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S2 Ep108: Red Sign Soapstone - Gunfire Reborn
73 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Justin as they talk about guns more than the NRA in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Appearance
00:00:29
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going all right, but I'm going to quick use a deflect and say, how's it going tonight, Justin? Whoa. Hi. So I don't know if you listened to last week's episode, but I literally quoted your whoa as if you were listening to the podcast and reacting to what I was saying.
00:00:54
Speaker
But welcome, Justin. Justin has been mentioned once or twice and is a friend of the podcast. But if you want to share a little bit about yourself, so I'm not making up your IMDB. I have to ask first before you go into it, are we having them on the podcast so we can get licensing for the whoa, like?
00:01:14
Speaker
So it's just incorporated in the podcast. Yes, retroactively. Everything we've done is now legal. Okay, excellent. That's how that works. We've bought you time. My royalties are very expensive. Hello, I'm Justin. I am friends of Jake and Dave. Went to high school with Dave and College of Jake. I didn't go to college with you though.
00:01:39
Speaker
No, you just sat outside my dorm a lot. Yeah. I didn't know you guys went to high school together. Yeah. That's something that was talked about in college once or twice. But then every time it comes up, people are like, oh, I didn't know that. I'm like, it's definitely come off. Yeah.
Gaming Preferences and History
00:01:56
Speaker
Yeah, we used to be on the Frisbee team back in the day. I think that's where we... Yeah, I was Dave's ride most of the time. I was not legally allowed to drive for a while.
00:02:07
Speaker
So it's a good thing that's not what he was talking about, obviously. Obviously. And we have earned the explicit check mark. So what type of games do you like, Justin? What's your wheelhouse? My wheelhouse is pretty much everything besides sports. I definitely have a particular affection for JRPGs, but also FPS.
00:02:37
Speaker
I grew up, I cut my teeth on UT99, which I think it might be relevant for this episode a little bit. Yeah, I can do that. And yeah, JRPGs are also a thing that I am very fond of that I know kind of gets dissed a little bit.
00:02:56
Speaker
I would say neglected. They get neglected. That was our very first fun fact. Our very first podcast request was for JRPG. I might know you submitted that one too. Yeah, you probably do. And we never fulfilled it. We have covered zero JRPG. But they take time.
Work-from-Home and Gaming Setups
00:03:18
Speaker
There's another game that seems to take a lot of time too.
00:03:22
Speaker
Oh my gosh, that's almost a segue. We're working on it. I'll ignore it. We can't do good segues anymore. Yeah. Yeah, I do want to get something like Persona on there at some point, but I feel like Persona is not going to be my wheelhouse as much. But I know you guys have both played and enjoyed it. Oh, yeah. I never beat Persona 5. Actually, I haven't beaten any of the Personas. I've gotten to the last segment before. How is that possible?
00:03:51
Speaker
Um, Rachel has rubbed off on me. Okay. I was going to say like, I don't know how you get, here's my question. Cause persona five is like 110 hour game for me to beat it. I can get to the last segment, which meant you're like a hundred hours of commitment and then not finish it. Uh, so they announced Royal. Okay. That's fair. And they had no.
00:04:19
Speaker
experience carrying saves forward all the way because of how they usually do the expansions to the Persona games. So it ended up just being a if I'm going to replay it at some point anyways. Right. Turn it into a like hundred and eighty hour experience instead of a two hundred hour experience, I guess. No, that's fair. So are you going to answer my question of how's it going tonight, Justin, or what?
00:04:49
Speaker
Whoa. Tonight's good. It's still night, I guess. I don't know. I mean, it's getting there. The sun's yet to fully set. I can still see my neighbors if I need to. I got the blue lights turned
PS5 Reveal and Game Expectations
00:05:04
Speaker
on. I'm in relax mode. It's no longer my office. It's now the game room again. That's got to be a cool toggle.
00:05:13
Speaker
Do you find yourself conditioned for office versus game room lighting? The lighting I haven't played with, typically. So we have hue lights. So I have RGB control in my room because, yes. Money. Yeah.
00:05:33
Speaker
But so when I'm using my room as office, it is full concentrate bright the entire day. And then my preferred seating arrangement is dark besides my monitors. So the blue does help a little bit with that. But the the space conditioning with the work from home stuff has been rough on me. Yeah.
00:06:01
Speaker
No, I get that 100 percent. We haven't talked about that at all. Well, I'm sorry to bring up that. I mean, it's true. I think pretty much everybody who works in tech, you know, has and is still capable of working from home, still has a job.
00:06:20
Speaker
Thankfully, you know, you got to make your adjustments. And a lot of people already kind of did, you know, so there's some people who had like their side office. But without that, it's a it's a bit of a jump.
00:06:34
Speaker
Sometimes it's easier to just close applications. I'm just like, all right, nothing else. Come back to this. For me, I have to disconnect all the cables and such because I essentially use my setup as extra peripherals to do my work laptop. And then I'll just disconnect everything and go back to my tower. I despised that process so much because I have extra cables over a standard laptop setup.
00:07:02
Speaker
So I actually scrounged out a old USB 2.0 hub that I plugged all my peripherals into and it was a single cable to swap instead of the five I had. Yeah, that's the smart solution. Life hacks. Now, what would be ideal is if you could take like your gaming station and like move it to a separate room and then just separate yourself from that station. So like for me, I've got my PlayStation in the living room.
00:07:32
Speaker
But I mean, you're not working much on your PlayStation as far as I know. No, no. Yeah, we tried doing that a little bit. I recently picked up one of the couch keyboard solutions so I could try to play PC games on the couch. But because that's still a shared space, it's not my space. So there's still... That's good.
