Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S3 Ep206: RSS - May - Justin
79 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Justin as they talk about food, moving, chilling in the sun, a bit of Overwatch 2, Blizzard in general, and what we've all be playing recently in this week's episode!
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/
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 Cinco de Mayo Banter
00:00:35
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, Sulweez Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? I deflect, targeting Justin. Happy Cinco de Mayo! I'm dating this episode. Interesting. I didn't know that Rachel would allow that, but hey, you do you?
00:00:59
Speaker
Hi, I'm Justin. Dice. Let's just go with that. Yeah. Do you have a preference for what we call you on the episode? Because I literally never call you Dice. Rachel calls me Dice all the time. She'll introduce me in public as Dice. We have recent events that I can go into later, but no, really, I'll respond to either.
00:01:19
Speaker
That's fair. I was just not going to use any term. Guest. Guest on the episode. I'm going to do my dad's joke and call you late for dinner. Oof. Congratulations. I shouldn't call somebody. So I know that nobody cares about that.
Zencastr Waveform Humor
00:01:40
Speaker
But I'm watching Zencaster and like the waveforms go by and it's really blurry for me for some reason. I've never seen that.
00:01:48
Speaker
I don't know what that means. Jake, you need your glasses. Wait. OK, no. Yeah, taking them off doesn't help. Dave, you're the odd one out now. You're not wearing yours. I know. Minor distance glasses. Like, you know how they have distance runners? These are distance glasses. Gotcha. I don't want to go extra blind by having them on, while I'm, you know, two feet from a screen. So you can only wear them when running long distances.
00:02:15
Speaker
if I got that analogy right. I don't wear them very often based on what you're saying. That's fair. But welcome back, Justin. I think it's been months. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
Guest Justin and Host Replacement Jokes
00:02:31
Speaker
Well, see you guys the next time. It's always a pleasure.
00:02:38
Speaker
All of our guests are so good that like after we have them on, we're like, we can't have them back from the six months. They're going to be like, we should get rid of the host entirely. Just have the guest. I've been at it. If we just set up the lobby and fuck off, hear me out. That's off the rails. I mean, it is literally like Joan joined by URL. So if somebody could guess it and the timeframe that we are recording, they actually would just be able to join.
00:03:06
Speaker
There's not like an authentication code. That's true. So challenge for future weeks and see if you can join. I'm going to have to say from Dave on who it is. I know the name of the episode. We got to change the naming format. Yeah, that's what we got to change the naming format. We just like prepended with a good luck scrum. Yeah. Yeah.
00:03:31
Speaker
I don't have a segue. I was going to ask, how are people doing on this Cinco de Mayo?
Recent Activities and Weather Fun
00:03:37
Speaker
How's your day been? We can even extend it to week. Not month though. I don't give a fuck to that extent. It's also only been five days of May. My memory doesn't extend that long. I don't know. I'm doing pretty well, you know, into the week, playing some games, which I'm not going to go into yet because that's how we never get back to talking about the other person.
00:04:00
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it's been going pretty well. It's warm outside. I walked outside and I like laid down on the driveway. I just like absorbed the radiating heat a little bit. It's freaking great. I like to imagine like your neighbor goes out to check the mail. They're like, should I literally did exit their front door and looked at us for a bit? Cause, uh, Jenny was there and then, uh, walked back inside. I don't know what they think about us right now, but still great.
00:04:29
Speaker
It's been a busy week for us. We went for a walk at a local park for the first time on Monday. Rachel had history going to this park, but never wanted to go back or never had the opportunity to go back. So we just decided on Monday we're going to grab Wawa and have a picnic dinner. Nice.
00:04:49
Speaker
So that was nice. I didn't realize there was that big of a lake that close to us. I know there was a reservoir further out close to her parents, but- Before you dox yourself, I'm going to muddy the waters a little bit and be like, oh, which great lake was it? Yeah. But yeah, it was really nice out. It's been really nice out.
00:05:16
Speaker
And then today I had off work for other reasons. And so I spent a little bit of time making an enchilazania for Cinco de Mayo.
Cinco de Mayo Cooking Adventures
00:05:28
Speaker
It came out pretty well. I don't think it was necessarily worth the effort. But because it was a day off, I just kind of got to do it. And it came out well.
00:05:39
Speaker
Nice. It's, it's really fun to just sink yourself into something like that. Like I want to cook something. Don't do a five minute version. No, no, no. Hear me out in three hours and they just keep like making it more complex. Then you appreciate that all the more when it's done. Yeah. It took easily two and a half hours. Um, but I also made fresh guac to go with it. So we had that as an appetizer and then put that on the side and yeah.
00:06:07
Speaker
That sounds good. I like the idea of guac as an appetizer, not literally in every piece of the middle. Well, I can't have avocado toast. I'm a millennial. That's true. It's Trump against. So the house. What about avocado tortilla? I feel like I should have the next segue. How are you doing, Dave? How's your week going?
00:06:31
Speaker
It's quiet. I'm really just waiting to move. That's fair. That's coming up right quick.
00:06:40
Speaker
I think is the measurement of time. Yeah. I'm just, I'm done. I want to, I want to be moved. Yeah. I want to be able to be like, you know, I'm going to decades tonight.
Dave's Move and Local Discoveries
00:06:52
Speaker
A chain bar across the US. Exactly. But now I'm just looking forward to the change up because.
00:07:02
Speaker
I mean, thankfully, where I'm at currently, Justin and Rachel were close enough. I get to hang out with them. They were so awful. I've heard of them. But outside of that, there's nothing really in the area. Because I'm kind of between some business parks and whatnot. I don't go out too much because of, granted, COVID's taken up a lot of when I've looked at this apartment.
00:07:23
Speaker
I see you hand gesturing. Did you want to comment? You're moving right after we found our favorite Thai place, though, that is immediately next to your apartment. Cancel the move, Dave. Just kidding. Dave's moving closer to me, so don't do that. To be fair, that Thai place has been there a very long time. They changed management and the new people are adorable. And I've now found out that
00:07:50
Speaker
Butterfly PT is a thing and it's delicious. It's like, I didn't know that butterflies could. Well, yeah, I was going to ask like what the story was for that entry in Silent Hill. Thank you for the pity laugh. That was, you know, that's good. I was hoping Justin would take because like, I haven't played that game. Yeah. Well, I mean, no one's played that game, right? Like, which one is it from?
