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Snowpocalypse 2026
15 Plays13 days ago
Join Dave and Jake as they try to stay warm with the smoldering embers of failed live service games and talk a bit about what they've been playing recently in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - 2-Player Select
Outro:
- Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries - Shadow of Kerensky DLC - Legion of the Grave
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Transcript
Introductions and Snowy Weather
00:00:23
Speaker
How's going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host as always Dave. lot of snow out there Dave. Right you are Ken. um I've been letting my dog out as you know, most dog owners should i would argue. And because of how cold it is and how hard the snow has gotten, i actually looked out back. So i haven't been up back because again, the snow and there's like a little area which.
00:00:55
Speaker
is technically not on grass once the snow melts of where she's been going. Right. And I'm like, I need to actually go out there with like a pickaxe and try and reclaim that before
Snowy Season and Pizza Ethics
00:01:09
Speaker
things melt. Yes. Yeah.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, no it's been it's been pretty crazy out there. um i do not have a dog, and thankfully the cat pees inside in designated areas.
00:01:24
Speaker
But at a certain point, we have to free ourselves, too, from the snow. um Because just give up and die in our homes is not very... ah You want to be able to go out and get stuff like food.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah. and be You'd feel like an asshole ordering delivery when it's like, hey, we haven't really shoveled. ah You want to just kind of like climb up? There's a yeah. I mean, honestly, i've made a joke about that with my neighbor because I was like my reward for shoveling. I shoveled yesterday was going to be like, we'll get a pizza. We get to get a pizza feast.
00:02:02
Speaker
And um I was like I'm using college tier motivation for myself to go get a pizza but like if I were to order Domino's or something like that they would leave it at the mailbox and they should like um unless you're wearing boots I'm kind of like I don't want somebody to have to trudge through snow yeah Like I'm kind of on a hill and it's not even a guarantee they could make it to me at the top, right? Like nature is assisting with the tower defense set up of my home in ways that I don't want it to.
00:02:39
Speaker
um So, no, be kind to people and have a little bit of empathy. And if it's not really feasible for them to make it up to your house, you know, consider that when you order delivery.
Preparing for a LAN Party
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, I've started to if I'm going to order to delivery, typically it'll be on the weekend when feeling more lazy. And I also try and do it for lunch because right now my porch light is out.
00:03:08
Speaker
So for me to like be like, hey, can you give me dinner? Just kind of follow the glow of the light from inside the house. ahha Yeah. go Get some will-o'-the-wisps on your street to work overtime for you and guide people in.
00:03:24
Speaker
you
00:03:27
Speaker
What's your job? i lead people to the fountain of renewal. What about you? I help deliver pizzas. Exactly. Exactly. um but I mean, pizza was good.
00:03:40
Speaker
And now I'm just recovering, preparing for LAN party, getting all all hyped up for that. ah Get stuff updated and installed. Go back to using Windows for a little bit for the duration of LAN party, which is fine, I guess.
00:04:02
Speaker
I just realized because I will be attending as well. I'll be bringing the pup. m I haven't fully shoveled out my driveway. I shoveled it out enough to use my car to break through the rest of it to go get groceries.
00:04:18
Speaker
But with the dog in the car. i don't want to be like, buckle up. My arm behind the passenger seat, look back and just gun it. Uh huh. Where we're going, we we don't need no roads. Yeah.
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah. um No, that's fair. Well, what are you looking forward to playing at LAN with people? That's a great question. I think I'm probably going to play the standard allotment. Actually, so i was working as a ah tournament organizer at the the previous LAN.
PC Game Performance and DRM
00:04:51
Speaker
And so this question is actually very germane, which is also a fun word to use. to like my continued operations at LAN parties, which is just like, what should people play at LAN?
00:05:05
Speaker
Which is basically what and what what you're asking, essentially. um Just a personal variant of that. um And it's really funny because increasingly, I think you can like you can designate some multiplayer games that people will play. These are some like the classics, things like Rocket League, right?
00:05:28
Speaker
um But a lot of people are basically bringing their own either small scale co-op games or just honestly single player games like fair number of people were playing Silksong at the last major LAN because it came out like right before LAN or during LAN even. I'm not even sure. I think it was right before.
00:05:50
Speaker
mean, I guess there's a way for you to double dip. Yeah. On the silksong stuff. Oh, I have this tournament I want to be a part of at two. Yeah. Yeah. And think like I think that's fine because you still get like the social aspect. You can still be talking to people out for Yeah, it doesn't be 24 seven socializing. Exactly.
00:06:08
Speaker
socializing exactly But it's like, OK, I am here with my computer and I'm doing this thing. It is there is a certain amount of absurdity if you don't play in tournaments really at all. And it's just single player stuff on your computer.
00:06:21
Speaker
But I don't want to judge too harshly there because there's a friend in Special Guest who specifically has exactly that behavior. um a I thought of them immediately when you said as soon as you said single player game, I'm like, yeah,
00:06:36
Speaker
um But I've been there, too. Like, I i played a No Man's Sky um an extensive amount at RGB because I was just like, well, whatever. But then I also, like, mixed it up little bit of Titanfall Frontier Defense, which is their... um I don't want to call it Call of Duty zombies because it's not that but like wave defense spend money for upgrades mode.
00:07:00
Speaker
um Horde defense. There you It's a it's a horde mode. um And ah the other one was Monster Hunter Wilds, which apparently has gotten an actual performance patch for PC.
00:07:17
Speaker
And ah people say that it is dramatic. um And I was telling people in Discord this last last night, but apparently a community member figured out why the game was like, so the performance was so bad in PC.
00:07:33
Speaker
And it was because the game continually is checking for like DLC that you could have bought for the game. And this DRM, this this like authentication check, literally is just burning CPU cycles.