00:07:55
Speaker
MySpace is not all set up to be anymore. Jake's literally wearing a mask on camera. But as soon as Justin said MySpace, I saw a cheek twinge. I'm like, he's smiling. It is a joke lined up. Yep. I also tried to make a segue to talking about PlayStation and failed entirely. I was like, oh, PlayStation. Hey, Justin, I hear you don't like sports games. But did you see they're coming out with a 2K21? So moist. So moist.
Open-World Games and Horizon Series
00:08:23
Speaker
oh my gosh it was uncomfortable it was it was too much sweat in that trailer for me like it's clearly like they got to the point where they're like we have all the processing graphical power whatever we can simulate moisture in some way on this person's body
00:08:39
Speaker
now that's a feature amp that up and they just kept hitting like they like twist in the knob every single drop of sweat is simulated yeah right this man is it's just like a box quote or something it's like this man is our valley and we have some you look at the rivers
00:08:58
Speaker
But Rachel and I, one of the earlier trailers before the 2K sports ball thing, I was like, man, they're really showing off the subsurface scattering on all the skin textures and stuff like that. And then we're sitting there on Discord. We watched it on the YouTube stream, which I guess was a little bit behind the Twitch stream that you guys were watching. And so I don't know where exactly the sweat comment that you made in Discord was.
00:09:26
Speaker
in relation to where you were in the stream. But I was like, Jake was completely right. Because it just got more and more sweaty. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it just it didn't stop. I was just they should have just had like the last scene just be like some low waves like on the court. Just like, all right. Bioshock started it. We're finishing this. So what did you guys like from the PS5 reveal?
00:09:56
Speaker
Or what did you hate? What stood out? Besides the look and feel of the PS5. I could take one and then hand it off. The one I'm probably still looking, I don't know, it's a little tough here. So obviously you never played Demon's Souls, so I have to start with that. That's the thing. I want to name this up stone. And so it always kind of looked like old trashy game.
00:10:24
Speaker
not like bad, as in it's a bad game, but it just didn't look that playable, right? Yeah, dated exactly. And everything was better since then. So being able to go back and like high resolution probably updated
Ratchet and Clank and PS5 Graphics
00:10:38
Speaker
mechanics. The fact that Bluepoint has a history of doing more work, they
00:10:46
Speaker
There was the Ico rerelease for Shadow of the Colossus that they did where they, I don't remember who did the first like HD port, but then they did the full Shadow of the Colossus remaster and they were able to hit the general feeling from that game that kind of got lost when they got upscale because they could increase the trawl distance. So they just did. Right. Whereas they kind of reimplemented the fog and stuff from for the actual remaster.
00:11:16
Speaker
So was this this one isn't from soft. It's actually being remastered by somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. So Blue Point pretty much has a history of doing this. They don't. Yeah. They may or may not. I don't know their full gameography, but they primarily focus on remaking existing games. Gotcha.
00:11:39
Speaker
so but they do do new model creation asset upscaling and stuff like that but they're one of the the predominant forces in the actual remaster thing they usually get source code whatever they can basically from
00:11:58
Speaker
original developers, IP holders, whatever they can, and do follow that pretty closely, but they have a good track record of performance and stuff like that out of it. So them being in control of it, I would be pretty confident in the remaster from a gameplay standpoint.
00:12:16
Speaker
Their list looks good. Like, I was looking at all that. It is pretty much just remasters, but their list looks really good. God of War Collection, Titanfall, Demon's Souls obviously coming up, Shadow of the Claws. It's like you mentioned, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid. Like, that's a pretty good list of remastering games. I don't know how I would feel if I only really remastered games, and that's what I was known for. But it's a way to get to touch IPs, I guess, that you'd otherwise never be able to touch. So that's cool.
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah, Demon's Souls. That's mine. That's that's my entry to cap that off. My number one or two, the other one's nebulous, but I'll let somebody else take it with their contender for game of the show. Justin, you're in a rock, paper, scissors on cam. Go ahead, Dave.
00:13:09
Speaker
You're free to concede at any point. I've read the magic. So honestly, nothing here stood out super crazy to me as I need to get a PS5. But the one or
Justifying a PS5 Purchase
00:13:23
Speaker
two things looked really good. Obviously, Horizon 2. Yeah. I never beat the first one, but I did spend a decent amount of time on it. It was really solid. And the trailer for it also just looks hype.
00:13:36
Speaker
It's also so good open world games that could do one a year and then you're like, I'm not doing that shit again If you pick a open world game, that's hard to go wrong with horizon We were having a little bit discussion following the trailer and discord. It's very much Take what you have in your mind as an open world game and kind of just polish that it's it's one of the top
00:14:03
Speaker
examples of what you can do with open world game correctly it has your progression trees it has your tower equivalents all that stuff its main gimmick is the robot animals that you're hunting but that was enough of a pool to start it and then the storytelling for an open world game which
00:14:29
Speaker
It's a qualifier that you almost have to have because the way that those stories end up being disconnected. But it had a drive there that, like, going into the final segments of Horizon Zero Dawn 1 was very solid. I ended up platinuming it, basically on release, but I never went back into the expansion. And I like snow areas. The expansion was a snow area. I did the snow area because it was out when I played the game.
00:14:56
Speaker
Okay. How was it? No recommendation for that. I enjoyed the snow area. I mean, it's kind of just, it's more of the same, but they had more gear, more a bit of lore, some stuff like that. And they flush it out a bit. It's, I'm always a fan when they add DLC that just like fits right into the world. And you're just like, this is just part of the game of the year edition now. It doesn't feel like it's, and now load up disc 17, you know? Going back to Persona 5, that's kind of,
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, well really saw their expansions there The change of stuff, but the DLC kind of starts afterwards or it fits in the entire way it starts afterwards. No, it's Baked in through the entire process so like you can go there anytime. Yeah stuff Yeah, my understanding is they changed the end of the game though, too. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so it like keeps going but yeah Yeah
Gunfire Reborn: Mechanics and Features
00:15:50
Speaker
horizon to
00:15:52
Speaker
I mean, this is also, we talked about how, and we'll probably mention how some of the graphics don't matter that much for the games that are listed, or they don't look that impressive for a new console, really. Well, it's not like between one and two, there's not such a drastic difference to my naked eye at least. I'm sure if I was actually playing through some of it and comparing it side by side, I'd be like, okay, this looks a lot better. There's a lot more options than part of this here. Part of what we're dealing with is also how we're watching the videos.
