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S2 Ep37: RUINER
78 Plays7 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they stop at nothing to save their brother in this lighthearted tail about friendship and ultra-violence.
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Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:00
Speaker
Get him, uppy. Get ready.
00:00:30
Speaker
Project sample!
00:00:57
Speaker
How's it going, everyone?
Who Listens to the Podcast?
00:00:58
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? I always want to have something witty to say, and I don't, but it's actually going pretty well. That's good. That's good. But we never talk about, how are you doing? Actually, I think we do almost every time. I think you turn it around and be like, how are you doing? Actually, do you?
00:01:21
Speaker
See, if we listen to our podcasts, we'd actually know. Ain't nobody got time for that. I'd be surprised if anyone listens to this podcast, Dave. Even though the fact that someone right here is hearing my voice means that I'm wrong to some extent. Unless no one is hearing my voice. This is a weird line of thought for me to go down.
00:01:41
Speaker
Can
Introduction to 'Ruiner'
00:01:42
Speaker
we go back to like the jovial banter of like we're both coming off being sick and then we're like What are we talking about tonight? And then we talked about the game. I like that. So the game tonight is Ruiner and I Was sick. Yeah, and I'm now less sick, but I might cough a little bit. So we'll see how it goes but Ruiner to make a full circle there is a game came out in 2017 published by devolver devolver digital and
00:02:08
Speaker
There's a big publisher, I love their titles that they've been publishing, such as Hotline Miami, and developed by Rycon or Recon. I'm not sure exactly how you'd say that. I want to say Rycon, because it seems like it's spelled like Dycon Raddish, which I'm sure I'm wrong on that, but that's how I'm reading it. Yeah, they're a Polish developer out of Warsaw, actually.
Combat Mechanics in 'Ruiner'
00:02:30
Speaker
We probably got really close to them when we, uh, when we visited, but didn't stop by. Didn't think of it. Should've, should've. Oh, well, I hadn't played the game at that point. I, uh, I had, but I didn't realize they were in Poland. So stuff we figure out or researching months after the fact. Um, other things we figured out more recently, the game itself is how would you, how would you describe this is definitely a top down shooter, but.
00:02:58
Speaker
Isometric yeah isometric As you can see from my notes the first thing I put in I started playing was this game is fucking badass, right? because it's very stylized as far as the
00:03:13
Speaker
Like it's not crazy graphics, but what they use with the lighting and shadows. Oh, yeah. And like the music and then the combat and everything, it just like throws you in. Yeah. And you just get very excited and into it like almost instantly.
Gameplay Loop and Experience
00:03:29
Speaker
So I feel like we can jump into some of that. Like you mentioned the combat and that is really the core of this game. There's a little bit of time you spend in the overworld. Like you can talk to people.
00:03:40
Speaker
I think there's a quest you can go around and interact with some world objects. Ringcock, which is the name of the city. I want to pronounce that as Ringcock, not Ringcock. Like Cock Ring.
00:03:56
Speaker
You can pronounce that however you want. Making sure. This is a Polish developer, I'm gonna pronounce it like they intended. Mostly you're spending your time in areas adjacent to the main world, or the main world, the hub. And you're fighting gangs, taking out bounties, trying to find your brother, you know, standing things.
00:04:22
Speaker
but the moment to moment gameplay and the loop is largely fast frenetic action followed by a bit of downtime where you are rewarded for your fight and then you move into the next area where you're again ambushed it's kind of like
00:04:39
Speaker
the corridor walls come up and it's like, here's your arena, fight, survive, and then the next one, right? Yeah. Which,
Weapon Strategies and Skill Trees
00:04:47
Speaker
as I've already stated, the combat is fucking badass. Yes. Let's get a sound clip of that so I can reuse it. But it's very fast paced. You start off with like, I think just like a crowbar. Yeah, it's a longer crowbar.
00:05:04
Speaker
I know it doesn't, it sounds weird to say it's a longer crowbar, but I think, when I think a crowbar, I think like a foot long, maybe two feet. His crowbar is like three feet long, he's gonna... That's still a crowbar though, right? It's a pipe. It's a pipe. It's a lid pipe. So you have a melee weapon? Yes. It's definitely a piece of pipe when you start out.
00:05:26
Speaker
and laying some pipe on these dudes. But you kind of like dash around to enemies and you can do a swing of your melee weapon. And when it starts off, it's kind of like a one hit kill. And some people have guns, but you can close the distance really easily. But you also have your own gun and then you kill an enemy.
00:05:47
Speaker
No, you get the Ruiner a little bit later. The side pistol is the... Oh, no, yeah. The pistol is the Ruiner. That's your fallback. Yes. Yes. Which gets upgraded later. Yeah. But you can also pick up enemies' weapons and use that. So as you're going through and chaining all these kills and dashing away from bullets and going behind people and hitting them with a fucking crowbar wrench or a longer crowbar,
00:06:12
Speaker
It's just, it's really quick. And then you can get like executions where kind of like in doom is like in this stunned ink, in cap state. And you get to do an animation where I like the ones where it does it with the melee weapon. Yeah. So when you start off with the.
00:06:28
Speaker
I'm going to say pipe, correct me if we're wrong. You kind of like jumps up and just slams down like in the center of their back type thing. And they just kind of like explode. And then they're gone. But then you're like dealing with other enemies. And like games with modern games with executions like this, you have iframes for the entire duration of the animation. Another reason I like it. Very important.
00:06:50
Speaker
because they could have made the animations really, really quickly and kind of reduce the impact of it, made it less cool and left you vulnerable. But instead they chose to just make the animation take a little bit of time and you look awesome.
00:07:03
Speaker
Whether that's pulling out the Ruiner and just shooting somebody in the head at a point like ranged to finish them off or whatever you have. There's even one where it's like you're holding the person up and you're just like three slow punches in their gut and they fall over and die. They're not all flashy. It's pretty great. You mentioned some of the guns there. You can quickly toggle between whatever your equipped melee weapon is and whatever your equipped ranged weapon is. And it's two ways you can sort of play through the game.