00:07:50
Speaker
what the fuck uh-huh that makes no sense because like something like that it's when they log in and access their stuff you'd be like hey do they have these dlc skins or dlc maps or whatever the fuck and then you're like okay cool they have that we're gonna flip that flag and you never check it again yeah yeah not for that session at least right um But what was funny here is if you actually owned all of the DLC, then the performance for the game was way better because it stopped checking.
00:08:23
Speaker
um And someone observed this because they ah they played on their computer and then they had a friend who like played their account, the friend's account, on the same computer.
00:08:36
Speaker
And they're like, why is your performance so much better? It's the same computer. um and then ultimately, this person was pretty tech savvy. they were able to isolate the DLC calls and then um like ah not and not fake it for the purpose of getting access to DLC content, but basically like block them, prevent the ah prevent the process from continuing to send them.
00:09:01
Speaker
And the game just sped up in performance dramatically. So coincidentally, probably nothing to do with that ah that find from a couple of weeks back. ah Capcom released a performance patch that improved performance a lot for PC players recently.
Game Design and Innovation
00:09:20
Speaker
But I don't get how that wouldn't have come up in testing. i Capcom is a different beast, an altered beast, if you will. Um...
00:09:31
Speaker
They have very weird development cycles and they don't catch all of this stuff. Sometimes their games have all sorts of problems like this. um I love that in 2026, it's like yeah Yeah, they're still working out some kinks. And you can almost use that for any IP.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah. Because, like, I love Elden Ring. I'll simp for all the time. And people would be like, well, what about this? And was like, yeah, it's actually a good point. <unk>s good point. Yeah, i mean, FromSoft's duct tape, like, their games are held together with duct tape. It's just they have a very strong...
00:10:07
Speaker
um they have a very high view games management terminology or whatever, or tech management terminology. Their velocity is very high. They can ship stuff very rapidly.
00:10:19
Speaker
um And so the fact that it's held to get held together with duct tape doesn't matter too much because the product that the user sees is pretty well put together. It's just on the back end. They like,
00:10:32
Speaker
absolutely had shenanigans like they didn't have actual mounts for any of the bosses until Elden Ring. And I remember Zully talking about like, oh, these are actually two different entities this time. That's crazy. They've never been able to do that before.
00:10:50
Speaker
For the little bit I've dicked around in the evening, I do mean a very little bit. hmm. it would definitely be easier to treat something as one entity and be like, these are its animations. This is its shared hitbox, blah, blah, blah.
00:11:03
Speaker
But as soon as you make it multiple entities, it's now like, Okay, is this one considered mounted? is it not moving separately from something else? um They have separate animations now.
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah. um It's also more computationally difficult to keep things bound together. like um And that was probably one of the the earlier concerns. But they always got around this, right? The important thing was on the FromSoft side...
00:11:32
Speaker
You never thought you never had to ask that question. There's this boss that I'm fighting. I'm trying to think of like a decent sort of two part mounted boss or something like that. They it's kind of tough for me to think of off off the top of my head, to be honest. But i mean, Dark Souls to have the chariot.
00:11:49
Speaker
That's true. Yeah, they had the chariot. That's a great example. And. and On the player side, if you're thinking of like, how did this mechanically work on the game development side, then i think you've almost not necessarily failed. Like, unless it's a sense of wonder, unless that's the reason that you're asking.
00:12:10
Speaker
um Those shouldn't really be the questions that are coming up. for players. yeah Instead, players should be thinking like, oh, that boss is really tough or it's BS or it's like, you know, ah that's a really cool scene or something like that. You're thinking about the presentation that the player sees as long as the players in that mindset, then they're good.
00:12:30
Speaker
um But the technical bones behind it all is really interesting to see as well. um I think now granted, I am very tech-minded to like where i want to figure out how some things work but like knowing some of those types of things with games like common exploits or like yeah oh you could possibly get out of bounds here because there's like some overlapping textures and maybe i can kind of like wiggle my way in throw off the numbers and then get out of bounds um stuff like that is through
00:13:10
Speaker
trial and error to degree, but also a lot of things that hold true for games will hold true throughout games until the end of time. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it's...
00:13:23
Speaker
I'm in the same boat. It is gratifying. The last game that I kind of like picked apart in that way was pray actually because I never did speed running, but I did find like speed run strats and use some of those when I was getting my um hundred percent achievements.
00:13:42
Speaker
um for the game because it's just like, oh, if I can like out of bounds here and then jump through this very specific area, like all the way down, then I can do this massive skip or whatever.
00:13:55
Speaker
That's fun. And, you know, I appreciate the technical aspect of engaging with games in different ways once you've already done it the conventional way.
00:14:06
Speaker
Mm hmm. So to answer your question, probably some Rocket League, Monster Hunter Wilds, Titanfall, if I can get people together for it. And people still play TF2 for some reason, at least for the inaugural game.
00:14:20
Speaker
um ah So, you know, I could do that a little bit, but we'll see beyond that. um So you guys won't be playing any High Guard?
00:14:31
Speaker
Oh, that's a great segue. um That game did come out. I hear it's doing great. It is not critically doing great. Let me look up what it's at today.
00:14:47
Speaker
um But it's pretty low. So for anyone who's not aware, a High Guard is a Team shooter, a team hero shooter. Yeah. Similar to Overwatch and the like.
00:15:01
Speaker
You have horses as a mobility option. Mm hmm. Some of the characters, at least one character can like remove walls. That's neat. And like have some interaction with the environment.
00:15:16
Speaker
And some other stuff. But I think the the large consensus was pretty much. OK, but we already have those. Right. Yes, I think i think you're 100% correct there. um There's not really that many official reviews on OpenCritic right now.
