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S2 Ep132: Talkcast - November
75 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they catch up on news and talk about what's been going on recently!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introductions and Weekend Plans
00:00:42
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 today, Dave? It's going good. Having a nice, relaxing extended weekend. How about you?
00:00:57
Speaker
Same. Uh, just like super extended weekend.
Cyberpunk 2077 Delay Impact
00:01:01
Speaker
Uh, do you attack on vacation days? Yeah, I just slapped. So like cyberpunk was supposed to come out originally last week. And so my PTO was up for that. And then they rescheduled it like without that much of a heads up to last week. So I just, I just kept that vacation going. But yeah.
00:01:25
Speaker
Otherwise, you know, we're getting by. It'll come out someday. Hopefully the day that they've said it will because I've also taken up time for that. I heard they're actually going to pair it as like a double release. So you get it like as like a pack. It's like that and the Covid vaccine together. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah.
00:01:46
Speaker
Although what's funny is it probably is the minor form of the COVID vaccine in a way, because unless you already have COVID, you're not going to get it while you're sitting down playing Cyberpunk. Hey man, come to the bar. Nah, nah. I have a couple of side missions I got to do tonight. No, it's fairly ridiculous. I don't know if it can actually live up to hype. It might be impossible at this point. But we'll see. We'll see how it is.
Thanksgiving Reflections
00:02:14
Speaker
How was your holiday?
00:02:18
Speaker
Thanksgiving stuff. It was good. Thanks. No, I specifically did not tell anybody I was thankful for them or do like a Facebook post or anything like that. But I did drive down to see Mike and Annie. We had Thanksgiving there. It was like a small value. Just them and Annie's sister, Laura, but had some banging food. Got to hang out.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, got to play with the pads. It was just nice, good relaxing time. No, that's pretty much the perfect Thanksgiving, I think.
00:02:53
Speaker
Like you don't have the family political chaos or anything like that. Yeah. We kept pointing that out. It's like, ah, four young liberals. Nice. And also there's no big travel. Right. I did have to drive down, but like they didn't have to go from like family to family across cities or states.
00:03:19
Speaker
No, that's definitely the way to do it. We basically stayed in for ours. Did you get wall wall gobblers? I did actually. I saw your recommend. Because that was my initial plan if this fell through or was never planned in the first place. Yeah, it was actually so we kind of went like.
00:03:39
Speaker
after I woke up. So it was probably like 5pm, like 6pm or something. And the, we're like, it's probably real busy, right? Like it's around when people would be getting off of work. That was the first thing I thought about that makes no sense. And also like people are going to be showing up
00:04:00
Speaker
For dinner you know all the thanksgiving loners and people who are getting all our gobblers. But we went there and there was almost nobody there is like two or three other customers in the store and our order was done like right quick. Because it was the only order in the store.
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah, those people are just doing they're getting overtime or double or over triple pay for holiday stuff to do that shift And then they're out but a lot of families seem to get together around The afternoon if they have like an evening meal Right. Mm-hmm. That's true. Actually, I don't know everybody shows up just for like Turkey done. We're here Yeah, hold hands pray feed me that shit. I
00:04:45
Speaker
It is Thanksgiving is a little bit weird in that regard that I think it's the only like holiday meal I can think of where it's got like a pretty explicit afternoon offset. It's not like Christmas dinner, which usually happens like at dinner time, as one would expect. It doesn't have like Thanksgiving dinner or whatever. It doesn't happen over lunch usually. It's like two, like you're saying.
00:05:12
Speaker
Which is weird. I think it's just because of the prep time or something. It takes longer to get everything set up. Well, yeah, but you can you can offset the prep time to almost anything. Right. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have a particular feeling either way on it. I just like having the good food. Do you have any fixings that you especially need?
00:05:35
Speaker
Hmm. That aren't on a government. Right. Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm kind of a traditionalist for a lot of that. Just like, um, stuffing is really good. Stuffing is probably the, the like.
00:05:50
Speaker
one of the number ones for me, which shouldn't be a surprise given like I love bread in general. As opposed to most people who hate bread. Right. But carb loading was a joke with me for a long time. But never a joke to me. Right. So this is my life. Okay, I have to add real quick. Do you like homemade stuffing or like the box mix?
Thanksgiving Culinary Delights
00:06:18
Speaker
Honestly, they're both pretty good. Homemade's probably a bit better because there's a lot of stuff you can do with homemade. Kind of kick it up a notch. But yeah, I think they're both pretty good. Also cranberries. I like cranberries in general. There's some jokes about me ordering cranberry juices when we go to restaurants instead of alcoholic beverages. So I like to keep that rolling.
00:06:43
Speaker
I actually made some cranberry orange muffins that I brought down to contribute to food because they were doing all the other prep and actual cooking. It was turned out okay, I think. You're cashing in on that muffin experience from earlier this year. Yes. I also went to the store today to get some stuff to make muffins later after this call.
00:07:09
Speaker
which will hopefully be lemon and blueberry or something close to it. Ooh, lemon blueberry sounds pretty good. But Mike actually made apparently to him is like very simple homemade cranberry sauce. But he like took cranberries and sugar and water and like cooked it down, but also zested and peeled an orange. Mm.
00:07:31
Speaker
It's, it's so good. I, I said, I like, I wouldn't shut up about it. Like that's how good it was. People are like talking about their lives and stuff. You're like, yeah, it's pretty good, huh? They're like, my grandmother died.
00:07:46
Speaker
Yeah. Wait, was that the wrong time? No, they won't listen to this episode because they're busy with their dead grandmother. Great. That's fair.
Post-Election Family Discussions
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah. I got to take some stuff home. I haven't touched the leftovers yet. I'm giving it like a daybreak on Thanksgiving food and then tomorrow it will be Thanksgiving food again until it's gone. Right.