Skill Trees and Play Styles
00:07:33
Speaker
You always have your base ranged weapon, which is like the Ruiner or your upgrade later, and your melee weapon, which starts out as a pipe and eventually you replace it with a sword.
00:07:46
Speaker
But they do decent damage, but it's always the lowest basically of your options. If you pick up an opponent's melee weapon or ranged weapon, it'll have like a limited number of hits in the case of a melee weapon. Like a durability. Exactly. Or ammo in a sense. Yeah. But you'll be able to deal a lot more damage or have some more utility depending on like what you have equipped.
00:08:12
Speaker
So you're incentivized to kind of, I compare a lot of this to Hotline Miami, where in Hotline Miami, you're constantly looking for resources to continue to clear the stage out. You're like, pick up a shotgun real quick, shoot a guy, throw the shotgun at somebody else, run up, like punch him on the ground.
00:08:32
Speaker
Ruiner is similar where you're picking up these resources and using it to fight and until it expires, then you're grabbing your next set or your next piece and continuing to fight. You're kind of like the John Wick in a sense. Yeah. And part of that is the badassery of that, of like, I can handle any weapon, any situation to go in and just murder bad guys. The other part of that is
00:08:57
Speaker
It helps for a more diverse gameplay. I could have easily gone through the game with one gun and one weapon and had just as much fun. But it definitely adds more when you're like, oh, I have the shotgun now. That has maybe two cartridges left. Let me switch something else. Oh, now I have an ice laser. It's nice to switch between those. They have a lot of variety in the weapon types.
00:09:23
Speaker
Something I kind of leaned on a little bit early playthrough is a flamethrower, which just, in just a short burst, there's basically like two options here. You hold it for like a second and a half and, or maybe like two seconds and whoever you're burning straight up dies. Yeah. Just to die. If you burst them though, with a little like second burst, it'll do enough damage to them that they're taken into the executable state reliably. And you can just execute everyone at the super ammo efficient.
00:09:52
Speaker
weapon, and there's a skill tree for upgrading your utilization of melee weapons and ammo. It's not the flashiest thing, but it's actually, in my opinion, one of the best to actually allow you to commit to using a given weapon.
00:10:10
Speaker
And the benefit of the skill tree is you can unallocate points. Because there are lots of situations where I'm like, holy fuck, I'm getting my shit stomped in. Let me try a different approach. Or maybe I need to invest points in shield or something. And you can just take everything out of here, put it in here, and then you just go and do it again. Exactly. It's really nice. I like games that give you full limitless respect and then let you
00:10:39
Speaker
and then build the gameplay in such a way that that's not a downside. You're not removing something from the gameplay by giving players more choice.
Combat Tactics and Skill Enhancements
00:10:48
Speaker
Or even in the case of something like, if we use an example like Skyrim, like a more in-depth RPG, if you go into heavy armor stuff, you're obviously not gonna be a very stealthy character. You're gonna be more noticeable, and I assume, loud. So if something requires stealth, you shouldn't be forced to
00:11:05
Speaker
But while I'm trying to brute force my way through and just kill everybody, which really enjoyable is for how I play games. But it's nice to have that option to be like, but now I want to be a ninja now. Yeah. And the skill trees here is like, there's a couple that are a little less interesting to me, but they're all worth playing around with a little bit.
00:11:27
Speaker
Did you do much in the way of grenades or supply drops? Grenade I explicitly basically always ignore because I feel like the points are better spent elsewhere. Hells yeah. But I agree that there's different ways you can kind of play this game, different combos you can execute. So probably the most core ability you get it really early is your dash, right?
00:11:46
Speaker
Your dash lets you almost instantaneously move from one point to another. Enemies have pretty good tracking in this game, so they'll turn and shoot at you pretty quick, but it can throw them off a little bit. You can dodge environmental attacks, grenades, things like that.
00:12:03
Speaker
But if you dash right up next to somebody or like past them or whatever, it will allow you to hit them with a melee weapon. They'll be stunned for a second basically. You have an opportunity. And you can actually chain that with grenades. So one really devastating combo is there's a personal shield you can get that puts like a forward-facing shield in front of you.
00:12:26
Speaker
And I thought this was really awkward on my first playthrough. I don't know if you felt the same, but every time you attack, the shield goes away. Yes. I don't understand how that worked for a good...
00:12:38
Speaker
half of the game? Yeah. Because I'm like, aha, my shield's up. Let me just shoot this guy quick. And it's like I pulled my pants down like, hey, fuck me in the ass now. So we get hit by one thing. Yeah, exactly. And the enemies were fairly strong at this point. You don't have a lot of health. And I got punished every time. Exactly. But one strategy is use that shield and then get the perk, which is a couple. The skill trees are like vertical for each skill. The upgrades go down.
00:13:03
Speaker
They're not trees as much as skill vines. Yeah, they're skill vines. Skill roots. Not just vines. Trees is an inherited term for convenience here. But the couple perk points down, the shield does impact damage when you dash through people. You're like, all right, that's kind of cool. Maybe we can sort of use this. But it's not going to do enough damage to kill anybody. But it'll just stun them for a moment, knock them back a little bit.
00:13:29
Speaker
So what you do is you get the shield up, you dash through the enemies, and mid dash, you hit your grenade button as soon as the impact hits the enemies, and you get that little slow effect of dealing damage. So you have that opportunity to use your grenade. Those guys are dead, because you literally dash through them, stun them, and then hit them with a point-and-link grenade explosion at the cost of a little bit of energy, safe guaranteed kill on a group of enemies. And this game is full of little combos like that.
00:13:57
Speaker
I was going to point out, the grenade does not damage yourself. No. You can be within the blast radius, you take no friendly fire there. It's really just a radial, it's a point blank A we around you is really how it goes.
00:14:09
Speaker
I didn't know that initially I thought it was going to be some projectile. I'm like, I'm already dodging so much. I don't want to put my, I don't want to play Snake in Smash Brothers. I want to throw out grenades because I'm going to walk into it later type thing. Yeah, I actually, it took me, I actually forgot how the grenades worked on this playthrough and it took me longer than it should have for me to realize it was a point blank AOE. And I just wasted a bunch of energy. I'm like, the grenades aren't going anywhere. Do I have to hold it in longer? Yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
You know how some games have the arc? I think Gears of War has that arc that kind of builds out where you're swinging the little maze. Yeah, you're fixing the trajectory. Exactly. You don't get that here, but the game's too fast-paced for it anyway.