00:15:34
Speaker
I can check Metacritic. So it's got 67 on Metacritic overall 2.2 user score based on 188 reviews as of this recording. um And probably for the reasons that you're mentioning, right? Like um I actually read. It's funny. I read an article this morning.
00:15:54
Speaker
in bed before I even got up ah that was talking about like, isn't it just fine that High Guard is struggling? Like like it doesn't we don't have to discuss everything about it, ah which is funny because we're going to discuss everything about it. And this article basically was as well.
00:16:11
Speaker
um But like, why would we assume success for a live service game? and just because something was the, um this was in the premiere spot.
00:16:22
Speaker
It was the very last trailer for the Game Awards. And Jeff Keighley was like, high guard. And like, how many millions of dollars did you get to say high guard? um I mean, I would say a high guard for millions of dollars. Right? like Um, but there is ah even then there is kind of this disconnect because I remember when we were watching the game where it's like, oh my gosh, everybody shut up. This is from the makers of Titanfall and like, let's see what this is. And then as we were watching this, i was like, I'm seeing a person on a horse.
00:16:51
Speaker
It looks like a hero shooter. it looks like, you know, symmetrical gameplay across, you know two teams. And I don't like it wasn't it wasn't interesting to me.
00:17:04
Speaker
Um, My understanding is that the game does um it does have some new ideas, but it's just it looks so much like old ideas that it's really hard to find motivation to to split it out.
Hero Shooters and Market Competition
00:17:19
Speaker
The characters look very traditional fantasy-esque. Vaguely cartoony. Vaguely cartoony. um The game's basically split out into like a looting phase where they're like, oh, we got to do like the apex thing where you you get out there and you open chests and you get like gear and whatnot.
00:17:38
Speaker
And so like looting phase where you could run into ah members of the enemy team, but you probably won't. Okay. And then, you know, they could have some PvE in there a little bit, perhaps.
00:17:50
Speaker
Then once that's done, there's the official like, hey, now it's time to fight over the sword. And And then you go fight over the sword. Whoever wins the sword is now the attacking team and they will attack the enemy base.
00:18:05
Speaker
And from what I read, it's basically time. So even if you die at the sword, you'll have a chance for everyone to respawn, be in defense mode and then try to fight off the enemy team.
00:18:17
Speaker
um And the enemy team is going though the attackers are going to try to like destroy two objectives inside your base um or a third objective which is like deeper in in order to outright win so they can destroy the two and win or they can go to like the the core or whatever and destroy it and win and if the defenders repel them for long enough then it resets back to the sword phase where people will contest the sword and new attackers will be determined.
00:18:47
Speaker
So that's like the overall structure with kind of the gimmick being you can like jump on your mount and run around real fast ah to cover ground. um Does that sound compelling? Is any part of that interesting to you, Dave?
00:19:01
Speaker
Not terribly. um Again, it's it could be different if this was the first and only thing like this, like a team based hero shooter. Yeah, be like, oh, my God, this is a a cool new shiny thing.
00:19:17
Speaker
But it does feel like it just kind of missed the boat by a couple of years. Similar to what's going on with Marathon.
00:19:31
Speaker
Although I will say. There was ah a sweet spot of when those things were in vogue. um But now if you're like two years late to the party, one, it's not in the zeitgeist anymore. And two, people are going to compare it to the thing that's already in that spot. Right. Right.
00:19:51
Speaker
I will say I'm going to put a pin on in Marathon because I do want to come back and talk about it. I've been watching the videos that come out for it. That game looks so much better than it did. Like their
Extraction Shooters Analysis
00:20:03
Speaker
delay, their decision to to to cook it a little bit more.
00:20:08
Speaker
Graphically, it looks so much better. Audio wise, it looks so much better. They've improved a lot that makes it look like people that enjoy extraction shooters. Could actually get a lot out of marathon like the aesthetic is pretty peak right now in there their YouTube shorts. I will say that that being said I Do not include myself and the people that necessarily enjoy extraction shooters um Outside of duck off obviously um So you have no interest in arc Raiders, which I hear has been a popular variation in the genre not really
00:20:45
Speaker
um And that's the trick, right? This is the traditional marathon problem is they weren't ready to ship before Ark Raiders because all of these reasons to the community called out. Like graphically, they one of their to their credit, they have like a YouTube short up there that's just like, here is the before and after what the game looks like from the preview back then and and now what they have the graphics out. And that i don't I don't know how much weight I want to put into like messing with filters and stuff, but like the water looks better. The environments look better. it just looks like so much more precise um and it looks less washed out.
00:21:29
Speaker
um More vibrant and stuff like that and it's clear that their aesthetic is this kind of like blocky sort of future retro Like people bleed blue blood Sort of stuff. I don't know marathon is actually really interesting to me i just don't think it's the type of game I would play and I wish it was a single-player Our graders on the other hand is like perfect as far as I can hear you know based off reviews as far as an extraction shooter But I don't really want to play an extraction shooter Yeah.
00:22:02
Speaker
I've tried a couple like i remember when was it Warzone had some extraction shooter version. Yeah, we had a Call of Duty Warzone, right?
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Tried that for a bit. um It was fine. I think it's more fun to like be coordinating with your friends and like, oh, we're going to go over here, attack these NPCs or yeah other enemy squad, which we do.
00:22:28
Speaker
But
00:22:31
Speaker
I'm somebody who plays video games casually now. Yeah. So if I'm hopping on and someone's like, I'm looking to fight somebody and like shoot them down, I'm going to get shot and Uh huh.
00:22:45
Speaker
Uh, I also don't want to lose guns or gear in general, which is a big part of how extraction shooters work. Uh, not like I'm typically going to find something that's like really amazing where it's like, oh, this is going be game changing if I hold on this for a future round.