00:16:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah, but for sure. Yeah, that's true. But I mean, like Horizons, we're at the point in gaming where like a lot of things that are AAA games look good. And I don't feel that they need to be improved. Right. I'm sure I will appreciate some things that are improved. Like Final Fantasy seven remake looked super nice. And that stands out on its own. Especially because you're comparing it to the original game, but just other games for this era, it is pretty clean.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, but I don't need games necessarily to Keep going in that direction, but I will appreciate the ones that do
00:17:00
Speaker
I don't want to be misunderstood. I think Horizon is one of the games that can benefit from being on a new console, because it was very, very pretty on PS4, but it had some hiccups, some slowdown if you're playing it on PS4 Pro. It's not super frequent, but it's an absolutely beautiful game, and if they can keep that level of fidelity and just up the frame rate, I'm pretty happy with it.
00:17:27
Speaker
I have the Pro version and I use, I was on a 1080p screen at the time, so I just did the performance mode. And I think it was pretty much, it held stable with performance mode at 30 FPS. If they can get extra power out of it for solid or however, whatever the extra buzzwords they wanna sell with the PS5 to help some of that will probably be good.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah. I got to save some content for the inevitable Horizon episode. It was a good game. What about you, Justin? Anything for PS5 you want to comment before we go into actual content? My stand out is Ratchet and Clank. I grew up with that series. I have fond memories. I've done full skill point runs of a majority of them. And so that is like I was afraid that when
00:18:23
Speaker
Spider-Man did so well for Insomniac, which good for them, that that would potentially mean that they were going to abandon the Ratchet and Clank. The movie did well enough, but it didn't really start anything. So I was afraid that Ratchet and Clank had kind of gotten put to the side. And that general style, it's just fun. Yeah, they've always kind of been a Pixar style game.
00:18:53
Speaker
So I'm happy that there is more Ratchet and Clank. And yeah, I'm a fan of that series. So I'm hoping it's good. And Insomniac has done good things for a very long time. So confident there.
00:19:07
Speaker
Yeah, they're solid. It looks super clean too. Keep using, it looks clean. It's shiny. That was the first time. It's clean. It's clean. Simple and clean. It was the first one in the PS5 demo of things that I thought looked
00:19:30
Speaker
like ps5 graphics worthy they were very much showing off the ray tracing oh yeah especially with clang being metal i supposedly some i there's some discussion of it uh the portal stuff may be an indication of how they're doing content streaming with the the enhanced ssd
00:19:52
Speaker
that's in the PS5. I think that there are probably ways you could get around that with normal resource caching, but having extra RAM definitely helps with that stuff and memory bandwidth for storage. Yeah. No. So I guess to cap it off, are you getting a PS5? Are you sold on it? Is this enough? We already know the answers, but nobody else does. So let's mention it, right?
00:20:23
Speaker
100%, I'm probably going to get one at launch just because I'm fortunate enough to be able to make that decision. And video games are my main hobby. So I will usually have a good PC and whatever consoles have exclusives that I care about. And so the last two gens have pretty much been Sony, Nintendo, and a computer.
00:20:48
Speaker
What do you mean Xbox is nothing? Well, PC, especially with the way that Microsoft is pushing their shared ecosystem, it's becoming less and less necessary to have their physical hardware. Yeah, fuck Xbox. Yeah, you mentioned that you're fortunate enough that you'll be able to get one at launch. I just wanted to say not everybody knows the GameStop truck route, so we can't all be there.
00:21:17
Speaker
throws out the spikes. What about you, Dave? What would it take to get you to buy into the PS5? So obviously, it's probably gonna have a pretty high price point. So I would probably need four titles that I'm like, it's only PS5 exclusive, and they're games I have to play. Yeah.
00:21:45
Speaker
But if it's just a couple, I could probably live vicariously by watching streams of people play certain things. Like Resident Evil, I've not really followed the series at all. But it's an interesting universe and I like watching people play it. I'm also a little scaredy baby.
00:22:03
Speaker
I agree. Yeah, I'm in the same boat, basically. In some of the games they showed off, like Deathloop, I feel like they'll probably have limited exclusivity then come to PC. So it's going to take like a little bit more. Just do the Monster Hunter. Oh, wait a year. It'll be up easy. Well, I bought the PS4 for Monster Hunter, so it's the opposite of a good example. Same. Iceborn is on sale right now.
00:22:30
Speaker
Um, just oh my god, look at this push here over here made a mistake That is that is all right. Let's go bring in the backup Dmb a link later. I'll check it out Um, but uh now that we've done the 22 minute intro, um Do you guys want to talk about anything else? Should we call it here? I mean i'm good Yeah, there's I mean, I guess i've been playing it lately. Have you guys been playing anything recently? any first person shooters
00:22:58
Speaker
Any roguelikes? Anything with poor translations from Chinese to English? I only play games with anthropomorphic animals. Oh, okay. Any furry games?
00:23:14
Speaker
Furry games, the rest of that, I have no idea, but furry games, let me tell you. Let me tell you. All right, let me adjust my chair here. So it's basically half Neopets, half Honeypie. That's not at all true.
00:23:31
Speaker
As I was jokingly alluding to earlier, it is a roguelike FPS and we've all been playing it because I think it's on early access for pretty cheap. What's the industry? But it does have multiplayer. Gunfire Reborn. Good point. Gunfire Reborn. Look at the title. Look back to us.