00:14:52
Speaker
That's probably the least utilized option. You also mentioned the supply drop, which I didn't use at all the first playthrough. But I realized for this one that if you use the supply drop, basically it takes like 10 seconds, something like that, before it drops down without any upgrades. But when you trigger it, you pick what drop you want. And you can pick from like any ranged weapon, I think, that you've encountered, or any melee weapon that you've encountered.
00:15:22
Speaker
and just get one of those. Wait, how do you pick which one you get? There's a radial menu that shows up and you can do that. So I didn't use that the entirety of me playing through this game. Good to know. Yeah. And so if you're doing a specific heavy weapon having playthrough where you're like, I'm really committed to using this weapon, you get supply drop and you pick up the weapon perks that give you more ammo for your weapon and then more durability for melee.
00:15:52
Speaker
And this is actually viable because if you run that there's a mechanic in combat where after you've slain 30 security guards who's like swarming over you matrix style All of their guns are on the ground and you'll get this this prompt that a recycler bot is like inbound on your location, right?
00:16:11
Speaker
And I love that mechanic. I think that's cool. We were talking about the loop before, but it's like that nice downtime. So you clear like the room full of enemies, just like their bot shows up, and you're like, what does this do? Recycle. And then it kind of does like this cool...
00:16:27
Speaker
like a thumpers yeah like a poem and then all the guns kind of dematerialize and turn into like dust get sucked into it and it starts shooting out these credits yeah which is like experience for you and then afterwards it goes and spits out like an upgraded gun of some sort yeah
00:16:49
Speaker
And the quality seems to depend on like how many guns are left there. Yes. So if you have, um, if you're running a melee playthrough and you're focusing on, uh, like utilizing less ammo, fewer weapons.
00:17:03
Speaker
You can maximize your experience early game Which is kind of cool. You get that trade-off. You're like I didn't pick up anybody's guns I wasn't pressured in this fight. I just touch you by I I didn't touch anything and That you get pretty good payouts for it Which is which is nice The only thing I wish they would have changed a little bit there is that I almost always pick up the good gun the upgraded gun Then leaving my old gun on the ground so I immediately hit the Thumper again
00:17:32
Speaker
to get a little bit of extra experience. I think I did that once or twice. I'm like, no, let me pick up this shitiest gun. Oh, this guy has a little water pistol? Great. I picked that up and like, gosh, gosh. So then I can just swap out the piece of shit. Yeah. I should get that ROI. There was another thing on the melee I actually missed in the first playthrough, but I caught up here. On the backswing of an attack, if you attack and hold, you'll start charging up
00:18:00
Speaker
a backswing attack that's just this massive aoe like burst of damage for a one-handed weapon and it takes like a block of energy which is your resource like like health and if you're using a two-handed weapon you do like a spin to win. Yeah, spin to win. Yeah. Axedarius style thing.
00:18:20
Speaker
And, uh, that makes mainly a lot better as it turns out. It does. Um, it's really great for like knocking down people who have shields or just anything where you can like, cause the spin will hit multiple times. So if you got like a fucking sledgehammer, you're really getting your money's worth out of that. Yeah. But the bigger weapon you have, the slower it is to swing. Exactly. Yeah. And the further you get into the game, so many enemies are dashing away from you and also have shields and also have guns.
00:18:50
Speaker
So I kind of steered away from melee because I had trouble like dashing into somebody and doing the swing at the same time. They're fast. Yeah. Those enemies are fast. Usually I want to like run and go. Kind of like how I'm playing Hades now. Yeah. I'm like, let me dash away, get my attacks in, dash away. Like always get that positioning in first and then try and murder. Yeah.
00:19:16
Speaker
It's really, really, it's more demanding to play in melee for this for sure, for the whole thing. There's a lot of great range options that you kind of completely have to neglect if you go melee. But the skill tree is really cool. One
Mind Control and Upgrade Systems
00:19:31
Speaker
of the ones you can kind of lean on the most is, or for me in my case, is the, there's a mind control, like shock, mind, I can't remember exactly what it's called,
00:19:42
Speaker
But it's mind controllability. It basically channels on one enemy. And then they join your team for a time. Which is freaking great. Because that guy does work, depending on who you're mind controlled.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah. You don't want to get anybody who's like, oh, I'm going to self-destruct. Very short-lived teammate. But if you get some of the bigger baddies, you obviously can't get like some of the fucking goliaths because that would be overpowered. I could grab a boss. But if something's like a rogue, like an assassin, where it just goes up and backstabs you, it will usually kill you in one hit. Yeah. Getting those people, like once they spawn in, I just start channeling them like, where the fuck are you? And then when they come into your zone of influence, they're like,
00:20:24
Speaker
gotcha, we're friends. And then they'll go off and kill people. And they pull aggro pretty well too. Whoever is mind controlled tends to just have a permanent, they're hitting that taunt button as quickly as possible. And then when they expire or when they die, you have the option to execute them as well. So depending on the other perks you have,
00:20:44
Speaker
you can use the iframes to kill them. Also they might drop like health and energy which helps sustain. So in one of the last sections of the game you're in like this onslaught of enemies after enemies after enemies. So it helps to have a team there for certain things because
00:21:08
Speaker
Again, dodging is fun, but it's helpful when you can delegate certain things. Yeah, and not being hit by everyone at once is really nice. This one also has like, it's got an expensive kind of longer perk vine. But at the end of it, the last one I remember is called Lich King. It allows you to mind control two more people. You're just like, all right, well, everybody's on my side now. Now the whole squad's fucking here.
00:21:37
Speaker
It's like, but you're using abilities like that, and those drain your energy pool, which is next to your health. One of the passives I think is like, or one of the vines that's kind of underutilized, it's easy to pass over it, is heal, which just takes your energy, turns it into health, right? It's not particularly efficient. It doesn't give you a lot of health.