00:08:20
Speaker
Silent Hill PT or Silent Hill. Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't make that connection. I was still thinking of the fully spelled out PT. I gotcha. PT go home. All right. These are good. They're too quick for me at the moment. But yeah, the type place is good.
00:08:42
Speaker
I, I might go through it one more time. Uh, when Mike comes up, we're probably either going to try and do that or mama longs as like the last vestige of tasty Asian food before I fuck off. We're getting close enough that I'm probably not going on a work trip that week. So I might actually be available. Dang.
Overwatch 2 Beta Critiques
00:09:01
Speaker
Oh, you just gotta invite yourself over.
00:09:05
Speaker
Does this flight have an extra seat with leg room? Business class only. Next topic. What have we been playing lately? They introduced it. I can open. I've been playing the usual suspects.
00:09:32
Speaker
Also, I guess Overwatch 2 beta. We haven't talked about that at all. Justin just shakes his head dismissively. Justin, ask me in my opinion on the Overwatch 2 beta. What's your opinion on the Overwatch 2 beta, Dave? Okay. Mine's the historical baggage from Blizzard, but...
00:09:55
Speaker
You can say that. We know that it's just because you never felt like you reached your full potential as Widowmaker. Like, I understand. I understand. Like, 72% win rate as Tracer is locked in historically. That's right. Never, never, never pollute it. That was like you hit your career best, I think, in 2016, right? It was really good. Play the one-land party stuff. But no, it's...
00:10:21
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, the people who listen to this podcast already have all of the information that I have. I hope it turns out well. I've got a lot of the same reservations a lot of people do about Blizzard. I don't know. Maybe if it ever has more information on it or if they give us a little bit more, we can talk about it more at length, but I'm fine for the most part avoiding it. I will say, the one thing I will say.
00:10:50
Speaker
is that they actually released a blog post that was like, hey, remember that time we were like, we're going to talk to you guys more? That's what this is. And they actually detailed a lot of the
00:11:01
Speaker
thoughts they were having for why they were making changes to the game and everything like that. And holy crap, after like two years, it's nice to have literally any sort of explanation for what's going on. The problem is consistency. Like that has always been their problem with community feedback is they'll say, hey, we know you guys are looking for feedback and then you get a two year gap, you get one blog post and then
00:11:27
Speaker
six months without anything. And then, hey, we're still listening to the community, but... Are you Team Cherry? Are you? They did specifically say they're going to try and do a monthly, I think. They've done it before, though. Yeah. They were doing monthlies, but it ended up being art content.
00:11:51
Speaker
I can appreciate that stuff, but that's not, it's the multiple demographics that they have, right? Like you want the people, the technical details, especially when the community starts asking the questions of what are you doing about X? And then they release an art blog post. This is all coming from my Diablo three fandom where I played 14 seasons consistently for release weekend. And then.
00:12:18
Speaker
Hey, we're not updating this game anymore. Peace.
Blizzard's Management and Communication Issues
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. They like to do that. Yeah.
00:12:28
Speaker
I want to say some of it probably chalks up to management because that sounds like a very managerial move of making promises about something. Well, yeah, it's like the, hey, we hear you. Managers will always make you feel like listen to and then do fucking enough. Personal bias historically over many jobs. But their initial thing is like they don't want you to backlash or they're like, oh, I accept your feelings. And then they just don't follow up on it.
00:12:56
Speaker
They're dampening the feelings rather than acting on them. Yeah. I mean, it is nice that they are willing to do something. But yeah, if it's not a consistent thing, there's not actual community engagement versus just, hey, we released a couple emails type thing. Yeah, I don't really see the point of doing it in the first place at that point.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, they kind of have straddled that line a little bit because they almost, they almost make it hurt more with like bursts of engagement when they had like the experimental card. And it was just like, Hey, every couple of weeks we're just trying random crap out. Like.
00:13:32
Speaker
Tanks can heal themselves and here's all this nonsense and all this crap and people had a lot of fun with it and then they're like, all right, see you in six months. All right. That's a little bit more rough and they're trying to be a big AAA game that is going to continue to be an esport. They're still trying it for two. So they should probably put the effort in. I don't know.
00:13:54
Speaker
I've been a Blizzard fanboy historically for a very long time. I know patch cycles from vanilla WoW. It's the same stuff over and over again. I'm far enough along in my... I'm a grumpy old man with them, basically. And it's just...
00:14:15
Speaker
I can see through the cynicism I've been there for the droughts and the hey we're listening patch cycles with all of the WoW expansions and then they release a patch they release an expansion and things that were pointed out for months in PTR are broken and yeah
00:14:36
Speaker
They do not stay up on that. Although, maybe Microsoft will just fire everybody. And then it's no. It's not like a change of hands makes things immediately better. And even if it was going to move in a positive direction, that's going to take a long time. Yeah. Because you have to acclimate teams. You have to do everything, essentially from the ground up. I don't know how they prove it to me anymore. That's my biggest problem is like,
00:15:05
Speaker
I can sit here and be like, I don't play Blizzard games anymore. And I used to be a huge fan. I don't know how they would win me back even. Right.
Diablo IV vs. Path of Exile 2 Debate
00:15:14
Speaker
Unless there was just so much fan like, hey, this is awesome. Again, all of this, like it's just it. The pool has been tainted. The pot like the pond is poisoned. How good would the product how good would Diablo four have to be compared to Path of Exile two?
00:15:35
Speaker
That's the threshold I don't know because I am actively waiting for Path of Exile 2 to come out. If Grinding Gear Games corrects some of their entry-level issues that I have with them, so I don't even know. And Riot divests their 99% stake in the company or whatever.
00:16:02
Speaker
But indie games. Indie games, we got indie games. The devolver threshold, the devolver digital, they can just release something and I'll play it. I may not get my thousand hours out of it anymore.
00:16:19
Speaker
That's also, there's a joke. There's no way, like, well, I'm going to eat my words, I guess, but I would be very surprised if a Chinese company bought out Devolver Digital. None of their games could be played in their current state in China. They'd have to even re-release Ape out. Yeah.