00:08:08
Speaker
Yeah, Thanksgiving is also good for that for leftovers, obviously. I was talking to a friend of the show and friend, Thorne, yeah, actually. And he was talking about how they were prepping a
00:08:23
Speaker
I think they actually I can't remember if he said they were getting a turkey or a chicken, but recommended was the chicken. I think they were prepping a chicken. I think that's where the topic went instead of like a full turkey because they only had like they were only feeding two people or something, in which case like a full turkey makes less sense.
00:08:44
Speaker
I was like, that's a good idea. That's a good pivot. So sorry, Thorin, I've disappointed you. I went and got a gobbler instead, but it was still a good idea. I mean, I think that your option is fine too. If it was me and I was pretending to do actual cooking, I would honestly get like the $5 rotisserie chickens. That's like in the hot and ready section. I'd be like, haha, look, it's done. Because I just need like cooked meat that's been seasoned.
00:09:15
Speaker
Wawa doesn't really have hot and ready chicken, though, do they? That's more of a... Oh, no, I meant more like a Wegmans or Giant, yeah. Something, an actual grocery store. I had considered it, but man, like the day just got on and I was like, I'm really lazy. And Jenny was streaming that day. So as soon as she was done, she was like really hungry and like, let's go to Wawa.
00:09:38
Speaker
Oh, yes, another idea. It's less of a gotta have and a little bit more of a this is really convenient and amazing. Yeah. And they built the one closer to your place to after I moved away.
Holiday Convenience Store Visit
00:09:54
Speaker
I don't know if it's any any closer than the the one up the street. I'm going to try not to place myself. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it is new, at least we've been in there.
00:10:08
Speaker
We've been in there once or twice, but yeah, it's nice. Exciting times for Jake. He has a new wah-wah. There's a lot of options, honestly. I think there's three within convenient driving distance now. Doesn't really matter. I only need one, but you can re-pivot off of an errand to any of them, I guess.
00:10:33
Speaker
Or you're like, I got some wah wah. I guess I should also do groceries. Right, yeah. Exactly. So what else has been new with you outside of holiday stuff?
Gaming and Social Interaction Balance
00:10:45
Speaker
Because I see them just only took up like a day of your time. If that... Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't too bad. I got one family call in I wanted to mention. It was two and a half hours. I was talking to my dad.
00:10:58
Speaker
It actually wasn't too bad because politics weren't like a large part of it, but I just call so infrequently because I'm just a terrible son that when I do call, my parents are like, keep them on the line. It's like the old spy movie thing where it's like keep them talking while they're tracing the call in the background. It's literally that, but for this whole purpose of keeping me talking. But your mom is really bad at triangulating your location.
00:11:27
Speaker
Right. She's like looking through all the emails. Did they say what their address was?
00:11:34
Speaker
That was literally we were texting back and forth for address verification for cards and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Anytime somebody says like, hey, what's your address? I'm like, what am I getting? Do I want to write the wrong address so I don't get it? Decoy neighbor address. Yeah. Oh, that looks like food. I'm gonna go steal that from them real quick. Yeah. No, it was it was kind of
00:12:01
Speaker
It was weird a little bit or maybe less weird is actually what I'm trying to say, talking to family like after all the election stuff's been done because like they're still on, you know, all of these. We disagree on many topics without going into it, but.
00:12:19
Speaker
It seemed like for the first time in a while, we could kind of just refocus and be like, hey, I love you guys. Let's talk about stuff that isn't going to stress us the heck out. And they're like, yeah, OK. I was like, that worked. So that was nice. That was a nice little Thanksgiving gift.
00:12:41
Speaker
I didn't get you anything for Thanksgiving. I'm sorry. If you want, we can never talk about politics. That's fair. I mean, that's a different podcast probably. I don't think I could do it. It just gets too stressful. Yeah.
00:12:55
Speaker
It also is that there's this, um, I was thinking about this earlier, like with religion. And it's just like, if I, I have beliefs and I have thoughts about like religion, but what am I going to talk about that hasn't already been debated to death and philosophy, right? Like I doubt I have original contributions to make in that space.
00:13:18
Speaker
Oh, you're right. They definitely don't have any IGN reviews of any of the games we've talked about for the past three years. Right. Well, that's possibly a good point. Why do we do this? It's our voice and our perspective. It's not necessarily right or wrong. It's just where we're coming from. Yeah. Hmm.
00:13:46
Speaker
Where are you coming from, Jake? Where am I coming from? Faced with the possibility that I might be wrong for the first time. But no, I guess to your question, I've been playing a lot of games. Probably a little less Final Fantasy than I have been recently, mostly doing the weekly stuff there. Watching people play some games, playing Sea of Thieves.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen you guys doing lots of piracy actions.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a really interesting game. It's kind of, um, I didn't realize this going in, but there's no progression to it. Like it's all cosmetic stuff. So the point is to like acquire currency, gold and stuff like that by solving riddles or again, piracy. Um, but it's never to like actually progress. It's just to make your stuff look better.
00:14:48
Speaker
And it's weird. That's a weird system to me. Is it enough of an engaging system to kind of merit that where you want to just go out and dick around with friends and then get some swag? I guess like.
00:15:02
Speaker
I think the answer is yes, but it's just because the base gameplay is actually really fun. I was thinking about it and I was like, there's nothing like this. And I was like, wait, Dota is literally like this. Dota is only cosmetics. I mean, it does have like ranked progression and stuff like that, though, which this game doesn't have.
00:15:24
Speaker
Um, and there's not really a win or lose thing at the end of it to tell you whether you did a good job. Um, I think it's just for just the experiences. Yeah. It's just for the multiplayer fun of like having your ship be on the edge of sinking and someone's rapidly bailing water while fixing holes and you're still taking on cannonballs. And it's just, it's just fun to play, um, in that space with some friends up to four friends.
00:15:53
Speaker
Well, up to three other friends. Four people in total. But there's, I don't know, I do have gripes with it. I think that it really sucks that you basically have to remake your lobby and lose your progress if you want to adjust your ship size. That's pretty lame.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like kind of a kick in the shins. It is because you might be working on something and you have to just restart from nothing. But because it's all cosmetic, it sort of matters a little bit less. I don't know.