00:22:01
Speaker
Health drops are pretty plentiful, but that masks how good that tree actually is. Because you get a couple points, and you get the ability to turn health into energy. And you have a constant regenerating health. It's just a passive benefit on one of the perks. And then at the bottom, you get the ability to, if you have like, I think it's your health maxed out, and you go to turn it on, it'll generate ammo as well.
00:22:27
Speaker
And as soon as you have that and whatever melee or ranged weapon you want, you're set. You don't need to make choices anymore. There are no sacrifices. Nope, I have everything. Yes.
00:22:41
Speaker
And any game that lets you have this out of combat kind of a permanent loop, so if you have that tree and the ability to convert energy to health and health regains automatically over time, you just can be maxed out for every encounter. Yeah, because you do have like these little recharge stations where it might give you some health or energy, but they cap out at a point. Like early on, you're like, oh, I'm back to full because you have no stats. Yes. So it's like, oh, you heal two health, great. Later on that two health, you're like,
00:23:10
Speaker
Only to health, huh? And it sucks, because maybe you will get clipped by some environmental trap in between areas. Yeah, they got flames or electricity. Maybe you just fucked up in some way, somebody hit you, and they hit harder than you expected. And that always sucks, for sure. Yeah. Unless you circumvent that issue. But if you want to go hard in the paint and have no defensive options, sacrifice all shields, whatever,
00:23:36
Speaker
Like this
Key Boss Fights and Strategies
00:23:37
Speaker
overcharge tree is exactly what you want, which basically just gives you the ability to run up and just kill everyone at the expense of all of your energy. And it's glorious offense. I don't know if you use that at all in your playthrough, but... Oh, Jake. Let me tell you. Let me lean into the mic and utilize my lungs for once. So I got into overcharge probably a couple of years ago. Right, yeah.
00:24:01
Speaker
No, but when I started playing, I put some points in to try it out initially, but it starts giving you this...
00:24:08
Speaker
Like the screen kind of, it's like stress in a way. Like you have anxiety lines and like things are very intense. Like you're on some type of... You're on Stimpaks at this point. Yeah. It's like some type of stimulant. Yeah. And you move faster, but like the camera has that skewed effect a little bit. Yeah. But as you go and kill things, you can actually put points in the skill vine to get more damage as you combo. Yeah.
00:24:35
Speaker
And that's actually how I killed one of the bosses, because they infinitely spawned these ads. And I was having trouble staying alive, but also getting the DPS into the main part of the boss. So I just went around murdering everything, and then switched to one gun. I peeked around the corner like...
00:24:52
Speaker
And just chunks of hell sort of disappearing You DPS tank the fire. Yeah, like it's only at the cost of your energy which you can do other things sometimes the Executions will actually give you energy as well. Yeah, you get some health energy drops. Oh
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah and it comes back pretty quick or like let's say in only the last 10 seconds you'll still be able to gain enough energy over time through killing things or other environment stuff where you're just running and gunning the whole fucking time. Yeah and they have on the bottom of the resource efficiency vine. The last one there is shooting guns grants you energy.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah. So this game has like, sometimes it feels like you cap out pretty early in a game and you're like, this is the skill set I'm going to use for the rest of it. In Ruiner, I always felt like I could redistribute my points to make things more efficiently. Something I see happening a lot in my playthroughs is I'll start out and I'll be like, I don't have a lot of options. Let's like get forward.
00:25:52
Speaker
points into dash so I can dash I can dash all day I can dash all day but uh later I'm like I need like one point I need one more point to get the next uh like energy efficiency modern energy or whatever I'll take out one dash so I get to like the end game and I'm sitting there on like a token dash and you're like walking up to the fight you're like you got this like pimpin aura going on it's it's uh it's good for that though I like that
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah, I felt that even though with all these options that the game provides you, there were parts of the game where
00:26:28
Speaker
And as always, I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer. I've definitely toned it down for my level of caring and my level of investment and skill. So there are points where I was just getting my ass handed to me, even though I play games a decent amount. And I was like, the fuck?
00:26:51
Speaker
As I kind of mentioned before, I think it was just I was approaching it the wrong way. Because there are certain fights which kind of demand certain approaches. It's true. We're talking about melee is not always the best option. Right. You might have to mix it up and do one or two other things. There's a key moment. Excuse me, one second.
00:27:13
Speaker
And that sound means it's time for intermission where we talk about whatever we feel like. I think that we've got a couple things here since our last episode, which is a while back. It's come up. I know you attended Magfest. I did. And I did not attend Magfest. I actually got the Mag flu before Mag. Yes. So my body's like, you know what? No more diseases for you. You're good.
00:27:39
Speaker
So you got to play as the carrier role this time. Yes. I was one of the zombies for the humans versus zombies real life. But it was a really good time. Great shows. Interesting panels. I still didn't get to go to so much, but I also did so much in the same time. Right.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's always an interesting time. They've got all of those swag, too. Did you pick up anything cool at MAG? I definitely got some merch. I tried not to get more prints. Yeah. But I also wanted Lena Raine's signature, so. So I had to buy her off, get the signature. Yeah. I also ran into her, like, again. We were just, like, in an elevator together. I always hear about these elevator stories.
00:28:23
Speaker
Well, I mean, there's like a nightclub on the top floor. Right. It's not my scene, but I'll check it out and be like, this is terrible. And then I go back downstairs. Are you sure it's not your scene? You called it a scene. So that's usually that's what I have. It's not my scene. Right. Right. OK. Yeah, no, it's I had a pretty good time last time I was there, but skipped out this year. I'm glad that they're keeping on keeping on. Was it still like 20,000 people? Was it jam packed?
00:28:49
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's always packed, but the good thing is like you have all these people who you already know, and like Lucy was able to come up, which is awesome. Yeah. And you get to see a lot of people you know, and then you always get to meet cool people too, which is nice. Yeah. People who are willing to dress up and completely ridiculous and awesome outfits away from all the judging eyes of normies. So that's best. Anything else about magfest? Anything stand out? What was your favorite? What was your favorite cosplay there?