00:16:39
Speaker
For anybody who doesn't know, Ape Out is a game where you play as an ape and you are escaping from a facility and they have cartoonish, like, orange blood.
Cyberpunk 2077 Experience and Updates
00:16:47
Speaker
Historically, it's not, anyway. I actually have played that one. Not to be confused with Ape Escape. I mean, could they just turn the ape into a Winnie the Pooh facsimile and then it'd be fine? I don't know if that's... Yeah, I hear they like that one.
00:17:03
Speaker
I'm sure if somebody did implement that or let that go through, they'd be getting a couple of Xi Jinping's in their emails. They'd stop getting emails. It's done. The other game I was playing. I was appreciating two levels, so thank you. Other game I've been playing is Cyberpunk 2077.
00:17:24
Speaker
How is it now after all the patches? I've never gotten around the patch, the playing it because of the initial backlash it got. I haven't pulled the trigger on buying it in a sale discount. I mean, it's probably worth picking up on a sale. The game's not, I don't think it's been appreciably different on PC. The difference is that like there's a lot of good mods now. So I have like a quick bar mod.
00:17:48
Speaker
And you're just like, hey, it's customizable so you can put whatever you want on the quick bar. And I'm trying to think of some of the other really nice mods. Oh, one of the ones I really like is whenever you take a weapon out for the first time in Cyberpunk, V will like, if it's a blade, he'll like run his hand across it and some like, you know, like samurai, unsheathing, cool, Hollywood effect, or like flip a shotgun and then like, it'll settle in his hand.
00:18:15
Speaker
Something really cool. Some cool like, hey, I'm the protagonist and I'm a cool protagonist. A nice flourish. Exactly, a nice flourish. But it only happens for the first time you equip that weapon. All this mod does is it makes it so that happens every time you take the weapon out. I think you can cancel it with like aim down sights.
00:18:34
Speaker
It's stuff like that's just hilarious. Otherwise, like doing the main story, I started seeing like texture glitches within 15 minutes, I think, of starting playing the game. So they weren't like long lasting. It was during like a couple of cut scenes where geometry was a little flaky. But the fact that it's this far along and that still pops up is. You'd like to know that it's still buggy after, you know, more than a year. Mm hmm.
00:19:01
Speaker
Oh, there's another mod. It used to be in the base game. You have to like craft everything one at a time. And one of those crafting things you could do is upgrade basic materials to high level materials. And that sucks if you want to do it 500 times. So there's a mod that's just like, oh, you did it once. How many more times you want to do it? And there's just a slider. Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, that's that's huge quality of life stuff. But I don't know. I don't know when I will actually get around to it, I guess, with
00:19:32
Speaker
everything else. This year has been crazy for game releases and other random BS in the sphere of wanting to play. The nice thing is they did officially announce they canceled all plans for multiplayer. So you could play it literally whenever you want. It does not matter. It's a single player game forever. Okay.
00:19:53
Speaker
And the story is good. Side quests are entertaining. I enjoyed playing through it even with the bug fiesta that it was at the time.
Gaming PC Setup Challenges
00:20:02
Speaker
So I've even still considered, because I have a newer machine now. Thanks, Justin. To probably go back and do a play through at some point now that that's done. OK. We need to talk about your thermal still, I think. You were having some weird CPU stuff, but we never solved that problem. It gets toasty.
00:20:23
Speaker
Toasty is fine. BSOD is because it's toasty. That's too much. Let me rephrase, it gets a real toasty. It gets like Mortal Kombat toasty. Finish it. I'm interested in Cyberpunk 2077 from a Cyberpunk standpoint, but
00:20:46
Speaker
In comparison to something like a Deus Ex, is it worth playing from that sphere, I guess? Because that's what I've been itching to play. Like Immersive Sim? Yeah. I don't think it has the same degree of that necessarily, but it is like... Okay. Quick hacking is amazing.
00:21:09
Speaker
That's as far as I can go before Dave's going to cut my mic. And the stealth system is very workable. It's incredibly fair. None of it's really necessary if you want to just run around and kill everybody.
00:21:24
Speaker
There's not really a reason not to do that, if that makes any sense. It's not like Metal Gear Solid, where it's like, oh, you were detected. Don't talk about it afterwards. Yeah. And so if you want to play that way and you want to use quick hacks and stealth and things like that, I think it makes the game way more engaging when you're like, I'm going to find a way up into this building. I'm going to work my way through here and do this espionage style. But it's not necessary, unless that's the place I'm going for. I just think that's the most gratifying.
00:21:54
Speaker
So you're forced to basically set your own requirements for that, whereas the easier method doesn't have the consequences. Yeah, not really. Not at least on the lower difficulties and things like that. I'm playing this new playthroughs on the hardest difficulty, so it's very hard. And I started out with
00:22:16
Speaker
All right, I'm going to try a sword build, and I had like no points in sword. And I freaking die because people shoot with a gun, and then I die. I'm like, all right, time's a quick load. So I went back to my old hacky ways, and that absolutely can like turn the table. I recommend for anyone who enjoys playing a sword-based game or like a more tactical game, try a Netrunner build first. But, oh, another quality of life thing. You can like, I think you can respect whenever you want.
00:22:47
Speaker
It costs like a certain low number of eddies, which is the currency, euro dollars in cyberpunk space. They finally took a note from Eldering. So that's really nice because it was incredibly expensive or impossible, I think, when the game launched. I don't remember it being an option at launch. Yeah.
00:23:09
Speaker
You just kind of get into like, oh, I'm stuck doing this. If I want to invest in another tree, I'll take my hard earned points. But then at that point, it's like 20 and swords and melee and then like five and stealth. Stealth doesn't seem like it's having an impact because you're not putting as much in it. Okay.
Spectating Elden Ring vs. Cyberpunk 2077
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely on my radar.