00:16:26
Speaker
It looks fun from what I've seen you guys play on Discord. Yeah. I mean, I would recommend it, basically. I think it also just does look really fun because we played it with like a group of two or three people. And then within a few days, we have like six other people by the game. It was fairly ridiculous. And this is why they're trying to go on Discord. What are they playing, 14 or pirate stuff? Nevermind. Yeah.
00:16:56
Speaker
But yeah, that's something I've been putting time into. I know you've had, you know, your holiday time. Have you been putting time into games other than the one that we recently put time into together? I mean, listen, I'm always gaming 24-7, even when I'm right. Poop and I'm doing Flappy Bird, you know. You have a gamer chair, so. That I poop on.
00:17:23
Speaker
I kind of still some of the tried and trues, still passively doing some monster on her iceborn. Occasionally I can get people for that. Other times, like this morning, I'm like, nobody's fucking awake. So I'll just do some solo quests just to be less bad for when we do some multiplayer stuff. Dota 2 here and there based on people's availability.
00:17:45
Speaker
Among Us and Fall Guys still exists, but it's kind of slowed down. Not usually people are trying to get on board for that. And then Solo, single player game. I've been checking out Lisa a little bit.
00:17:58
Speaker
which I think Dunkey had a video on years ago, but it's like, I went back and watched it recently. Actually 2d RPG kind of out there in an earth bound sense. I don't know too much about it or where it's going, but I've enjoyed what I've played so far and we'll continue to beat it. Uh, but it's very unorthodox compared to standard RPGs.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, that was definitely the impression I was getting. It kind of looked like, um, like the Paper Mario sort of like novelty style of writing, but like with a bunch of drugs injected and cranked up to 11. That's what it looked like. Yeah. It's had some nice little subversion humor of it appreciated.
00:18:44
Speaker
I own that game. Do you? I apparently do. Oh, I've never played it. I mean, check it out some point, I guess. Might as well, I guess. Yeah, I'm just very passively playing it though, because
00:18:59
Speaker
I don't know, it's hard for me to like sit down and do single player RPG for like hours at a time. Yeah. I'll do an hour and a half and then I'll get a severe case of FOMO. Be like, what are other people doing? And I'll just sit on Discord and like listen to people play games rather than play a game or I'll throw one of YouTube's. I think that's kind of...
00:19:22
Speaker
I wonder if that's part of growing up is the, maybe not. A lot of little kids enjoy watching people play games and stuff like that too. So bad example perhaps, but I'm reminded of like, if you're your grandparents or something, rather than them going off and playing games or doing whatever, they're always just kind of like
00:19:44
Speaker
hanging out around your space, seeing what you're doing, right? They're just like, all right, this is the spectator part of it. Yeah, I hate saying it depends, but there are times where I just want to be a spectator and live vicariously through somebody else. Like with Sea of Thieves,
00:20:04
Speaker
I have zero interest in that game. But I see you guys having fun playing. I'm like, okay, I get to kind of appreciate that from a distance. Cool. Yeah. And then there are times where I want to do something and grind it out and be like, yeah, I did that shit. Right. But for a lot of times, I don't feel an active need to
00:20:25
Speaker
be doing something to get enjoyment versus just experiencing something. It's a lot easier to just throw on a Netflix, YouTube, Discord stream, Twitch, and just be like, oh, that's what's going on. Let me just soak that in. Right. Something passively sort of there in the background. I can get that. That can be pretty nice.
00:20:46
Speaker
I definitely sometimes fall into the mindset of the solo play away from group sort of thing, where if I'm playing like a single player game, I can't really do that and be in chat that much.
Focus on Single-Player Gaming
00:21:03
Speaker
So I'll just kind of drop. And if I'm really stuck in a single player game, like when Cyberpunk comes out, I'm probably not going to be in Discord.
00:21:12
Speaker
like sharing my experiences with people, although that might be a more fulfilling experience in the long run, just because I'm going to be really focused on the game.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's just multiplayer experiences or just human contact at this point is just nice in whatever capacity. That's fair. That's probably a little bit of why I'm leaning that way. But yeah, if I am going to go through a single player thing where like I care about the plot, and it's not like second monitor is going to be music or something else that's slightly distracting, white noisy, right? I want focus. So I don't want to hear somebody talking about
00:21:54
Speaker
Something like shut the fuck up. So I gotta put myself in a box to just be in the game
00:22:00
Speaker
I can't remember the last time I've done this, but like, usually like I'm second monitor. Uh, something's up all the time, be it Reddit or YouTube or whatever. Right. Um, doesn't have to be playing anything actively, but it's there, but there's been a few games where after I launched it up, it was, it was something that like just came out. I literally turned off my other monitors because I'm just like, just complete focus, nothing in periphery. Um, then I got a larger monitor. So.
00:22:28
Speaker
Now I have to like look to the sides to see what's on my main monitor anyway. So maybe that's a little bit of an issue, but yeah. Now it's, I can see the argument for the social aspect of it. This chord's like really freaking nice for that. Being able to actually have a community.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I don't follow the community aspect at all. Um, cause that's my own, how my own brain works, but it is nice that at any point I can hit somebody up or we can hop on a call or join a different server to play games. I've played chess with a whole bunch of random people recently, not random as I have no idea who they are, but like a handful of people across the discourse are like, who wants to play chess? I'll be like, all right, do that shit.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah. I didn't even realize it was a thing. I know we've talked about chess a little bit in the past, but I think I forced you to play it once, like three years ago. Yeah. I played it once and I was just like, oof. But there's a level of investment that I just wasn't
00:23:40
Speaker
I knew that grandmasters and people like that were probably pretty into it. But watching you play chess or just listening to you play chess with someone else in the channel also playing chess. There's something here. There's a certain level of commitment and nerddom to this that I can respect.