00:29:19
Speaker
Ooh. Did you cosplay this time? I don't think so, right? I did not. I didn't see anything in prep. It would have been a surprise. No, I really like Messonnier 1 from last year, but I want to hold off before pretending to try and cosplay again. Yeah. We'll see. Maybe in the future. There were some cool cosplays, but nothing's jumping to mind at the moment. Yeah. There were people still on the near train. You've got plenty of 2B's and 9S's.
00:29:43
Speaker
There's a surprising amount of, I'm gonna call them 15-year-old girls, but people who don't really have like a bone structure and seem very fatigued, they're like, I'll be 2B. And I'm like...
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good game. Oh, yeah. I guess in other news, you sent a link to me about this, but Fallout 76 continued to have issues. What? Oh, yeah, right. All the things we mentioned previously, additionally, people got into the developer room and started screwing with the economy even more. It's not like that game was ever balanced as far as economy, but no, I feel like it's
00:30:21
Speaker
had issues. And to be fair, I think the issues have always always existed. Yeah, just more keep coming to light. It's like working on a major application that goes to production. And then you keep finding all these, these issues as more users use the application. Yeah, no one knows what you're talking about, Dave.
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, so that's Fallout 76. I have no idea why people care about the economy at this point. I'm surprised there's still people really playing it. I enjoyed it for like a week. I don't know why people would still be. But you know what? Whatever floats your boat. That's fine. I just hope that they haven't nuked the franchise.
00:31:03
Speaker
Oh, that actually worked. Yeah, because you know the whole issue with the nukes. Oh. I thought you were doing that tongue-in-cheek. You should have just owned it. I should have, yeah. I should have at least, I should have not acknowledged it. Yeah. All right, what else besides new stuff? What are you playing recently? A fair amount of, so I was sick too. I mean, you guys know because we missed an episode, but I had full-on bra and kites.
00:31:24
Speaker
and you know probably a couple coughs across this episode as well, but the I picked up a switch Specifically for smash because we had our land party which a lot of our friends and us attend and People were playing smash. I was like this is too fun. That was really good I got to play some more of the holidays as well. Yeah, I'm Tempted to come over and play when you let me
00:31:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's a bit of an investment for just the console, but there's a couple of Switch games I'll eventually pick up. I tell myself with the unopened Horizon Zero Dawn on the shelf behind you. And right when you do, I'll let you borrow God of War. Yup, there's quite the list. So maybe eventually, maybe someday a Smash episode, probably someday a God of War episode, maybe a Horizon episode, I don't know about Horizon, but we'll see.
00:32:19
Speaker
Basically, if people give a game game of the year that then we'll talk about it, you know, no, no trash My little pony adventure island fuck But speaking of trash, I guess we should we should get back to the game. Yeah, let's get back to it But there was a key moment where you are fighting one of the bosses called mother which we'll talk probably a little bit about but I
00:32:46
Speaker
your handler her says like you need to shield like at the start of the fight like immediately you're just like and I had forgotten about this in my second like in the second playthrough but I was like wait memory time I need to shield
00:33:06
Speaker
And it turns out it's important to shield there.
Game Aesthetics and Character Design
00:33:09
Speaker
Yeah, you have like four or five bars of energy. Once you put the shield on, it kind of just depletes over time, linearly. But you put it on, and then this death laser comes out. And it's pushing you back into the wall, and you're just like, man, I hope that shield lasts. Because it blocks you from all projectile damage. But then after that, not so much.
00:33:32
Speaker
So it like completely depletes your shield and you're like, what? And then that's when you can have the opportunity like DPS. There might be some other ads going on for that fight. But I really liked that fight. Oh yeah. I mean, I like all the fights and we'll talk about more. But so each character that you interact with will have
00:33:53
Speaker
usually like an in-game animation for the most part. They usually have like a cool stylized picture and then under that they'll have some dialogue. And most of the characters do not actually have audible voice lines except for her, which is the handler you mentioned.
00:34:14
Speaker
But when you first meet like this mother AI thing, it's kind of like this rogue machine. Yeah. And up until that point, you'd come across just like some worker machines who were like making passive aggressive comments towards humans. Yeah. But she said, I'm going to snort your fucking ashes. I'm like, whoa.
00:34:38
Speaker
That's like hot out the gate. And took that to 10 pretty quickly. It's honestly a pretty good fight though for this game too because it's broken out into a couple distinct phases. You have to like fight the repair cores after you've messed up your face. Yeah, you have to go to like different areas too. It's not all one thing. Yeah, which I like. There's a bit of diversity here because I mean one of the common gripes against the game is it feels very samey.
00:35:07
Speaker
When you move like the combat to combat, there's a lot of fighting in this game. That is what the game is, right? I didn't feel that personally But some people were a little bit more bothered by it I kind of knew what I was getting into to be honest I was like, that's what this game is one. It's a devolver digital game. Mm-hmm to Have you fucking seen the box art? Like I
00:35:31
Speaker
And yeah, it is very samey in that regard. But how we were saying, I enjoy that loop. And it's also the game's not long enough where it's like, this is droning on. How many people like gonna murder? Oh, no. It would be like you're playing Slay the Spire or something. You're like, is it gonna get to a point where I don't have to play cards? Like, come on, geez. Where's the end game, man?
00:35:57
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, now that we've talked about that boss, we should jump into some of these characters and how this game actually goes, right? Let's go. First, we have to go back, back, back, back. Let's just touch on, let's, I'm sure that picked up on the mic, some key moments through and we'll hit some of the bosses and cool shit there. Yeah. How's that sound? Yeah. So you start in an elevator. It's a good start, right? Elevator. I was coming down from the club.
00:36:28
Speaker
So we should first describe the character. Sure. Because you kind of have... Talk about puppy. Puppy. You have got the seal on your face and you kind of like this leather jacket. Yeah. This is why Jake is reminded so much of Hotline Miami and his vibes with this game. You have this really cool badass character and you have like this black metal
00:36:50
Speaker
kind of like Daft Punk, but it's like this LED screen over your face. Yeah, full curvature, the full head. Nothing like a full curvature, right? The full head, yeah. But throughout the game, different things will show up on your face screen. Yes. So initially, it says something like loading or no file, and then it says ready. And you're like, oh, shit, what's going on?
