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S2 Ep111: Disappointing Games
75 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they look bad upon a few games just a little bit less fondly than usual 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/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Unexpected Day Off
00:00:00
Speaker
Disappointed!
00:00:27
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, Dave?
00:00:34
Speaker
How is it going tonight, Dave? A question that has plagued us for years. Nay, millennia. At least two years. Does that answer your question? Right. No, no, not really. I mean, I'm just all right. We're all right. It's I have off tomorrow. I found out today. Huzzah. So that's a boon. That's a life boon. Yeah, I tend to not figure that stuff out until like my boss. Hey, see you Monday. And you're like, it's not Friday.
00:01:03
Speaker
Thankfully, we have Monday team meetings, so some of them will. My boss will say it there. But although I was notified on the list of holidays that I think was sent out in January, I didn't pay any attention to that. I just went
Mask Mandate Humor
00:01:17
Speaker
for the Monday. Nobody does. So yeah, that's freaking nice, yeah. Getting the day off. Do you have any plans for the day off?
00:01:27
Speaker
Bro, you know I don't. Gonna go out, party, go to beaches, have a Corona open party. Yeah, because COVID's a lie and the earth is flat. Gonna go have myself a grand time. Not towards the outskirts, because I'll die and fall off.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, there was a, for PA, there was a, um, I think today they had, they, they re enabled the mandatory face mask. Um,
Subjective Nature of 'How's it Going?'
00:01:52
Speaker
so I'm actually going to go for a walk tomorrow and then point at people and be like, arrest this man. Just have like 911 on speed dial. They're just like waiting. They're holding the photo snap.
00:02:09
Speaker
It's just start taking pictures of people running at them, holding the phone up. I used to be harassment and now it's evidence. Right. Yeah, don't do that. Um, I was also thinking about like how you turned around the, how are you doing question? And I wonder if one day we have, we find the answer to that and we just retired the question. Like it's been two years at this point. Oh, you mean like my mental state progression?
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah. Just like the opener question. How's it going today? Tonight, Dave. Like what if there is a true answer to that? I feel like it's subjective and dynamic, which is why part of the reason why we do it. That's probably true.
00:02:52
Speaker
Also, if you didn't do it, people would be like, oh, it's just the solo episode with Jake.
Actions vs. Prayers in Showing Care
00:02:58
Speaker
It's your cue to start talking. Get through an hour and you're just like any minute now. I'm just motioning on the camera. Count me in. And a one and a two and a Dave's doing fine.
00:03:15
Speaker
Oh, man. So full disclosure, I had an anecdote or something I was going to talk about and specifically didn't talk about it in the pregame. I've since forgotten what that was. So that's good. Thank you for this moment of non-content. Thanks for mentioning it. Yeah. I was going to send you this video. I forgot what it was.
00:03:40
Speaker
Okay. Thanks for thinking of me. Oh, man. Well, you know, it's good to be in thoughts. It's the thought that counts, people say. I prefer to be in people's prayers because I know they're not doing anything. Oh, man.
Disappointing Games Discussion Begins
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah. Quick sidebar before we get to our topic at hand, which we won't mention what it is yet because we hope to read title descriptions. Who knows what game it is. Do you get offended when people say I'm praying for you? I don't get offended. I don't get offended with like an intonation where it can come off as condescending.
00:04:16
Speaker
No, no. I mean, I don't think, if anything, I'm probably more accepting of someone saying, like, I'm praying for you. Now, yeah, the intonation matters because if it's like, hey, I haven't taken out the garbage yet, but I'm going to do that this afternoon and they respond with, I'm praying for you. Like, this is a bless your soul type moment, right? Like, sweet summer child, something like that.
00:04:43
Speaker
But I mean, if it's someone who's actually religious and that's their their view, their actual belief. I mean, awesome means they actually care about me and they're incorporating me in that.
00:05:00
Speaker
I mean, I don't disagree with anything that you said. I feel like it would just be more proactive and beneficial if my, my go-to thought is, hey, instead of thinking about me, text me, call me, oh, grub hub me something, like have some type of physical interaction where I can be like, oh, cool. So-and-so does actually care about me and thinks about me from time to time. Right. Instead of the nebulous, like they, they talk to somebody else about me. Yeah.
00:05:31
Speaker
I think that's fair. And I mean, if they like grub hub me a pizza or something, that would answer my personal prayers. So it kind of just works out. And that's a twofer. I mean, I do know somebody on Dota who has drunkenly promised me a pizza, but I need to message him on Steam and say, so how about pizza? That's the exact
Silent Hills PT: Canceled Potential
00:05:52
Speaker
key phrase. Right. But I can theoretically give him your address and you would have that pizza.
00:06:00
Speaker
I gotta remember that as a trick. Just send me your address and I'll send you a pizza. It's one step process to just getting people's personal information.
00:06:09
Speaker
I'll trade you pizza for your social. I mean, what are you doing later? I don't know. Not like social media, social security. Yeah, I don't know. I think part of obviously moving away from certain beliefs and things like that has mellowed me out a little bit toward that. And now I don't think it would matter what religion someone has if they were like, hey, I'm praying for you. And it seemed sincere. I'd be like, cool.
00:06:39
Speaker
Because I mean, maybe they have a completely different thing I disagree with. But if in their mind space, they care about me and they're showing that some way. Awesome.
00:06:50
Speaker
I mean, that's better than my just general sense of apathy for everything. So, you know, hard to judge. And I will never think of you again. Good day, Sam. Who are you? How did you get in here? Don't at me. Right. Oh, man. There's a whole generation of people who don't know what don't at me means. It's crazy. I'm in that generation. Can you explain what this means?