00:23:52
Speaker
So, yeah, it's been pretty good so far. I feel like I'm playing it roughly a week, maybe. Maybe I played seven hours total, like an hour a day. Yeah, I think we're all roughly around seven to 10 hours somewhere in there. Yeah. Yeah. I may have been creeping on some steam stats last night. Oh, my God. This guy does research. Yeah. No, don't get used to this, people. This isn't a habit we're going to try to make.
00:24:21
Speaker
It has been fun. I was kind of skeptical from the trailer alone when Ian mentioned it, just because I'm a pessimist by nature. But it has been very fun. I really do enjoy the progression of roguelikes and unlocking more things. The main progression being you get access to more guns and you can passively upgrade your character for like starting stats like health. Very much the roguelike rather than roguelike.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yes But Jake and I actually Beat the current content in the game last night. Well, what I took us about an hour But I feel like we had a good run. Yeah, that was pretty solid
00:25:06
Speaker
I mean, we did beat it. Yeah. I was going to come off that statement. You said like you like roguelikes and that's one reason you like the game. I'm coming from the opposite perspective. I don't usually like roguelikes. It's rare that there's one that I particularly get involved in for an extended period of time. But I find this just really fun to play, which is weird because it like came out last month and it's early access from a Hong Kong developer.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah, and those are red flags out the get-go. Yeah, they're firing the red flags at you with the gun. But it's fun. Yeah, it has a good game feel, which definitely helps it. I like Rogue Like's Rogue Legacy. I've put lots of hours into and that's very similar from a progression standpoint.
00:26:06
Speaker
but generally the gun play feels good. It both encourages a play style, but also lets you experiment if you want to, I think. It will let you stay with what you're comfortable with if you want to, or if you find something interesting, you can play around with it. It's quick enough that it doesn't really hamstring you too badly.
00:26:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's an interest. Sorry, guys. Sorry. No, I'll fight you for it. Obviously, you do have guns that you can pick up and certain ones might be more elemental based. But even if you're not getting stuff that seems to be geared towards an elemental weapon, you still have a primary ability, which is throwing out a grenade that'll hit enemies and kind of lock them in time, which deals some decent damage. And then it can be used for crowd control.
00:27:02
Speaker
But you also get smoke grenades, which will deal damage, but also have other effects. So you can kind of go into any of those routes specifically, or sometimes you might be in a situation where you kind of have to side grade some things, but it makes your build more versatile.
00:27:23
Speaker
Like going through a run, it's entirely possible to get something very synergized and be like, this is my main source of damage. This is the exact play style I want to do that fits. But I have gone some other things where like, Oh, I wasn't planning on going more grenades, but I'm getting some good stuff for it. And then it kind of morphed my bill to be more utility based.
00:27:45
Speaker
My last couple of runs have been, I found a specific gun, like the, they do a Diablo-esque style loot rolls, or I guess Borderlands would be more apt.
00:27:59
Speaker
on the guns themselves, and I found one gun-based model that I really liked how it fired and the general effects of it. I think it's the Starburst Lightning Blast. Star Destroyer? No, not the Star Destroyer. It's the Lightning Blast, I believe.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it shoots orbs, and then the right click generates the shield that if you shoot through, it increases the damage. I had a really good run with a really good rolled one, and I just generally liked that play style. And so I spent a whole bunch of games or lives, runs, I guess would be the roguelike term, where I was hard focused on
00:28:47
Speaker
building lightning because it's a primary lightning weapon, and then stacking the stuff along with that, and then kind of just hoping that I would get that gun or a gun that would play with that well. And that worked. So last night, after creeping on your guys' stats, I saw that you got it clear. So, of course, I needed to push through, and I did end up killing him at, like,
00:29:14
Speaker
the final boss that's currently in content at like 1230 or something last night. Yeah. Only 1230 seconds. That's a hell of a run. I need to start stacking lightning.
00:29:30
Speaker
You talked about that specific build. I think there's one of the advantages of the game right now is there's not too much diversity. There's three elements, lightning, like acid, which is decay, and then fire, and then normal type.
00:29:51
Speaker
A couple different types of ammo and then grenades and the special ability. And that's like it. So you can kind of pivot a run, or in other roguelikes you couldn't pivot a run as easily. Like there's been times, like in Dave and I, we had a clear. I didn't, I was just trying to like spec into fire for like the entire run and I was getting like support scrolls and stuff for fire.
00:30:15
Speaker
but like just could not get the fire affinity, which is you have lifesteal basically when you let yourself on fire by letting other people on fire until like the very end of the game almost. They've got it actually and handed it off to me. And that's what is awesome. I wanted to highlight the style.
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah, so let's say we go to a shop and everything is instanced as far as loot, but let's say you clear a room, you get a scroll from a chest. If I know that Jake's going for fire or Justin's going for lightning, I can be like, hey, I have something for you that I can just literally drop on the ground and they can pick it up, which is so nice. Because if I'm just going off of solely my loot tables,
00:30:58
Speaker
I might get some of those sidegrades that are still beneficial, don't really fit into my current play style, and they just kind of sit there. But like I can buy them guns. They can drop guns for me. It's like, oh, hey, I found this really cool thing.
00:31:15
Speaker
So there's super useful. There's actually a lot of choice. Um, surprisingly, like normally in a rogue, like you open up a chest and you get that item. Um, you can either leave the item or take it. Um,
Challenges and Critiques in Gunfire Reborn
00:31:29
Speaker
take it or leave it. They call it. Yeah. Oh, leave it to take it. Okay. Um,
00:31:34
Speaker
But there's so one of your primary upgrade is the Golden Goblet. That's where you access your like in run talent tree. And every time you get one of those, you have three choices to upgrade from.
