin or this character. It just kind of like sits there. So it's like basically like a subscription box. Like, Oh, I got the newest thing for this month. I played it this month. And the next one you're like, well, we'll wait for the barbecue set. And then you play that one and then you just never go back to it. Um,
00:33:22
Speaker
I don't know how you pick and choose what you want there. Right. At a certain point, like how much content is too much content there. Well, we know it's somewhere in the past for payday. Right. Right.
00:33:39
Speaker
Payday 2 is kind of like a state college for Penn State. It's just like they just keep having satellite campuses and absorbing other games and other DLCs. This is a massive entity. You want to sell the full game? You're going to need a second computer. Yeah. Oh, and I can't even imagine the install size at this point if you had everything. Man, I am curious. That would be crazy. Let's see if I can find it.
00:34:05
Speaker
I want to look like the biggest pack of deal because I know I joked about Sims 4, but that's also notorious for having a fuck ton of DLC. Mm hmm. Like so, so much. I wonder if there's a Guinness World Record for video game with most DLC. So I feel like I'd have to lean mobile, mobile or at least as far as generating sales, maybe not like the most content of DLC. Right. Or paid content. Hmm.
00:34:35
Speaker
So people are saying for Payday 2, as of 2018, which was five years ago, 60 gigabytes for the install, and when you needed to run updates, an extra 30, which is a lot for 2018. Yeah.
00:34:51
Speaker
It's also allowed for a game that came out in, what, like 2010? 2013? No. Is it a decade old? I want to find out. I'm a resident fact checker today. Yeah, 13. 2013. Dear God. You are at least 10 years old for having played this game. That's how math works.
00:35:17
Speaker
I, uh, that's just, it's way too much to have a thing like, Oh, it's been paid at two for 10 years. Yeah. Also here's another one.
00:35:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's 10 years. Sometimes games release sequels too rapidly. Call of Duty is oftentimes the go-to example. 10 years is enough time, for sure, between the releases. I mean, if you think about it, Spelunky and Spelunky 2, that was a similar time frame. I think the first game came out, I mean, in the Flash days, like, Binding of Isaac Flash era.
00:35:58
Speaker
Well, then there was the HD release which made it a standalone game and then I want to say it was 10 years almost 10 years until they released the sequel
00:36:10
Speaker
Jeez.
Final Thoughts and Farewell
00:36:13
Speaker
The fact checking this is my job. I am. I am unionized. You can't do this to me. OK, so HD came out on July 4th, 2012. So, yeah. And then it's blocky to I think was 2021.
00:36:34
Speaker
So about nine years. Yeah. I mean, it's a long time, right? You're talking about people who eat, sleep, breathe and smoke this IP. Right? Like that's that's their thing. This is also basically my estimated timeline for when Silksong is going to come out just just for the record. I was debating making a Toby Fox joke, but yeah, Silksong would definitely be the the better contender of the two for time between game releases.
00:37:04
Speaker
For Toby Fox, the reality is he'll have released the entirety of Deltarune in like demo format before like chapter two comes out or whatever. Very weird release process, but we'll see I guess.
00:37:24
Speaker
I pretty much never want these games to rush. And although it's absurd, right? Like we're talking about Payday 2. It's been so long. I'm at the point in my life where I have plenty of games to play. And a rushed game is just a game that is not reaching its potential.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah. Did you play that or just bask in the radiation of the scathing reviews? The scathing reviews, but also I like to tune into a couple of Twitch streams of it. And it was just, yeah, it was not even a fun time to hang out with people and watch an awful game.
00:38:10
Speaker
That's rough. It looks so pretty. It looks so pretty, but I wanted to wait. I always feel like I want to wait unless it's, again, FromSoft, I'd have their baby. But other than that, I always want to wait for some degree of feedback. Even... God, what's the Russian game coming out that we've talked about so many times? Atomic Heart. Atomic Heart.
00:38:39
Speaker
Looks amazing from all the trailers i've seen i've always been very interested like oh cool universe What's going on? Get to do some magical powers and arrange to beat up some robots very cool. I'm on board will I get it day one fuck no because
00:38:55
Speaker
Like what I'm getting right now is like all the promotional stuff from like IGN or like here's like a little teaser trailer or like a very brief snippet of gameplay. I'm like, what are we not talking about yet? And I'm waiting for the shoe to drop. Worst case, I play it like a week later, two weeks later, a month later. That's fine. Like I'm not worried about it being spoiled so much. I can play it my own time. Right.