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean the fact you don't know that is kind of I do it is kind of disappointing Don't at me about your disappointment Wait, that was a segue. Oh, right Sorry, I shot the segue it was like Dave's hopped on the segue and he's like gestured like hey get on the segue I raised the rifle and took out the tire and
00:07:44
Speaker
Oh, next time I'll do a visual cue on the camera side of things to be like, it's the segue. Right off the cliff. Um, disappointing games.
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah.
Metal Gear Survive Critique
00:07:57
Speaker
Failures or things that just didn't pan out. Correct. Definitely had a lot of hype for stuff as a youth or as an adult of, hey, this thing's going to come out and be awesome. And sometimes it's not awesome. And sometimes it doesn't come out. Yeah, that's just life.
00:08:19
Speaker
Not coming out. Coming out of my cage. Yeah, so thank you for preparing the initial list here. I threw in some other things, but this is one I didn't know if I could brainstorm. Name something disappointing. Go.
00:08:39
Speaker
It's like it doesn't really work, right? I just visualize myself and it's not helping. I was about to panic be like, sex with me? I don't know.
00:08:55
Speaker
But yeah, we've got like several games on this. And I think your criteria is pretty good. I have a criteria reminded me. Well, your criteria was like things that are maybe shouldn't have come out or where it had major flaws, things like that. There's some some things I added on here that I think there's a little bit of discussion, a little bit of wiggle room on some of those, but because I can have a disappointment in a game and
00:09:25
Speaker
Have it still be good in some ways? Yeah. Certain things are very, I would actually argue all of it is subjective. Certain things I feel are more agreed upon as a community.
00:09:38
Speaker
So we'll probably touch on some of those first and then get into like, well, this is good, but here's why I hate it. Yeah. No, that's fair. I guess if you want to, if we want to kick it off, we have our shared shared list here and you actually added this one, which was interesting. Cause I don't think we've ever talked about it, but silent Hills PT. Yeah. Why did you add it to the list? I guess. What was your disappointment point for this?
00:10:06
Speaker
So I've always appreciated, from a distance, because I've never played any of the games, the Silent Hills universe and just good horror theming in general. It's scary if you get up close. It's better from a distance.
00:10:22
Speaker
I mean, there's a ways to, like, enter, like, B-rated horror, right? Everyone knows, like, it's kind of just hokey. But I'm generally a little scaredy baby, but there are ways to go about it where it's genuine suspense and fear. Like, going back to a fairly dated game now, Amnesia, I did enjoy that experience. It was well crafted. But at the same time, I refused to go back and play because I'm spooked, right?
00:10:51
Speaker
So Silent Hills PT was this great little thing that I saw enough footage of where it is essentially just you going down this repeating square hallway. Yep. Just like two or three right turns.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah. Like these small events occurring throughout and there was like a bit of a plot and puzzle with it, but it was a fairly brief game, but it had so much fucking atmosphere and was loved by everybody who was in the Silent Hill community. And they're like, wow, this shit's going to be bananas. I can't wait for it to come out. Cause Silent Hills, I think was being done with Kojina, right? Yep. And Guillermo del Toro. Yep. The Toro of Toro, I guess.
00:11:40
Speaker
But thankfully we would see him later in Death Stranding anyway. Yeah, I
Death Stranding: Mixed Opinions
00:11:46
Speaker
actually played this. I did. I did. I will spoiler say this is something that did get pulled. So the fact that we're able to play it.
00:11:58
Speaker
I got mine. Screw you guys. Yeah. No, there was literally a this is an aside But some playstations were being sold that had the PT downloaded Like before it was taken off the store and they were literally just being marked up That's weird. I don't fully get that but I guess collectors got money. What are you gonna do? Yeah, it was
00:12:24
Speaker
Uh, so engaging and weird and very like slow paced, like you kind of just walk through the graphically was amazing. It looked really freaking good. In some ways, I think, um, what was it, uh, resident evil.
00:12:41
Speaker
Five. Not five. What am I thinking of? Six? No. Seven. Seven. Seven's the one. It had some of the same graphical fidelity that this had, but this had all the atmosphere. And it looked awesome. And I've never played a Silent Hills. We'll just close you as well. Though I've read the wiki a lot. All right. So we're talking about all these good things about it. Why is it on the disappointing list, though? Yeah. Because it never came out.
00:13:09
Speaker
Kojima got pulled. Yeah. So as we know, Konami is a shitty company for more reasons I will explain later. Factual statement. Yeah. But they were parting ways with Kojima. So they kind of just canceled this project, which made everyone really disappointed because Kojima obviously known for the Metal Gear series and his involvement in that.
00:13:37
Speaker
And yeah, like they just kind of yeeted the whole thing. Yeah. So it's something that should have come out and would have been a great game, I'm sure. Because PT was just a playable trailer, getting people hyped for what would eventually, I guess, be a game. But it didn't get didn't go through steam green light and it got canned. So that's why it's a fucking disappointment.
00:14:03
Speaker
They made just walking through a looping hallway sequence super engaging and like very little content. It's a travesty that's never got released or developed one should say. Presumably they didn't have a whole lot of work into the game, but they made the teaser first. I almost wonder if like maybe there's news about this or something because I don't look things up. I just hypothesized.
00:14:31
Speaker
So if the teaser was to help sell it to Konami, actually, like look at all the interest in this teaser and Konami is just like, I don't know.
00:14:44
Speaker
So let's stay on that front a little bit, right? So Konami says, hey, Kojima, fuck you for your good game such. We're going to make our own Metal Gear instance. Yeah, I was thinking of this.
00:15:02
Speaker
Now, what was the name of this piece of shit again? It was Metal Gear Survive, which was using some similar assets from Metal Gear 5, but it didn't keep anything else. And it was like a weird zombie fighting game. But it was shit in so many ways. And it was, I'm going to use the term a lot tonight, very far from the source IP. It wasn't about Metal Gear.