00:24:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like with magic or anything else. It's just you pick some things up from practice because by no means do I consider myself a good chess player. Can I beat some of my friends? Yeah. Could they beat me? Justin and I, Justin and we're going back and forth and we were kind of just doing like taking turns being smooth brain.
00:24:23
Speaker
And it's like, I put this really aggressive move out. I'm like, this is going to fork him with my queen. And then he just killed my queen because the pawn is next to him. I'm like, that was dumb. There's just been like a weird resurgence of that. That's been kind of cool. Yeah.
00:24:43
Speaker
No, it is. It is really cool. I suspect that they've probably seen a lot more activity like chess.com. Yeah. Over the pandemic, a lot of people. Did you guys end up watching Queen's Gambit on Netflix? I haven't seen it yet, no. Okay. Well, I think that's part of what spurred the resurgence because the show about fictional character Beth Harmon playing chess and she's like a chess savant and a lady.
New Console Comparisons
00:25:10
Speaker
So a lot of people in chess at that time period were not ladies. So a lot of it was like, they became ladies. They transformed through the waters of, yeah, it's like her chess career and some stuff. It's I think based on a novel.
00:25:32
Speaker
But most good shows and movies are. That's true, except for season six. Anyway. It doesn't even matter the show, actually. You could just say season six and it's usually pretty... Community? Yeah.
00:25:54
Speaker
Six is just not a great time for the Dexter or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, before we talk about six, I feel like we should talk about five, the PS five and the Xbox, whatever the fuck they're calling that stuff now. Have you followed the console wars at all?
00:26:15
Speaker
I mean, I feel like they probably are barely wars anymore at this point. Maybe they are. Well, they usually will release around the same time for obvious reasons. That's true. But have you followed anything for which system you're more interested in? Are you just out of the console game?
00:26:34
Speaker
I mean, I'm going to probably wait a fair amount of time. Um, PlayStation default wins for me, uh, just cause I care less. Like it could be that Xbox has a lot on PlayStation. Maybe they do, but I just kind of don't care. So like PS4 hardware wise.
00:26:57
Speaker
was basically good enough for me. Most of the games I played on PS4, like Monster Hunter was the only thing that really had any possibility to struggle there that I played in. And there was a performance mode for that. I could just be like, oh, graphics down a little bit and we're good.
00:27:16
Speaker
So I don't care if it got any better, really, right? Like loading times didn't really impact me that much. So I'm not waiting for like the next big hardware jump. So the only thing I really have to consider are games. And in my opinion, I'm ready for the counter, the counter argument from the other side here though, Dave. I care about games for PlayStation more than Xbox.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that. Moving on. I mean, Xbox's main thing for a long time has been Halo. Surprise, surprise. But as we kind of talked about before, I feel like they haven't modified it too much. Like, it's not been like amazing gameplay since Halo 2. I'm like, oh, my God, I got to get the next one. Remember, I'm like four games back. Yeah. Halo 2 is the last one I played. Do you remember Alex from work?
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah. H? Yeah. Yeah. I guess I'm using people's last names on here. Sorry, Justin. But he's a big Halo buff. So for him, he was always looking to get the latest and greatest Halo. But he kept playing Halo. And he had friends to play with and everything. So I get that. That's part of your gaming culture, is I want to hop on Xbox Live with my guys. I'm going to shoot some aliens and hang out. Cool. Yeah.
00:28:41
Speaker
But outside of Halo, which I don't think blew out of the waters for this latest Xbox, I don't really know what they have on offer versus PlayStation 5 has Demon's Souls and anything else beyond that, I'm like... It kind of doesn't matter. Demon's Souls is really what's selling us for me. In the same way for PlayStation 4, I'm like, oh, Final Fantasy 7 remake and then I never bought it. Yeah.
00:29:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's basically, I meant the exact, I meant the exact same boat. It's just like Demon's Souls though. Is it worth buying a new console for Demon's Souls? Probably not for me.
00:29:28
Speaker
There's two ways to think about it, I guess. Will games come out for PS5 that I would pick up and play and enjoy? Yes. And I think everybody who is currently getting one that can get one with how crappy stock is for everything now, they probably are safe in assuming good games are going to come out.
00:29:50
Speaker
But I'm just going to wait. So when I pick it up, games will be 10, 20 bucks cheaper, maybe a little more. And then I can do the same thing I do with PS4, where I'm just like, here's five titles. I took a week off or something. I'm going to play a bunch of stuff.
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think it makes sense. On top of that, a lot of things that come out for Xbox because they are Microsoft products will typically come out on PC as well. It's true. Yeah. Going back to when we talked about Tunic for E3 like two years ago, the game looks cute as fuck, but it's going to come out on PC and I can't wait for that. Versus certain things that are PlayStation exclusives seem to, you know, never migrate to PC because PlayStation exclusive. Yeah.
00:30:38
Speaker
So it almost is tricking me into leading PlayStation's route. Yeah. I think if you didn't care about PC gaming at all, you could make a stronger argument for a lot of Xbox titles. And there are a lot of Xbox games that work significantly better with an Xbox controller.
00:31:01
Speaker
And there's a lot of PC games that work significantly better with an Xbox controller, right? Like, I think that's still basically the standard. Some people use PlayStation controllers, but so many games detected plugged in Xbox controller and then bind to it, right? Yeah, it's literally a plug and play for every third-person game I've ever played. Yeah, and a lot of 360 controllers. A lot of roguelike are just platformers, like Hollow Knight, one of my blanking, Dead Cells, controller-based, Dark Souls series.
00:31:31
Speaker
Yeah, Monster Hunter.
00:31:35
Speaker
Just cross the board. Having the controller from Xbox is usually good enough since the games are also coming over to a PC. I don't know. What I'll probably do is wait on PlayStation 5 and pick it up and Demon's Souls at the same time. Since it's like a single player-ish game, I'm not in a rush to play it. I'm just glad that there's a modern version of it that I can get around to playing at some point.