00:23:02
Speaker
But it doesn't feel good. Yeah. Like there's not a meta progression in the same way where like you're getting stronger over time. It's just you have access to more tools, more variety guns and other stuff.
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, i kind of I kind of agree with you. um Both of so I know our creators has like a skill tree that you're working your way down, but here's the problem like this the this Advancement needs to be incremental um And I don't know if they completely solved it for our creators They probably do have an implementation like this but literally going all the way back to Tarkov, which is like the the granddaddy of Extraction shooters
00:23:51
Speaker
You have like different buy-ins right if this was like a poker table or something and you had to put down more money at Like higher tier tables. That's basically how extraction shooters generally do or how they generally work So you'll have like and this works the same way for marathon You'll have your first area where it's basically intended for new players because of that the rewards aren't going to be like crazy high And the risk generally isn't going to be crazy high that you're going to just get wiped by like a strong NPC and or something like that. Some PVE encounter.
00:24:25
Speaker
um And then on the opposite end of that, you'll have your really difficult raid, which might require like a key that you would find somewhere um and then extract with it in order to even like enter this new area.
00:24:39
Speaker
or it costs currency to get in and whatever the game game currency is. um But the loot is better um and the risk is higher. And so on Marathon's case, they have like... I think it's actually either the Marathon ship or it's like cryo storage, I think it is, is like their end game kind of area. And it's like... If you don't take your best gear to this, you're just you're just going to die. like You're just guaranteed to die. It doesn't even matter whether there are other players are there. It's just very difficult. If you don't bring your best gun, you're going to freeze to death. Yes, exactly. You got to shoot that gun to stay warm.
00:25:16
Speaker
um And so they do have like that kind of scaling a little bit. But the trick is, here's the counterforce. Like this is a PvP game, right?
00:25:28
Speaker
And so if you just show up as a nobody and somebody else has all the good gear, you're just going to die. And did that feel meaningful at all? Right.
00:25:41
Speaker
Like, was that decent gameplay for you? If you say no, if you don't want that experience at all, then that's kind of a point against extraction shooters in general because they're never guaranteeing a fair fight for you. Yeah, they can try and balance things to a degree.
00:25:59
Speaker
um i know Arc Raiders, I just found this out on YouTube video a day or two ago. Apparently their system for matchmaking is... If you're like chilling nice with people, you get put on the chilling nice servers. Yeah. If you're going out and always trying to like murder other squads and be the only one to extract.
00:26:20
Speaker
Okay, you get put on the more aggressive servers. So they're grouping people based off of their gameplay style. Yeah. Which I think is nice because you're like, hey, I'm just here to like have fun, explore, and play with my friends. Not trying to murder anybody. It's a fun PvE experience we do every Thursday night. Cool.
00:26:38
Speaker
As you keep playing, you're not going to be with people who are going to try and murk you all the time. Yeah. It could still happen, right? And anyone could have their... they're off day, they're devil on their shoulder. Anybody could have like a John Fetterman episode. Yeah. yeah Um, but yeah, in general, they try to try to keep it a little bit more split, which is honestly part of that is only possible because it is such a successful game, right? Like if marathon launches and they don't have the same player base, then it's a little bit harder to do something like a PVP and non PVP queue.
00:27:16
Speaker
Um, But and i think the other aspect that was a big part of that is the um the robots in our creators like are can be a substantial threat and some of them require like groups of players to fight.
00:27:32
Speaker
And so they can incentivize players to work together without like basically undercutting the entire gameplay. Right. Like imagine everyone joins a rest server and then they only build their own bases and they never fought anybody.
00:27:48
Speaker
It's like sure the base building might be fine. But it's like all of the rest of this content is kind of setting up the the human litmus test morality machine to see how you interact with each other. Right. Like, are you going to get tribal with this and just like fight other factions just because they're an out group?
00:28:10
Speaker
That's what the game expects you to do. Arc Raiders kind of has a little bit of both right like there's an incentive to fight players But there's also an incentive to work together with players to get loot that you can't get on your own um But I don't know if all ah All of these extraction shooters are gonna have that type of ah Counterbalance right like in Tarkov.
00:28:32
Speaker
Oh Definitely not like I feel like it's a lot more PvP focused um And in Marathon, I don't know what the split is going to be. They definitely have PvE encounters like they had. um It's such a cool man. It's such a cool concept. I wish I liked. I wish this was a game that I liked um because aesthetically it's awesome. But one of the things they show in a preview is like sometimes on a map, the sky will basically just open up because like reality and digital space are like converging and it'll start like PVE raid in the middle of the arena and not like an m MMO raid, but like ah an event, I should say.
00:29:16
Speaker
And this only happens sometimes, but if it happens, then there's going to be rewards for the people who participate. And it's like, that's cool. I like that.
00:29:27
Speaker
um But it's an extraction shooter, so I don't know. I don't know. that's The other thing that's different from Marathon is the um a class-based approach.
00:29:40
Speaker
so like you start out by picking the type of runner shell that you want because your your person is basically just like remoting in SSH or RDP into a shell, essentially that um you are a mercenary remotely controlling a robot body.
00:30:03
Speaker
um And there might be some Eldritch shenanigans going on based off the trailers. But like that's the the gist. So the body that you pick is like going to give you your class abilities. Think something closer to like Night Rain, right? Where it's like there are certain actives and passives and things like that attached to whichever so one you select. So one of them is like a support. One of them is more like a tank, either an assassin or the person who finds assassins. and um And then the last one is the Rook, which is the wild card.
00:30:38
Speaker
Basically, where it's like um usually in extraction shooters, you have like a low commitment option to get into a match. And that's the Rook.
00:30:49
Speaker
The Rook basically like starts with garbage gear. You don't like I don't think you have the option to outfit him to be anything excellent. And while everyone else started the match at the beginning, so they all they're all on equal footage on equal footing, if you play as the Rook, it can launch you into a match that's in progress.
