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S2 Ep188: 2021: Year in Review
79 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they look back on this year's games in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Co-host Catch-up
00:00:55
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? I am tired and emotionally drained. How are you? It was very difficult. I'm going through a difficult part of my time in my life right now and the difficult time is like...
00:01:12
Speaker
maintaining a standard cadence while like watching you pantomime what i'm saying in real time it's actually really hard oh i wasn't no no i wasn't trying to pantomime i was uh so like right right as it was doing the countdown for record i was doing the i don't think it's crazy frog or six flags but it was it was something in that space
00:01:37
Speaker
And I did like two notes of it. And then I didn't want it to come up in the audio. So I stopped and did it silently. Gotcha. Okay. It was a continuation of that. It was really funny because I was like, I don't know why, but my brain association just started speeding up the standard opener and usually tried to match a cadence.
00:01:57
Speaker
Okay, so you thought I was basically like doing the same thing that you were doing. That's my bad. No, that's all good. To actually be tired though, I understand that I cheated and took a nap before all of this. I was just like, I lay down here and just lay down on a beanbag and went unconscious for like half hour or so.
00:02:21
Speaker
Where are you going? I'm going unconscious, you know. Yeah. Where's that? Well, over there. Usually over there. Sometimes over here. Usually it's the beanbag though. And I woke up and I was like, hmm, this is a little bit of a headache. So I took some medicine, took some coffee, a little sip of energy drink, the natural cocktail of
00:02:43
Speaker
making it through the evening. And, uh, and now I'm, I'm ready and raring, I think. Yeah. Rare where to go.
00:02:57
Speaker
Nice. Fucking stoked. I've changed my tune. I'm ready. Yeah. Have you had any caffeine recently? I had a Zevia with dinner. That's like the energy tea. It's like 120 milligrams of caffeine. That's a good kick. It tastes nice.
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's really the reason why I get it. Also, I don't want to get 300 milligrams of caffeine, drink half of it, and then cough a lot, and then put it back in the fridge. Yes. That has been my life because I'm still using the rain, orange dream sickle, or lemon. And those are 400 milligrams, exactly.
00:03:41
Speaker
I get like halfway through and you're about and my body starts like putting out like morning signs like, hey, this is actually too much caffeine. Like to continue to drink this can is to remove the sleep option from the table. Like I'm just going to slide that off. Right. So let's go.
00:04:01
Speaker
Like, I remember when I thought I could actually drink a full can of that like in the afternoon. And then it's like, it's nowhere near my 6pm cutoff for caffeine. I'll be fine. That doesn't work if it's 400 milligrams. You can't have like a coffee that's like a triple espresso or something like that and call it good.
00:04:23
Speaker
Yeah. Like I know your body can definitely build up a tolerance for that. And I think like if you have energy drinks enough, you just assume like, Oh, I'm good. It doesn't affect me the same way. Um, to be fair, like I do get sleepy still on caffeine, but I just stare at the wall and I'm like, we fucked up. Right. Your body's just like, what you trying to do? Trying to like, uh, trying to rest here. Cause I'm going. That means you're going.
00:04:53
Speaker
I just lay down with my eyes closed and I'm just like, yup. Uh-huh. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. If you're going to do that better to offset caffeine, a little bit of caffeine, then you go for the rest and then the caffeine kicks in later, but it's got to be pretty immediate. Um, if you sit there and let it settle, then you'll start going.
00:05:17
Speaker
But talking about going places, I think our podcast is going places. Maybe quickly, maybe it's like a treadmill. We're moving rapidly. In the same spot.
Year-end Review and Podcast Evolution
00:05:31
Speaker
We have accomplished closing out yet one more year. So this will be this will be published as the last episode of the year. It goes live.
00:05:45
Speaker
And as is tradition, we have a year in review episode for many reasons. The only one that matters is easy content. That is true. Do you know filler episodes and anime? Anyway, tune in next week. I was looking at the podcast on Spotify.
00:06:07
Speaker
Because occasionally I'll be like, how bad did I sound in this one thing? And the answer's always bad, in my head anyway. But I was looking at the naming, and it's like, oh, this is season two. And I'm like, wait, we have fucking seasons? And I remember, oh, I made a video being like, season two. And then I was like, we never transitioned to a season three, which would have made sense at a point.
00:06:31
Speaker
Just to be like, oh, it's still moving forward. It's just waiting for the next video. I actually didn't even consider that in my brain. Like there hasn't been. Even though like what year we're going into year four next year, I think.
00:06:45
Speaker
Yes, I believe that's correct because we did like how to check this but refuse to I think that's I think that's right um And so there's no it makes no sense for us to still be in season two, but not only that um We didn't reset like the episode counter once we went to season two
00:07:06
Speaker
So one of these days, if I'm ever just tremendously bothered by it, I'll probably go back and change the episode IDs for everything. It doesn't change, it won't re-upload anything, it'll just change the metadata. Oh really? And then, yeah, it'll just show up in whatever podcast platform you have.
00:07:25
Speaker
Um, for people who actually like Spotify, for instance, we'll use a season dropdown. So you can say like, Oh, let's, I'll specifically look at season two or season three. That's gotta be so terribly confusing for anybody who's like season one. Oh yeah. They had like 20 episodes. I remember that. What's their next. Oh, season 20 was everything or season two was everything else. Nice. Like 160 episodes. The longest arc. It's a really long arc. Um,
00:07:53
Speaker
And then it continues the episode number. So season two doesn't start at episode one. It's episode 21 in this example. So basically, regardless of what system
00:08:04
Speaker
you think would be correct here. We haven't. There's not an explanation for necessarily how it works, but that's kind of that's that's part of the insider. That's that's an Easter egg for the podcast, I think. I don't know if a lot of people know how screwed up the seasons are. I feel like every single aspect we try and do
00:08:29
Speaker
like a rough pass on and then we're like, yeah. And that's how we approach everything. But again, like I know we've talked about this, but I still, I like that.