00:39:24
Speaker
Yeah. I think if anyone advocated against that, there's so many just pop, pop culture examples. You could be like, well, do you remember cyberpunk or no man's sky or freaking fallout 76 or one of these other games, but for each other on the bus, they screwed him over on it. Um, yeah. Were you ever directly burned by anything? Like, did you buy into some hype?
00:39:54
Speaker
For sure, yes. But I'm really just struggling for an example right now. There's some shark cards for Grand Theft Auto. 50 Cent Blood on the Sand. You can tell me you pre-ordered it. I won't judge you.
00:40:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's going to bug me because I can't I know there's there's something recent that that I got burned on and it's just not coming to me. That's fair. I know once you can look at recent purchases, but I don't have it on this laptop. It's not it's not brought up. It's exactly what I'm doing right now is I'm going to my my refund list. Oh, the refund list. I didn't. Yeah. How do you see that?
00:40:47
Speaker
I'm very curious to see what mine is, actually. It's under your purchase history. It'll show you which games you've purchased and which games you've refunded. Yeah. It's somewhere under account information or something like that, David, to get the purchase history.
00:41:09
Speaker
Yeah, it might be a little tough. I haven't refunded that many games. We talked about the one that I did, which was like Hyper Light Drifter, and I actually have nothing wrong with it. I hold nothing against that game. It's probably great. I just wasn't in the mood to play it.
00:41:26
Speaker
then I can't remember how I bought a multiplayer game to play with friends. And again, I just kind of wasn't feeling it. So I have discovered two, two recent examples. Back for Blood was, was the big fun as I, you know,
00:41:48
Speaker
I never really played Left 4 Dead or Left 4 Dead 2, but the hype around Back 4 Blood was just so intense. And watching a couple streamers play it, it looked like it was fun. And then I think I played... I didn't even complete the first mission. I just got so frustrated with it that I was just like, no, this is not for me. Yeah, that's fair.
00:42:17
Speaker
I think I refunded Total War Warhammer 2. I think I watched a Mandalore video and like, man, he makes it seem so fun and cool. And then I played it for like 20 minutes. I was like, I'm going to claw my eyes out. This is not for me. It's a really good game, but it's hard to put time into it. I have three and I have like a couple hours or something like that. I'm still like playing through the tutorial, but I like put it on the shelf and it's months have passed.
00:42:46
Speaker
It's just comforting, like a comfort game for me because I'm like, if I ever wanted to play this, I could come back. And I know what's a good game, which is kind of different than some of the stuff that's been outright refunded. You mentioned Back 4 Blood though, Mike, and like,
00:43:01
Speaker
I've thought about this one cause like it's in the, the, I'm not going to use the word zeitgeist. It's in like the popular sphere of games that are like a nostalgia tornado for so many gamers was like left for dead, left for dead too. Like I have memories of that. We've talked about memories. I know Dave's the same for this. Um, but.
00:43:30
Speaker
is depressing and dreary as it is to say. If Left 4 Dead or Left 4 Dead 2 came out literally today with the age I'm at, with the time I have, with all of that stuff, I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I did then. And there's other issues with Back 4 Blood, but nothing compares to the memory of your best gaming experiences.
00:43:58
Speaker
There's still good stuff out there, though. This isn't all meant to be a downer. You can find fun games and stuff like that. Like Ian's playing through a near right now. Right. And oh, to like have that first experience with a game like that. But you got to be careful what other people's experience and memories might be obscuring their bias. Right. Right. I will say it's definitely been a trend for me where
00:44:31
Speaker
my disappointment in games has been far more triple A skewed than indie game skewed. And I don't know if that's a
00:44:43
Speaker
Oh, this was a $60 game and I am not enjoying this versus, oh, this is a $20 game and I'm not enjoying this. Or if it's just AAA games just don't seem to be as interesting or innovative or any of the buzzwords that get thrown around in the gaming industry.
00:45:05
Speaker
Zeitgeist. Yeah. I think I'm also more hesitant to request a refund on an indie game just because I know it's more impactful to the person that I'm purchasing the game from than EA games. It's like camera cuts to the game developer who sees the refund and scoops up the mashed potatoes from their child's plate and puts it back in the bowl.