00:15:32
Speaker
It was just Metal Gear Universe. Here's the thing. I didn't buy this one. I don't think anybody did. I don't know one actually. Reviewers got review copies. That was it. I don't know. There's so much wrong with it. You could look up anything, but yeah. Yeah, it's generally regarded as a piece of shit.
00:15:56
Speaker
Right. We should do an episode on five at some point. Admittedly, it's a very long game. Well, well, yeah, you know what I mean. Hey, it could also be on the disappointments list. Metal Gear 5. I was actually going to say, so off that front, like we know that Kojima part of ways with Konami because they're garbage and he went on to create his own company. So there was initially hope that there would be a,
00:16:22
Speaker
Silent Hills actual game But I'm sure there was some licensing and rights issues there. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm just gonna make my own thing It's gonna be the best it's gonna be its own type of game Strand gaming. Yeah genre death stranding. I
00:16:41
Speaker
Edit, please put music here. Yeah, which I guess is me this week. The zipping segue. So you actually played death training. I didn't, but I know there's a lot of, I don't know if controversy is the right word, but diametrically opposed opinions about it.
00:16:57
Speaker
So as you can see, my shields here for my cool headphones is actually the Kojima Studios logo because I was hyped that he was going to be doing his own thing and I was looking forward to seeing what that was. So I did want to pick up Death Stranding when it came out. It seemed like it was going to be a cool thing, very Kojima-esque, and it has a lot of cool ideas.
00:17:21
Speaker
If
Fallout 76: A Critique of Failures
00:17:22
Speaker
you like to game from a pacing perspective, there's definitely some benefit to it. As an overall game though, it has some flaws. People had a lot of buggy issues with it. I didn't really run into any personally, but I saw footage and it was pretty bad. Yeah.
00:17:44
Speaker
Also, it's kind of a very slow game because you are essentially a glorified Amazon delivery person on foot. Yeah. And the other big thing being double channel notes.
00:18:04
Speaker
It was kind of up its own ass, story-wise. As we know, Kojima's stories have typically been very out there. You've played Metal Gear, but there's a certain novelty and fun aspect to it, right? But this seemed to be taking itself too seriously and tryhardy. It just felt a little off.
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I had some intentions to, to play it, but I was waiting. It was in the waiting for review space. Obviously you've been a big fan of the MGS series, um, like way longer than I have, as I could not rightly be quality, like actually classified as a fan. I've only played two of the games, but you've checked out the Wiki and that's what's important. But, um,
00:18:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was interested in it, but none of the trailers. A recurring theme I think some of these games are going to show is like the trailers generate a lot of hype and then the game releases and people can't reconcile the hype with what came out. And the trailers for Death Stranding were like
00:19:19
Speaker
I don't think anyone knew what any of it, nobody knew, which maybe helped him a little here, actually. Cause when the game came out, it could have been anything. And it'd be like, yeah, I can kind of see how the trailers were made from some later trailers. Cause like you see Norman Reedus running around on foot, dodging some Raider people carrying packages, but that's kind of all you knew. Yeah.
00:19:44
Speaker
And it's not like the gameplay itself is bad by any means. I think it's interesting. Again, it goes back to like it's slow and it's paced. Yeah. And it's nice to like appreciate the environment, kind of build out faster routes, the multiplayer aspect where if you link up a certain area, you get access to other people's bridges and ladders and ropes. You can leave nice messages. And that shit's all really cool.
00:20:10
Speaker
But where it gets faulty is you keep doing the same thing, add infinitum. It becomes very grindy and uninteresting. And the kind of out there, try hard story is not enough to keep me engaged. So I just feel like I'm trudging through and that's kind of why I fell off.
00:20:34
Speaker
But do you think this would be a good game if you like Euro truck simulator is the question, I guess. If you play a game where only delivering packages is already your norm. I could very much see like in that because it's much more, many more facets on that than just the truck. Yeah.
00:20:53
Speaker
This is the kind of game that maybe, maybe someday I'd come back and play, but just the length of time necessary invested in it makes it hard to justify for me when there's already like a lot of other good games out there, but. So you can
Mighty No. 9: Expectations vs. Reality
00:21:07
Speaker
conflict in half the time or a fourth of the time. Video games are too long, as Wise Man once said. Or Dave, you know. I was quoting.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's a. Well, we'll see for that one. I actually am curious not to not to branch off too much, but I'm curious where Kojima goes from here, because I think Death Stranding was still enough of a success, even with some of the controversy that they're not like, publish game, go under. Yeah, there's going to be more. I hope that's not the case. At the same time, I.
00:21:47
Speaker
I feel like they got enough flak where people were like, this isn't what we really want. So hopefully it goes in a different direction. Yeah, I'm kind of a sucker for gameplay. No, I say that. But like, I like walking simulators to be over here. And my games to be over here. And sometimes gameplay gets in the way of my story. And sometimes story gets in the way of my gameplay. But
00:22:14
Speaker
I don't like hours of overland travel anymore. Sorry, oblivion, I guess. Yeah, there's a way to do it. So my next one, I didn't write any notes for, Dave did though. So on my list, I have Fallout 76, and Dave just wrote a smiley face.
00:22:41
Speaker
Uh, which is, I assume this is passive aggressive. Like, what are you getting into here? Right? Like, how deep are you going to go? This can't be its own episode. Yeah. Like you can't say without someone going, Oh yeah, I heard about that. Yeah. It's what's, it's not infamous for how many fucking issues it's had and how little content it's had. I know they've released stuff since, so I can't speak to that, but what have been your thoughts? Cause you actually got this when it came out.
00:23:08
Speaker
They pretty much launched. I played through with Ian for a week, actually, but we could play time into it. Fun, my minor story. We actually had have someone at work. No, won't name any names, won't name the guilty. They love this game.
00:23:26
Speaker
And I don't know. I haven't interviewed them to find out what's going on there. But you don't know the person. But smiley face basically sums it up, I think. The game I understand came from a place that a lot of people want, which is I want one of these Bethesda open world games in a cooperative setting.