00:08:40
Speaker
Like I don't want to discount all the cool effort we put into like some edits here and there. There's obviously a lot more in like the early days, but also that was very scripted in comparison. So if we didn't quite get something that like lined up, we'd be like, let's pause here. Let's do another take of something, maybe sound a little more natural or whatever. And records would be like four hours of various bullshit. And they're still fun, but it was, it was such a time commitment in comparison.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah. I would just go over to Jake's for the day. We literally play Smash for equally as long afterwards.
00:09:18
Speaker
We would go back and forth like when we started. I did look and so our earliest dated episode is April 2018. So this is closing out the third year. The reason we're closing it out is because we actually started recording well before April. I think it was like February or March. I think it was February, maybe even January, but that was back when we were
00:09:41
Speaker
an ACL salt cast on a SoundCloud instead of soapstone on an actual platform that supports us. You're checking my SoundCloud. And not all of those episodes made the jump and they all got redated when they got uploaded to the new platform. So.
00:10:02
Speaker
That's the way it is. Not that I would actually say this every time we talk about the old episodes. Don't go back and listen to them. They sound like trash. I could literally download the raw audio and then run it through a processor and make it sound a lot better now. And that's how bad it is. You can't usually do that with audio, but that's how bad it was.
00:10:25
Speaker
It was the equivalent of us talking through tin cans in a string. It was shit. It was real rough. But still fond. Opened with Payday 2 and then we had Doom 2016. And all these years later we're still covering Doom games. New Doom games even.
00:10:44
Speaker
Um, I think eternal was this year, I believe. No, no, last year, two internals, definitely last year. This is again, why we're still in the second season. We'll eventually make it to season three. That'll be with our merch drop, you know, right? Uh-huh. That's where like everything goes live, Patreon, everything, live shows, actual soap stones to people.
00:11:08
Speaker
I'll have to find a geologist to be our supplier, but it could be fun. I mean, those are the only people who have those, yeah.
00:11:18
Speaker
I have basically like a child's understanding of supply and demand in the supply chain. So you're just like, like, where do you get rocks from a geologist? Uh, what if you need to start a fire, a fire fight? Cause they fight fire with fire. There was a fire on hand. Exactly. You got to know your enemy.
00:11:42
Speaker
Oh my god. This is basically the Fire Force anime. I'm not going to get into it because I don't want to recommend it. But they do do that. That's good. That is good.
00:11:56
Speaker
Yeah. One of the other things that changed this year is, uh, we kind of solidified the new format, which I'm a big fan of. Like for a long time, we were clearly burning ourselves, uh, burning ourselves out, alternating. I'd be like, Hey, Dave, let's play this game that I love. And you're like, I, I'll get you back next week. Yeah. I'll get you back.
00:12:18
Speaker
Very accurate though. Like there were times where you're like, we should play this game. And I'm like, I will play the game, but no, this will cost you. And most of the time it wasn't that, but play in like four games a month.
00:12:34
Speaker
Like we should have been paid for some of the effort we put into this in the earlier years. Yeah. Because very quickly we burned through like, oh, we have enough memory of this to make it a topic and kind of go over it. But then be like, oh, we have to do something new. How much time do we have to do it? Oh, two days? Fuck. Yeah.
00:12:54
Speaker
Because after... So we record on Thursdays, right? And then Jake and I don't talk Friday. We don't talk Saturday. We're literally just like, oh, we're going into weekend mode and decompressing or what have you. And then Sunday, we'll be like, hey, whoever had the edit, we'll ship it, get it through. And then Monday, we're like, okay, so what's this week's episode going to be? And then we have less time.
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah, there was a lot of like treating it more like work or it's like, all right, I need to dedicate. Like given everything else going on in my life, I have to put 10 hours into completing this upcoming title. And I don't think I mean, like most of the time, to be fair, we're still having fun. It's literally playing games. And if we hated it, we wouldn't do it. But there was much more of an aspect of stress. And sometimes we wanted to play other games. Right. Like something came out and we're just like,
00:13:50
Speaker
Like you might have been playing more Dota at the time or like I was playing an MMO or something. It's like, all right, let me stop doing what I want so we could play these video games for this unpaid podcast. But all of that aside, looking back on it, it's still kind of proud of the effort we put into it.
00:14:11
Speaker
But I just like having the justification of like, sorry, guys, I have to go play video games right now. It's kind of an obligation. Yeah. They're like, OK. Uh-huh. But yeah, the new format is we have kind of the four episode format where we have a topic, we have a game that we cover, we have a guest that comes on, and then like a talk cast chat.
00:14:40
Speaker
And it's gotten so much more smoothly. It's so much less stressful for me, at least hopefully for you. No, I mean, that's much better. It's much more laid back. We have time to let go and play that one game or refresh ourselves on it.
00:15:04
Speaker
And also with gas it feels more relaxed too because we're not Forcing them to come in with anything or forcing us to come in with something. Oh, it's just like hey friend who also plays video games Let's just hang out chat and I like that because I think in general people like just hanging out and talking with friends Yeah, it's more like um
00:15:30
Speaker
a talk show sort of format. We made that pivot relatively early in the year, probably Q1, Q2. We were like, hey, rather than putting all the pressure on you, you need to come prepared to sell us on a game. We could talk about games you played if you want, but we could also talk about all of this other stuff.
00:15:50
Speaker
And it's a lot more balanced, particularly if there's a game that like one of us has played and the guest has played, but the other, the co-host has not played. For instance, like, those are all situations that we, I think there's still good episodes. There's a lot of really good episodes in there, but it could be very difficult to balance contribution while talking.
