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2024 in Preview
74 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they look forward to and justify their most anticipated games coming in 2024!
Intro:
- Lethal Company - Boombox Song 5 (EwigMusic Remix)
Outro:
- Infraction - Freaky
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Transcript
Cakes and Conversation
00:00:55
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Serpstone. My name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave? It's going good. Good.
00:01:07
Speaker
Uh, it's normalish day. I have a wealth of friends and people who care about me. Um, I've had breakfast slash lunch. Part of the lunch was a cake. I should say a slice of cake. It wasn't a whole cake. Yeah. But, uh, shout out to my parents. Uh, they made and mailed me a cake. I say my parents, I think it was primarily my mom's doing, um, but neither of them listened anyway. So I'll give dad credit as well.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah. Just in case. You never know. He listens and he's like, I want to talk to you about not getting any fucking cake credit, David. Oh, shit. My bad. He writes in, which means I'll get the email first and I'll send it to you. I was like, Dave, is this actually your dad? That'd be very funny. Yeah. Depends if he uses my middle name. Oof. Yeah. That would be proof. Mm-hmm.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, well we'll we'll avoid using your middle name for this for this part. The speaking of cake though, last evening, I actually purchased is kind of a little little surprise. I say surprise.
00:02:16
Speaker
I'm going to have some of it, right? If I'm, if I'm going to eat some part of something that I intend for another person, I don't know if I deserve full credit, but an ice cream cake, like a chocolate ice cream cake. Um, and what I didn't really fully realize and neither did my wife is that an ice cream cake is basically just ice cream. Like it's, oh yeah, that's, that's pretty much all it is. Um, which is good. Then I kind of want a cake.
00:02:44
Speaker
Tell you what, if any of this apple cake survives, you're definitely welcome to some. What's funny, after I left your place the other day and I came home, there was a box out my door and I was like, oh, is this from my parents? Okay, this is a cake. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't going to share it some then.
00:03:02
Speaker
That's fair. But it sounds good. It might take you up on the offer, although I also understand. We are currently snowed in, so if you need it as emergency provisions to make it through, I fully get it.
00:03:17
Speaker
I imagine me in my jammies, in my bed, specifically under the covers, covered in crumbs. I'm shoving another slice of my face. I'm like, it's an emergency. I point to the very light snowfall outside. I can't go out there. It's like your walkway's just been cleared.
2024 Game Releases: Expectations vs Reality
00:03:38
Speaker
There's several old people walking around outside.
00:03:40
Speaker
Oh, it's a little bit chilly today. Uh-huh. Someone's actively taking a leaf blower to your car and clearing all the snow off of it and stuff. No, that's entirely fair. But you know what else is entirely fair is
00:04:01
Speaker
the offering of games, I guess, that's going to come out this year. I don't know. Actually, what would you say your impression is of the games that are coming out this year, both maybe like as far as the potential quality of the games themselves and also comparing. We just had an episode on how crazy the previous year was. Do you think there's any way it can measure up? Jake, you know, I can never remember what happened the last episode. Sure. A friend messaged me on Facebook like, hey,
00:04:30
Speaker
This one thing's always gonna make me laugh in the future. I'm like, what are you referring to? And it's like, Oh, your last podcast episode. I'm like, dude, I do not know what was said there. You can have your hair just graze in real time. When was that? Oh, okay. I mean, yeah, 2023 definitely had some bangers.
00:04:54
Speaker
But like looking up for the upcoming things of items that I highlighted for, Hey, this is slated for 2024, theoretically. Um, I mean, a lot of them look good. I'm sure there are some that also I'm not on the train for or on the same page with it's not fully within my wheelhouse or, um, cognition yet, but I'm sure I will appreciate them as well. Yeah.
00:05:20
Speaker
That's fair. I would definitely agree with that. We also have some contingent games where it's like, they may be delayed or they may not have a specific release date. And if those get pushed, I really don't think 2024 can compete with how crazy 2023 was and Armor Corps, Baldur's Gate, the whole shebang.
00:05:41
Speaker
I don't think we're going to have anything that's going to break the mold, I would say. Though I am curious about if Silksong does release this year. Yes. I assume that will be the peak of Metroidvanias.