00:32:03
Speaker
Cause it's like, do I get a PS3 just to play Demon's Souls? Or do I get a PS5 just to play Demon's Souls and it'll be pretty weird. Like if you were willing to wait in the past and not pick up like an old console, why not wait a little bit to pick up the new console?
00:32:19
Speaker
I hope I don't get hit by a bus randomly. That'd be too, too ironic. Reaching toward this guy, like I never got to play. You have died. Oh yeah. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's basically where I'm at. I think, uh, I don't know. I'm too lazy to care about console wars when I'm focused mostly on PC. That's fair.
00:32:49
Speaker
Speaking of consoles, have you followed any of the Smash drama?
Nintendo and Smash Community Frustration
00:32:56
Speaker
Talking about Nintendo Space. Which one? This is the tournament and Slippy drama. I don't know if I'm 100% familiar with this.
00:33:10
Speaker
Unless this is just Nintendo being a D. It is that. So quick summary for those who are not aware. There's something called Slippy online. It's a free emulated version of Smash Brothers Melee.
00:33:29
Speaker
I think to play it, you need some type of like a controller adapter to use your GameCube controller. Essentially, it's like been the most seamless online experience for the conversion of this. Like previously, there was Project M to kind of try and emulate it. But this is like a totally unrelated from Nintendo thing that somebody made. Yeah.
00:33:51
Speaker
But it comes from people in the Smash community because Nintendo has never really done anything for Smash in a competitive space. It's always been community driven. And they've wanted to hold tournaments with Slippy because what else can they do currently? It's a pandemic. You can't really do any in-person tourneys.
00:34:15
Speaker
So basically, Nintendo's like, but that's our property. So they've been shutting it down. But there's been a whole lot of backlash against Nintendo from the Smash community because of that. And also saying they've literally never supported the Smash competitive scene and have always shut it down. They've put more efforts into stuff like, I think somebody said ARMS and Splatoon.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah. Because it needed the help, whereas Smash is big on its own because of the community. Nintendo can kind of reap the benefits of the Smash popularity being like, oh, Nintendo, giving them free publicity.
00:34:55
Speaker
So basically in my opinion, from what I've heard and researched from some YouTube videos and whatnot, Nintendo are being assholes. Like I understand it is their property, but like they refuse to work with anybody else for any version of their IP. Yeah.
00:35:15
Speaker
You mentioned like Project M. I keep thinking other M, but I was like, that's a Metroid. Yeah, Metroid. But like Project M, there's like a twit longer thing I was reading somewhere where they were talking about how
00:35:34
Speaker
Nintendo was working on a deal with Twitch to set some stuff up. And they're like, all right, but you're gonna have to keep this content from getting on there. I think it was Project M or whatever. Basically, don't do this if you wanna play with us. And then nothing ever came of the deal. Anyways, there was no partnership in the end. Twitch couldn't set up tournaments or anything like that.
00:36:01
Speaker
And that's pretty much been the recurring story with Nintendo, where they'll like string people along and give them ultimatums for like future deals and things like that to prevent them from using current emulation in order, but then it never develops, never turns into anything. They never follow through on the deals. It's like, it's super scummy behavior, to be honest.
00:36:29
Speaker
Um, like we circle jerk about how great Nintendo games are because in a lot of ways they're really great. Smash ultimate pretty freaking great. We're still playing it. Um, like breath of the wild. Great. Nintendo has a quality to their games. That's hard to reach for a lot of other publishers, but holy crap. Do they abuse the crap out of the smash community?
00:36:58
Speaker
on the regular, um, where any other IP would be head over heels, trying to take advantage of the good will that exists there. Right. Cause it's not like
00:37:14
Speaker
a given game community is doing for the sake of making money and just because they like that game or that franchise or whatever. So they're just looking for ways to kind of expand the community. So it's like any type of fighting game, having a tournament is like, let's get everyone excited to see who's the best at this. And even though I don't really follow fighting games at all, it's exciting for me to watch.
00:37:41
Speaker
Oh yeah. What's the Xbox one? Mortal Kombat and all that. Mortal Kombat's nuts. I'm really blanked on the Xbox one. Soul Calibur, a bunch of stuff. What do you mean the Xbox one? There's one that was specifically for Microsoft. They redid a couple of years back of an older game.
00:38:06
Speaker
Street Fighter, I don't know. There's a bunch of fighting games out there. I apologize. I'm blanking. Somebody write me in and call me an asshole for forgetting. But even though I knew like nothing about that game, you're just like watching people pull off these combos and these texts. I'm like, I don't know what's going on, but I can tell that it's impressive. Yeah, it's a high tier. Yeah.
00:38:29
Speaker
I mean, they've tried to have so many tournaments or anything working with Nintendo, but because it's Nintendo's property, they have final say. But people have gone above and beyond to try and make deals with Nintendo where it's like, hey, we won't even make money from this. We just want to do it.
00:38:51
Speaker
You don't have to do anything. We'll set up literally everything. Yes. We will even give you floor space promoting all these things and then Nintendo is still like, nah. But also giving the hope of like, like you were saying with Twitch, the reason that got shut down, that they didn't want to have anything there is, well, with the release of Ultimate coming out so soon, let's hold off and see how that goes and then maybe revisit it for Ultimate.
00:39:20
Speaker
Guess what you don't fucking see on Twitch, my dudes? Yes, yeah. Ultimate tournaments, yeah. Yeah, no, it's fairly ridiculous. I love analogies.
00:39:35
Speaker
Smash has a great grassroots movement and Nintendo has an endless supply of Weed Killer and they just go over the lawn and they just spray it and spray it and spray it periodically. Just round it all up. Throw them all out.
00:39:51
Speaker
It's really ridiculous that Smash, I think Smash has as far as popularity, it's the most popular fighting game right now. It's not the best one as far as actual online fighting games go at all. But it's really popular, it's easy to get into. And you know, Mortal Kombat creators, Capcom, any of those companies.