00:16:16
Speaker
I can say five episodes off the top of my head. Almost all of them, actually, like once we started the the guest kind of every month, it was like Animal Crossing, which I hadn't played, but you had played or like Subnautica, which I had played, but you had not played and like, et cetera, et cetera. So putting a little less pressure on it, I think is better in the long term.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, we've lived and learned. Hanging on by the edge of tomorrow. That sounds like a quote. I don't know where it's from. It's Sonic Adventure Battle 2. I was going to guess like days of our lives or some soap opera type of thing. Because the way that you said it, it could have worked for them.
00:17:11
Speaker
But other than the format, we covered a lot of games still this year, a lot of good ones. Were there any standouts for you that were like, or maybe let me, I'll phrase that more specifically as something like if you could
Favorite Games Discussion
00:17:28
Speaker
just spend another hour talking about one of these games, was there anything we covered this year where you're like, yeah, I absolutely would go back and just gush about that game.
00:17:39
Speaker
Let me look at the list quick. Yeah, some of these are. I don't want to say standalone, but like, for example, loop here, we had an episode on. There's not as much to talk about that for like another whole episode length. Yeah. If I can steal one, you know, I've asked you the question and I'll jump into by a little bit of time.
00:18:05
Speaker
It's kind of it's it's sort of a cheaty sort of answer. But like we did Dead Space. We started the Dead Space series this year. And like it's really difficult to constrain a discussion about Dead Space to specifically Dead Space One when we now know, you know, where the rest of the franchise is going. I think like.
00:18:27
Speaker
The rest of the series was not nearly as well received as the first for plenty of reason. Thanks EA by the way, but still it's all part of that same universe and trying to treat an older game as a standalone and knowing where it all heads is a little tough.
00:18:46
Speaker
And I had fun with the others. That's my admission for the evening. I feel like for something like that, I'd go into Dead Space 2 and then it just becomes kind of a comparison to one more so. I mean, I'm sure we'd have enough to talk about for an episode of 2, but I feel like that would definitely come up.
00:19:11
Speaker
Overall, I would really like, it's anything Dark Souls 3 related. Yeah. Like, even though we had an episode in Dark Souls 3, even though we had an episode in Dark Souls 3, Convergence mod, which changes a lot, there's so much in Dark Souls in a given game, as far as like, the lore, where you can just delve in. Like, I re-watched a Vaati video. Yeah. Thanks Vaati, friend of the show. Also his mom, weirdly enough.
00:19:41
Speaker
But there's just so much in there and I get swept up in it and it's fun for me to talk about and learn about too. I love when I find out something new lore wise from Dark Souls or Hollow Knight because it makes me appreciate that much more and also I just missed it entirely because I didn't go looking for it.
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's fair. It's the right answer. Any time that we have had a Dark Souls episode, it's gone pretty long and had the potential to go even longer. Obviously, the podcast itself is named after an item in Dark Souls.
00:20:24
Speaker
And it's also like, I, I consider it at least the backbone of the podcast. Like for the last four years, we've had not even just souls born content. We've had a dark souls episode every year. Um, dark souls, dark souls, two, three, and then three convergence mod being our most recent, um, across 2018, 19, 20 and 21. Um,
00:20:54
Speaker
And that's really cool. Like, we covered Bloodborne the same year we covered Dark Souls 2. I think that's when we were starting to run a little bit lower on content. And it's not technically a Dark Souls series game, but. Dark Souls 2? Yeah, I also agree with that. No. But I mean, we're coming up. This might be the first year where we don't have an explicitly Dark Souls title.
00:21:22
Speaker
Well, let's see how Elden Ring goes, right? They rename it at the last second. Dark Souls Elden Ring. I'm like, thank God. Well, they might have like some tie in or even just like an easter egg where I'd be like, see, see, it's Dark Souls. Mm hmm. That's fair. But that stuff that we talked about in the last year, there's also a lot of games that came out this year, which we did not play or cover. True.
00:21:50
Speaker
Is there anything on this list that you plan to cover in the future or that you wish that we did? I mean, the easy one for me on this list is one that I did actually play. But Deathloop, I had a lot of fun with it. We obviously didn't have an episode on it. We haven't both played it yet. It's not something that you have to rush into playing. And I think that the PvP
00:22:14
Speaker
Aspect while it's cool, if you were to play this game like a year later and the PvP is basically dead and you're just playing versus AI, it's easier to get through because of that. But it really doesn't like it's not a detriment to the experience. So well, what I'm leaning towards is if you haven't pulled the trigger on Deathloop, you might as well wait for a sale. And I would anticipate at some point should that come up.
00:22:43
Speaker
Dave will either buy it or I'll buy it for Dave when it's on sale and maybe we could have an episode on that. I mean, if you ban from the server for like a week, I'll play it. That's fair. That is fair.
00:23:05
Speaker
I think, let's see, what else here? There's some other stuff that we covered. I mean, you put Endwalker. I'm not going to talk a whole lot about that. That will never cover. I don't think I doubt we'll ever really cover that.
00:23:21
Speaker
And that's fine. There's plenty of information you can find on that. But otherwise, most of the titles that came out this year, I didn't play or we didn't talk about it. Those are the standouts. Sorry. To describe the Venn diagram. These are games that the ones we just described are the games that I have played that we didn't cover. Everything else I didn't even play.
00:23:53
Speaker
So for everybody writing it down at home, make sure you just have this space out correctly. And now we'll go to the next category, which is games that came out that are probably worth covering, but I don't know if we will. So just to list a few, Halo Infinite, Resident Evil Village, Metroid Dread, Psychonauts 2 even. Well, I played that one. You played that one. But I don't think we necessarily need to have an episode on it.