00:23:56
Speaker
Um, people have been trying to mod co-op into Bethesda games since oblivion, maybe even more with, but I know oblivion. Um, and it really hasn't worked because it's a single player engine. Now, Bethesda went and tried to do it and it really didn't work because it was a single player. And, uh, it's, it's an issue of design, I think at its core.
00:24:23
Speaker
where they tried to build it up to make a lot of money. They stripped out the core things people cared about, like storytelling and PCs.
00:24:35
Speaker
They magnified all of the bugs that were included. I think Joseph Anderson made an hour-long video that was just showcasing different bugs he encountered in his review for this game. Yeah, it is impressive. Just put Fallout 76 on YouTube, you'll see what comes up. But there is an egregious amount of things. And Bethesda's already been, they have a history of being
00:25:01
Speaker
Oh, well, it's a little bit buggy. Right. But like they've not fixed that problem out of any of their games. Like it's always like an accepted fact. Yeah. An unofficial patch has been released for every single player that has the game since Oblivion, maybe more.
00:25:20
Speaker
What's crazy though is when a lot of these things happen for these major publishers, it's like a week before some random person on the internet's like, hey, I created a patch for this to make the game suck less dick. You're like, wow, that was one person. Okay. I guess Bethesda doesn't have the resources to do that or they don't care.
00:25:44
Speaker
In this particular case, because Fallout 76 isn't always online service, they screwed themselves even more there because you can't mod an MMO like it's technically MMO like. Um, so they couldn't rely on the community to fix those problems for them.
00:26:00
Speaker
And I
Indie vs. AAA Expectations: No Man's Sky
00:26:01
Speaker
think at some point someone actually did, this was early on release, they did uncap like the frame rate. And they found out that it just speeds up everything that happens in the game. Like it gives you speed hacks if you uncap the frame rate. And so as I had to step in and be like, okay, we got to stop this. People can't uncap the frame rate somehow. Cause it's just auto speed hacks. I don't know. The biggest issue I can, I can say in bugs personally,
00:26:29
Speaker
But I can't stand people ruining an IP that I love by undermining the storytelling and the gameplay. And playing this game just makes me want to play other Fallout games. That's the problem. Let me go back and play the good one. Yeah, it's not a good sign.
00:26:52
Speaker
And that's that we'll cut it off here for the rest of it. You can follow my blog spot where every month I release another trade against tirade tirade against follow 76. Would you say that's your, your biggest disappointment on your list?
00:27:09
Speaker
Fallout 76 personally. Yeah. Yeah. Had to think about it for a second. But like I almost got in a car accident because of Fallout. Like I was so excited when I got Fallout 3 that I started to run a red light stopped and then back back up into my spot and everyone was cautiously just watching me. Very embarrassing moment and obviously the fault of the game.
00:27:37
Speaker
But I love the series. And I have this massive poster over here just to my right on the wall. And then they had to go and they had to do it to me. I don't know. It's emotional for me. The game or the situation? Situation, I guess.
00:28:00
Speaker
The game, the problem is this is the most frustrating thing certain things shine through. Like there's some cool ideas here. There was some mobile building that was working together with your friends. There was accomplishing shared goals. And then everything else was screwed up and undermined all of it. You could get disconnected and lose all of your public building accomplishments. It's like the rant goes on. I have to stop.
00:28:29
Speaker
It's it's not good and the introduction of more things you could buy with real money was not good and the season pass idea was not good and it's like
00:28:39
Speaker
Everything the EA has recently been dropping to make their games better. But that's just like, these are great ideas. Let's pick these up. Let's throw these on the pack. You got to leave those microtransactions there. Hey guys, look, microtransactions. We got them for free. You can pay money for them.
00:29:01
Speaker
I this should be the voice of Bethesda. I think you should you should do It's stolen from like a Gus Johnson bit. Oh, yeah, that's right. I immediately yeah, but it is the go-to like dumb business person who just like
00:29:17
Speaker
Oh, what's that over there? Is that, uh, it just, that's great though, actually. So anyways, let's, uh, let's get Gus Johnson to make trailers for Bethesda games. Yeah. Let me message him. Sure. He's not busy and knows who the fuck we are. Um, yeah, we're pretty popular. We have listeners.
00:29:37
Speaker
On that note, plural even. So a lot of these things on our list are sequels or something I kind of was supposed to carry on the legacy of a given IP and then shit the bed. Yeah. I mean, I was going to save that one for later. A quick easy go to of like, hey, what's something that you spent money on that you're sad about? Mighty number nine. Yeah.
00:30:08
Speaker
was supposed to be the spiritual successor to the Mega Man series. I'm going to backdate things a little bit. Mega Man was a series platformer, very tight controls, cool robots, cool music. Everybody fucking knows Wylie's theme from Mega Man 2. It gets played at every fucking convention I go to. That's not a bad thing. It's a banger.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah. So people really loves legacy Mega Man. And Mega Man X series built on that pretty well to a point. After X4, things got a little bit weird. X6 was just a garbage. X7's like, hey,
00:30:48
Speaker
how what if it wasn't 2d x8 i think i'm told from my friend shad who actually picked it up i went kind of back to more classic mega man but still kind of a different feel was this all the way up to 18 or did they jump to x past the point all right so he's like original mega man x2 i'm sorry not it was like mega man mega man 2 it wasn't like they went
00:31:12
Speaker
Exactly. They go to nine. No, no, no. Gotcha. I was like, are there more Mega Man games than Final Fantasy? Plus in that. But yeah, they kind of diverged away from the good, normal stuff. Mm hmm. You can make your arguments for a Mega Man X command mission, whatever. I wouldn't. I mean, some might be. They tried some things. Respect for that. But they kind of just stopped with the Mega Man IP. But the original guy,
00:31:44
Speaker
Don't remember his name. Who? Man. Started off with Mega Man. He's like, hey, can a crowdfund make my own game? Yeah. Everyone's like, oh my god. Yes, it's going to be Mega Man again. Back like we remember nostalgia, the old days.