00:31:11
Speaker
And you would visually each of these like these shells kind of looks different. So you should be able to tell what abilities each one has. And so you can tell like a rook is just like a scavenger slash someone who just shows up and is less powerful. And they're like picking from the corpses of the people who were around.
00:31:28
Speaker
I kind of love that vibe. That's an interesting idea. um The raccoon class. It is the raccoon. Yeah, exactly. um Yeah. And in their their trailers, they have like ah footage taken from people that are in the i don't know if it's a beta or an alpha. Now, I guess it's a beta.
00:31:46
Speaker
um But they're like the people in voice comms that are talking about the ethics of how they should deal with the rook that is basically helpless in front of them that they've coined. And they're just like, wow you can't kill him. He's just a rook. Like, no, just let it go.
00:32:02
Speaker
It's very funny. It was interesting to see how people interact online. Especially when a lot of times ah games are kind of broken into that. This is single player or this is multiplayer. Yeah. ioggainst the machine or You're against you're against Mm-hmm.
00:32:21
Speaker
And... I was going to say, as far as class stuff is concerned, I feel like every game should have class stuff if you have multiple characters.
00:32:31
Speaker
Yeah. um Because it feels weird to just change your cosmetic skin in Call of Duty Warzone. Mm-hmm. And it's like exact same pool of guns and gear. Like you're just swapping the paint and nothing else.
00:32:44
Speaker
But it feels very fun in all games to be able to specialize into something. Yeah. It also lends to the um to the tactics a little bit. Right. So pretty much all extraction shooters that I know of outside of Duck off, which is the single player one, the superior one um that they have some sort of like, OK, this is your solo queue. You know, you're jumping in on your own and you also have like three man.
00:33:11
Speaker
um You're jumping in with three people. um And then something like the scavenger slash rook option, which is pretty much always solo. um But it's your budget run.
00:33:22
Speaker
And in particular, i like the idea of something like marathon because like having ah classes that are visually identifiable also lets you with game knowledge and game sense, like pick out what your opponent might be capable of.
00:33:40
Speaker
Right. So if you see somebody and they have like a hood, and the guy's not named Zero. That's the Borderlands character. But the assassin shell wears a hood.
00:33:52
Speaker
And like if you identify that, you're like, OK, well, I should probably be on the lookout to see if he goes invisible and tries to flank me or something like that.
00:34:02
Speaker
um Or the person with the shield just like running us down um and using the shield to like reflect damage in the form of rockets at us or something like that. And like that's interesting because it gives you like a little bit of little bit of depth there or maybe you primary the medic right geek the mage as they say.
00:34:22
Speaker
um And I do like that idea. Of having some sort of, ah it's more than just everybody's got armor plates and gadgets, like you were saying, for Warzone.
00:34:35
Speaker
um But it requires them to be visually identifiable and you can pick out the silhouettes in ways that's necessary for something like Dota or for like Overwatch or whatever. You need to have that visual identification or else.
00:34:48
Speaker
So I guess how customizable are the loadouts that they would choose to go this route versus, hey, here's the assassin character. Here's the tank character.
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so these are as acid and air tank characters. The difference is like the customization and the loadouts comes in stuff that you can extract with and then use to enhance your character.
00:35:15
Speaker
So an example of that is like you might have an example. I don't know if this one exists or not, but they had some other example. OK, one that I know does exist is the shield guy. You can have a upgrade attached.
00:35:30
Speaker
That makes it so as your shield blocks damage, it ah charges up. And then when you put away your shield, all of that shield energy goes to overshield for your personal shield. So you could basically like face tank for a bit and then put your shield away and have a lot of personal shield while you can fire your gun, um which, you know, is Potentially very dangerous. The other one is like the shield can fire back rockets. I mentioned that as it's taking damage is like a retaliation thorns type effect.
Game Innovation vs. Saturation
00:36:02
Speaker
um Or one of the classes can like jump and deal like impact damage and superhero landing basically around her if she jumps from high enough.
00:36:16
Speaker
And so that's sort of the customization on the classes is it's like you attach more passives essentially to what they do. okay But your active effects are probably going to be, um you know, ah maybe the active effects can be modified as well. Like the medic has a drone they can send out and attach to another person to like heal them.
00:36:36
Speaker
And, um you know, if ah if you're a investing in that, you might be able to change how it works. But But it's all modifiers on that same base class, right?
00:36:48
Speaker
So no one else is just getting the ability to be like, okay, if I backstab someone, I'm also invisible for five seconds or something like that. You see this giant monolithic tank just disappear. Right, exactly.
00:37:04
Speaker
um Man, i hope I hope it's good. Not that I would necessarily... I wouldn't rule out or rule in that I would play it It just looks very, very different right now.
00:37:18
Speaker
I need to watch a new trailer because I remember the original one. It was very hype with a Justice. Oh, yeah. The soundtrack. I think so for that ah video, everything looked very cool and crisp and they did the gameplay and it felt very off i guess yeah way to put it yeah yeah if they are actually making changes and strides um would definitely at least peek another trailer for sure yeah but i'm definitely in that same boat with you as far as extraction shooters just aren't really my bag yep and this is until uh duskbloods comes out and then i have to get a switch too and i have to play that is duskbloods an extraction shooter
00:38:03
Speaker
I thought they said something that had like an extraction property to it. It might. What is this? I thought it was weird enough, and they're like, closing circle, that's never going to work.
00:38:14
Speaker
I love Night Rain. It's actually really, really well made. It's your previous night episode. For for more more that's on Night Rain. But yeah, it's at least PvE and PvP. so I don't know. i kind of...