00:05:59
Speaker
Right. You mentioned silk song and I got, I gotta ask for silk song. I mean, obviously it's a meme at this point, like, you know, yeah. Um, do you think that they might be suffering from some of this, uh,
00:06:15
Speaker
fear of success or heightened expectations at this point, because I know that this has happened other times in the industry, right? Like Valve is notorious for this, where they felt like they could not release the next Half-Life game because the hype was so high that there was no way they would meet it. There's no way they would meet it. So they just chose not to release anything until Alex, right? Do you think Silksong might be experiencing a little bit of that or is that too speculative?
Game Quality vs Release Speed
00:06:45
Speaker
I don't think it's too speculative. I think it's kind of similar to what they've echoed in the past, where they don't want to release something partially. Like they did have the teaser trailer. I think that's only because they had to make one. They're like, listen, we got to promote something in this E3. You're doing it. And they're like, okay.
00:07:05
Speaker
But I think, yeah, they very much want to have the full control and attention to detail and have everything be just right for when it's released versus like some AAA stuff where it might be 99% of the way there, but it might have to get some patches and other things. Even Baldur's Gate 3, amazing game, as voted by everybody, had issues at launch. It had some bugs and stuff.
00:07:34
Speaker
So yeah, I imagine they're really trying to hone it as much as possible. I don't know if that's actually causing delays as far as their schedule. So we don't really know what their schedule is, but yeah, I'm still fine waiting as long as it's a good product that comes out. Exactly, right. I don't think we're at a, even now, we're not at a drought of games, right? There are plenty of games I could go back and play and do. And a lot of games I still need to beat or at least take a little college try to beat.
00:08:03
Speaker
Um, so I don't need things immediately. I'm looking at like this list and there's things coming out earlier in the year. And I'm like, if you guys push that, that'd be fine. It's fine. Um, but yeah, I guess, I guess we'll see the first, when the first game released for hollow night, um, they pretty much knew they're like, Hey, we're already better than everybody else. Now they did that. Now they have to compete with themselves and that can be, that can be the real struggle.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah. I think that will also be. I guess a factor or something that both the studio and myself would consider as far as Hades to as well. True. Because Hades straight banger was amazing in that space. And now it's like, hey, how do we move the bar forward? So we're not making like a reskinned thing at the first game. Yes. I mean, obviously new characters, new abilities, some other stuff.
00:09:00
Speaker
I don't think they need to change too, too much, honestly, just as long as it feels different from Hades 1. Right.
Naming Conventions and Expectations
00:09:10
Speaker
It is worth noting for Hades 2, this is the first time Supergiant, as far as I know, is making a sequel. They really like establishing a new baseline and oftentimes completely genre shifting. They've pretty much done that in the past.
00:09:28
Speaker
for most of their games like their comparisons are like this is similar to Bastion because there's a narrator and they're like okay never mind all of their games have a narrator we're good.
00:09:39
Speaker
but this is the closest they've come to retreading the same ground. And I'm kind of curious. I'm kind of curious how they pull that off. But honestly, if they were like, this is a Hades expansion and we just added a bunch more interactions or items or whatever, as far as the story was concerned, I would have been sold on that. So it's gonna be kind of hard for Hades two to miss.
00:10:07
Speaker
I don't want to curse it, but I don't know. I imagine it just was super well received. I mean, it's been on however many platforms now. Yeah. Cause every time we look up like, Hey, what games are coming out? They're like, Oh, Hades. I'm like, again? Oh, it's on switch now. It's on PC. It's on Mac. It's on iOS. Um,
00:10:27
Speaker
Whereas I don't at least remember that with some of the previous titles. Yeah, I think Bash was kind of, I mean, obviously being their first, maybe not the most popular, wasn't fully in the zeitgeist, might've been like a sleeper hit. And then when things came around to, I hate that I always forget the name of their second game, even though it's Transistor. I've played it twice, at least.
00:10:52
Speaker
people were like, okay, like I'm kind of getting on board the super giant five. Um, and then people were like, anime basketball. I don't know. Uh, I think pyre was a little bit polarizing as far as the style. Cause at least people heard basketball. They're like, I don't know. Yes. Yeah. But still an amazing game. And then Hades felt very much more approachable as far as, Hey, do you like rogue likes? Be like, yeah, I know what that is.