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah. But then when it came out, it wasn't that much like Mega Man as people had hoped. It had a lot of weird, dumpy mechanics, and it was a huge disappointment for everybody. And I'm one of those people who did pre-order it, tried it for two hours and 10 minutes, and then couldn't refund it on Steam.
00:32:20
Speaker
Was this a Kickstarter backer or something like that? I think it might have been a Kickstarter. Yeah, I vaguely remember it being like a Kickstarter. Yeah. Yeah, it was just supposed to be so much more than it was. I think I actually saw you play this. I don't know if they had complications or not. It was just not good.
00:32:44
Speaker
I think actually we might've did this have co-op because we might've loaded it up at one point to like try it out. I don't think so. Maybe I just saw a video of it. I can't remember. The thing that, the thing that jumped out to me is how floaty it looked compared to like how crisp and snappy the controls were in previous Mega Man games. And I'm not a good Mega Man player. Dave carried me through the series for our, uh, our like retro episodes. Yeah.
Importance of Developer Names in Gaming
00:33:12
Speaker
Um.
00:33:14
Speaker
But it looked egregiously bad. Like the one thing you have to get is controls in the platformer. It's not about tight controls. Keep it right. Keep it tight. That's what they say.
00:33:26
Speaker
That's the whole thing. You want to have more challenging jumping movement, make more interesting levels. But if it's hard for the controller, as in the person who's controlling the character, to move around and interact with things, that's on you, the developer, the publisher. You fucked that shit up. So it was just really not true to old Mega Man at all.
00:33:53
Speaker
So I guess this is a question that might come up for several of these, but how much of your disappointment for Mighty No. 9 was because it was supposed to be the return to Mega Man roots, as opposed to just objectively where the game was? Like, if this would have just been Mega Man previous entry plus one,
00:34:14
Speaker
And you were just like, you just expected it to be another kind of line in these mediocre games or whatever, as opposed to the return to goodness. So you think that would have definitely amplified by that, which is why I gave the history of where Capcom kind of went with Mega Man as a series versus. I want to say Shigeru Miyamoto, but I know that's the Final Fantasy guy. Yeah.
00:34:42
Speaker
But when you have the person who was originally involved in the project, oh, they know what it was. That's why you still have some of the same guys working on Doom. You're like, oh, they understand what the IP is meant to be. They understand what the players who like that game like, what they want to have, why they're playing the game. So it seemed like it was going to be a return to form and then wasn't.
00:35:13
Speaker
I wonder how much do you think that we as gamers overvalue the importance of one person's input or their name? Because I see this a lot. Like, hey, we're going to be doing a remaster. We pulled in the guy. This is the hero that brought you the game from the 90s. I feel like my opinion is maybe we do because there's so many more voices that go into game creation now.
00:35:43
Speaker
Oh yeah, definitely. It's definitely an internal bias. Because if I say it's you right now, Tim Schafer, you go, oh yeah, I like his stuff.
00:35:55
Speaker
I like his game. And like historically, I've liked a lot of- I'm sorry, Shafer. I was only here from Monkey Island. He's had a lot of good games. He has a lot of good games. There's some ones I haven't checked out or haven't been super fond of, whatever. But whenever I hear that he has a thing he's working on, I'm like, oh, cool. Because
00:36:23
Speaker
I feel he has enough of a voice and direction to control where things go. Gotcha. And then again, referring to the Doom team, I feel that he knows to make consistently what his audience is looking for. Right. So like with Psychonauts
Starcraft Ghost: Anticipated but Canceled
00:36:40
Speaker
or any of his other games, he has a sense of style and humor that's kind of carried across his games.
00:36:48
Speaker
Right, so if he's making another entry in something like oh, it's probably gonna have some of those same characteristics that I love Gotcha. No, that's fair Yeah, I think behind the scenes. They're probably more like his him and his team is like pulled into it They can they can control the vortex they can harness it and make the end product what you want and
00:37:10
Speaker
There's definitely, I've seen more of a move to have specifically names attached to things, even like games as a service. We have Jeff Kaplan for Overwatch. We had Ben Brode for Hearthstone. We had like, we have Ice Frog for Dota. We put a lot of weight into those names. I'm interested. Maybe we'll have a follow-up, maybe we'll configure up a follow-up episode for like figures in the gaming industry and what that means. I mean, it's a degree of celebrity, right? Yeah.
00:37:39
Speaker
We know the name. We hear the name for a lot of things. We know they're associated with something. So we do kind of put them on a pedestal and continue to expect good things from them. Not to say that they can't keep doing awesome things, but they are also our people. Yeah. It goes back to the personification kind of thing.
00:38:00
Speaker
Well, you're personifying a person, but yeah, make it personal. What do you think people are? Fucking lizard men. You're personified.
00:38:14
Speaker
I have one on here. I have more than one, but next one I want to talk about is No Man's Sky, which had to be on this list, right? Can I add my smiley face note? Yeah. I'm not actually going to go too much off No Man's Sky because I think we've touched on properties of it already.
00:38:30
Speaker
Um, but it was massively hyped. I think it was hyped for a triple-A game, like an exceptional triple-A game. Um, when in reality it was being developed by like a relatively small indie-ish company that just had a lot of money, but they were still indie. Um, obviously Sean Murray didn't help that situation because he had promising features that never made it into the game. Uh, or at least for the launch.
00:39:02
Speaker
But that was mostly it. If this would have come out and nobody knew what it was, it would have been a decent indie title with some cool ideas. And given everything that was added in, it would have been amazing at current day. As it is now, at current day, they have a lot of the features they mentioned.