00:24:23
Speaker
I put it in a similar, personally, I put it in a similar situation to death loop where it's like, if it's on sale, pick it up, circle back, have an episode on it. I'm not opposed to it. I just had, there was nothing about it immediately at launch that was like, I have to play this game now for me.
00:24:41
Speaker
Um, so you hate some shavers? What are you saying? Just strongly dislike him. I don't hate him. I just think he smells terrible. Yeah. And it's similar for dread for me. Like I, uh, uh, friend of the show and recurrent guest Ian.
00:24:58
Speaker
um is a big advocate of dread but uh from everything i've seen about it unless you're like a big fan of that traditional um metroid style platformer like that is the kick that is basically what they're really going for is that traditional experience which you know good on them for not letting that just die out or only making 3d games but i kind of want to play the 3d games so
00:25:23
Speaker
I'll probably also visit that later. I mean, honestly, you could probably borrow it from one of our friends. Yeah. Who's already played it. That's my best bet. Physical copy borrow because it'll never go on sale. True. But also like if we have an episode on it, I'm just going to shit talk it because it is very much not for me for like the little bit I played.
00:25:47
Speaker
Because it immediately my brain goes to this isn't Hollow Knight and it sucks. Mm-hmm doesn't control nicely Blah blah blah. There's all these cutscenes and stuff loading screens. I'm like fuck. Yeah
00:26:01
Speaker
There are still downsides. And any time that I say that I'm not a huge fan of platformers, we go on all this about the platformers I like. We were like, I don't really like it. I mean, Hollow Knight was fine. Hollow Knight, yeah. Classfulness is kind of cool too. There's also, yeah. There are some. But then there are traditional platformers that I don't actually find myself engaged with nearly as much. How traditional?
00:26:27
Speaker
Like Rogue Legacy is an amazing game, but I don't particularly enjoy it that much. Oh no, like it was fun playing through it once. I would never really go back. Like it's very simple and straightforward. Um, and it's like a nice arcadey experience and then I'm done. There's not the replayability factor really. Yeah. So.
00:26:54
Speaker
Yeah, if it's a game I can play and I literally have physical copies of games on Borrow that I still need to get through. So this is in itself becoming a contested category for me. If you want to jump spots. I looked at my PlayStation games the other day because I think it was like, what's a game I can have like Jake Borrow? And I'm like, this is Jake Spiderman. And I never opened it or touched it.
00:27:24
Speaker
Yeah, maybe we'll check out at some point. Spider-Man's not a bad one. I could have sworn. I think there was a requested episode for that. Was there? I believe there might have been a long time ago. Don't let the audience know that we don't get a track of that. It's not that long a game. I actually do quite like I did quite enjoy it. It's reviewed pretty well.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think, let's see, what else is here on this list? Because we're talking about specifically things that came out this year. You also got me, I'm gonna spoil Dave's Christmas present to me, but he got me on top of a whole bunch of delicious foods and snacks and things. He knows my color can take, so he accommodated. He also got me a Yakuza Like a Dragon for PlayStation, and
00:28:17
Speaker
That's 100% on the list. That pushed some of the other games down from the physical box space. Here's the thing, though. We already had an episode on it. It's true. But it's because of that episode that I checked out the game. I'm like, this is pretty good. Yeah. I know I'm going to really enjoy it. I absolutely know I will. Oh, yeah. I'll probably play next week, actually, if I can.
00:28:40
Speaker
Like any type of Japanese RPG, certain parts do feel a bit grindy, but holy shit, everything that they do with mechanics, the animation, the characters and the storyline, it is driving. Oh, yeah. Also, there's a driving minigame. Also, there's so many minigames. There are absolutely... There's always a driving minigame in that, even if it's a little race cars in Yakuza.
00:29:06
Speaker
But I have to disqualify it from this list at least because it did come out last year. But we will play it at some point. There are some interesting ones here. I know this one you tracked more than I did. Death's Door came out this year. I tracked it so much that I tracked it into my Steam library. That's pretty good tracking. Somehow got several achievements.
00:29:31
Speaker
So you didn't just immediately launch it and you're like, that's enough. Let's close it out. Or is that where the achievements box out? Close the game immediately. Achievement unlocked. Not for me. That's the name of the achievement.
00:29:46
Speaker
refunding it on Steam, separate achievement. That would actually be hilarious if there was, that's a really good idea for an indie game in particular, like a lighthearted one, to give you an achievement for closing the game, starting the process of closing the game really quickly after launching it, and then reference the refund timeframe.
00:30:05
Speaker
Please don't refund or something like that. I have a family to feed. That's what they should call the child. Yeah. Okay. That makes more sense because the opposite would be like local indie studio just goes bankrupt because everyone's get this one achievement.
00:30:23
Speaker
But yeah, that game is very cute and fun. I don't think it's like a must check out, but if it's an on sale type thing, I enjoyed it. It's not super long. It is very quaint and nice. That's good.
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, I can't speak much more to that. So we'll add it to the pile of maybes for subsequent years. What do you want? What about back for blood? Are you actually think you're ever going to jump back on that train?
00:30:59
Speaker
Jump back for blood I mean it's on sale literally as of this recording so a lot of this is gonna be based off of if I can get two Witnesses basically what I'm saying is can I get a witness? But two of them
00:31:14
Speaker
From friends that have played the game. This is so Dave can't single-handedly Override and so me on the game right now. So yeah, I would say like I play decent amount I Know Steve's played a lot as well. I Don't think anybody else on our discord Really bought into it as much as like they just played that a free weekend. Yeah
00:31:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think I mean, that's where I was at. So I know that there is a big patch. I'm curious where they're going with it. I do want to see Turtle Rock succeed, but I'm not willing to buy one to give them money. Yeah, just for it.