00:38:30
Speaker
I get this, right? Like there's a reason to put PVP in your game. It's to drive engagement that you wouldn't necessarily get just from PVE. But there are entire nights out of the week where I don't want to play anything that has any any concept anywhere near PvP. um and If I'm going to get mad at somebody, I want it to either be myself or my friend. Not a stranger i can't flame.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. um And I don't know. like I guess i don't know I don't know what Marathon would have been. if it didn't have a PvP aspect as an extraction shooters because it's so baked into its DNA.
00:39:15
Speaker
But it's also like, I guess the thing and this is maybe taking it back to high guard a little bit like, what is it actually bringing to the table?
00:39:26
Speaker
Right. Like it felt like when an Overwatch came out, I was like, wow, like these this is a really clean hero shooter when I didn't know what hero shooter meant prior to that. And now it's ah like a genre term we use for other types of games.
00:39:43
Speaker
um And you can argue whether Valorant is more of a hero shooter or more of like a Counter-Strike type thing, whatever. But like... I have more respect, I guess, for the games that are taking outside DNA or at least out of mainstream DNA as far as mechanics and the genre and stuff like that and doing something new as compared to just remixing what we're already used to.
00:40:11
Speaker
and That's my fear for Marathon. I'm pretty sure it's the reason that High Guard is struggling, which is crazy. That one's free to play, right? Like Concord cost money and then everyone got refunded.
00:40:24
Speaker
High Guard's actually like free to play. And I don't think it's completely dead yet. I was hearing that it has like 12,000 players on Steam or something. That's still relatively low considering. It's pretty low for for an initial launch.
00:40:37
Speaker
um Again, not charging people money. um So i I don't know. I guess I'm still a believer that we would want something else that stands out, not something that's going to blend in.
FromSoft Legacy and Game Design
00:40:56
Speaker
Yeah, I'd agree with that. Because the more games are made, um the more saturated it's going to be, the less new ideas there will be yeah in general. So to stand out, you need something either really unique or you need to take something existing that people like and improve upon it.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah. Again, look at FromSoph's progression. Some of those games sucked ass. yeah And mechanically, they've been building upon their stuff a lot. And it feels good to play, regardless of what mode I'm playing, whether it's A Dark Soul, Sekiro, Night Reign, Elden Ring.
00:41:38
Speaker
All of the combat feels good. The movement feels good. And that and also the design and exploration is what's going to keep bringing me back.
00:41:48
Speaker
I don't think that there's.
00:41:52
Speaker
I would be impressed if somebody dethroned FromSoft. I will say I'm very glad that Eliza P did as well as it did. Oh, yeah. Because it's an excellent game. A lot of Souls likes where it's like and a separate thing just kind of crashed and burned.
00:42:07
Speaker
Or you hear about it once like ah Steel Rising and Atria and then you never hear about it again. Yes. Yeah. And to their credit, and we it's been a while since our episode on Lies of P, but they didn't try to do everything the same way that FromSoft did. Like, it still has so much of that soul's DNA, but it's also like, okay, here are the, I shouldn't say casual, but here are convenience options we're doing as far as gameplay is concerned.
00:42:35
Speaker
um And I can't even remember all of them, but I remember, like, weapon upgrades were... both simultaneously kind of more interesting and how you could combine things, but also like simplified and that there wasn't a million weapons like there is an Elden Ring.
00:42:52
Speaker
And, you know, how does respawning near bosses work and all this other stuff? So, um, It's possible to still take a lot of primary DNA out of something, but then um have novel ideas that ah give people a reason to play it. And Liza P was also the story.
00:43:15
Speaker
Right? Like, it's completely removed from anything. Like, here's Fantasy China once again and a Souls-like. And you're like, cool. like we We've been here. Cool.
00:43:30
Speaker
It actually has ah good music, too. Yeah. It's a full package. So... so I guess we'll see right like I think marathons coming out. I want to say in May, maybe March.
00:43:46
Speaker
um I would be kind of surprised if they push it back now because again, they are literally just releasing clips of people playing the game now.
00:43:57
Speaker
um And it seems like it's pretty, pretty close. um I am really curious to see where it lands. And this is kind of like the ah this is the you know, the the the comic of the like ah the weirdo outside the window. He's like, haha, yes, man, whatever. And that's me. And I want to see like where the industry actually goes as far as ah acceptance or pushback for live service games. Right. Because it's it's a conversation now.
00:44:32
Speaker
Like our graders absolutely popped off. And then we just kind of like. Awkwardly chuckled to ourselves about the whole concord situation because it's like okay. Well, I guess not everybody's gonna I'm sorry concord not everyone's gonna fail like so We'll see but High guard might be struggling. We'll see I'm curious what the next big trend will be But also it's still exciting to see things come out in general because I never would have been like Astro Boy. Yeah. But somebody had that idea and they made it a thing and it's really good.
00:45:14
Speaker
Here's the hot take. The next big thing in gaming, it's going to four player cooperative versus zombies. That's that's going to be the next thing. Haven't seen it before. Back for blood yet again. Back for more blood. Back five blood. um Yeah, I don't know.
00:45:36
Speaker
The gaming industry is so big that ah all of this stuff is happening all the time. Also, that's the other thing to acknowledge is like if there's a particular genre that you like, congratulations, something just came out for it, right? Like it could be an indie. If you're only looking at the AAA games or the things that show up at the Game Awards, maybe you wouldn't see some of this stuff. But otherwise, it is kind of just a smorgasbord.
00:46:05
Speaker
of whatever you want um yeah that's nice in a time where thankfully video games have been worked on a lot since the 80s yeah and we are kind of spoiled for choice as far as genre art style other things yeah it's branched out so much Yet I still find myself kind of drawn towards old RPG-esque stuff. Mm-hmm. Where it's like, you just got to give me fire, ice, and lightning, and like a couple weapons, and we'll figure something out.