00:40:14
Speaker
would be head over heels to have what Nintendo has, but instead Nintendo has it and they're peeing all over it with their roundup. Yeah. I will say on the other side of like, I wouldn't necessarily say directly community driven, but have you followed anything for Arkash gaming?
00:40:35
Speaker
I have not. Ah. I don't know what that is. So in the Dota 2 space, if you remember Sir Action Slacks, the sociopath of the Dota 2 community, the meme got himself.
NA Dota 2 Scene Revival
00:40:47
Speaker
He is actually the captain of a new NA team called Arkash Gaming. Terrible idea. It's interesting. They've been doing like some scrims on like Tuesdays.
00:40:59
Speaker
But like their whole thing is like they're very metal vibed like all of their players are kind of like have Personas ones a plague doctor ones like a werewolf ones like a gremlin and so on and so forth So like they recently had a scrim on Tuesday where they played the old eg team so like PPD syndrome and some other people I think sheep stick was in there, too and
00:41:25
Speaker
And like Sir Action Slacks wasn't casting, but he was kind of controlling what people were seeing and then putting in like clips when like team fights broke out or like that player got like a cool play. So from what I've seen briefly from that and on the subreddit, people are excited because usually NA Dota is not the big thing. It's more so been like a European scene or SEA. So it's cool to see people excited about it because I still follow Dota 2.
00:41:55
Speaker
I like watching the big tournaments because it's a game I know how it's played. So I do appreciate even more when people are doing things really well in it. So I'm excited to watch more of that and see where it goes. Oh, that's really cool. It's also a good example of like,
00:42:16
Speaker
Valve's approach, which is just let the community run everything and we won't have to put any work in. But that works if you've got a really enthusiastic community like Dota. I still feel that Valve should reciprocate a little bit, but it is nice that they're not ban hammering people for
00:42:35
Speaker
playing in the space or contributing to it. Speaking of banhammering people for playing in the space and contributing to it, that leads me to one of my topics, which was a Valve employee was playing in a game with another player. And the player said something like, we should all go mid, like push mid, take a tower or something. And the Valve employee disagreed with this.
00:42:59
Speaker
And after the match was over, went back and used some of the developer tools to put the other player into low priority for the suggestion. And this is not something you can usually be put in low priority for suggesting a tactic or a strategy in the game of Dota 2.
00:43:21
Speaker
So showed up on Reddit. The guy was like many threads. He was like, hey, I got put into low priority and it's not my fault. But in this case, it actually wasn't his fault. And the employee actually ended up responding to the thread like, hey, sorry, we went back and reviewed this. We haven't had a formal policy on this, but we've had an informal policy not to screw with other players when we're playing the game.
00:43:48
Speaker
And they basically had the resolution that it's impossible to be objective while you're in a game of Dota. That's true. So you can't make calls like that, you know, while you're in the game. So they're going to formalize the policy to keep that from happening in the future. Well, I mean, I'm glad it's happened to have something formal. You don't have like Dota 2 employees being like, fuck that guy. Yeah.
00:44:14
Speaker
Not to turn it around on the league, but there's a lot of examples of that happening in the league where they're right employees, like screw people over there playing with. Yeah. I'll be honest though, there is a history of that happening in Han as well. It seems like maybe for emotionally investing games, it's just better to take a step back rather than being the arbiter while you're also in the match. Yeah.
00:44:45
Speaker
for sure. So anyways, take away is about does better when they're hands off, I guess. Yeah, if you have a community who's gonna do things to support your games, let it flourish, encourage it. Like if we had a fan base,
00:45:03
Speaker
Um, and then they're doing like fan arts, something like that. I'd be like, please stop shipping us. But at the same time, I'd be happy that they were like trying to promote us, you know? Right. Because it's somebody who cares about something, who wants to share that joy with other people. So even if it takes some slightly weirdly sexual forms, encourage it, you know? Right. That's what
00:45:27
Speaker
That's what we're here for, is what Dave's trying to say. It's been years coming to public, what, three years of podcast time, and there's not nearly enough loots.
00:45:37
Speaker
We're just going to stop, I think. Get on that community or email me directly at Dave at Dave dot com. Yes. At Dave. Oh, man. What else is going on here? It's cool. Pivot from the the valve thing to a valve thing. Black Mesa is hitting their one point. Oh, which is for people not familiar with this. This is a remake of Half Life One by
00:46:07
Speaker
fans with much, much better graphics, and they completely redid the final section of Half-Life, which was Zen, which pretty much everybody panned at release. Gabe Newell, I think when asked what his biggest regret was, he just said Zen. It wasn't even in relation, like the question wasn't in relation to Half-Life, he just said Zen. I have a clue, but I'm guessing it's pretty bad.
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah, so it was the 11th hour of development for Half-Life 1, and it's the alien level at the end of it. And it turned into this kind of like jump pad
00:46:50
Speaker
not platformer, but vertical nonsense level. And I didn't hate it when I played the original Half-Life, but it was definitely not to the heights it should have been for an interesting alien level. So they re-envisioned it for Black Mesa.
00:47:08
Speaker
After 16 years in development, Black Mesa, it is complete. There's apparently a couple of things they wanted to patch as far as, like, bugs are concerned, but content-wise, it's done and the game is complete. So, Valve gave them the go-ahead. They use all of their
00:47:27
Speaker
all of their IP for the remake. And I don't know the deal behind the scenes, but I assume they're just taking a standard steam cut for it because more money, right? So that's an example of how you should do it. If you have really rabid, enthusiastic fan base, let them make your content for you. So if you have never played Half-Life 1, this is now the recommend, I guess, is going into Black Mesa. Do you know what Black Mesa runs at currently?
00:47:58
Speaker
what it costs. I will in about 15 seconds of bot time. Okay, so other things are going recently. I know you've been playing 10 bucks. 10? Yep, 10 bucks. It's 50% off right now, though, ending December 1st, so it will be 20 bucks. No, that's another two days. So if you listen to this, the day it comes out or the day after, you can still pick it up for 10 bucks.