00:37:18
Speaker
And then through like your interactions with talking with people, your character might show like some aggression by having like the phrase kill you. Yeah. Like repeated across the face. Like in red, flashing vertically. There's a lot of really cool designs. There's a blue screen looking too slow.
00:37:38
Speaker
And a lot of it it's not just text like flashes up on your screen. One of them's a nuke That's just exploding in the background and the text like we were never friends in front of it It's just it's really great. Especially since you have a silent protagonist like yeah, you said most the characters are silent in that place protagonist as well and
00:37:59
Speaker
And so whenever you have dialogue choices, cycling between the choices will change what's on your screen. That's how your character is responding. It's a nod and an animation that says, kill you, kill you, kill you, kill you.
00:38:16
Speaker
But it's a really cool way to approach having or giving a character expression. And so the other character, her, you meet early on, we'll have like some different poses and pictures for the dialogue and certain ones will kind of convey different emotions or thought processes. But also in the just like her text. Yeah.
00:38:46
Speaker
So you already know where I'm going. Yes. Like at the end of most sentences, there'd be like a little emote. Yes. You know, like Lenny type thing. It's like more complicated versions of that. And they're all super either funny, quirky, cute, murderous.
00:39:04
Speaker
But it adds such a current day expression that I'm so used to it because I'm on Discord, I'm on Facebook, I've been on aim for, I mean, back in the day. But it's something that we grew up on, where you learn these little shorthand things to convey something, or then emotes and then memes, and nobody uses words anymore. I miss the old days, but it's a really fucking cool medium that they put in the game.
00:39:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's like she uses, so most of us I like to think, like back when we were on AIM or MSN or whatever, like those were the emoticon days. That's when you had the hyphens and the parentheses and all, you're trying to make, you know, cool faces and stuff. And now we just, we have our discord, you know, emotes or whatever.
00:39:51
Speaker
but she uses full-on emoticons and it's got this kind of like childish or like young teenager tent to it where it's just like OMG I can't imagine like how'd you survive you know stuff like that and it like lightens her character a lot which you know is great because as it turns out she's not a real nice person.
00:40:15
Speaker
But her character is also really built on, cause she does have actual voice lines. So after you clear a room, each of those like encounters, it'll give you a score like any type of Japanese game where it's ranked E through S plus. Yeah.
00:40:33
Speaker
It's like, wow, good job. And other stuff, which is like a bit of like a Spanish accent. And sometimes if you're about to go murder somebody, like go get them puppy and get them puppy and other things like that. And it's, Oh my God.
00:40:48
Speaker
It's pretty great. She's got like these, so you can get combos by killing people throughout the game. And there's like these Unreal Tournament style voice lines for like domination. Killer combos. Yeah. And she's got that accent to like all of them. And it kind of just, it adds to it in a way.
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, because on top of this, you still have the combats going on. You still have the background music, which we haven't even touched on yet, throughout each area. And then you have these motivational or demotivational voiceovers. And sometimes they're also flash on the screen too. At the beginning of the game,
00:41:27
Speaker
when you're interacting with Wizard, it's like, kill boss. Kill boss. And like his face kind of like shows up over the whole screen. Yeah. While you're still running around and doing shit. Yeah. And then it has like the da da da da da da da da. And then just, you're going the whole time. Yes. This, this
Plot Critique and Gameplay Impact
00:41:43
Speaker
game is not afraid to flash things on your screen in the middle of a fight. It's not super obnoxious to get used to it pretty quick or we do, but, um, I could see.
00:41:53
Speaker
if you if you get disoriented quickly this game you might struggle a little bit with this game um but yeah it's it's honestly pretty great and like when you get those ratings at the end of a given encounter uh it'll she'll she actually has like different poses for like how well you did and like if you get like s rank she's like awesome and you're like standing up like jumping up yeah regions of the sky um it's it's pretty great i
00:42:18
Speaker
I don't usually care about rankings and stuff like that and I play this game I'm like going for S going for S. It's like it's a small like tactile reward thing. It's not something you need but it's like having like when you pick up gold in a game yeah you have like a little chink in the coin purse yeah the last hit sound yeah like it's it's a positive feedback type thing that's nice and it helps break up
00:42:44
Speaker
The monotony of murder. Exactly. And if you get like, if you die a couple times and you get like a B, you're just like, I could have done better. Yeah. You know, you should have done better then.
00:42:56
Speaker
Like, when I get a B after I could die 30 times, I'm like, thank you. I'll take it. Consolation B. Never have I wanted the D so much. Oh, man. But yeah, she's a, so she's got this headset on, says bad on like the top and the side. She's got like a little bandaid on her cheek. Very distinct. She has like a diva-ish vibe about her. That's actually true. Like a more grungy diva.
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah. Grimes. Grimes. But Ruiner loves the color red and black. That's a common theme in motif. And a lot of the character portraits instills use a lot of like red and black.
00:43:44
Speaker
And yeah, it pops up all throughout the game. They have these cutaway screens, like when you're transitioning to an area where it just like suddenly flashes up like this is the area. Street garage, you know, whatever it is.
00:43:59
Speaker
And there's actually a bike scene. We're kind of just talking about the aesthetic now, and so the characters are now. But there's this bike scene where you're accelerating to, I think, the second area in the game. You're going over the bridge, and it's got this kind of parallaxed background, so the back is...
00:44:17
Speaker
moving slowly and the foreground's moving quickly. And you reach like a trellis in the bridge, like holding it up. And as soon as that crosses the side of the screen, it cuts immediately to the area name on the transition system, black, red text. And it's like, I realized that describing this in the podcast probably has no impact. But when I saw that, I was like, oh, that's a cool transition.
00:44:44
Speaker
Like, and then when you, when you break in, uh, he's like riding the bike real fast. It actually shows your helmet and it's got like kilometers per hour accelerating. Yeah. And then you just kind of like blow your bike through security and then like just kind of jump off it. They're like, Hey, you can't be here. And you just pull out the pipe. And then it brings you into the action. I brought my pass multi pass.