00:31:58
Speaker
But yeah, I hope that it has that. I hope that it has unlocked, you know, that longevity. But I'm just curious from the people that have played it. I'll probably track it a little bit more. It was a contested week when it came out. I was already doing a bunch of other things, but, you know, on sale, perhaps.
00:32:21
Speaker
And this has the, there's a multiplayer imperative, I would say, where it's like, it's encouraged for sure. Like they did recently as a part of that update, add single player progression. So like you can play on your own with NPCs and still get progression in the game through the campaign and get cards and unlocks. And you don't have to play with random people, but it's a much more enjoyable experience if you have a squad.
00:32:50
Speaker
See if somebody yell at when they trigger something that summons the horde. Right. I mean, yeah. And that's what I mean by multiplayer imperative. Like if a game launched and a bunch of friends are playing it and it's a multiplayer game, you probably don't really want to wait to pick it up. Right. Like that's your opportunity to jump in and be part of that group for a time. And that's more what I mean. Like if this game is going to see a little bit of a resurgence or some people more consistently playing it,
00:33:20
Speaker
That's the incentive to not just wait until it's at like a 50% sale instead of a 30% sale or something. Whereas single player games, who cares? You can wait to buy those whenever. As long as you don't want to go on Reddit or YouTube or anything.
00:33:37
Speaker
That is sometimes the trick, although the in-game mind-shattering twists and plot turns are back for blood, I don't care about. The story is not the focus. I'll say that much.
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of story not being the focus, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy came out this year and for some reason was like a nominee in several categories for the Game Awards.
Game Reception and Critiques
00:34:04
Speaker
It won them too. This is actually really funny because I had my internet apology prepared once I saw that you had added this to the games that came out we didn't cover.
00:34:17
Speaker
Like this one is overwhelmingly positive on Steam. It won several awards for like the storytelling and the humor. And I was like, hmm, not what I expected. Not, not really what I expected. And I have to like pseudo apologize for making fun of it. Just given my assumptions about the game when we did our precursor game awards episode.
00:34:45
Speaker
I will say flat out right now, I stand by what I said. Okay, grain of salt, I know I have not played the game, but I've seen plenty of footage of the game. I know it's not something for me that I would enjoy. For me, it falls under like the AAA.
00:35:02
Speaker
We're kind of checking some boxes here, but nothing about it really stands out or does anything. It's not even really the characters from the universe. They're kind of like knockoff versions.
00:35:18
Speaker
And all of it just seems very AAA jank to me. Yeah. So again, I'm a jaded old man gamer at this point. I very much have what I like, but I do forget that there are people who enjoy different things such as Assassin's Creed, Marvel games, FIFA, Call of Duty. Right.
00:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think my mistake was lumping this in with, and I might have even been a little confused when we were talking about it originally, lumping this in with Marvel's Avengers that Square Enix published. And that's the one that was like it had a bunch of microtransactions and heavily monetized and absolutely bombed
00:36:02
Speaker
I was today years old when I had that same realization as you explained it to me. And this game is completely separate from that. It's like a single player. Your point still stands that the characters don't look they're not based off of the the movie likenesses because I believe Disney owns like that style. Yeah. You know, Chris Pratt is a star lord.
00:36:26
Speaker
So they use the older like traditional comic styles for a lot of the characters. But OK, so I will say I've seen nothing for this game and I was making fun of Marvel's Avengers.
00:36:42
Speaker
That's how old and jaded of a gamer I am. I'm like, what is it? That superhero shit? Yeah, it's all shit. It's all bad. But you'd be correct for doing that, I think. Honestly, I realized I was apologizing a little bit. I'm going to backtrack on the backtracking slightly. If you make the assumption that an IP caching superhero game is bad, most of the time you'll be correct.
00:37:07
Speaker
like good on them for having an exception in this case and you know something that's reviewing really well and winning awards but usually you can shortcut and just say nah not interested and save yourself a bunch of time.
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah, because the next thing I'm about to mention, we did not cover and won't cover because it's not really our thing. But it's another good example of AAA games kind of being like, hey, you like this, right? And then not making it good. But just knowing that look at the sales anyway. And those two entries are Far Cry 6 and Battlefield 2042 bugs logged in the first 10 minutes of multiplayer. That was my joke I wrote in. That was actually pretty funny.
00:37:53
Speaker
I don't know. I may at some point play Far Cry 6 because I play almost every Far Cry. Okay, so then from your experience with Far Cry, have they been building on it and doing stuff with it or is it the same thing? Assassin's Creed each time enters a different venue?
00:38:12
Speaker
I mean, so Ubisoft is literally the example for the traditional open world format where it's like, hey, go around, free outposts, get collectibles, progressive tech tree, do main story missions, do optional side missions.
00:38:31
Speaker
They basically have released that game so many times across Assassin's Creed and Far Cry. Far Cry is their shooter. Assassin's Creed is their, you know, action platformer style one.
00:38:44
Speaker
But it's like they share that same DNA. It's incredibly inbred at this point. And I don't expect innovation. I enjoyed Far Cry 5. There's some cool stuff there. Attack helicopter or whatever. But is it the same Far Cry game? Yes.
00:39:08
Speaker
different music, different stories. Sure. Why not? But I don't expect more to change, you know, when I play six, when it's massively on sale. Well, I'll I don't want to like shit talk it if it's something that like you enjoy. No, you should. You should. And people should.
00:39:27
Speaker
Because for me, as an older, I don't want to yuck somebody's yum, I think the term is. I've never heard that, but I understand what you mean. But yeah, just because it's not for me, and I always want to dunk on it, somebody really enjoys it. If somebody asks my opinion, what do you think of Assassin's Creed? I'll say, I think it's a really shitty franchise, and I really don't enjoy it.