00:23:31
Speaker
when I will get around to it, I guess, and also which platform I'll do it on. Part of the benefit, like I ended up playing Elden Ring on PS5 just for the ability to start it up randomly. It's a little bit more of a threshold to try and get
00:23:51
Speaker
PC stuff on the television downstairs. And Rachel, my wife wants to enjoy, she wants to have that background noise if I'm down there and engaging with something, she wants to be able to at least experience part of it. And she loved when I was running through Elden Ring. So it's
00:24:10
Speaker
how integral knowing where I am in the story, because with Elden Ring, it was watching me suffer, basically, is where she got the enjoyment. That's fair. And with a closer to an immersive sim, not knowing where those those fine connections happen seems more important, but Elden Ring has a whole new lore connections that we were able to discuss that later. Like it may work that way.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah, if you're spectating Cyberpunk, I mean, there's the story beats, which are like basically like watching a movie. Those are fine. You're not making like a lot of choices. There's different dialogue options. It's kind of closer to Bioware is sort of, they don't really matter too much in the end, but they have a little bit of an impact. But then everything else is pretty much combat or however you deal with the combat encounters. And that's most of it. So it can be incredibly flashy.
00:25:11
Speaker
And eventually once I got like the sword build actually working in some armor, it could be incredibly flashy. You're just like, Hey, I'm going to blind everybody. Like jump up in here, double jump and like land on somebody with a freaking sword. But, um, yeah, I don't know. So every punk's good. I like it. I still, I'm at like 120 hours and the first hundred hours was the first save. So.
00:25:31
Speaker
It's not causing enough problems to prevent you from wanting to play it again. And that's really what I needed to hear to pull whatever it goes on sale to pull the trigger on like, Hey, I'll play this at some point and I will probably enjoy it. Yeah. And just because I know that there's certain things that we share in common, you and I, Justin, I would say grind in Pacifica.
Cyberpunk 2077 Strategies
00:25:51
Speaker
There you go. Just remember those lines and you'll be good. They're shaking his head.
00:25:59
Speaker
I mean, I'll do that on a play through too, for sure. But, uh, typically I like my first one to always be fresh and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. And you get there through basically just determination and you know, the occasional like, Hey, go here. I'm like, okay, I'll go there.
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah, if I'm in a farming style mood, then I really enjoy when I can get a little farming loop and just kind of turn my brain off. And that's literally what I do in Pacifica, is I'm like, I run around and I fight these groups of gangs in a big enough circle that they'll respawn and grab all their weapons, break them down so I have components.
00:26:39
Speaker
and then go turn it into crafting stuff I use or sell. This is the economy of harvesting the booster gangers in Night City. I'm glad you get enjoyment from that. That sounds mind-numbing to me. I spent a couple of, I wouldn't even say hours, but there was a
00:27:03
Speaker
early in my Elden Ring playthrough there was a castle where one of the halves of the D elevator that came from that I found
00:27:20
Speaker
And I felt like I was comfortable killing those bats. And because it was in Caled, they gave a decent number of runes that I would run in there and just farm some runes and be like, yeah, I got two or three levels out of this just enough to like feel like I was understanding the combat more and like that threshold. But I don't know my current state of playing games. I would spend
00:27:46
Speaker
I wouldn't necessarily get to level 100 doing that. I know some of the discussions online of the boulder farming and stuff like that that people were doing. I don't have the patience for that anymore. But as a counter to that, I also, as of two weekends ago, I have all of the achievements for vampire survivor.
00:28:11
Speaker
Hey, congrats. Nice. Just wait a week and then you won't. Yeah. I get appropriated so often. It does. I was, I literally finished doing the achievements one week and I was talking to either Mike or Jess and I was like, Oh, I finished the thing. And then I like toggle games and steam like motherfucker. Yeah. Even the last time we mentioned it.
00:28:34
Speaker
I was like, oh yeah, and there's like this combo for this weapon and Dave's like, what weapon? I didn't realize I was gonna be a problem when I took this podcast's advice to pick it up and be like, oh yeah, this is enjoyable. And then I checked Jake's achievements and like, he didn't have anything. I'm like, this is weird. Didn't connect that. He had just patched so much since then that if I wanted to keep up, it was gonna be,
00:29:03
Speaker
periodically just grinding away. It's not quite like a daily game, but it is becoming a bit of a weekly game. But I still think I'm getting my mileage for the $3 I've spent on it.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's two things I'd say on that. One, this is probably the game we've talked the most about compared to the actual price of the game. That's not literally free. That's cheating. Literally free games are disqualified.
Vampire Survivors Achievements
00:29:26
Speaker
That's division by zero. You in the universe if you try that. And the other thing is like, how much do you guys think that the pace of development is just because of how ridiculously simple the game is? I'm sure some amount of it like it's
00:29:43
Speaker
But the Arcana system that they recently added was another mechanic on top of everything. It wasn't just an expansion of an existing mechanic, so there were considerations there for that.
00:29:56
Speaker
Right. I don't know what this system is. It's basically, if you do the latest achievements, you can unlock passives that you can unlock. And like, oh, I have a first card. This will give you a passive with these bonuses. And then as you progress, you might be able to unlock up to two other cards. So you can have like three passes going at once. So as you're shaping your build, it kind of gives you another layer to do it, which is just cool. But it's definitely
00:30:22
Speaker
Like a simple enough concept of like, hey, here's the current weapons we have in the game. What passes could we make to build on that? Or what we add that, oh, we don't have anything that's horizontal. And then they added like the mine cart.
00:30:34
Speaker
And they keep building stuff like that. Its numbers goes up, but it doesn't interface with the character stats in the same way that the other passive items do. It takes a subset and buffs their base damage rather than just increasing the character stats on it somewhat. There are some. I guess specialization. Yeah.
00:30:58
Speaker
Yeah, so it might be like these specific three or four type of weapons will have like an extra bounce or two on their head. That can be really strong if you're putting a lot of points into maxing those items that didn't originally create will now create items that healed you now deal damage when they heal you are the two other big ones.
00:31:24
Speaker
That second one sounds interesting because my recollection at least from like the base game was, I say the base game, the game like two weeks ago, I don't know, like was that pretty much all of the healing items are garbage. Like there were some that kinda sorta kinda, but like none of them are as good as just straight up lasting longer because you were killing everything.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, I would typically run garlic already, and then the arcana that made it so that the evolution of garlic did additional damage and also healed for twice the amount, just solidified garlic being a default pick for me, basically. Gotcha. Everybody starts out loves garlic. Also, if you haven't played the game, you don't know we're talking about evolved garlic is roasted garlic. It's really good. You can put it on bread, et cetera.