00:45:12
Speaker
Multipass 5x multiplayer Yeah, but that kind of high frenetic Aesthetic is just all over the game and the antagonist and people you run into Fit into this kind of like futuristic Parallel cyberpunk world. I would just say it's it's all futures are cyberpunk. Yeah, it's it's got that vibe down to a T. Mm-hmm
00:45:38
Speaker
Like, everything about this game, blankets they even in case it wasn't obvious, I like. I don't have any complaints about it, honestly. It's real good. But, the one, the first character you meet a wizard who's like, kill boss, kill boss. Super hot. He has, if you remember, like the Batman Beyond.
00:45:59
Speaker
type days, where they have that punk vibe, where he has the leather jacket, the collar goes up like an extra fucking foot, they have the shades are kind of pressed in, but they don't actually have things to go over your ears. They're boxes, it actually goes across from his face, it goes past his head. Oh, it's like those visors. Yeah, exactly. And then it has that kind of mohawk-y type thing. Yeah, he's punk. Yeah, it's got that...
00:46:25
Speaker
Like it reminds me of Batman Beyond, like these are punks type vibe. A lot of the enemies you come across will be some type of android. Like they're not, I don't think most of them or if any of them are, I think most of them are android. Yeah, I think as you get in the game there's fewer and fewer just human guards. The first guys you encounter all look like
00:46:52
Speaker
guile basically they all have like the military guile sort of haircut and like chiseled almost like absurdly polygonal like mechanical box face yeah exactly like i think they have like slightly different facial features or haircuts or something but they're clearly all the exact same model with a slightly different texture uh which i love it's just like that's clearly a design decision where you put effort into other things
00:47:20
Speaker
You know that that was intentional. It's like, these are meaningless goons. Yeah, with almost the same model of Android. Yeah. A plot. But yeah, there's a few main bosses here. So you start out, kill boss is happening. Wizard wants you to go kill boss in heaven, which is the name of this complex you're breaking into.
00:47:48
Speaker
And it's kind of this tutorial, you know? Yeah, you've learned a couple of mechanics. Probably one of the best ones is when Dash is explained to you. Yeah. There's like this little mine, which speaks to you in like a very cutesy Japanese. But like, it has a timer over it, but it keeps moving closer to you. Dash away from it, because if it touches you, it will explode and get damaged. Yeah. But it just adds personality to like a land mine. Exactly. And stuff like that.
00:48:18
Speaker
But as you're going through heaven and learning these things, you eventually come to a boss, which is the security chief, who is a character like you, can dash, has a gun, has a shield. And this is like the first time you actually have to put effort in to a degree. He has a health bar. Yeah. That's how you know it's real. It's legit.
00:48:41
Speaker
But yeah, there's not all too much to that fight. The special thing to mention here is at the start of it, Wizard's just like, all right, we need to get through this. I'm putting you on a timer. You have 15 seconds until you die. Every enemy you kill adds time. Yeah.
00:49:00
Speaker
If you weren't playing aggressively up to this point, now's the time to start. It's time to find out how this game's meant to be played. And if you are just indiscriminately murdering everyone, you have plenty of time for this fight, but you can't sit on your laurels at the start.
00:49:16
Speaker
You can't really hide behind stuff and wait patiently. Because again, this is another beautiful use of like the screen face, is the timer starts at like 60 and starts like spinning down to 15 seconds. Yes. And so sometimes you have to wait for enemies to spawn into the area. If you're like, I need more time, give me a guy to kill. Yeah. So you are killing the ads building up your time, also trying to get some damage on the boss. And then when you've cleared the ads, focus more so on the boss and finish with your allotted time still. Yeah.
00:49:46
Speaker
and at the completion of that beating that guy there's a door that you go up to hack there's a kind of a hacking minigame at several points here I don't think you need to for this door but later hacking actually has a function where you input and it's
00:50:03
Speaker
It's really weird because it's very, very simple, but it's just arrow keys, like up, down, left, right, and a random kind of order. I don't know if they made like a pattern in their random, randomization, but it never feels, it always feels like you're going like left, right, up, down, or like left, left, right, right, up, down. Like there's a pattern to it instead of being true random.
00:50:25
Speaker
I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it makes it feel better to input the code than true random. Cause like left, right, left is like dissonant. Left, right, up, down is symmetrical.
00:50:43
Speaker
This is a conspiracy theory and I realize this. I'm gonna keep looking at you until you put down the coffee, you take some of the pins out the wall, take down some of the yarn. Dave's looking at the timeline, the amount of time put in the recording, the amount of notes we have left. He's like, why are you talking about this?
00:51:03
Speaker
But that aside, it's cool though. It is cool. I like that.
Aesthetic Elements and Themes
00:51:07
Speaker
And you're not actually penalized for fucking it up either. Yeah. Like zap you and you get sent back or sorry, like knock back like a foot and you can go and it'll be a different, not true random. Yes. Right. Right. Thank you. Um, you just put input it again and you unlock things for like little caches for weapons or other things. Yeah. And it's again, just like another small tactile, positive feedback.
00:51:32
Speaker
But this first door, it doesn't even use that. You go up, you touch the door, and you immediately get hacked. Just prior to this, these are first glimpses of her. She's like, don't do it. And as soon as you touch the door, it overloads your arm. She presumably hacks you to save your life, she says. And it blows your arm to pieces, which is, it's robotic. So that's less gruesome than it sounds, but it's still unfortunate for you.
00:52:02
Speaker
And then you you end up in in Ringcock with In the middle of the street messed up arm and just collapse. Yeah And I don't know like how crazy we need to go into the plot because honestly it's I
00:52:20
Speaker
I don't want to, I'll say it. Yeah, it doesn't matter that much. It's a layer that's nice in this game, and playing through it and talking to the characters can be interesting. It's not the reason to play this game. No.