00:39:22
Speaker
in the early hype. Um, so it's, I think a good game. I still don't really find it super playable for personal reasons, but, um, it has to be on the list. Yeah. You just, you can't, you can't lie about what your game is going to be and expect everything to be okay. It was a huge over promise under deliver. And if I'm correct, a lot of gaming services were funding purchases.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of controversies about this one. They literally had in the EU, they were put throwing stickers over the multiplayer. Like game contains multiplayer content warning on the back of the box, they put stickers over them. Because the game didn't have multiplayer at launch. So
00:40:13
Speaker
I think that this'll, this'll go down in the history books is like how you do not handle the game launch. Yeah. That's something that is still consistently an issue in the industry of, Hey, let's have a cronish to like, make sure this thing gets out. We've got to get it out. And then certain things will be missing from it, whether it's Hey, the graphics are toned down from a given trailer, or it's just not what it was meant to be. Cause that the love was not put into it.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to jinx the app. I don't want to jinx this release by mentioning CD Projekt Red and Cyberpunk 2077. But one of the things I'm hoping is positive about that release is they basically are controlling their own release timescale. They don't have a publisher breathing down their throat, their neck.
00:41:07
Speaker
Now if a publisher is breathing down your throat, that's more extreme than the average human. I'm glad you saw me mid-yong because I was about to jump on that shit. But I know SEGA. Sony gave a lot of money to Hello Games for No Man's Sky and they really didn't want it to be pushed back forever. Whereas if you're really big, people think your game is going to be great and you have all the publishing power.
00:41:33
Speaker
You can kind of, you can push it back and cyberpunk ass would push back twice so far. Hopefully that's it. They did that with Animal Crossing as well. Cyberpunk pushback Animal Crossing. Oof. More clout than I thought. There's a post saying like, Hey, Animal Crossing is going to be delayed. Our team is working really hard on it, but we also want to give them time to live their lives and not have them be stressed out. We want to have a good product that everybody loves. They're all like, all right, cool. That's wholesome.
00:42:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. If anything, I wish more parts of the gaming industry could allow, could set their timescale and their expectations to reduce some of the crunch, which is obviously one of the worst things about being a game developer. Probably the worst thing, I would assume. Because everything bleeds out of that.
00:42:22
Speaker
You know who's not subject to crunch? Toby Fox. Yep. The next game on the series is Toby Fox. That's true. He just hides in a, I don't know, foxhole rabbit hole. He crosses the stream maybe so we lose his track. I'll see him in a year and a half.
00:42:45
Speaker
Yeah. There's actually a release date, release date for, um, no, no. Okay. Okay. I wasn't sure if we had anything. So one thing just came out of like a random tweet and then he fucked off again. See you guy. Yeah. Um, so something we have to talk about another disappointment, big hype, big dick hype, Starcraft ghost. Yeah.
Impact of Failed Games on Industry
00:43:13
Speaker
I remember this being described as the Halo killer. Now, for anybody who doesn't know, Halo was one of the biggest fucking games of all time. At release, it was the only thing like it at the time. It had multiplayer. It took the world by storm. They had the music. You know what the fuck Halo is. I shouldn't be describing this, right? Yeah.
00:43:41
Speaker
So to even have the accolade of this game's gonna be bigger than Halo, it is definitely somebody at IGN. We were so guilty of that in the 2000s, right? Remember like the WoW killer, the Halo killer, we had all this. Yeah, it's like this will be the next big thing. A lot of obsession with death, really, so much. Kill it, kill it. It's the only way we can succeed, kill it.
00:44:08
Speaker
But this is obviously Starcraft is a huge fucking IP. Yeah, it's pretty big. So they wanted to have an FPS spinoff and Halo was the big thing at the time. Oh, well, we got to do this. But also around the time, a lot of stealth games were big.
00:44:25
Speaker
Like I think he's winter. So I was going to say that and that'll be solid. Maybe like Cooper is a bit older, but, uh, just naming self games amnesia, obviously. I was supposed to be Giganto, um, but it, it really suffered from a lack of direction. And you can see a little footage of like, here's what it, they had in game at the time.
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was bad. It was real bad. Yeah. It was a shoot for the moon, maybe it'll hit the stars. But the rocket was faulty and Russian. And that's like, hey, they made it to space before we did. I'm just saying they did hit the stars on the way back. So there was no recovery. But just kidding. Yeah. Respect to the cosmonauts. Friends of the show.
00:45:23
Speaker
That's probably a proper noun. There's probably another like podcast called the Cosmonauts. Don't add us. Got him. He always got it. Yeah. I mean, based off of how crappy it was, though, what you saw would. Do you think this should have been released at some point? Because from the little I've seen, I'm almost kind of thinking Blizzard made the right call by never delivering on this.
00:45:49
Speaker
So yeah, that's definitely true. Do you remember Food Wars? JonTron did a video on it several years ago. Yeah.
00:45:57
Speaker
That was an example of something that was riddled with ads and whatever, but they kind of like pieced it together because it had a lot of issues in production, whatever the fuck, but they eventually released it and there was no reason to outside of like recouping the money invested, I guess. Yeah. Throw some, some dirt into the hole to try to fill it up at this point. We're not building anything. We're just recovering.
00:46:24
Speaker
So yeah,
Spore: Over-Promise, Under-Deliver
00:46:25
Speaker
I think it is good to know when to quit. But I remember being a kid, my grandparents like, Hey, like, what do you want for Christmas? I'm like, this is the only, you can skip for three years, but this is something I'm really looking forward to. In retrospect, a bad call is you got no Christmas presents for three years. And I still haven't really, really bet everything I'm black on that one. Yeah.
00:46:52
Speaker
Or in this case, just one number like 76. Yeah. Oof. Yeah. But I guess it was. It's not, not a great number anymore. That's all stories though. You know, there's, there's a little silver lining. I guess not. That's not true. Not all stories. Nova did get missions in Starcraft two eventually, but it wasn't a first person shooter and it wasn't any of this and it was completely separate things. So yeah, it's still nice that they carried over that character.