00:48:27
Speaker
Check the date of your podcast when listening. And it has overwhelmingly positive reviews. So sounds promising. Yeah, it's good stuff.
00:48:36
Speaker
Speaking of Promiser, I see you've been playing some Hades recently. Hell yeah. And by Hades, I mean like a lot of Hades. A lot of Hades. I think about like 76 hours or something on Steam. One thing for people who played it on Epic Games Store, I don't know if this works for everybody, but I assume it would because it worked for me. Maybe it's just because I linked my accounts or something. But when I repurchased it on Steam,
00:49:02
Speaker
when it was on sale. All my save data got moved over. Oh, well. Yeah, it's pretty huge. Was nice. So I got a little bit of a head start, but I didn't play it a whole lot back when we did our original review. And I have since played it like 76 hours on Steam and actually made it through the epilogue. And I'm done, completed story-wise.
00:49:28
Speaker
it's a good game. I don't like Roblox that much, and it's a really good game. Jake really doesn't. Occasionally I'll suggest some things to him. He's like, I don't have space. Which I guess, if you're not keen on a genre, you're like, well, not really gonna check this out.
00:49:47
Speaker
But a lot of people kind of waited for the 1.0 release. I think the only person was like, I'm going to do it early and play every single patch. Yeah. Ian did also. He played a ton to his credit. But they've added a lot. And it's so crisp and clean. Mm-hmm.
00:50:09
Speaker
It's the Hollow Knight of Roguelikes for me. That's the highest praise I can give it. I don't care about platformers that much. I love Hollow Knight. I don't care about Roguelikes that much. I love Hades. And a lot of it is that freaking actually meaningful meta progression that makes you feel like you're
Hades Game Praise
00:50:29
Speaker
going through the game. Well, it doesn't make you feel like it. You're going through the game and stories happening and things are being unlocked.
00:50:38
Speaker
And you always think that you're going to run out of dialogue. You're like, I've had like 200 runs already. What's the character say to me? Hi? Oh, nope. They're talking about stuff. Okay. Yep. It's wild. I'm still passively doing some runs and unlocking some things.
00:50:55
Speaker
Because everybody else, once they're playing, flew past me because I was kind of passively playing the whole time. But when people got it, they just like cracked down and binged it. I think Justin sent me, other Justin sent me a screenshot. Again, DM me for his direct address and social security number. He sent me a screenshot of he unlocked everything and got an achievement for it. I'm like, Jesus, dude.
00:51:20
Speaker
Yeah, but he literally put his nose to the grindstone And just hanged it out But I'm glad so many people are enjoying more super giant titles Yes, good times Hades I mean like
00:51:35
Speaker
you could make a strong argument that every game they release is their best in some way. And I think that remains true for Hades. It's just really freaking good. And if other games used early access, like Hades used early access, it wouldn't
00:51:51
Speaker
The early access model wouldn't be trash. To their credit, this is something I've ranted about before. Part of the reason they did early access was for those installments, but also they listened to the feedback of people who were playing the game.
00:52:09
Speaker
Whereas we always talk about so many AAA developers who just kind of be like, I know what's best, or whoever makes a decision on a higher level. And then people are like, this isn't what we wanted. The reason we like these games is for this reason. And you went a completely different direction. Now it's too late.
00:52:30
Speaker
Whereas they were like, oh, we need to rescale this. People are really responding to this well. Oh, let's change these designs.
00:52:41
Speaker
Yeah. Just have a button in the game, like while it's in early access, that's key bound for everybody. And they can just hit a button and report an issue or suggest a change. And that's worked pretty good pretty well for those, those two games. Yeah. Also, you can feel like you're actually a part of it. How cool is it to suggest something to a people making a game that you're playing and then you get to see that change actually occur?
00:53:11
Speaker
And you're like, hey, hey, Tim, hey, everybody, this is, this is my suggestion. 30,000. I would suggest soon that they should all continue to make areas past Asphodel. Yeah, community wise, that's fucking awesome.
00:53:29
Speaker
I regret not sending them anything. I just appreciate it while I was playing. I'm like, this is cool. Feedback, smiley face. I didn't email death threats, so it was a good game. That's good. That's pretty good. That's how you know. It is a good place to be. What do you think they're going to do for their next title? Oh my gosh. I have no idea. First person shooter at this point. I don't know what else it could be.
00:53:59
Speaker
I mean, it's got to be an isometric something, right? Right. It's got to be actually that's true. It has to be isometric. Okay. Tactics game? It could be tactics. I could see tactics. The qualifiers I'd put on it is they only really pick genres that
00:54:17
Speaker
Um, our sort of niche, not at least in the isometric perspective. I think tactics is fairly niche now. Well, that might, the reason for a case is solely because, um, for every game that they've built upon, they've had like an action based component. I feel like it'd be a hard left term for them to be like, um, you're taking turns now go. Right. Like after they've shown what they can do with Hades for like fast pace, it'd be, I don't know.
00:54:47
Speaker
I still think we'll have an action component versus turn-based. Yeah. I mean, you could argue they did that for Transistor. If you press the space bar. Nobody presses space bar. Who would want to attack five times in one second? That's ridiculous. Not me. I'm too busy playing Pyre.
00:55:13
Speaker
That's fair. But yeah, looking forward to Supergiant's next stuff. It's ridiculous. Warner Bros, when they picked them up to publish their stuff, made a good call.
00:55:27
Speaker
made a good call. Super agree. Most we got here. There's plenty of stuff. Do we care about any of it? Bob Ross stuff. Talk about that. I really like Bob Ross. Talked about him a little bit in the past, I think, probably a long time ago. But apparently, some of his art is being used for Magic the Gathering basic lands as part of the happy little gathering set, which is hilarious. And
00:55:57
Speaker
You can I'm not a I'm not a big magic the gathering player. We talked about it a little bit earlier this episode. But my understanding is basic lands are pretty much some of the strongest cards in the game. So we should see a lot of a lot of influence here, right?