00:39:48
Speaker
But if that's somebody's thing, 100%, I don't want to rag on them for it. I just know that they don't like the game. We won't talk about it, you know? And that's fine. But it, it doesn't really behoove me or anybody else to just make some, make fun of somebody's preferences. Like I'm sure a lot of the games I like people are not into. That's fine.
00:40:13
Speaker
Not everybody has to appreciate the art that is honey pop, you know? I was actually thinking of making the joke, but then I was like, I don't know if we should necessarily throw in a honey pop joke. I think I agree with what you're saying in principle. From a content perspective, it's much better if we just dig into games, even if we're wrong. And in the case of Far Cry,
00:40:40
Speaker
Are the games fun for me? Do I still like that format? Yes. And this is basically in the same space as somebody buys Call of Duty every time it comes out. Is the game massively changing? No. Do you enjoy the format? Yes. All right, that's good enough. I'm not going to get after people for playing games like that, but it's a separate question to ask. Is Far Cry 6 worth actually creating in the first place?
00:41:10
Speaker
Um, is it the type of game where they are changing the formula enough where they actually are innovating and the far cry series for the most part is not like some of the most innovation we saw was blood dragon. I was going to mention that at some point because I did enjoy the fuck out of that, but it was also kind of like stripped down bare bones. Like it's like, Hey, do you want to play this format for like four hours? But it'd be like bad ass. You're like, yeah. Yeah. It's a fun four hour experience.
00:41:41
Speaker
I still remember when you guys were planning your wedding, and I was like, do you think you could get the Blood Dragon music in there? I think it'd be a good thing to walk out to, and you're like, ah, we'll see. And then I think you guys picked actual something. Yeah, probably. But I really had my fingers crossed for that. Yeah, that day was kind of a blur. I don't remember much about it, to be honest. But there was no music that day. There was no sound, weirdly enough. The whole thing was very strange. Yeah.
00:42:12
Speaker
I was just going to say like four games that do just continue to release, you know, largely the same game. They just recreate different assets and things like that. Like even critically, like Metacritic wise Far Cry 6, it's, you know, taking some hits. It's like 75 on PC, 74 PS5, like and it should because releasing the same game without making improvements is incredibly lazy, even if you make a lot of money off of it.
00:42:42
Speaker
So I just wanted to close that out. I'm not an apologist for far cry. Like I am dark souls too. Have you had another game on this list that you wouldn't be an apologist for? Is there an entry?
00:43:00
Speaker
Hmm, that's interesting. Given the remainder, let's see. We didn't even talk about Battlefield, which sounds about right. Neither of us played it. I mean, it's going to be similar to Far Cry 6, except I know it has a lot of issues on launch. Yeah. Like an insane amount of bugs. That's EA, though. They're like, brush the game. Oh, crap, got to fix it. It's got to actually work out. Then it becomes a playable Battlefield game, and then they release a new one. They try to move everybody over, too.
00:43:29
Speaker
Um, I don't know if I have an apologist kind of left on this list because I've kind of as a specific stance, but there are some cool things here. Um, no more heroes three came out. I haven't played it. It's a switch game. So I liked the trailer and then somebody now who has followed the series. Um, their heart was kind of broken by the experience. So I'm not keen on checking it out now. Yeah.
00:43:57
Speaker
I had not really, I've never played a Travis touchdown licensed video game before. Oh, you can get games one and two on the switch as they heavily promoted before three came out. Yeah. And maybe that's the play at this point. Cause this is another game that didn't review very well. You can get both of them for like 20 bucks. Yeah. I'd say check it out. It's definitely a novel experience. Very fun. Um, but I don't think the format really holds up as much.
00:44:28
Speaker
And from what he said, I think it kind of went back to like the first game. Yeah. And it's not didn't really add anything. Yeah. Doesn't respect your time. That's a good way to put it.
00:44:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of games where that's the expectation. JRPGs in particular are massive time sinks. There are some genres where it's like, why are you taking the JRPG-like approach to people's time and just wasting it to some extent?
00:45:01
Speaker
Like, and I get that. I get that. That's kind of unforgivable, particularly when we have 20 other games on the docket to play. If your game's not fun and it's not enjoyable and you're wasting my time and that's not like part of the message that you're trying to present, maybe don't. Yeah, I think it's good. Good policy. And that's why I avidly avoid JRPGs. Hmm.
00:45:28
Speaker
Because they just go on about stuff. And even if I did care for the first hour, by hour 27, I want to kill everybody. Because your character design is not so good that your mere existence of you talking for four hours straight will not annoy me. And then there's Jackie's look like a dragon. So hear me out. There's some other fun stuff that was on this. Guilty Gear Strive. Never going to play it.
00:45:57
Speaker
I'm never going to buy it. If somebody gifted it to me, I would play with them. I love the fact that it exists. I was actually talking. We had a happy hour today at work. I was talking about Shrive during the happy hour with someone there who plays it on Steam.
00:46:15
Speaker
And I just I let them know. I was like, I cannot play this. I do not have the capacity, the fortitude, the agility attributes allocated to actually play a real fighting game, which is why I play Smash. But like nonetheless, I absolutely love watching people play this game, and it's so beautiful.
00:46:43
Speaker
Oh, it's gorgeous. There's a lot of effort put into the game and how it plays and even stuff outside of just the active combat. I mean, I've watched some friends play it on Steam. I'm in that same boat, though, where I grew up on Soul Calibur, so I don't know how fighters worked. And I went to Smash and I stopped there. Your skills regressed a little bit at that point.
00:47:11
Speaker
I will say Smash is definitely more technical than Soul Calibur. Soul Calibur is a gimmicky shit show.