00:31:50
Speaker
And so you're making choices pretty regularly in regards to that. There are also chests that give you a choice of scrolls. So normally, the scroll chests either give you a goblet or give you a scroll, and then you cannot take it or leave it.
00:32:11
Speaker
But then there's the talking chest, cursed chest. I don't know if there's an official name, but that's what we've been calling it. We call them cursed chests, yeah. Because they're devil doors. Yeah. Those usually have three or four choices. Either give money to get a thing or get a different thing for giving money sometimes. And then there is also a optional scroll chest at some of the later levels where you get three choices of scrolls. Those are usually better scrolls to the legendary tier or whatever.
00:32:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And none of them are typically bad. Certain ones might have negative effects, like a common one. I forget the name of it, but essentially if you're continually hitting enemies, it will refund you some ammo, which is not usually you're going to run out of ammo in a run unless you have, oh, I'm only doing heavy ammo types or whatever reason it's not dropping. You do a little chain guns. Yeah.
00:33:09
Speaker
But the downside of that scroll is if you're not shooting anything for four seconds, it starts to deplete your ammo pool. So typically, if you're the one who has it around, which say to everybody else, hey, could you hurry the fuck up? But Jake found a hack of you can just drop it on the ground until you're ready to go and you then aren't burning that ammo. So I noticed that scroll in particular, I think it does stop counting down ammo after four seconds.
00:33:37
Speaker
So it's basically like a TikTok cycle. But that was in a solo play. They might treat it slightly different. It's also early access, which should be a qualifier for all of this is probably going to change at some point, depending on what their release calendar actually looks like. Yeah. And then I haven't used the dog character at all. What we've probably been talking about is the...
00:34:02
Speaker
The cat, right? Yeah, I don't... He has an actual name. The furry part of the game.
00:34:10
Speaker
So the dog has his own talent tree between runs and inside runs. The gun scroll pool is the same between the characters, but the way that they will interact with those is different. I think the main thing with the dog is that he can do a wheel, correct? Yeah, that's his E, I believe. That's the skill difference.
00:34:35
Speaker
His passive, his between them and skill tree is actually the same, which is nice. You actually share progression. Oh, OK. I assume I wasn't sure because I haven't checked up the dog yet either. I was confused by the the very right hand column. They have like the selection tree.
00:34:53
Speaker
And that was a different lockout system, but I probably just didn't check the dog again since I unlocked him. I don't know for that far bar, but all of the core skills, things like economy, improvement, health, shield, all of that. That's a lot better than what I was thinking. That's all shared, thankfully. He's it's interesting. I want to see this is clearly two characters of like an expanding roster. They'll probably at least look at an injury. I heard some rumors of a bird.
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's on the the loading screens. So the loading screen for the second area is the dog and like the loading screen for the third area is a bird looking character. Oh, OK. I always just assume that that was an enemy that we never ran into for some reason. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yes.
00:35:39
Speaker
But yeah, I actually one of the things I really like about this we're talking about the cooperative aspect is I'm always a fan of RNG manipulation and abuse basically like being able to mitigate RNG in the system. I think I know where this is going. And so like the fact that you can trade scrolls means
00:35:58
Speaker
that if one person is like having an, they might get an item that's okay for them, but amazing for someone else, you can complete their build. Like we were playing with four people and we were trading items pretty frequently every fucking room. We're like, all right, which is down. Yeah, it slows it down a little bit, but I love it. I don't think grudge it. It felt like, you know, when you went to, I didn't go to middle school, but
00:36:20
Speaker
elementary school-ish, and you're trading items for lunch, right? I will give you this Capri Sun if you give me that hot pocket, which for some reason is uncooked. Just having those options is, like you said, really great. Yeah. It covers a multitude of sins for me with RNG. I don't have bad runs usually when I'm in multiplayer with three plus people.
00:36:45
Speaker
because you can just adapt. And so, are there other roguelikes? I struggle sometimes. I'm just like, oh, my first item was trash. I don't like it. This one requires me to be good at the game. I'm like, I'm just uninstalled. How dare it. Yeah. So that's one of the things I love most about it is it has all of those good roguelike vibes, but
00:37:08
Speaker
It doesn't feel like you have that many bad runs, really. It's the fact that it supports multiplayer in a roguelite. There's not a lot as far as I know off of my passing interest in roguelites that have straight multiplayer. The only other one I can think of is 20XX. Oh, true. And I was going to say, don't starve together. And that was a fan clamoring for them to add co-op. Yeah.
00:37:39
Speaker
We considered talking about Don't Starve Together a couple times, but for some reason I can never spend that much time in the game. I was going to say Remnant from the Ashes. It was another game we covered, and it had roguelike aspects, like the world was kind of random, the drops were random, but the big difference between these two, and I only basically played that game until we beat it.
00:37:58
Speaker
And then I was done. I don't even remember if I beat it, actually. We didn't beat the last boss because it was just a pain in the dick and not fun. We're bad at games, basically, to take away. That's why you talk about games. It's usually how it works. Yeah. But it didn't have co-op coverage for the RNG aspects. It's not like, oh, my buddy's helping me out here because they got a good drop I could use. And that makes this feel strictly better.
00:38:28
Speaker
for me. Yeah, it doesn't feel like strictly just shooting. Yeah, you could throw some other bodies in there and you're also shooting and it does scale with multiplayer. Yes. But the trading aspect is definitely key. And also, if you're down, somebody can pick you up. Yes, which is super useful, which we had some problems when we started. But I noticed in the skill tree, as you unlock later tiers, you can see the next year.
00:38:55
Speaker
there is a tier two speed up recovery for reviving somebody else. I think it's like 60% at max. Oh, dang. Basically, you touch somebody in the rough. It's like the borderlands. I don't know if you guys played the borderlands too, but one of Maya's ultimate abilities was it changed it from a graviton warp hold to just instantly pick up whoever you're pointing at at any distance.