00:11:18
Speaker
Here's a good one. Like, Oh, okay. Yeah. And here's the, it really became, I think, I think this is true. I think Hades is the archetypical modern rogue, like, like, I can't think of a game that is bigger in that space, um, for Roguelikes. I mean, obviously there's a bunch of Roguelikes. There's the traditional Rogue. There's binding of Isaac. There's all these types of games. Um, and sometimes games release Roguelike modes, like God of War Valhalla is the most recently.
00:11:47
Speaker
But Hades, and it's very difficult for me not to say nuts every single time, it's the top of the pyramid for roguelikes for me. It's so freaking good and they don't need to change that much to keep it good. I have a lot of faith.
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah, it is weird how a lot of things on my list are actually sequels or extensions. That's fair. Yeah. Cause there's also a Senua saga Hellblade two, which as we know from playing guess the game, I know that fucking game, like the back of my hand. That's true. I can't confirm. I literally came out of the bathroom and be like, Hey Dave, what game is this? Like Senua saga next. Um, but yeah, that's another thing where.
00:12:43
Speaker
for any sequel, how do you build on it without retreading too much of the ground from the first one? I will say graphically from what they've shown.
00:12:54
Speaker
wildly different. Not that Sunnywood 1 looked bad, but when you compare the two side by side, it's like, holy shit, technology is definitely advanced. So hopefully in there, it's also going to add some additional mechanics versus sidling, sidling on rocks, listening to things talk. And then I'd say it's still pretty fun hack and slash
Upcoming Titles: Hopes and Skepticism
00:13:17
Speaker
as far as the combat is concerned.
00:13:20
Speaker
But it seemed like they had a couple of mechanics that are all straightforward and not too difficult to pick up. Right. Yeah. So anyway, it's been very much about the atmosphere and the story. I would say a lot more than gameplay for the first game. The gameplay was fine, but if you said that a good portion of it was a walking simulator, I wouldn't disagree.
00:13:45
Speaker
My main concern here is actually with the naming scheme for this series. As a lot of games, they're kind of going weird with it. The first game was Hellblade, Senua's Sacrifice. And the second game is Senua's Saga, Hellblade 2. And it's like, so this is part of the Hellblade series of games, I guess. I still don't understand why they went with Hellblade at all. Because I don't know if they even make a mention to that at all.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah, it seems it's not cool. It's not like what's the that fighting game named after a sword. Soul Calibur. Soul Calibur. Yeah, it's not like Soul Calibur, where it's like this is a core part of the plot. There is no hell blade as far as I know. I.
00:14:32
Speaker
I think they at least changed up the naming scheme a little bit because every time it's like Hellblade Senua's sacrifice. If I said like, oh hey, I really enjoyed Hellblade, this is my Hellblade cosplay. They're like, what? Like, oh, it's from Senua. They're like, oh. So people associated Senua more so with the name of the game because that's the main character versus Hellblade. I think there's nothing to do with the game but is for some reason in the title.
00:14:57
Speaker
Like, okay, we'll put Senua's first, Hellblade's second. Okay. Yes. Yeah. I think, unless they literally do Senua's Saga, Hellblade three, which I think would be dumb. This is the, this is the ramp for the next game to just be Senua's Saga, something else. Maybe don't call it Hellblade, right? It would be fine. No one's going to hold it against them. Or at least they shouldn't.
00:15:19
Speaker
Then it's gonna be discussions 10 years from now. How did you guys feel about the Hellblade series of Senua's games versus the... The Hellblade arc. The Hellblade arc. Versus when they were doing like mech combat. Heaven's Blade is gonna be the next one. It'll be Heaven's Blade 1 and 2. You're gonna think it's an anime game based off the name. Yeah, that's fair.
00:15:48
Speaker
But yeah, there are a lot of sequels and follow-ups and things like that coming out this year. I'm looking at my list and there's not too many, but I do have a couple. I was just gonna go through chronological though. So maybe it makes more sense to go through your games. I think that there's, I might not have as much to say about some of my own entries versus the ones you're looking forward to.