00:47:22
Speaker
But yeah, I got to give a shout out for that person. I don't even know if he listens to the podcast, but Nagoriyuki, such a cool DLC character. Giant, Bushido, samurai, sword person, vampire. Oh, that guy. Yeah. Yeah. That's his main, the person I was talking to at the happy hour. So shout out to that character. Samurai vampire was actually in the finals of some tournament. It was like that in a Potemkin.
00:47:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right. I know like, um, um, most critical had like one of, one of his, uh, one of the people they were sponsoring, uh, played in a goryuki. Nice. Yeah. He's a really cool character. Like we could get into some of the specifics about the game. I'm not gonna, but he looks really cool. Just look up his super moves and it's just the greatest stuff. Super stylish.
00:48:14
Speaker
One of the games on here that I did, I want to play for the novelty if it's on sale and somebody gives it to me for free. Dying Light 2, it's going to be Dying Light 1, but Dying Light 1 was very fun and stupid. Again, we drop kick zombies into spikes and we did it so many times.
00:48:38
Speaker
But it's like that and mashing space to free run up a building. It was just a fun shits and giggles type thing. Story was ass. And when they paused for cutscenes, I wanted to die. But all of the day-to-day mission stuff, great stuff.
00:48:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think like it's been a while since I played this game, so I remember a whole lot about it. We had an episode. You guys go back and listen to that. I really think that this is the type of game that sort of inherited. I don't want to say explicitly inherited the mantle of Dead Rising, but like Dead Rising had co-op as well. It's a very different game. It's very limited. Time constraints doesn't have parkour. It's a Capcom game, so it's absolutely insane.
00:49:25
Speaker
like dynamite doesn't have all of that feel but the multiplayer survival cooperative zombie experience is less oversaturated now i think than it was you know
00:49:41
Speaker
a few years back when everyone was making multiplayer survival, like often crafting zombie games. I didn't hate it. Like you said, it was fun. I thought the parkour was kind of a weird ad, but it worked well in the game. And I don't know too much about two yet, but I think that your take is largely correct. It's just kind of an expansion of some of those systems and concepts and
00:50:12
Speaker
If I were to revisit it, like, you know, why not grab one with some improvements and things.
00:50:17
Speaker
Yeah. It's just like the way they marketed it. They made it seem like this is like the next generation of like, and then try to make it super cool and bad-ass and it's like fighting zombies. Whoa. And it's just, if you played the game again, it's drop kicking zombies. Um, more so than it is like very serious and tense shit. Um, but actually having some other zombie games that still came out recently.
00:50:43
Speaker
Back for blood. That's like, I'm trying to think of the other one. It was, um, what was the one that you were playing last year or two? Zombie game. I was playing last year. My memory is actually garbage. So it's hard for you to say. You had like a team of people you could use.
00:51:06
Speaker
Oh, I was playing it solo. I was playing, um, so there's invisible strain. Is that it was the one I was playing? Yeah. It's kind of like a colony management slash. So I'm beginning. That was fun. I like that. I think it's still in development. Um,
00:51:24
Speaker
Like the other one, there was one that, uh, I think Mike was playing days gone. That sounds like a zombie game. Well, if it has daisy somewhere in the name, it's a zombie game. Well, supposedly that was another like triple A type situation where like the core concept was probably fine, but then the actual polished gameplay was a little, a little fuzzier. And then it just draw out story things that like no one gives a fuck about. Yeah.
00:51:53
Speaker
Yeah, of all of the games on this list, even though Dying Light is not like, it's not big, right? Like it's, it's not gigantic. It's not like super draw interest triple A of the ones unplayed. It's one of the ones I think I'm most likely to actually pick up and play. Cause I would, I feel like I'd just enjoy that experience. Um, back to some of that co-op nonsense. It's been a while since I did some co-op nonsense.
00:52:20
Speaker
Co-op nonsense is good. And it's going to be at least another six months before we do seven days to die. Until that'll, it'll have a completely different skill system again by the time we get back to it. Cause game is never releasing. Your bullets now dig into the terrain. I'll be the one guy in the Bay is constantly shooting bullets for trenches.
00:52:47
Speaker
This is, I know you mentioned this one, but this is probably the one on this list that's gotten the most recent exposure just because it largely is coming out toward the end of the year. But Halo Infinite. So of the people I know that play Halo, you are the people I know that play Halo. I played Halo 2 and I made you play Halo.
00:53:12
Speaker
I remember not that long ago, you're like, hey, we should also get through the campaign of like Halo 3. And I was like, is there co-op in that? And you're like, yeah, you're like, OK, months past, sunrise, sunset in the background. But like, how do you how do you feel about Halo Infinite? Like, have you tracked it? Do you have any thoughts on it so far or? I mean, I played some of the multiplayer for maybe like an hour and a half with some people.
00:53:40
Speaker
It's changed a lot from back when I played. I don't necessarily like how things feel as far as like the gunplay and movement. And that could just be like culture shock because it's been so long and I'm used to different styles. There's like a sprint key now.
00:53:59
Speaker
which I don't know if Halo always had sprint. I don't think it did. No. It's you walked. It was very slow and clunky in comparison. Yeah. But I don't know. It didn't really feel super great for me. It was more fun playing with friends, for sure. But I wasn't getting a whole lot out of the experience. But also, I don't really do multiplayer shooters too often.
00:54:24
Speaker
The only one I kind of do on the regular is Overwatch and I don't enjoy that as much as I want to spend time with the friends who play Overwatch.