00:32:16
Speaker
What's crazy though, I was on Steam recently, funny thought. And they actually had a copycat game already. So another, something it's like, oh, something survival. Like they don't say vampire survivors, but it's the same type of game model. But it's cool to see, the same way it was like Slay the Spire, that something like that can take off, people are like, oh, this is a good idea. And then you'll have other variations of it.
00:32:43
Speaker
I've thought about a like space version where the different characters, different ships instead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically it is at its concept. It's just like it's a bullet hell game. Reverse bullet hell. I think that's actually how they sell it where you're just completely swarmed.
00:33:07
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know why it's as good as this. It's solid, especially. And you don't go in expecting a whole lot because of the price point they sent for it.
Vampire Survivors Gameplay Praise
00:33:19
Speaker
Basically, it's the quality that I've always expected from a mobile game at a mobile game price, but released on PC. Yeah, there's no microtransactions. Yep.
00:33:30
Speaker
I would get a cosmetic to support them, honestly. But the game is simple enough. It's rewarding enough for numbers go up. And the music for it's really good. Oh, yeah. For how long you will have a session up to half an hour? I'm jamming. It's good stuff. I don't know if they've fixed it since, but when I first started, there was literally an option in the menus that it was
00:33:56
Speaker
royalty free music verse like, Hey, we probably pirated or this is not technically licensed. Well, I think I think they probably license both, but if they have that option, it's a streamers can. Yeah, it was definitely a stripper stuff. Yeah. There was something else I was going to say about it is the
00:34:20
Speaker
I lost it. Yeah, sorry. It's all right. We can wait until you get it back. Like extremely long moments of literal silence on a podcast. I wanted to come back next time we have Justin on. I wanted to be six months. You're like Eureka. Yeah. Oh, that's fair. It's good, though. So you've been playing that recently. I think you also mentioned some other game that we haven't talked about much.
00:34:48
Speaker
My other major game recently, besides Elden Ring, has also been Tiny Tina's Wonderland, which is an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC right now.
00:35:02
Speaker
anybody who likes a D&D campaign and understands how sideways that can sometimes go, I think would end up enjoying the story on top of the best Borderlands gameplay they've had to date. So I haven't tracked this aggressively. I know Ian, friend of the show, Ian, was looking at it and then got distracted by everything else that's been going on gaming wise. But is this
00:35:32
Speaker
It's not like they're telltale games. This is like an actual shooter. It's one of the Borderlands spinoffs. So it's something like the pre-sequel or something besides the pre-sequel that they released. I mean, it's effectively an extension or a full game version of the Borderlands 2 DLC, the Dragon Keep, I believe DLC was called. Yeah.
00:35:58
Speaker
But it is it's a full game. It's probably their shortest main story quest version, but it has multiple maps. It has the gun to play back because I think the the DLC end up not having gunplay. It was all spells. And.
00:36:18
Speaker
the it's not as dependent on the previous games characters so like there are cameos of old game characters but they're basically just Tina's
00:36:31
Speaker
rough idea of what those characters were applied to a fantasy universe. So brick from the first borderlands is repurposed as the fairy punch mother. So it's just brick with a tutu and wings and he wants to punch goblins to save nature.
00:36:54
Speaker
That's fair. We've all done it. I've linked Rachel a whole bunch of the dialogue because it was real cute. There were dialogue selections for being thirsty, wanting to get some.
00:37:10
Speaker
you could just ignore it and it would end up pissing off Tiny Tina who is effectively the game's dungeon master. You can play into that or you can just ignore it and it ends up being really fun. And then on top of that, while the gun variation isn't
00:37:32
Speaker
It's a standards borderlands gunner variation where they can always feel like there's always more options they could have provided. The big thing they've changed with it is that the grenades are actually spells. Okay, gotcha. So I will have one spell that is a Hydra that I spawn and it just ends up being like a turret, which would effectively be a normal skill from old games. Or it's a bouncing grenade, yeah. That's really cool.
Tiny Tina's Wonderland Review
00:38:01
Speaker
If there's a way to limit the amount of UI that they put into the UI, I would 100% be down to check it out on sale because I know Steve has also given it really high praise. There's a multiplayer. It's definitely worth picking up once it comes on to Steam. I think it does have some of the Borderlands 3 problems that Dave and I ran into when we played that through where
00:38:26
Speaker
It's hard to see the enemies, but because of how over the top, some of the weapons and abilities and spells are, you can almost mitigate some of that. Shirei, we... Yeah, basically. And the big thing is their endgame feels the most action RPG consistent with the current structure of how action RPGs work. It's effectively a horde mode.
00:38:55
Speaker
but each run is there's a variance in each run because you
00:39:00
Speaker
treated almost like a roguelike. You pick options in the run to make it more difficult or give yourself buffs and try to get through. And there are effectively from Diablo 3, it was monster levels for Path of Exile. It was the tiers of the maps. When you start it, you pick which tier you're running and try to get through it.
00:39:29
Speaker
Nice bit of endgame. I remember doing that a lot with Diablo three. What was it called? Riffs. Yeah, the riffs. Yeah, that was used to grind up a lot of a lot of stuff where you try and get certain elite packs to all die at the same time as you could get their bonuses and just Use one abilities you went through essentially a man. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting though. I haven't heard of like a
00:39:53
Speaker
Borderlands in game ever really being anything like I think like raids like a group together and kill a big thing. Yeah. So that's kind of interesting. I haven't been super and I did actually play through three, but it's been a while. And I haven't really played anything since then. I love Borderlands style and I love Borderlands writing.
00:40:18
Speaker
I really wanted Gearbox to do anything with the gameplay. So if they're starting to do that, then excellent. With their recent purchase by Embracer Group, I feel like they're potentially going to spin off or at least provide feedback on other ones, but historically, they've kind of stuck to the same template, right?
00:40:46
Speaker
I know what I'm getting when I play a Borderlands-inspired game, and it's just how much. There's a historical issue with alt characters. They fixed some of the issues from two to three, but three introduced its own problems that weren't resolved by Tiny Tina's.