00:39:24
Speaker
pretty good support ability. Yeah, it's fun. And the other thing is we talk about meta progressions when we cover roguelikes. And I feel like this one has really strong meta progression, where there's a huge difference for I just started playing the game and
00:39:41
Speaker
We've talked, we played with this for a week and we're gonna do a podcast episode on it. Like, it's much, I'm much stronger now in the game. My character is just much better. Yeah. It really shows it for how far we've gotten in the run for each run. So like, oh, you're like, oh, we'll put an extra little point in my max health or shields or possible guns to drop at the start of the game. And also that in conjunction with you learning the enemy types and the areas helps a lot.
00:40:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the game is definitely balanced around the multiplayer trading, because it's more than just doubling when you had two people and stuff like that. But I also feel like there's scaling considerations for the progression tree. Because I think when you hit the second tier, so you've put like 10 points into your character at that point.
00:40:35
Speaker
that's when you get access to or is it the the 20 tier where you have the straight dr damage reduction this will be changed it's early access whatever he says is true it'll be different when you play the game when you listen to this um but we the first time i got to the desert area
00:40:55
Speaker
I instantly got dropped like there. There was no there was no recovering to it. But now running through the desert area, obviously learning the enemy types and stuff like that, but also just having a bigger HP pool, having a bigger shield that recharges and the again, the straight damage reduction on top of that. I think it's definitely like the damage probably scales
00:41:25
Speaker
into the axe because of that too. And I know you pointed out that one of the other tiers where you get the access to certain inscriptions, you only start getting those inscriptions to even drop, at least in normal mode, when you hit certain bosses. So you won't get more than two affixes in the first chapter until the first boss may drop one with three and a rare. And then the Gemini inscriptions off of the second boss and further
00:41:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's nice because with those, so let's say you have a gun that you like. I like how this gun feels, but it feels kind of underpowered. You do have the options through the curse chests and the one of the shopkeepers.
00:42:12
Speaker
to just either flat upgrade it or have some of those affixes changed to like possibly fire extra projectiles, change its damage element type, a bunch of other fun stuff. So usually I'll find one thing that seems semi-decent and pump the living fuck out of it. Yeah, like one of my favorite weapons right now is the prism.
00:42:37
Speaker
which is like a little poison kunai. It's so good. And you throw it out and then it bounces like five times. So I kind of have been pumping everything into this acid build when possible and crit. And so far my best runs have been with that. Yeah.
00:42:54
Speaker
And there's some interesting interactions with that stuff too, so at least I think it works this way. The prism, if it hits an enemy, it does not bounce. But if you get the piercing affix,
00:43:10
Speaker
it will then bounce after going through an enemy. So like that combination with that specific weapon ends up being stronger than its individual parts. Yes. Yeah. There's some kind of like taking it back to what you said Justin, the Diablo style modifiers, some of them are kind of built defining. You pick one up and you're like,
00:43:32
Speaker
This is actually ridiculous. I had a Justice Dragon thing that had multi-shot, so it fired three orbs with every shot or some nonsense, and it just did stupid damage. Instant Kill is a top contender for one of the best ones. I was really mad about losing one run. I got an exclusive affix on the Lightning Glove that increased its AOE area.
00:43:58
Speaker
So it shamed substantially wider and it just shit on dudes. Oh, man. Can we focus on the game part of this now? It's not my pastime. Yeah, there's so many guns that are built that I've yet to explore. Like I haven't touched anything with fire yet and I've barely touched lightning. I just found that asking is really fun so far.
00:44:24
Speaker
But that's the thing, I keep wanting to go back to it and try out other things. And I really have enjoyed playing with you guys. Also, Ian, who's not here with us, but he's been playing a lot as well. And he's been honestly solid. Yep. And there's actually hidden mechanics. I didn't realize this, that Ian had mentioned the miasma or manipulation or something. That's all based on combinations of elements affecting enemies.
00:44:53
Speaker
So when you get, I think if you combo fire and decay, it causes an explosion. If you combo decay and lightning, you get manipulation, which is basically the mind control. And then there's a third one. Yeah.
00:45:14
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not familiar with those at all. So I had seen the icon, I just figured it was one person's specific skill show up when we were in multiplayer, but that's apparently where that's coming from. So the dog has an advantage there because he can have two different weapon elements at once and basically have that all the way up.
00:45:35
Speaker
I have seen that on the Gemini, too, where it was just weapon one and weapon two share damage type.
Death Mechanic Analysis in Multiplayer
00:45:41
Speaker
Yeah. So I had like fire and corrosive or fire and lightning. I'm just like, the Gemini system is actually pretty interesting, too, because it's it's a little hard to build around, at least based on our progression tier. But it also encourages you to hold on to weapons you don't necessarily like just because you like that affix.
00:46:00
Speaker
Yeah. So the Gemini thing is like going to fix on a, now I'm saying an affix on a weapon where it'll say, Hey, um, if the other item has the exact same Gemini, they benefit from each other.
00:46:17
Speaker
Like for, I think I had two prisms, which I was the cat, so I sadly could not dual wield them. But I got like eight times crit multiplier versus four, and it was, oof, so choice. There's some crazy ones. Like there's ones where the ammo capacity or the clip size is the combined total of the two weapons. And then there's some weapons that just by design have really low clips. And you're just like, that's not the case anymore. I'm broken.
00:46:47
Speaker
Just a lot of fun RNG combos there. I forgot to mention, how do you guys feel about the little challenge rooms? Or the portals? Whatever you want to call them. We're going to get to the bad stuff eventually, right? I don't think they're all bad. I think some are easily debatable. I have wax poetic about how
00:47:10
Speaker
It's very easy to make bad first person platforming. And I think we've all experienced that. There's also things that can make it effectively impossible to clear them because there are curse scrolls that have straight up negative effects.