00:52:33
Speaker
But it does have like a good small world building for sure. Yeah, it's definitely fleshed out enough But it's not a plot heavy game. Like I didn't take anything away from it. I'm not gonna recommend it to people for that reason Yeah, it's just very stylized very tuned for what it is. Yeah, there's the games. I usually am drawn to It's it's focused and it's like I did this right. I'm like, I like that. That's cool
00:52:59
Speaker
The one thing I will say is you do end up chasing down Wizard after your handler has switched over to her. And when you enter the area to begin chasing him down, it shows his portrait and then silhouettes for two other characters. And I'm just like, oh, okay. All right. So you're actually showing me, this is almost like a Mega Man type. These are going to be your bosses. Yeah. It's like that boss progression. Yeah. I was like, I kind of like that, you know?
00:53:29
Speaker
You're being forward with me. You realize it doesn't matter that your game has three bosses or 15 bosses. You're just gonna let me know where I'm at in the game. Yes. And sometimes that's nice. It's nice to know like, oh, I'm at the actual 50% mark, but you didn't just give someone a percentage, you know? Yeah, I don't like knowing the actual... Don't give me the numbers. Yes, yeah. Never tell me the odds.
00:53:59
Speaker
It's like you're watching Netflix and you move your mouse, you're like, 10 minutes left? Oh, fuck. Because you can infer certain things like, oh, they're going to try and wrap up storyline. They might try and resolve an arc in this time or do something else.
00:54:14
Speaker
Because when you get subjected to enough media, you learn. You learn over time. And I hate that. That's the one thing I hate. Learning. It's cool when it's... It's actually kind of a throwback to Mortal Kombat. When you have the arcade mode and you're going up and it has the silhouette for the next person. You can't see. You see the current one. But then it goes and then it kind of flips and shows you who the person is. It's like a nice who's that Pokémon of final bosses.
00:54:44
Speaker
It's Pikachu! I like it. It's like it doesn't convey anything in universe. It's purely a UI choice. It's literally giving you information that your character doesn't know and it doesn't matter because it's not that kind of game. Yeah. This is not a role-playing game. And another point to that is
00:55:09
Speaker
when you encounter enemies like the first one is the security chief yeah like he has some badass voice line about how he's gonna like kill you and like your path ends here yeah and then like every other boss you have after that is like doing that same type of overly bravado badass like they have some cool crazy design they give him like three bullet points being like yeah like anachronistic or whatever a super aggressive
00:55:34
Speaker
loves guns, something like that. Kind of like if you played borderlands, the splash screens for the borderlands bosses, something like that. Yeah, it gives you just enough to like feel out like the quick character design. But again, like it doesn't really matter who or what they are. It's not super plot relevant. Yes. But it's just badass, you know? Yeah. When you're playing this game, everything between you and completing the game
00:56:00
Speaker
It's just something to talk to or kill. Just like in real life. I talk a lot. Thank God. But yeah, I mean, I don't really have many criticisms either. It's got more depth than Hotline Miami.
00:56:22
Speaker
Oddly enough, less story so, but we never had a Hotline Miami episode, so I can't justify that. True, true. But gameplay-wise, it's just got more layers on top of it. It's got more interesting kind of low cowls. I think a lot of it is grimy underworld of City, but even that, it doesn't take too much away from the game.
00:56:50
Speaker
There's a couple repetitive like travel sections If I remember if I recall well, oh, yeah, I just forget towards the end of the game you can get like that Talk about that light cycle. Yeah, where it's kind of like a transition in between areas you have to hold and shift to speed it up and it's really just like a transition screen, but they do it like a
00:57:13
Speaker
Five or six times, I feel like. And I'm not sure if that was meant to drive home a certain point, because I didn't get anything out of it.
00:57:23
Speaker
The first two times you do it, I get why, and it's amusing. I'll leave that as a vague spoiler for people to check it out. But beyond that, it does nothing. It's not like Transistor, where they use that as an opportunity for voice lines to fill in, plot, and build out the world. And you also get to see some of the cityscape and other things. Yeah, you get to step back, have your cup of coffee, and appreciate the art.
00:57:50
Speaker
It's not really what it's doing. Yeah. This is a close-up of like me on a tricycle and you're like, okay, but why? Why are you on the tricycle though? Oh, that'd be a nice soapstone video idea. Yeah. We have to, we'd have to buy a tricycle. They don't make those anymore. Don't people steal from kids or something? It's not really easy. I probably, I don't know.
00:58:14
Speaker
I think. I'm pretty sure I don't know. I didn't think of a follow-up statement to transition from that. So I'm sorry for putting that on you. I wanted to figure out how to turn it into a joke. I was like, how do I make a joke out of stealing from kids? So that's going to be your homework, listeners. Post a comment on Facebook about... How to steal from children. How to steal from children. Your best child stealing joke. Not stealing children, but stealing from children.
00:58:40
Speaker
or extra credit stealing children. We need a hard transition. Hard transition off of that. If you
Closing Remarks and Banter
00:58:47
Speaker
want to send in those comments, website is facebook.com slash soapstone podcast.
00:58:54
Speaker
Anything else you want to mention about the game? This is another one of those games where Jake had the opportunity to play it before I did. And he actually did heavily recommend it to me. But me being a lazy old shit, I didn't get around to it for a while. But when I finally did, I immediately fell in love with it. I saw your background at work. I updated that.
00:59:19
Speaker
on wallpaper engine for my computer at home both monitors have got that one and it has like that slow smoke moving across yep next time you ever I'll show you it's real good um but yeah it's super nice and tuned um
00:59:34
Speaker
It's kind of like Fury in a way, where as soon as I started playing it, the experience and how it was stylized, I'm like, fuck yes. And it immediately drew me in. So this is another high recommendation for me. Same here, same here. As you know, because you said, I highly recommend it. It kind of took the words from me there. Now, it's a real solid game, goes on sale.
00:59:59
Speaker
I like Devolver Digital. Most of their games have been hits for me. Oh, yeah. And yeah, just continues the legacy, even though it's a completely different developer, the legacy kind of of Hotline Miami. So play the game, it's good. And if you want to reach out to us directly, you can do so at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com. So remember to complete your homework, tell us
01:00:28
Speaker
about your children jokes, stealing from kids specifically. And we'll see you in the next one.