00:41:07
Speaker
I also want to mention that you clearly read ahead to my emergency notes, which I will now reference just in case we ran out of content. We're not actually out of content, but it's not going to make any sense if I reference it later. Embracer group to acquire Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and Square Enix Montreal for $300 million, including Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, Legacy of Cain, and more.
00:41:32
Speaker
That for me is all like Eidos titles that I remember from CD-ROMs back in the day. Yeah, no, you were a big thief fan. Obviously, I'm a big Deus Ex fan. Yeah, I hated Deus Ex. I also have to give a shout out to Legacy of Cain. I don't know if it hurts or helps, Ian, but I know that he is a big fan of the series and
00:42:00
Speaker
may at some point want there to be another one. He's definitely wanted there to be another one. It's just what do you do with a modern version of a dark fantasy platformer? Castlevania? I don't know. I mean, it's been a bit, but they've done it. Didn't they do it in the GameCube? Wasn't there some you play as a skeleton?
00:42:24
Speaker
I remember the name of the game, unfortunately. And the description I'm giving is very lacking. But it can be done. I'm seeing platformers more so in the indie space than AAA. Double Fine came out and said that Psychonauts 2 is legitimately their best selling and best reviewed game ever. And that released post Microsoft. So Microsoft seeing that is likely to put more money into that style of game.
00:42:55
Speaker
Legitimately a good game. 100%.
00:42:58
Speaker
But it's, uh, Oh, I did a hundred percent. I thank you for asking. Um, it is very much so. Like, as I've said, multiple times on and off the podcast, it's a good game. And then I don't have anything else to say beyond that. Like it does, doesn't have the same sticking power of some of the other titles that we were waiting to release. Like Elden Ring. We don't shut the fuck up about. And it's like, when I was trying to like, I really enjoyed it. It was everything I wanted it to be. Period. And you're like, okay.
00:43:27
Speaker
It doesn't ask lingering questions. I guess it's probably the best way of phrasing it.
00:43:34
Speaker
It was like a really well played out, like tight experience. And that's what it was. Like once you're done, you don't really have like the same replay and the candidate bite on something else or the discussion around, Hey, what do you think is going to happen here? Cause it's stories wrapped at least as far as that section. Right. They didn't want to torture people to wait another 20 years for your psycho notes. Right.
00:44:02
Speaker
But at the same time, like if they kept doing that maybe less than 20 years, I would keep getting them because I enjoy the writing. I enjoy the gameplay. It's always interesting. I put it in the same bucket that I put Ratchet and Clank. Like if they released more, I would buy them. I know what I'm getting.
00:44:22
Speaker
And I will enjoy the experience of getting them, but I don't have a lot to add to that mythos basically. Yeah. Right. Do you have a game like that, Jake, where it's like, I'm always there for it, but then you kind of move on once it's done.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah.
Impact of Guardians of the Galaxy Game
00:44:40
Speaker
Well, I the problem is it's very difficult for me to think about those games because they just exit my brain once I'm done with them. Right. But I know exactly that sensation. I finished the game. I was like, man, that was fun. I'm never going to play this again. And not like with any amount of malice. We actually like stop thought about talking about it, but like Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. So I played not too long ago.
00:45:09
Speaker
And I really enjoyed it. I had a heck of a time going through the game, fun time. And then I got to the end of it and I was like, that was great. And I just moved on with my life, right? There's no like, nothing keeping me up at night. I don't need to wait for a sequel. It's something that's like fun and cool in the moment, but not like water cooler talk afterwards. Yeah. Like, Hey, did you play this one level? It's like, yeah.
00:45:35
Speaker
I think it does hurt a little bit more if it is in a series that you care about though, right? Like if you're expecting, if your expectations are higher, even if you're perfectly satisfied with the game, if you expect it to be blown away or to want more afterwards, even meeting your expectations can be disappointing as weird as that sounds. No, I get that for Psychonauts 2 because like it hit all the things I wanted it to. I don't really expect like a specific thing. I just expect to be like,
00:46:05
Speaker
Surprised and entertained. And they did that. I think part of the problem with second last time is just how long it took for them to release it because it was a fig release instead of... So we knew basically when the development started. So we knew that the game was happening all the way back before the first line of code, the first gray box was implemented. And so it was just that long wait.
00:46:36
Speaker
to get exactly what we wanted rather than something with Elden Ring where we knew it was happening, but we didn't know how expansive it was going to be, what content it was going to entail. He had a teaser and that was it. Yeah. I will say though, it was a quick interjection. A long wait into something that you don't want with Cyberpunk 2077. So count your blessings. Yeah.
00:47:03
Speaker
I feel like, and Jake, you said this before, it makes more sense to have very little notice or information given so that when it happens, you don't have those expectations.
Bethesda's Starfield Secrecy
00:47:15
Speaker
And with the Fig release and getting the email updates once a month, I'm like, the first two I read, beyond that, I was like, eh, let me know when it's done. It's like I ordered something from Grubhub two years in advance. I'm like, I'm going to want a cheesesteak, yeah. But don't keep telling me about it.
00:47:32
Speaker
So in that same vein, Starfield with Bethesda, so much has happened since their initial release and we've gotten very little content from them besides grandiose ideas of what the game is going to entail. Grandiose Montreal, yeah.
00:47:54
Speaker
I literally forget what they've released up to this point when we get a content drop or when someone mentions Starfield as a game and it's supposed to release this year. Yeah, it's slated for November. It's actually the Bethesda launch date. It's November 11. 11-11. I don't know, actually. I'm hoping we get a little bit of information. They had a portrait I actually posted to Discord or a picture. Art.
00:48:24
Speaker
I posted to Discord that's like, um, it's really evocative of like those old. Like episode four posters, like Luke standing there with like the lightsaber extending into the sky and lay on his leg or whatever.
Starfield Expectations and Comparisons
00:48:37
Speaker
And like, um, it's that kind of stuff. Like they removed all the misogyny, but they left all of the style. Um, it's not misogyny. They're related. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. They removed all of the incest, but like everything else is still there. Um, and.
00:48:54
Speaker
It looks really cool. I know like nothing about the game. Todd Howard did an AMA and he's like, it will have modding, which there was like no chance it was going to be removed if it was a single player game on the creation engine. So who knows? I suspect it will be.