00:47:28
Speaker
which reduce your movement speed there is and if you pick up weapons technically some of the heavier weapons will reduce your movement speed also um yeah a lot of them they designed around that a little bit because the uh you start with the the starting gun has infinite ammo and has a dedicated slot so you're never replacing your starting gun you will always be able to fire at people um that gun also
00:47:52
Speaker
gives you the standard movement speed. So if you end up having a double chain gun build, you can switch to that for the the jumping puzzle rooms. But you can still hurt yourself by having a cursed thing that reduces your movement speed. So then you can't actually complete the challenge. There are usually time to get an extra chest. Technically, there's usually a hidden chest and an extra chest. But
00:48:20
Speaker
Way too much time for that, though. Even without that, though, I feel like some of the platforming has been a little fuzzy. I consider myself decent enough at platforming, but there are times where it just felt very slippery for... I just lightly walked off a ledge and it fell, or... Yeah. Like, it has no jump-dash forgiveness. If you did not do exactly what it expected, you're gonna clip in a way and then fall down versus actually go on top of the ledge.
00:48:50
Speaker
And there's no clamor. There's no like, oh, I got a foot up there. So let's just climb up. It's all or nothing. One of them in particular needs you to dash up the wall after your jump. Otherwise you can't actually get up there. Yeah, it's.
00:49:06
Speaker
They're a little weird. Is this the desert one? Yeah, the desert one where you're jumping across the walls. If you jump too early, your dash won't project you up the wall and it's a slide surface. So you slide back down. Oh, that can fuck right off because so far nothing else has worked like that of the platforming I've done. Yeah. And I made that without that mechanic. I might have had a speed boost or something. I don't know. I didn't realize that the.
00:49:34
Speaker
The scroll I'm always hoping for is the one where you get movement speed based on how big your shield is. The one after dashing screwed me over and the jumping puzzle is actually because I'd have to dash to a small ledge and then have acceleration is terrible.
00:49:53
Speaker
The jumping puzzle in the water area, Dave had watched me in Discord Stream attempt that for the first time. I found tricks to it now, but it's still inconsistent and I think I've only, out of the four or five times I've gotten that room, I think I've only got the challenge chest once.
00:50:13
Speaker
Yeah. I only encountered it one time after watching you. And when I watched you, I thought you were a fucking idiot. But then after I failed for three minutes straight, I was like, yeah, this is legitimately a pain in the ass. So there there's a corner ledge that you can side dash to and then you just simply walk onto that first pillar.
00:50:34
Speaker
Yeah, I did eventually get to that point. But yeah, it's not always the most clear and it sucks to feel like you're missing out on a chest and progression. You don't see your feet. I think if they simply added your feet model into the normal camera view, that would go a long way to understanding your position a little bit. Yeah.
00:50:58
Speaker
I just wish they were more consistent. Some of them are relatively easy and other ones are almost impossible. And so it's clear that they really haven't, it's early access. That excuse will come up a lot. It's also just a reason, right? But if they just ran like 10 testers through all of these and are just like, try this 30 times, they would realize some of these are real freaking hard and some are really easy.
00:51:22
Speaker
And, but the water one in the third world does give you one of the choice chests that have a higher legendary rate. So like, I think there's some balancing there, but also that one's a little jank because the bonus chest, you can just open through the wall and grab the scroll from it. So it's not really a bonus chest. I spent way too long trying to get the bonus chest a normal way, and then I was like, oh wait, I can press F here.
00:51:50
Speaker
Dave actually, he opened it through the wall and then I was down in the water and I jumped and I grabbed the item from the water. It was absolutely dumb. Then there's combat challenge rooms, which are absolutely fine. I enjoy this. It plays into the game's strengths.
00:52:06
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Speaking of fighting enemies, I- There's enemies? The enemies are the friends who made a lot of the way. It's a walking sim and I unlock chests. I break into people's houses. Let me see your grandmother's heirlooms. Are you Link? Yeah, let's do some of those things. My precious pots. So there's three areas in the game at this point in time. The first area is kind of
00:52:32
Speaker
Tunnels. I think it's supposed to be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you guys feel about the enemies or areas? Okay.
00:52:50
Speaker
In normal mode, the first area is pretty boring at this point. I'm not sure if you guys got an opportunity to play any Elite after you got your clear. I did like one or two runs, not full runs, like died pretty early, because they start giving you better weapons earlier in Elite mode.
00:53:14
Speaker
and there's a chance for elites to randomly spawn in rooms, which drop significantly stronger loot, like act boss equivalent, plus I got like a scroll and a golden goblet off of the one I fought. It can kind of start the actual fun loop earlier in Elite mode. So I'm actually looking forward to playing more Elite mode now that I have that access to that.
00:53:41
Speaker
Yeah. Um, but yeah, the first, the first area is fine. Um, I like once we got the chest that has some starter weapons and being able to just blow through the first like two areas pretty quickly, um, has sped up that section, which makes it better.
00:54:00
Speaker
Yeah. Do you like a theming of one of the areas more than the others? Right now, I'm definitely a sucker for act three. Yeah, three. Three's really good. Three's very Asian water themed. Well, the whole game is Asian themed. Let me first point that out. Besides the Western, I guess there's a pagoda in the Western town, isn't there?
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah, and just like the style of enemies still fits that vibe. I mean, there's like some straight up Star Fox, so. Yeah. There's that. There are some, so there are some derivative things in this game. Who also cloaks. Yeah. Also, yeah. We talked about this like when we saw it, but the Bone Dragon cannon is just Zarya's gun from Overwatch.
00:54:55
Speaker
It fires projectiles that do the same thing as her ult on a lesser scale, and that's all it does. And then the reload animation, you hold it back and it gathers energy for a second, is exactly the same as Zarya's reload animation. So maybe not 100% new ideas, but it's still really fun.