00:16:14
Speaker
Well, this isn't looking forward to for me, but I think it is worth mentioning for how much we've talked about it. Destiny 2, the final shape expansion will be coming out June 4th. And that's supposed to be their final question mark?
00:16:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's the end of the light and dark saga is the way they've depicted it. So everything that's happened in Destiny 2 falls under the light and dark saga. And well, I guess technically maybe the Red War was a little differently, but a little different, but it still basically falls under this super arc, essentially.
00:16:53
Speaker
And once this is done, like if you were to buy the pass, like the whatever $100 content pack is for Final Shape, it includes episodes, a couple episodes instead of just seasons. That's what they're calling them after the Final Shape. But personally, I think I've said this before on the podcast, I'm kind of fine if Destiny stops here, like Destiny 2 does at least.
00:17:22
Speaker
There's a lot of articles I'm still like, it's one of the topics I follow for news is Destiny 2. And there's not a ton of excitement for the witness in particular, who's the antagonist for this expansion. And there's concern about obviously how everything's been handled at Bungie and the layoffs and not meeting financial goals. And then just the quality of the gameplay coming out of Lightfall.
00:17:52
Speaker
If your anticipation of something upcoming should be predicated based off of the results of things that came before it, final shape is shaky. Yeah, I, I'm not optimistic, but that's me as a person, but it's also having played Destiny 2 for way too long. Yeah. Yeah, I think fine if it just stops. Yeah.
00:18:17
Speaker
I think this could be a good bookend for me, and I'll be very disappointed if the final shape is like, hey, we're very clearly... If they follow this cadence of, well, we resolved a thing, but in the same breath we introduced a cliffhanger, I understand that's kind of how you get people to keep going, but this has to be a bookend.
00:18:40
Speaker
Like if this is not, we've closed the last page of this book that we're reading. There is, the community is just going to revolt. So, cause this is it. They said this is the end for, for that entire saga. And this is their chance to actually deliver answers to all the questions they're constantly making up. If they don't, then they fail. Yeah.
00:19:10
Speaker
Hopefully, it's good, but I don't know. How do you feel about Black Myth Wukong? I'll be honest. I'll be on August 20th. I haven't looked that much about it, still. I still am kind of getting third person action vibes, but I would rather be pleasantly surprised that it's excellent and then pick it up versus this is something I'm very hyped for and I'll try to pick it up day of or something like that.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, I still think it's a wait and see, like how it actually is played and reviewed and all that jazz. But at least as far as how the game is structured, it being a Souls-like type of gameplay, more of an action versus you and a boss. I don't know. That's always the exciting bit for me. Yeah. Because you don't remember levels as much in games.
00:20:06
Speaker
Usually you're more likely to remember a major boss fight because a lot of effort is put into their design, their soundtrack, their moveset. And it's usually like the culmination of a level. Like if you look at Mega Man, everything for Chill Penguin leading up to Chill Penguin, it's a snowfield. You have ice enemies. Cool. Here's the culmination of that Chill Penguin. He's going to slide down his belly and shoot some ice at you.
00:20:32
Speaker
but at least with FromSoft or Souls-like type games, you do remember some of those levels because they're also made to be very difficult and thematic at times. Yes, I think that's fair to say. But I'm always somebody who's going to enjoy a nice good boss fight because it's just
00:20:53
Speaker
Cool. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, you can go back to our, our fury review, right? Or our fury episode. That was the most overproduced episode I think we've ever made. Um, but it's because it's just boss fights and music. It's so good. It is impossible to mention this one without mentioning another thing on your list, which obviously would have been on my list too, if you hadn't gotten to it first, but, uh, the Elden Ring DLC shadow of the urge tree, we don't have a concrete release date for it yet.
00:21:23
Speaker
But there's a risk. It's just like August 19th or something like that, right? Like it was it just literally just eats Blacksmith Wukong's lunch Because Alden Ring was so good that a DLC announcement will literally take traffic away from other games. Yeah so We'll see. I mean, I think a lot of the times they are releasing in Q4. So
00:21:48
Speaker
We'll see, I guess. I will say shadow of the urge tree and Hades two are probably day one pickups for me. Yes. That's also silk song because why would I not? Um, I have to beat it before I get spoiled. I think is where I'm at for some of these. Yes. Yeah. Whereas weirdly with Alan Wake, I've still been okay.