00:49:12
Speaker
kind of like Elder Scrolls in space, because it's really the only, it's either gonna be fallout. Which is really the one I expect, yeah. Yeah, it's either fallout in space or it's Elder Scrolls in space. And Outer Wilds, no, Outer Worlds did one of those already, so.
00:49:28
Speaker
I can see them going more in depth with the world, I guess, is what I'm expecting from it. I'm hoping for a little bit more economy that isn't just crafting knives for 10 hours. But we'll see. My family is supported by the knife economy, Justin. What's funny here is your example, even using Starfield, Bethesda,
00:49:55
Speaker
had the opposite launch, where they did the year of announcement, right? They're like, hey, it's Gamescom. Fallout 3 is dropping or whatever. I don't think Fallout 3 is a good example, but they had Fallout 4.
00:50:06
Speaker
Like, the turnaround was less than a year, I think, from the point the game is announced. They learned their lesson from the previous ones, where Fallout 4 was a Fallout shelter dropped that day, and then Fallout 4 was dropping that year. They lost a little bit of that train with 76, which I never played. Yeah, good call. In retrospect.
00:50:36
Speaker
But it's good to see that they're still kind of following. They announced Elder Scrolls VI and Starfield the same time. And we're working on these. You don't need to know anything about them at this point. And then we're in the launch year. And it's like, OK, you're going to start hearing some things. And I think the real test will be whether or not they have a release preview to
00:51:05
Speaker
you know the standard media and stuff like that ahead of time that isn't the the the doom issue was their embargo lifted when it launched like there's a balance there somewhere yeah even close by can be dangerous because like cyberpunk i think had like a three-day embargo lift or something like that it was a relatively short amount of time it was enough time
00:51:30
Speaker
for reviewers to get out and start talking about the game and the heights of the game, but not to explore the lows. The other problem with the Cyberpunk 2077 embargo was that all of the media copies were PC. PC, yep. Because the console gun didn't run.
00:51:54
Speaker
Yeah. Back to what Jake said at the beginning. Before we recorded, trust no one. Zero trust networks? I can talk about zero trust networks if you really want. Circling back though, what games have you been playing, Dave? Circling back 40 minutes. Did I do my taxes this year? Yeah, so far back we are.
00:52:23
Speaker
So recently I have to do a game anecdote, because I've been playing some Dota 2 again with the boys. They had a patch like two days ago, and they fucked up something in the patch. That's normal. So do you guys know Underlord? Yeah.
00:52:39
Speaker
That's aimed at us for earlier. Yeah, so he has like a firestorm thing. So it does like some flat damage, and then some percents burn over time, and it does like pulses. So the longer you stay in it, you're going to be eating more damage than you need to. Well, they did the calculation wrong. So if you were in it once, it essentially burns your entire health. And we've played, I think, two games of using this mechanic before. They didn't even update a patch. They just removed the hero from the pool, and they're like, we're working on it.
00:53:08
Speaker
You couldn't select your band. So that was funny. But actual game I've been playing recently has been Tunic. The one I kept saying I would after three years of talking about once I got to come out. It's your star field. Yeah.
Tunic Experience and Exploration
00:53:25
Speaker
It's good, though. I did beat it recently. What about the game?
00:53:31
Speaker
I also beat that in my spare time from beating it. But kind of similar to Death's Door style of like an isometric hack and slash, kind of mixed with Link's Awakening, the remake they did, where it's like that very cute artsy style, low poly. I really enjoy just kind of playing and doing like, again, old school RPG type vibes.
00:53:56
Speaker
It was nice doing the progression, exploring, and just having fun with it. My only complaint, and I'll keep it vague because I know Justin's checking it out. Certain stuff late game or certain stuff in the game, I felt like I had to look up.
00:54:12
Speaker
versus it being intuitive to somebody who's just like playing a game. Yeah, it was really hard to get this hexing. Like I'm not sure why my question is as difficult as it was. It'd be furry porn because he plays a fork. I'm interested to see what those references are since
00:54:39
Speaker
For me, I get the length of the past stuff, but I also get a lot of Elden Ring or From Soft style exploration, like interconnected world where it's not necessarily that you don't have the ability to do something, but you just don't know that you have the ability. You don't get the information until later, for sure.
00:55:07
Speaker
And so I'm wondering whether or not some of the design considerations for it were not, you're not intended to solve every problem. Because I think that's some of the stuff that Miyazaki came out with was it's good to have secrets that are then discussed online of like, did you know about X, which I know we recently had an Elden Ring discussion about. I will say that
00:55:39
Speaker
Sorry, I was going to say as an aside, this is how you know that Justin belongs on the podcast. We were literally talking about like a Zelda like platformer thing and it's like the Elden Ring. Let's go back to talking about Elden Ring. He knows he gets paid per time he says it. So he's just like shoehorning it. I'm a convert. What can I say?
00:56:01
Speaker
I will say like some of the puzzles are like things you don't know that you can figure out. And then when you do figure it out, it does feel really cool. And as I was going through, I was kind of piecing together some things and kind of theory crafting. And it was fun to do and then have that information be rewarded later. Like, oh, I did call that correctly. Or oh, I was fucking away off base. But it was just it was a fun experience.
00:56:25
Speaker
Yeah, I'm curious to have Justin play through it and get his thoughts. And Jake, if you ever check it out, I'd love to do an episode for sure.
00:56:34
Speaker
Best bet might be if Justin plays through the game. I got six months. Got it. Okay. You got six months. Very good. Yeah. I don't know. I'll have to keep an eye on it. I actually have like a pretty sensitive backlog of games that I want to play. And instead of playing all of those, I'm playing games I've already played. But as I get older, I'm sure you guys can relate. That's just how it works sometimes. You're like, sure could play Yakuza like a dragon.
00:57:02
Speaker
And now I'm playing Cyberpunk for some reason. Like, you know, it's what's just what I'm going to do is just plant the seed. I'll mention it to Dan like once and then you guys be playing something together and then he'll start talking about our posts and stuff and that'll get you going. That's true. That is true. We tried a GTFO like last night and then I refunded it actually like that.