00:46:39
Speaker
Uh-huh. No, that's fair. And ah there's nothing wrong with that. I play comfort games more than I play anything else these days, as you know. Almost done with Helldivers having, well, not like to quit, but I've almost caught up on all the war bonds. We're so close. Anytime I see something on the Steam store page, I'm like, all right, I know what Shake's going to be up to. Yeah.
00:47:04
Speaker
It didn't help. They're releasing content more rapidly now. I'm like, come on, guys. Come on. I was almost all vampire survivors for so long. because Yeah, i'm going to stay on top of these achievements. This can be the one time I try and do that. And then each week they're like, there's another 10. I'm like, wow.
00:47:21
Speaker
Just falling behind. It's the one year like climbing up the abyss thing. And you're just getting closer and closer to the giant skeleton. um No, that's fair. Oh, that's another.
00:47:33
Speaker
but There's your callback for like weird gameplay mechanics in the Souls games. Like really interesting boss fight to just be like escaping this boss that's climbing after you. Like they never did that again as far as I know.
00:47:48
Speaker
i mean it's I feel like Wulnir variation on Oh, no, to forget their name. um Dark Sun Gwendolyn. Dark Sun Gwendolyn. Thank you. Yeah. Where it's kind of like that, that infinite hallway type thing where it just keeps generating the stuff ahead and then deallocating the stuff behind.
00:48:09
Speaker
ah But it makes it seem like you're in this eternal struggle that you have to deal with. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. I also just like big skeletons. Big skeletons. Can't go wrong.
00:48:21
Speaker
You're going to know that like people play right okay when I'm like, oh, I'm definitely going to buy one of those 10 foot skeletons. Just put it in a tree. Well, I've thought of either like there's the tree. There's the barn has like a window at like the very, very top. Oh, yeah. if i That's good. Set it up. So like the head was right there. Oh, my gosh. um Or I could have it, you know, just kind of like posing in the yard.
00:48:48
Speaker
It also be if you have large enough skeleton, you could just like put it on your roof, kind of just like crawling over if you wanted to make everyone uncomfortable.
00:48:59
Speaker
That would be pretty sick. Yeah. know Or maybe put in like a very like an Arduino type thing to move the arms and just have it like kind of occasionally clawing out your gutters. Get out here, leaves. Hopefully it's not too powerful. It just actually damages your gutters. It starts ripping your nose. Every time it rips them clean off.
00:49:23
Speaker
Avoid that if you can. Ideally, it's the final thing I'll say on the skeleton purchasing. If I had two of them and they were kind of like locked hand in hand grappling and that's like an archway for a door.
00:49:38
Speaker
Ooh, I do like that. Yeah. Bone arches. All about those arches, dude.
00:49:46
Speaker
I think that's fair. All right, Dave, we got to buy a little bit more time. So what have you been playing recently? ah Most recently I've been checking out sworn with some people. Okay.
00:49:59
Speaker
What's the yeah what's the high level pitch for sworn? Multiplayer Hades and then Arthur like stuff or a roundtable Camelot type style That's fame now This game is mostly positive on Steam Why do you think that it's mostly positive and not overwhelmingly positive?
00:50:22
Speaker
Um, it's definitely not as polished as Hades is That's a tough bar to clear, to be fair. It is. It really is. Like, they're very peak on animation, sound design, everything.
00:50:33
Speaker
Mm-hmm. this feels a lot more... I want to say this in a derogatory way, but homebrewed. Sure. Like more of a smaller studio. We have Hades at home. Less experience. um But it feels like they did, you know, like take some good ideas from Hades, but they also very much made this their own thing.
00:50:54
Speaker
Sure. um But it definitely feels like it wants to be Hades. Mm hmm. It might need some more original DNA, but I'm just glad to see more things in this space.
00:51:08
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Because i love a good roguelike, love the customization. ah And now I can also do that with people. Oh, yeah. That's a really cool idea.
00:51:19
Speaker
um I do kind of like... I do wonder sometimes if the... ah the approach to like inject co-op into a single player formula for this type of game, um, works, but I don't, I'm glad that the, the attempt is being made, right? Like, so what I'm thinking of is back to, um, ah, crap. It's not dungeon defenders. It's the, um, dungeon defenders is also a kind of example of injecting multiplayer in a single player format, but like, um, uh, torchlight, torchlight. That's the one.
00:51:54
Speaker
Take Diablo, which did have multiplayer, but you're making it more like a casual multiplayer experience. Open it up to people. Is it successful? Is it not? I think they were successful for one game at the very least. I don't think that looks like more for some reason yeah Torchlight is not as well received as far as I recall.
00:52:12
Speaker
um And I could see it, right? Like I could see it for Hades, open it up a little bit, add some multiplayer to it. You do have to cut out, I feel like a lot of the story in theory, or at least how the story is being told.
00:52:29
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think there's story, at least as far as I've played. Yeah. I think I'm definitely unlocking more things in runs, um making myself stronger, getting new character classes, weapons and whatnot.
00:52:44
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, there hasn't been a story and I don't really want there to be one. Right. It's kind of like, here's your three law levels. Here the bosses for each them. And then here's like your final area.
00:52:55
Speaker
h I'm hoping they actually expound upon it. because Camelot stuff has some cool lore potential for sure. Sure. Again, going back to like that Not high fantasy, like low low fantasy, but with magic. Magic does exist. Gotcha.
00:53:13
Speaker
Medium fantasy. Medium. There's no elves. Appropriate size. Good. Good. um But yeah, I feel like they definitely could add some more stuff in here.