00:45:34
Speaker
I mean, I agree with all of that. It's like if you go out for fast food or something, you're going to spend like five bucks to drive through. Oh, I didn't like it or someone's rude. OK, you spent five bucks. You kind of knew what you were getting into. Like there's that low price point of like, even if it's like a terrible experience. OK, it's like five bucks.
00:45:57
Speaker
versus if they're taking like a part of your paycheck at that point and you're like, Hey, I was promised this thing and you really under delivered that really goes a long way. Um, and also triple A does a lot more as far as marketing and making you seem like you're getting a really great thing and it might not be for you. It might not be a great thing at all. Um, versus like, you see a lot of stuff with like indie devs and I will say there's a ton of indie games I've played where it's like,
00:46:27
Speaker
underdeveloped and they're not the point of like full release or just maybe they're just kind of bad, but there are also some really good ones and you can tell that like they were a fucking passion project. We talked about Omori a lot or like Undertale and like people worked on it for a very long time and it doesn't need to have, you know, a famous person voice acting or doing the mocap for it to be a good time.
00:46:56
Speaker
And you know, as we've all played Vampire Survivors, I will say for like $3, now $6, like money's worth. No. I think part of it is like, this is Darwinism at play, but the indie sphere of games is just a sea of people trying to scramble to the top to get breath. It's all it is. Billions of people, like they are billions. I don't even know if that's an indie game.
00:47:25
Speaker
I think it is. But the ones that you hear more about are oftentimes not ones that you're like discovering, right? If you were to just search for survival crafting game open world on Steam, you would see a lot of bad indie games. Maybe if you drop open worlds too, it'll still be bad and some good ones.
00:47:49
Speaker
Contrast this to like AAA where they are on an island, right? Like Call of Duty. This is the we're still using the same analogy. There's the sea there's everybody out there at the ocean trying to scramble the top and then like people just relaxing on the beach and it's like Marketing will carry us we could release
00:48:09
Speaker
a game disc that literally is the trailer people have already seen for the game and they would buy it for $60. Like there is no game, it's just a DVD. And there's something inherently I think less.
00:48:27
Speaker
competitive about the AAA space because of that. Because for an indie game, I see mechanics and indies that beat out gameplay loops and AAA all the time. It's just they normally don't hit all of them, right? So that's my thought.
00:48:48
Speaker
I have signaled the end of the discussion. There was a there was a there was a visual of a mic drop there and it didn't translate to audio. Very expensive to drop a condenser mic repeatedly. I'm not going to do it. Also, I'm not just holding it here in front of my face, right? But I feel like I need a cup just for like dexterous reasons. Mm hmm.
00:49:16
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't have a lot of like cool snaps or spins on it, but it's sturdy and it fits in my hands. Mm-hmm. I missed my opportunity to make a joke. As soon as you said dexterous reasons, I was like, tonight's the night. It's gonna happen again and again. But yeah. Otherwise, what have you guys been up to? Anything fun?
00:49:42
Speaker
Anything funny you want to talk about? Yeah, I mean, we've got a puppy, Hazel. That's pretty good. Yeah, we've had her about seven weeks now. And yeah, it's a vast change in
00:50:03
Speaker
a vast change in impact on our lifestyle. Going from an older dog who is very chill, very relaxed and happy to sleep all day to a puppy who sleeps like an hour and then is running, literally running laps around the living room because she just needs to burn off energy. You're like toddler tier, basically, right? It's like maximum energy. Very much so to the point where I'm
00:50:29
Speaker
Yeah, I'm secretly hoping that she falls and hits her head on the corner of a table. Nothing permanent, just to like stunlock her a little bit. Yes, no real damage, just to teach her a lesson. Right. You can't do everything at 200 miles an hour. Yes. Yeah, that's fine. Because she'll also run into people. Oh, yeah. She's like, you are furniture that I'm going to. I'm going to kiss and nibble.
00:50:58
Speaker
I have a coat and a pair of shoes that I have. They are my designated walk time clothes because they're just caked in mud at this point. They have been sacrificed to that use.
00:51:18
Speaker
But she's really cute though. She's very sweet. She doesn't have a lot of energy though. When she's chill and just relaxing next to you, she's very sweet. She does do some very, very cute things and like, oh, this is how you get away with it. You're dragging your blanket out of your crate and down the hallway and holding it in your mouth while wagging your tail.