00:47:21
Speaker
Mm-hmm. There's a Widowmaker skin for Nova. So, you know, it works in the end. She ended up in a first person shooter. Nova skin for Widowmaker? Yeah. Makes her look like Nova. Yeah.
00:47:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's all it is. Oh, man. All right, so what else was on here? I'm going to shotgun one or two maybe here, because again, some of the concepts we've already covered. Spore was a disappointment when it came out.
00:47:55
Speaker
People thought it was just going to be the life simulator. There's been all of these simulators, SimAnt, SimFarm. There was actually also SimLife, but it was specifically for tactics. I think SimAnt is what comprises our sidewalks and a lot of buildings. I was going to try to make like a simp joke, but I can't think of one.
00:48:18
Speaker
Yeah sim sim. But Spore was supposed to be this macro go from cellular life up to tribal up to space like full RTS sold with infinite scope and
00:48:38
Speaker
It was disappointing when it released just because it was overhyped and those phases of development existed. But each time you went up a phase, you lost a lot of complexity. And so it was a great snake like game when you were playing as like a micro microbial creature.
00:49:00
Speaker
and it was an okay villager type game, but then it was like a bad RTS and it was a bad space game. So you kind of just, it fell apart. That was disappointing. Yeah. It seems to fall under the category of over promise, under deliver. Yep. Kind of like losing some of that scope. That's exactly what it was. Without spoilers,
Mass Effect 3: Controversial Ending
00:49:21
Speaker
I'm also going to shotgun Mass Effect 3. And this was actually different.
00:49:26
Speaker
This was having a game with an ending that was so disappointing that it undermined the entire franchise. This was a trilogy of long Bioware games. And that hurts. That's unfortunate. I can't say if that's your mass effect, but I do know your decisions through games do carry over. Yeah. And that was what they undermined, really, in the end. They were like, hey, regardless of all these choices you made,
00:49:56
Speaker
It basically boiled down to pick one of three buttons and literally pick one of three buttons. Just walk up and hit a button. And that's not a way to end a game when you've made all of these choices, leading up to it. You shouldn't be able to quick load and then change the entire outcome of the galaxy.
00:50:19
Speaker
There's also a huge controversy because the endings had the same animation with a different color overlay. One of
Sonic 06: Bugs vs. Nostalgia
00:50:27
Speaker
them was red, one was blue, and one was green. So yeah, don't do that. Though if you did go in, if you do come back and you play the game, they fixed it.
00:50:37
Speaker
Um, they went back and they actually released a patch to, uh, update a lot of the ending in some ways, uh, fixed it in quotes. Um, they're more satisfying endings. They have something closer to the fallout and occurrence better than different colors. I choose the red end for my 300, 400 hour experience conclusion. I can probably make you some of those MS pain. If you get bored.
00:51:05
Speaker
You literally could. Just a little Photoshop overlay. Basically good. After Effects, I guess, since it's video. Is there anything you wanted to hit on? Anything these traumatic experiences has dredged up in your mind?
00:51:20
Speaker
I mean, a notable thing on the list, and again, this is just through watching it on YouTube. Sonic 06 is another classic example of this is a piece of shit. Again, just watch the Game Grumps playthrough. They have, I think they got to like 100-ish, probably more than 100 episodes, usually like 10 to 15 minutes, but just
00:51:49
Speaker
One, I've never been a huge fan of Sonic. I've always liked the music. It seemed like a cool idea. The gameplay is not as much for me. Sonic Adventure Battle 2, which we did have an episode on. I always have nostalgia tied to, and I enjoy playing it. I was also carried through that one. Yeah, I wouldn't make you suffer through that. But it's not a super interesting IP overall.
00:52:19
Speaker
Yeah, but even like if you do like that universe.
00:52:24
Speaker
They're not really consistent with it. They just put things in and the bugs were so egregious. One of the main things being like the silver fight where you fight another hedgehog of a different color. Wow. And it would stun you if you attacked it from the front wallet. You had to attack it while it was mid animation for something else. That's the only way you could damage it.
00:52:49
Speaker
And it would stun you for five seconds. And then if you're still within that range, it would stun you again. There was no buffer time. You could instantly be locked out and just die. Yeah. And that's just one issue.
00:53:05
Speaker
And the other thing is the controls. So many things we've got. Yeah. Gameplay should always be, hey, this shit's tight. The second thing, if you're building off of an existing IP, make it true to the IP. If you're not sure what that is, fucking ask your audience. They'll have some input. Yeah. Because they want more good games in that space.
00:53:30
Speaker
That's fair. Sonic has been a hit or miss and mostly misfranchised for a long time. I do like Sonic. It was early. I think we talked about it in a retro, but I like Sonic PC. I also kind of like Sonic R. It's not a great game. I had fun with it as a kid, though. Sonic R is fucking comical. It was fun. It was fun. That was good enough for me. But yeah, it's not great. This is a lot that's bad. I want to make a sound for you, and you tell me if it sounds familiar from Sonic R. Are you ready?
00:54:00
Speaker
No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's funny. Full sprint barely clips wall with with elbow full time to stop. It's time to stop. Yeah. What's funny is you mentioned like you go to the community. That's what they did with Sonic Mania. They're just like, hey, make a Sonic game for us more or less. And then people are like, this is great. Do this more.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thing. People really like Sonic Mania. They also liked Sonic Generations. Yeah. Yeah. But it just... They can do right. It's not entirely sunk. You can save the Sonic series. Somehow. Some way. All right, I'm out of words to say.