00:54:34
Speaker
Yeah, that was, that was the pivot I was going to try to touch on. It's like Halo Infinite is literally free. The multiplayer is free. The multiplayer is free, yes. Good correction. So if you have friends that are playing, it's really easy to jump in. And I do know people that play a lot of Halo Infinite. They're like, doesn't work for the day or whatever. Jump on Halo Infinite, play with friends. And they're going through, I think some of that early experience, you're describing where
00:55:04
Speaker
They have their friend group together. They squad up and they, you know, go try to get stuff done. And that's a great experience. I'm glad like. That's that's a sign of success, even like with some of the issues the games had monetize, monetize, monetize, monetization. Thank you. Monetization issues they've had with cosmetics and things like that. Like that is the core, the reason to play it.
00:55:32
Speaker
And the fact that you're like correlating that to Overwatch immediately just makes the point for me. Like you don't particularly like the game, but you play it because your friends are playing it, right? It's there about the social experience. And I think for people who still want a Halo like game, they don't want, they want more of like a, I'm reluctant to call it a console shooter, but it is kind of definitively. It is. It is one console shooter.
00:56:00
Speaker
It's good for them, I think. If you like Halo, it's still Halo.
00:56:06
Speaker
You might have some opinions of like, I wish this gun or weapon work a little bit differently. Okay. Um, but if you like it, if you've liked the series, I'm sure you'll enjoy this at least for the multiplayer. I can't speak to anything outside the, for the campaign outside of one donkey video I watched. Cause I don't give a fuck about Halo story. It's dumb. Yeah. And it's continues to get dumb as time goes on.
00:56:32
Speaker
I really like this idea that's turned into a soap opera between Cortana and Master Chief, and that's the overarching narrative. You already lost me that grave mind. I was like, what the fuck's going on? Grave mind was cool, though. Especially as a kid, edgy, undead, super intelligence. It's pretty cool. Hey, Jake, what are you playing, Starcraft?
00:56:59
Speaker
uh grave mind actually the race grave mind avatar but um who has a lot of similarities to grave mind doesn't realizing i do like i particularly like the scene where he's got like chief uh rb and chief um together and he's they're just like we're gonna kill each other and he's holding him up like dolls and he's like
00:57:20
Speaker
No, stop it. Don't do that. Here's a new quest. And because they're the protagonists and there is a contract that if someone gives you a quest, you must, you must set out upon said quest. They start working together to accomplish the quest. Become best bros. That's the real Halo story. My brain's so stuck on. I'm thinking.
00:57:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was a YouTube series or something. It's called RB and the Chief or whatever, but it's been a long time. I I really liked the arbiters voice acting 10 out of 10. Yeah. And some of the stuff was I think I just enjoy Halo 2 overall. But again, a lot of that's nostalgia. Keith David. Oh, yeah. Keith David fucking slaps. Yep. He also did the voice of the cat in Coraline.
00:58:17
Speaker
and many other things, but that's the one thing that jumps out to me. Yeah. No, it's freaking great. Yeah, if people at LAN party wanted to do Halo Infinite multiplayer, I would, because I think everyone would be equally shit at it, and we would just have a time for sure, and then one person would figure out sniping and ruin it for everybody.
00:58:42
Speaker
But outside of that, not really. You need the friend group for it. You need to have that support group. Really hasn't changed. Solo queuing in an FPS in any sort of ranked mode or something like that is still depressing. I've been there. It's not made me a happy person. Play with friends. Without friends, I have to bear the cross of the defeat all on my own. That was my favorite thing.
00:59:12
Speaker
So like, this is particularly about MOBAs. And it was just like, man, all of these matches were so bad. And then someone, I think, on Reddit or Reform somewhere, it was just like, you know the one constant across all of the games that you play? It's you. Oof. Oof, they're right, though. Too real. I don't want to think about that.
00:59:38
Speaker
No more Moebas. Everyone's not playing Moebas. Yeah. I had a very long conversation about Moebas and how the person I was talking to played League and I was coming at it from like a Dota perspective and we both came to the conclusion. It's just like, if they didn't exist as a genre, the world would be a better place. It was fun. It was fun.
01:00:05
Speaker
Yeah. Good old days of multiplayer with people. It really is the friends you made along the way. That is, that's, that's my takeaway. Those are my, those are my end of year words to our dear listeners. Now that I've said something, do you have any closing thoughts for this year? Wrap out another prestigious 365 days in this 21st century.
01:00:37
Speaker
Join us next year for season three. Well, I'll just have to reorder all the seasons just to make it even weirder. So it's going to be, I want it to go to season three, episode one, and they'll be like, wait a minute. There's just one episode there. That would be good.
01:00:55
Speaker
All the episodes are going to get fucking gooids. Suck it. The title's completely invisible because the episode name takes up the entirety of the display. I like it. I like it. It's a strat. It's a strat.
01:01:10
Speaker
But, I mean, this is happening right around holidays. So, enjoy your holidays, even if you're not a big holiday person. Hopefully, you get some time to relax, eat some good food, tolerate family, don't bring up politics, or if you do, fucking dunk on your old ass Republican relatives.
01:01:34
Speaker
Again, like always, hopefully the next year doesn't suck as much as this one did.
Reflections and Future Hopes
01:01:38
Speaker
Yeah. But life is just kind of shit sometimes. So let's grin and bear it and make the best of it that we can. Yeah. Hang out with your friends. The friends help a lot. The friends help a lot. Absolutely. Join the Discord community. Have fun. And have fun. To quote Gabe Newell. My favorite class is the spy.
01:02:05
Speaker
But to those out there listening to us, thank you for sticking around for yet another year of Soapstone. If you would like to send us your favorite class, we know there's nine of them, it's a difficult decision, you could do so at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com, or you could join the discussion on Facebook, which is entirely about TF2 discussion at this point, at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast.
01:02:30
Speaker
And as always, we'll see you in a new year. Have a good night.
01:03:01
Speaker
I.