00:51:43
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, you can, you can terrorize the cat. Yeah, you can bark. Okay. They get in getting that baby allowance where it just covers a multitude of sense. Yeah. Anytime I talk to people about their pets, they always like say like some complaint of like, I got into something that made like a huge mess.
00:52:03
Speaker
they're so cute it's like the these polar opposite things of like if you antagonize me but i love you so goddamn much my my mind immediately goes to like all of the the internet photos of like something's torn up and then the dog's in frame and the dog looks sad or apologetic and you're just like
00:52:25
Speaker
This dog is getting away with murder. Yes. Right. Like there's there's there's no way this is being held against them. Somebody. Somebody gave us a dog shaming calendar for Christmas, so that is that is our daily routine is to see how many of these things or to bet on how long it'll be until the puppy does one of these things on the dog shaming calendar.
00:52:52
Speaker
So far, we're zero for 19. So that's good. It's really good. It's also not a standard calendar. Your days are going to be offset a little bit if you just keep using the same one. Oh, it's lunar. It's lunar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. It also helps keep things in perspective, I think. Right. Not that I would encourage people to have like
00:53:19
Speaker
a calendar that's literally major tragedy in Silicate because that's not really right. But maybe good to keep in mind that some other people have had some bad pet experiences, you know, that can stack up. They can be so noteworthy as to contribute to the calendar, right? Right.
00:53:41
Speaker
I do remember my dog growing up when they were still like puppy tier, like one to two. They still hadn't like fully been displayed like early stages. And we, you know, as like a semi Jewish household, my mom would occasionally make challah, which for the purpose of this story is just just a loaf of bread.
00:54:04
Speaker
And the dog somehow got it off the counter and, like, just took it behind. Like, we had a lazy boy, like, three-seater, and it was up against the wall. But there's, like, a little bit of room behind it where, like, the dog could fit and, like, nobody else could. So he just took, like, the whole loaf that was just, you know, in his mouth and just, like, went behind, was just, like, scarfing it down. And I was, like, trying to, like, grab him by his hips, and he was just, like, growling and eating. He's like, don't take this from me. And there's also the time where he ate.
00:54:33
Speaker
Do you remember those art boxes where it's like crayons, markers, colored pencils? Like what other tips and tricks? Well, he got into the crayons and ate a bunch of them.
00:54:44
Speaker
I'm a really hard. Yeah. I was glad he didn't know where he could. But it was definitely when it came out. Yeah, it was. Yeah. I was the army. I can't remember which one it was. I think it's the army. It's what do you mean? So crannier is it's a it's a it's one of the the go to. Marine, it is Marines. OK.
00:55:08
Speaker
um there's uh okay i googled this and it's actually really funny the top result is do marines really eat crayons only the red ones but the three branches of the u.s military have like
00:55:24
Speaker
obviously they make fun of each other but they each have like one given specific like this is the mainstream dig and that's the one against marines is that they're crann eaters interesting yeah obviously i would never accuse anyone of eating crayons that's not a titan in destiny but listen
00:55:48
Speaker
Sorry, that's a side, that's a side thing. You're just an ancient crayon. But why the red ones? Do they taste, like, are they the ones that taste the best or are they just... This would require more research that I'm probably willing to put into this. Actually, that's not true. The opening line in this article is, if you were to ask me directly if Marines eat crayons, my personal answer would be yes. But there are some mitigating circumstances. So, yeah.
00:56:17
Speaker
Anyways, Google it if you want. I like how like these things come about. Like growing up in Pennsylvania, there's always this hatred towards New Jersey. I think it's just one of those like us versus them things. And it's very arbitrary. It's just literally an adjacent state. Oh, yeah. Literally nothing against people from New Jersey. But we're like, oh, they don't even pump their own gas. And it just leads into other things like, oh, they're so backwards and different.
00:56:47
Speaker
Which I still do judge them for that because if I ever get gas in New Jersey and like let me do it, please It's so weird It was funny as an outsider
00:56:58
Speaker
like moving to PA. And I was just like, cause people had all this trash talk about New Jersey. And I was like, is it that bad? And they're like, Oh, by the way, it's summer. Let's go vacation to New Jersey. I'm like, what are you talking about? But yeah, a little bit like that. Cause you guys are, we're actually all for originally from different States. Yeah. Did you guys have any adjacent state should talk?