00:53:26
Speaker
I would like them too because, again, I like just experimenting and playing around with it, and it's been fun. And right now, I think it's like $13. thirteen bucks That's a pretty good deal. That's a good price point. um Yeah, I do appreciate when games realize that they should be built around the multiplayer component and how people are going to be playing that game in multiplayer.
00:53:45
Speaker
um It feels like sometimes multiplayer misses that. They're not really playing to their strengths in that case. um Bioshock 2. Well, Bioshock 2, the multiplayer was made by like a different company, if I recall correctly.
00:54:01
Speaker
um So they could do like simultaneous development. Okay. Which is like and That's not unheard of, right? Like that's that's happened other times in the past. But from what I hear from right here, like I'm hearing this is and common knowledge these days. But what I heard was that apparently it's multiplayer was actually pretty decent at launch. Like it was pretty fully featured.
00:54:24
Speaker
um It's just I had the question of why, right? Like, I lot. It's very narrative. Mm-hmm. At the very least, um great single-player game. Mm-hmm.
00:54:41
Speaker
I do actually i amm i I am realizing that I'm also kind of the defender of Bioshock 2. I'm the defender of sequels in games where people like the first game and the third game. um But I mean, Bioshock 2 was pretty great.
00:55:01
Speaker
But I just like to play as a big daddy. It's great. Plays Delta. um Is that a big sister? is a big daddy. Well, there was big sisters in that game, too.
00:55:13
Speaker
They introduced play as a big daddy. You play as a big daddy. um And yeah, you you got access to like the drill and various other um some of the other mechanics I think were related to being in the big daddy suit. But for the most part, I'm realizing now. Yeah.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah. Big daddy. Big sister. Yeah. Also, little sister. But like, wouldn't it be like big mama?
Gaming Preferences and Nostalgia
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's because they've okay when we're getting into Bioshock lore But because it's because they both fulfill the same function ah Which is they are the guardian for the the little sister.
00:55:54
Speaker
um They're the ones that are escorting them around to collect Adam The big sisters were created in Bioshock 2 as kind of a reflex to the fact that the big daddies were not being very successful.
00:56:11
Speaker
Um, and, uh, they wanted more control over the the whole process. Um, it also didn't help that that's part of like the actual narrative of the story is that you play as, uh, Delta who is like the original father, i think of one of these little sisters.
00:56:31
Speaker
And, um, He starts basically regaining his memory and people are like, ah, we don't really like that. We don't really like that. He's getting his memory back that he used to be someone's father.
00:56:44
Speaker
Let's just do a different product, right? This was their iPods not working. We're switching over to this other thing. part yeahods gain Gaining self-awareness. Uh-huh. Yeah. More apt, actually.
00:56:58
Speaker
um But it's the only Bioshock game where one of the ending is endings is holding the entire world hostage with nukes. So, you know, that's pretty crazy.
00:57:10
Speaker
that's what I look for in video games. It was really out there. Um, let's see. What have I been playing? I played Grimshire some since we last played. I'm currently kind of taking a break from it, but think like Stardew Valley.
00:57:26
Speaker
ah But instead of people, they're animals. And instead of always being cozy, comfortable, if you fail to produce enough food for them, they will starve and die. But it's not like just game over, you're talking like one at a time. You're just like, oh, well, the the food threshold has lowered. But this this ah townsperson is just out of the game now. um And I think the best way to sum it up was like the top review on Steam was like, this is an excellent game and I love it. And it says like product refunded. and it's like, but I cannot play it. It is too stressful. These animals are too cute.
00:58:05
Speaker
I can't do this. And I'm like, yeah, I get it. um Nobody wants to tell like little bunny boy that his mom's not coming home because there wasn't enough food. like yeah It also feels weird to have the game be, how long can you prevent the the death of these cute things? And it's like, yes indefinitely? It's like, well, we're going to give you a timer and we'll see. I'm like, no. No.
00:58:35
Speaker
They also, without spoiling anything, it's still in early access, but without spoiling anything, they it's it is one of those games where it's like, oh, everything's comfortable now. What if we add more weight? And you're like, oh, no.
00:58:50
Speaker
I'm no longer sure if I can actually pull this off. 300-pound gravity blanket. aha Yeah, exactly. But it's a very novel concept. And again, you know, we didn't just need another Stardew Valley clone. So Stardew Valley plus Sadness is ah is a decent option.
00:59:07
Speaker
um I want a depressing Billy the Hatcher. o And that's just because it's a name I remember and nothing else. It's Billy Hatcher and the Magic Egg.
00:59:19
Speaker
You have the incredibly addictive theme song. Yeah. that i remember from my childhood, uh, just because of, um, I don't know know. Marketing worked on me as a kid, I guess.
00:59:33
Speaker
You just hear things enough and they kind of get stuck there. Uh-huh. here's the Here's the note. I'll try to try to remember it. We'll just make either the outro or the intro.
00:59:46
Speaker
Billy Hatcher theme song. um And if you guys never heard it, then hopefully re-remember. If not, you can also get hit with the nostalgia. Saturday morning ah advertisements towards children.
01:00:02
Speaker
um Yeah. And otherwise, the other stuff I've been playing... It's not as notable or i can catch up on it later. So anything, any final thoughts, words, video game reviews, advice for people out there freezing, um trying to determine how to survive where every single game that comes out is an extraction shooter.
01:00:32
Speaker
Stay inside. yes Play games that you already have and try and play multiplayer games with your friends. Good life advice. I like that.
01:00:46
Speaker
Thank you guys for listening to another episode of soapstone. as always, all of our socials are down in the description. If you want to get ahold of us, always glad to communicate, uh, and respond to people, that reach out, or maybe you have ideas for future episodes.
01:01:01
Speaker
Uh, we take those sometimes. mean, like we take those. Um, but as always, we will see in the next one. Have a good night.