00:56:14
Speaker
Yeah. Sorry, I'm looking at some of the cards now. I mean, for anybody who plays magic, obviously a big part of the draw of magic is like the color identity, which kind of ties to the play styles because each color has something that they're good at, something that they're weak at.
00:56:32
Speaker
But with that there's also like the card art and then the lore of the space But like everybody myself included were suckers for the full art lands was where instead of like partial picture and like it's saying what it is and like the mana symbol it was the whole fucking card was the art as you can see some really cool things and
00:56:55
Speaker
And when you've been playing Magic for a couple of years, you're not looking for just stuff. You're looking to personalize your deck. So you swap out whatever basic lands you have for full art basic lands. So having something like a Bob Ross version, which I'm sure is going to be limited to some degree, which is really cool. Because he's obviously fucking amazing at art. Yeah.
00:57:20
Speaker
as are everybody else who like does art for the for these like they're all professional artists and they're really cool designs. Yeah, I think it's his
00:57:33
Speaker
His company is like still run by his family after his death. I think that some of these deals, people might say, you know, it's like, oh, cashing in on all this stuff. Screw that noise. Get them on magic cards. It's freaking great. Spread that legacy as wide as it goes. Bob Ross is great.
00:57:56
Speaker
What else were you talking about on this list? I'm looking at this here and see if there's anything. Oh, actually I did want to mention this one. Star Citizen, which is a game that will never come out, added a new development studio called Turbulent, which I thought was hilariously named.
Star Citizen Development Update
00:58:12
Speaker
They're like a Canadian studio. And I've been looking at expanding my hardware a little bit for like spacesims and stuff on that, like grab a joystick, grab a thruster, do all that stuff. None of it's in stock. So hopefully it comes back in stock before Star Citizen comes out. Again, never coming out. This is the game that's in perpetual.
00:58:38
Speaker
I don't want to say early access, but in perpetual kickstart. Yes. They're the ones where you can buy in-game ships for $10,000 on their website. And Mandalore made a video saying he's thinking it's going to take several years to come out in 2016.
00:59:03
Speaker
It's pretty ridiculous. I'm sure he was literally generous with that timeline as well when he thought of it at the time. Yes. So the other time they did something like this was for their first person shooter component, which was like Squadron 42 or something like that. And the whole thing ended up being scrapped. So.
00:59:24
Speaker
uh yeah it's hilarious that if you go back to that youtube video it's like and the current year is x you know or whatever it's been this many years since the video came out and there's still no progress here um it's i think it might be like the most kick-started
00:59:40
Speaker
thing ever. It was ridiculous. They made like 20 million dollars or some nonsense. So do you think this new development studio is going to be enough to kind of push it in a tangible direction? No. No, because I think the main issue is that they just don't have the desire to close things. And you need if you're developing something, you need someone to say,
01:00:08
Speaker
And this is what the product will look like. And I'm capping this and putting this in like Saran wrap and changes will not be made to this requirement or it never finishes. And the problem is the people at the top of Star Citizen are doing the opposite of that where they're like, Oh, let's do some minor improvements and things here. Um, and so their main features never get finished. Damn shame. Yeah. You hate to see it.
01:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. Would you almost rather them do what, uh, well, I'm a blanket on game names today. What is the space game that was released initially and it was missing all the multiplayer components? Uh, no man's sky. No man's sky. Would you rather them pull a no man's sky? Yeah. Cause like,
01:01:03
Speaker
They have the money to continue to develop this. And even if things were released as expansion packs, like Elite Dangerous is a space game where they released an expansion pack with some content. And then really recently, they just incorporated that into the base game. They're like, hey, if you bought it already, sweet. Here's a skin, a ship skin. Otherwise, everybody who picks up the game is going to get this expansion pack because we don't want to split our community. You could do that. And you could do the No Man's Sky thing where you release content after lunch.
01:01:32
Speaker
But the problem is getting that minimum viable product out the door so people can actually play your game is pretty important to getting people to actually play your game. And nobody expects development to go on for two decades. It's not there yet, but it could be. So I don't know. At the end of the day, if your game never goes live, people aren't going to be able to play it.
01:02:03
Speaker
maybe it doesn't have to be perfect in every single way with everything you can dream about in it.
Podcast Evolution and Nostalgia
01:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, iterative is always a little bit better, which is why I've been releasing my music on SoundCloud and it's garbage. Yeah. I mean, we used to release the
01:02:22
Speaker
Was it SoundCloud? Yeah. Yeah. We used to release the podcast in SoundCloud. Are my thinking of a different website? There's probably like the first couple of episodes before we rebranded. Yeah, because we used to be Sawcast. Yeah, it was SoundCloud.
01:02:43
Speaker
way back then, three years ago. If you want to hear terrible audio quality, please check us out. I hope I deleted it. I don't know. The episodes at least, anything that wasn't trash got re-uploaded, so they're just here on whatever listening platform you're listening to right now. But again, don't go back and listen to this.
01:03:04
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of not listening to the podcast, um, if you would like to send an ideas for us to create episodes that you could then not listen to, you could do so at soapstone podcast at gmail.com or you could reach out on Facebook and be like, why is this podcast so bad? Um, in a public space at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. Um, do you have any, uh, end of episode advice for our listeners as they recover from holiday food? Hmm.
01:03:35
Speaker
Please mix all of your leftovers into one bowl or put it in a sandwich and cover it with gravy and your cranberry sauce before it's all gone. You're not going to have this opportunity for another year. Um, be sure to pig out a little bit before you throw in your new year's resolutions. And also with our new schedule of how we're doing episodes next week, we're talking about an actual singular game. So get ready. And guess what it is in the comments.
01:04:04
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, oof. Trying to actually get people engaged. That's good. Nobody gets this far, Jake. Nobody gets this far. It's just us. As always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:04:47
Speaker
you