00:57:27
Speaker
I don't really remember anything growing up in North Carolina. Um, I think there was, I mean, obviously, you know, South Carolina, you know, same, similar state name. I think there was some rivalry there, but I think, I think most of it was all in state. Like if you lived in the mountains, you were hill people. Yeah.
00:57:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was a similar deal for Washington state because like I grew up grew up in southeastern Washington and the whole eastern part of Washington is like, it's not all literally farmland, but it's in the rain shadow. So a lot more farmland, things like that. And it's conservative, right? And as you go to the west, it becomes more and more liberal. And so like.
00:58:14
Speaker
There's a whole lot of politics about that in Washington state where it's like all these people out there in Olympia, you know, making decisions for the rest of us just because they've got the votes in the big cities and all that stuff. And I mean, spoiler alert, I'm a lot more liberal now, but.
00:58:34
Speaker
It's less interesting than state to state bickering and things like that. But that whole section down there and the border to Idaho and everything is all super conservative. Similar thing for Oregon though. Oregon was always the hipster state. And I think it is actually for the most part, depending on where you are, Portland at least. So those associations stuck around at least.
00:59:00
Speaker
I like a little bit of that. Like it's in a playful way. Like it does weirdly just bring people together. Um, that's just, it feels weird if it's like an ongoing, it seems, it feels like an uncle joke that like, every time you go to Thanksgiving, they're like, Hey, and you're like, all right, it's been like 30 years. Let me do the exact same shit. Um, yeah. Yeah.
00:59:21
Speaker
But I've noticed it where people will be fans of different sports teams and then they'll run into each other. And if it's like, hey, I was looking at sports team, they're like, I really hope they do good on Sunday. I'm like, in my mind, because I'm outside of the space, I'm like, who gives a fuck?
00:59:36
Speaker
But it's like a way for them to bond. And even if it's like opposing teams, it's like they'll talk about like specific players like, oh, you got so and so they're like, ah, well, yeah, but you have so it's just again, I'm outside of the space, which is why I can't even think of actual names. Cheese heads. Right. Yeah. Wisconsin. Yeah. Well, Green Bay, I think. Yeah. Yeah, Green Bay. Yeah.
01:00:03
Speaker
It's actually really funny there because like whenever whenever sports kind of escalate to the point of violence I mean, I understand it. I play d sports. I understand I get it but like It's really funny to me that like the person that you're quarreling with to go back to like 18th century terminology is someone who has
01:00:25
Speaker
a large, a high measure of interest in a sport that you are also interested in. Right. And so it's, it's, it's very irrational, right? If you were to like, just talk about, uh, American football or soccer or whatever the heck with someone else who's enthusiastic about it, you might have a great conversation, but instead it's like, no, they voted for, they're on the wrong team.
01:00:48
Speaker
It was always about politics. It's still about politics. Yeah. You got, you got your, you know, your liberals and you got your Dark Souls two fans. Like it's just really two sides of every coin. My political leaning. I don't know where Dark Souls two fans fall on the politics, uh, square. Maybe if you introduce gaming, it becomes a cube.
01:01:14
Speaker
That sounds what it is. The third dimension. Well, we are about that out that just cut this. No, actually, we're about at that time. I have the edit. I'm not going to. I'm not going to cut it about at that time. Thank you, Mike, for coming on once again, spending your evening with us. Yeah, it was good to have you back. Thanks for always always a pleasure to have you on and talk about you.
01:01:42
Speaker
and with you on the podcast and also to you at you alongside you for content. It's all for content again, you know, but appreciate the contribution. I don't talk to you enough. So when it comes around in these podcast times, it's always, always good for me. I hope it was good for you. Yeah.
01:02:10
Speaker
If it was good for you guys, dear listener, out there in the ether, please let us know. Send in your feedback. What is it? I'm getting drug hand motions from the other co-hosts here. We said, was it good for you? And I'm like miming lighting a cigarette in this classic 90s. That's what it was.
01:02:31
Speaker
Two people who are wearing a blanket after sex, apparently. Uh-huh. The traditional. I mean, how cold is where you live? You are literally wearing a blanket, though. I'm chilly. But if you have topics for new episodes or feedback or just really anything that isn't.
01:02:52
Speaker
an advertisement that we have to pay money for, uh, your product, send that in soapstone podcast at gmail.com, or you can join the discussion on Facebook until we move the posts over to our only fans at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.