00:54:55
Speaker
I mean, I didn't hate Sonic Heroes when it came out. I could probably not go back and play it. Yeah. It's not nearly as good as Sonic Jiro's. Oh. Gyros? I don't know. Yeah. I haven't had a gyro in a bit. I haven't been to a Sonic in a bit. Yeah. The last thing I got at Sonic was like a 2000 calorie milkshake. And then I died. This is a version two of me. I just want tots and an Icy.
00:55:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair. We're getting to time. We're getting to icy season. I haven't had an icy in like forever, though. It's basically just. It's sugar ice, right? Like that's that's pretty much what it is with coloring. I mean, an icy is like the same as a slushy, except I think Sonic's ices were more ice shards than slushies were much more fine.
00:55:52
Speaker
Hmm. I'm not up on the slushy culture, I guess. Not familiar. Have you ever been in a Kmart? Have you ever seen a very cool polar bear with the options of cherry, cola, or blue? Blue. I think it's supposed to be blueberry or something, right? I think it's blue raspberry. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's right. That was how I fucked over my teeth at an early age, is getting blue raspberry slushies from their Urwawa.
00:56:22
Speaker
Yeah. Part of the problem is you like you drink all the syrup, because I have had this product in some variety or another, even if it was an icy brand. And then you're just left with like, I was gonna say vanilla ice, but it's not vanilla. Vanilla is a flavor. Plain ice left in the cup. Just like, all right, well,
00:56:43
Speaker
That's why you got to keep mixing it. I actually have a cement mixer, but I just have like 20 ounces worth of slushy in there. That's a lot of slushy. That's heavy significant. You would need a cement mixer. I think at that point, that quantity, that would be hilarious at like a summer party or something back when parties exist
Learning from Failures and Nostalgia's Role
00:57:08
Speaker
and summer exists. Um,
00:57:11
Speaker
I literally have a cement mixer. Just like dip the cup. That's actually hilarious. I wonder. You couldn't make it sanitary, unfortunately. Oh, no. Probably not. Yeah. It's not like it was for Kraft macaroni and cheese, but I still love those commercials. I'm wondering if you could rubberize the inside. Just like turn the cement mixer, rubberize the inside. That might work.
00:57:38
Speaker
So anyways, follow back for the results of this as we get cement poisoning. What are our overall thoughts for disappointing games? Should games not be disappointing? What do you thought? I think everything in some moderation. A little bit of disappointment to make the rest of the games look good. Yeah. I don't know. In some ways that's kind of...
00:58:07
Speaker
I say that as a joke, but it's also sort of true, I think. I mean, obviously you shouldn't aim to be the disappointing game. You shouldn't aim to be the example, but sometimes the industry needs the example. Everything else on my list was spoilers. Dragon Age II, Star Wars Galaxies, and Star Wars Battlefront II. And that was the takeaway from all of those, like learn something from why your game failed and either follow up with a better game
00:58:36
Speaker
or let the industry watch your failure with their notebooks and their spectacles and be like, that's bad. Let's not do that. So, I mean, there's some good that can come out of it. People should learn regardless, but obviously you don't want the remake of your childhood to be the mistake, right? Like, yeah.
00:59:03
Speaker
But the industry really likes to capitalize on exploiting nostalgia. And then sometimes
Humorous Game Marketing Commentary
00:59:10
Speaker
it's not done justice and it's just you've now lost money. Yeah. Although this is these last two years, especially this year, I guess, has been the year of remasters, right? To success and failure.
00:59:28
Speaker
Again, from what I've heard, Silent Hill isn't doing a good job. Sorry, Resident Evil. Yeah. Zombie Games has been doing good. Zombie Games. We're back to Zombie Games.
00:59:39
Speaker
I had a joke I was gonna make one year to on survive Metal Gear Survive and That was they put the steam the steam tag horsemen of the apocalypse in the title of the game. That's how Screwed it was they literally put survival in the title Because they were what early access survival crafting and
01:00:06
Speaker
Can't remember what the fourth horseman was, but those are the four horsemen of steam tags. Family friendly. Yeah, that was it. That was it. Um, I did a search for four horsemen team tags and apparently it's like a WWE thing. Not going for that one. Um, yeah, I don't know.
01:00:35
Speaker
I don't know, man. Try to try to make your games good. Consult our list. I think we're experts at this point. And be like, I really had some ideas and it was going to take our game in a direction that Dave said Mighty Number Nine went.
01:00:55
Speaker
Stop. Just get some help. Also, if you had any disappointments in your life pertaining to gaming or mainly specific game or gaming company, hit us up. Text me. Yeah. My number is. Yeah.
01:01:14
Speaker
One, one, one. One, one. One. As a quick aside, I was trying to search up the Horseman steam tags thing to actually close the loop on that. Finding Nemo, Disney Pixar game, tagged action, adventure, psychological horror, and nudity.
01:01:39
Speaker
That's it. All right. As always, uh, you can DM us, uh, feet pics at soapstone podcast at gmail.com. Don't do that. Or you can just, I see him first. Anime feet in general at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast.
01:02:01
Speaker
I prefer D&D feats, actually, to any actual appendage discussion. It's a Christian server. Until next time. Well, as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:02:23
Speaker
Hey, you, look at the screen. Let me ask you a question. Do you like awesome things that are awesome? Then you gotta play this game, dude. It's friggin' cool and crazy addictive. Like popping bubble wrap addictive. Check this out.
01:02:38
Speaker
See, that's your dash move. There's a short dash, long dash, jump dash, spiral, slide. There's probably a dash that makes you breakfast. I don't know. Great idea. Wait, what? Point is, you're dashing around like a frigging moon man, and I love it. Oh, and look at this. There's all these combo moves you can do. Then you can do combos on combos to rack up your score. And I know you like that combo on combo action. But I saved the best for last. Absorption boosts.
01:03:10
Speaker
You kill an enemy, and you can absorb their power-ups, stuff that'll make you faster and stronger, and make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night. So what do you think? You ready to play? I'm ready. No one's talking to you, Vernon. Mighty number nine.