00:57:29
Speaker
And it wasn't because the game is GCFO because I thought it was like definitely like a four player something, but I couldn't tell if it was like a Left 4 Dead vibe or if it was something else. It's like survival horror co-op sort of like in a campaign.
00:57:47
Speaker
So like, is it like Left 4 Dead or? Yeah, well Left 4 Dead is more arcadey, it's slower. Like, so you enter a room, the enemies might not be aware of your presence, maybe try to sneak through and like stealth attack a bunch of them. Okay, now you've gotten to a door, you have to like activate a scanner to get through the door, survive waves of enemies.
00:58:06
Speaker
you have very low ammo, stuff like that. So it's much more into the survival sphere, but like the pace of it was what actually did it for me. I just don't have the patience to move really slowly through that. It's unfortunate because it was hecka atmospheric.
00:58:23
Speaker
So because of like the greediness and realism and it being survival, more focused, there was a lot more focus on staying alive versus playing with your friends and like running through zombies, like a back for blood, left for dead too. Okay. Yeah. Like your health only regenerates to 20%. Okay. Yeah, that's, that's brutal. But like in relation to like the time scale for like a barotama or however you pronounce the submarine game. Same word, but with one R.
00:58:53
Speaker
Justin, I think you literally mentioned like a Monster Hunter character. On the bear, the bear, Tommy. Yes, yes. There is an event for Sunbreaker on the 12th or 10th. I won't do that right now. That's fair. It felt a little slower. I don't think that it has to be that slow if you're like actually really accurate and you're going through it. But we were going really slow to conserve ammo and even then
00:59:23
Speaker
The thing was we ran out of ammo and it's like RNG. The maps are doors that lead to other areas and you have to like follow a path through to an objective and maybe come back and like, you know, you got to do stuff. Payday where like there is a fixed route through a thing. Exactly. But you still have that kind of experience barrier where the people that know how to play it would potentially go faster and feel
00:59:50
Speaker
slowed down by the people that were just learning a map or something along those lines. Yeah. And we just ran out of ammo. And so we straight up just like soft blocked essentially. Cause you can't survive. We got to, we like, or really low on ammo and we're like, we're doing okay. And then we got to like a hoard door where you activate it and get swarmed and we're like, the game is over. We played it out anyways, but, um, it was kind of demoralizing to get there, which is largely the reason how he funded it. Okay.
01:00:19
Speaker
If your first play session is not leaving feel-good vibes, that's why I refunded Mighty No. 9. You can refund on Kickstarter. If you have information about the owners of Kickstarter, you can get a refund for anything. In other things that I'm waiting for in
01:00:43
Speaker
Close to coming news that phrase was completely wrong. No, that was I know what you're talking about speaking of close to The satisfactory update six
Satisfactory Update Excitement
01:00:56
Speaker
is supposed to launch in June and I'm me and Rachel are super excited for that oh, yeah, I recently get back into it and I was hosting a
01:01:06
Speaker
a private server for the group of friends, and we'll figure out whether or not we're continuing from that save or potentially running two saves. I know we also spent a decent amount of time teaching Dave how to do coal power. And then I abuse that coal power to make giant launch tubes, like for yourself, the propelled transport.
01:01:34
Speaker
Well, it was the whatever sucks you in. Yeah. Lining up a bunch of those into like a very long ramp down and then like a little at the end. So you just kind of eat yourself. The dirty trick is like if you set up one of those tubes but you have directional input required to hit the next one. So you've set it up. So you're like, oh yeah, this will only work if you hold right. Like as soon as you exit or something like that. That's the thing. I legitimately try to set it up.
01:02:02
Speaker
But it's always inconsistent where you land. Because I tried making something like, oh, this would be like the landing pad, but I never landed in that exact spot. I always had to do input each time in like different directions. Walls were the solution to that problem. And then I always built cyclotrons to try and
01:02:21
Speaker
do what Jake was saying where instead of requiring an input at a certain speed, the game would just force you out sideways because it thought you were in an infinite loop. So you could use that knowledge to exploit a I built speed and now launch me. The problem was it was never fast enough for me. So on our private server, I think I made a
01:02:46
Speaker
a 12 to 16 entrance hyper tube launcher. And that would get you from the central spaghetti base to Ian's base in three seconds, if the server could keep up. That's really funny. That's great. It's a stupid, entertaining game. And I'm not even somebody who likes
01:03:14
Speaker
like the factory design that's never really appealed to me but I still get into this and I know when I was playing on your server with you and Rachel at some point I was just hanging out with you guys so I made like an idle launcher yep so I had a bunch of like little basically macaroni noodles that would like suck me and shoot me out suck me and shoot and I did it in a loop and that's like hey Dave what are you up to I'm like I'm just hanging out and just to see my body kind of moving around
01:03:40
Speaker
Every time I take my train off to Never Never Land, I drive past those and Dave was here once. That's great. It's a good game. I'm surprised as many people got into it as did in our friends group, but it's pretty prolific.
01:03:58
Speaker
I'm really excited for when 1.0 launches and it's a complete experience. I think it's a solid experience now, but I feel like they're where they could potentially go with some things. I'm interested to see what happens. Oh yeah, absolutely.
01:04:16
Speaker
And if you guys are interested and see what happens, just kidding. We have to do the thing first. Thank you, Justin, for being on the show once more. Thanks for having me again, twice in one episode. Yeah, right. Thank you, Dave, also for being on the show. Thank you, me. You're welcome. But no, it's always good to have you on and talk about random crap and farming spots and stuff like that. That's it.
01:04:46
Speaker
Well, now that you live more so out in the country, Jake, you could make your own farming spot. That's true. We don't have much of a backyard though. We do have a space in the front where a tree was removed. So we can make that a little plot, a little three by three plot. Put like a radish in there.
01:05:05
Speaker
I'll start composting just to bring compost over to you. Excellent. That's what I want people to deliver to my premise. But if you guys in the audience have anything that you would like to deliver to our premise, you can send that into our email, because that's about the only stuff that you should. At slopestonepodcastgml.com or you could join the discussion on Facebook, I think, at facebook.com slash slopestonepodcast.
01:05:35
Speaker
And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night. Thank you.
01:06:03
Speaker
you