00:55:20
Speaker
Yeah, I just like some of the things in act three as far as like I hate the monks Like a roadhog and other CC options that encourages more of a multiplayer gameplay You could have call us for like hey help me. I'm dying. Yeah, and I like that the enemy is
00:55:41
Speaker
are different models, like they have the same niche between each, uh, each act. Like there's a small little guy, the standard grunts, like the long range shooter guys, they introduce some more skinny. Yeah, they introduce some more variety, uh, throughout the three acts, but, uh,
00:56:00
Speaker
They're not just straight palette swaps. They are unique models with some unique mechanics. Like the one in act two might have armor, whereas the one in act three might have shield. So on and so forth. Like there's at least some, there's variance even inside the archetypes. Yeah.
00:56:20
Speaker
I want to touch on my main gripe with the game though. We just had a lot of positive things and I got to combo break it. So multiplayer death is currently really bad. Apparently it was worse when the game launched to their credo. When the game launched, when you were playing multiplayer, if you died and your friends were still continuing, you never respawned.
00:56:43
Speaker
You just watch them for up to an hour or whatever Now you respawn when you kill the boss when they kill the boss and you miss out on your items
00:56:53
Speaker
Uh, but you can still spend a significant amount of time doing literally nothing, which is not multiplayer. That's just Twitch, you know, like that's just watching people play video games. So one boon of synthetic, which we talked about a bit back is if you do die and let's say in a boss fight, you're still going to lose out in the loot, but you're always going to respond to next room. So you do get penalized, but you can still fucking play the game and you're not just capped out.
00:57:22
Speaker
Because then you start to like judge your your buddy who you're playing with who's like, well, what do they have at the shop? I don't care. Bring me back, motherfucker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just sucks to sit out on the action. Yeah. And it's something they could fix. Like relatively simply, if you really want to penalize people, have them take like a health hit, have them take a shield hit, whatever, make it easier for them to subsequently die. They're paying that penalty. Maybe they turn into that person who's just zerg cannon fodder dying all the time. But
00:57:52
Speaker
at least they're playing the game.
Conclusion and Audience Engagement
00:57:54
Speaker
I think even just taking this as they have right now, right now, when you want to revive yourself and not get picked up by a teammate, you pay your in-between run currency. Your meta currency. Yeah. Even just making it so that you have to spend that currency every time, and it takes half of whatever you have. But I think maybe how it does, or maybe there's some kind of cap for that. This game's close to half, yeah.
00:58:21
Speaker
just every time you die instead of having that limit so that even if you just wanted to smash your face against the wall, you kind of could. But maybe only in multiplayer, like don't allow you to do that in single player. And if you have zero left, like you didn't kill any enemies since you died left, then you can't revive or something like that. Maybe. I mean, it seems fair, but there's also like an option.
00:58:47
Speaker
Even if it was like a debuff, I would like to see kind of like a debuff you pay off maybe. OK. Where it's just like your next 20. Yeah, I can go to your bank because that way, like even if you reach zero, it's like I can keep playing the game. I can pay this off. I can reinvest because right now sometimes when you tap out, you're like, I'm losing half of my run. If I hit that end button and in multiplayer. Maybe you don't get a bet. Yeah, you know, the.
00:59:16
Speaker
In elite mode, to add to that, you also get triple, uh, soul currency, metacurrency. Um, so by the end of the first boss, I had 150, uh, which is, uh, basically what I was ending most of my runs while going through roughly at, um, I think to 200 is what I had when we beat it. Yeah. It was like the highest. Um, and that's before getting the, the boss. Metacurrency multipliers from the progression tree. Yeah.
00:59:45
Speaker
Also the boss fights I've been enjoying too. They're not overly complicated, but there's enough mechanics in them to keep them engaging and they'll have some ad phases as well. And all of them have achievements. I saw that you have the artillery achievement from the final Act III guy, and I was like, wow.
01:00:04
Speaker
What is the achievement? Don't get hit by his artillery. I'm not sure if that includes the the straight line one that he does periodically or just the the snap ball he shoots out. I assume it's the straight line one that has the indicator and then drops. I think my favorite thing about the bosses is that they're all different. Like none of them are super derivative, something I kind of got. There were some cool remnant bosses, but sometimes
01:00:35
Speaker
Like roguelike type games turn into just shoot the thing with your overpowered gun. Hopefully it's overpowered at this point You're in trouble till it dies dodge the thing and you're done. That's still kind of true here but they throw in different moves different mechanics there's some hopscotch and That keeps it that keeps it fresh for me. I'm not like I never get up to the Boston. I'm like, it's this again, right? I
01:00:58
Speaker
I totally do that for the first boss at this point. And the cutscenes before the bosses. They're cute, but I wish. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. But yeah, that was basically my main negative thing. And for a game that came out last month,
01:01:19
Speaker
and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I don't tend to really buy into early access games. Props to Ian. He suggested this, I think, in Discord initially. It's really fun and surprisingly playable, and I haven't hard crashed yet, which is pretty essential in a game where a run can last up to an hour. And out the gate, that's pretty good.
01:01:49
Speaker
Well, I don't know. This is usually where we stop talking, I think, right? No, we did just hit an hour. So do you guys. Do you have more to say on it?
01:02:01
Speaker
Let's just go back to PlayStation stuff. Talk about that a little more. All right, PS5. Well, I'd like to thank Justin for being our guest tonight on a relatively short notice. Thanks for having me. I invited him to the call while we, like, at the start when we start talking. Dave was performing vulgar hand gestures. Thanks to Dave, again, for joining me for this episode. I mean, literally always, Jake, I'll always be here. And most of all, thanks to myself.
01:02:29
Speaker
for playing us out here. Yeah, if you guys have ideas for great early access games that we'll look at and not buy, you can send them in to soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you can join the discussion at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And until next time, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night. Have a good one.