00:22:10
Speaker
Baldur's Gate 3 has become progressively shaky, as YouTube's like, oh, you like Baldur's Gate content?
Genre Shifts and Creative Potential
00:22:16
Speaker
I'm like, well, yeah. And they're like, here's 13 ways to spoil the ending. I'm like, stop it.
00:22:24
Speaker
I think the ending has actually changed since we started our save. Like I think we've added more stuff to it. So that's good. Well, I'll eventually see it on my single player play. Yeah, that's, that's probably realistically. I had downloaded mods for when I play through single player, then I just like left them disabled. So it wouldn't cause any issues when we continue, but like, yeah, it's, it's gotta happen eventually.
00:22:52
Speaker
Let's see, there's some other things on your list here I wanted to mention for sure. I wanted to call out, because this one's related to Bungie, obviously, Marathon. What are your ambitions for Marathon? I mean, you could take everything we talked about for Destiny and introduce it as a complication for Marathon at this point.
00:23:09
Speaker
I got nothing from marathon. It was an interesting trailer. It didn't really show fucking anything as far as gameplay. I really need to see that because it was like, hey, here's a shooter type thing. That's not enough to draw me in.
00:23:23
Speaker
I'm a little bit behind on FPS games and it would really need to stand out in a way or have a certain style or gimmick that I was very much into to draw me in. So maybe at some point in the future, they'll release some stuff and like, OK, I could get on board with that. But for right now, I'm always assuming it's going to be like a generic Call of Duty-esque shooter. Yeah, I mean, it's confirmed to be a three person squad extraction shooter. OK, so that's the type of game it is.
00:23:55
Speaker
I'm just now I can now I can pay for war zone I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I'm hoping it's different from war zone I would like to see more of the sci fi stuff. The marathon franchise obviously is maybe a word franchise isn't really accurate anymore but the IP
00:24:15
Speaker
goes back a long ways in Bungie's history. And it is actually, in some ways, tied to Destiny. Like, there are references to characters and some of, like, Destiny's guns. Darcy, in particular, I think. But, I don't know, I'm very disappointed it's an extraction shooter. Because it really just screams, like, we needed a game that was gonna make us a bunch of money in our free-to-play-esque transactions or microtransactions.
00:24:46
Speaker
And that's not interesting to me right now. There's so many games like that. I also feel like that season kind of passed, maybe just within my circle, but I know there was a time when people were playing war zone, people were playing Tarkov. I feel like that's really fallen off for the most part. Like I'm sure it still has a large player base in both instances. It's just.
00:25:17
Speaker
No one from our group really tries to get that together anymore, even on the other Discord. It just seemed to kind of have blown by, like it was a flavor of the month. Yeah, I think there's definitely a risk of that, right? Like this could be like that situation when WoW came out and then everyone started making an MMO. Like you're just, you're coming out with a flavor of last month, not the flavor of this month, right? I do think that you could be a zombie shooter.
00:25:44
Speaker
Right. Yeah, it's just time is a flat circle. We're on our way back.
00:25:49
Speaker
Um, I think like I enjoy extraction shooters and maybe it's, it's kind of, I haven't found the perfect niche for it. Um, so maybe marathon could be that this is my most generous interpretation, um, cause sci-fi I love. I like that more than traditional military fantasy stuff, like, or not fantasy stuff, but military simulation stuff like call of duty or whatever. Um, but yeah, I mean, you're competing in the space of.
00:26:18
Speaker
like competitive, let's go one more round type games where people have established things they're already doing, right? So I don't know. I would have loved this to be a single player or co-op first person shooter. Literally, this could have been the beginning of their arc after Halo, continuing these interesting interactions with AI, right? Like that's what Marathon was originally.
00:26:45
Speaker
Um, and like that white paper, that premise sounds so much more interesting to me than a three person extraction shooter on some planet in the marathon universe. So, but this is the one that I'm sure being counters in the background, pushed up their glasses and we're like, this is the one that's going to pay more money, right? Like we're going to get more money out of this type of game. Yeah. I'm curious to see where it goes. Hmm.
00:27:14
Speaker
I think it'll probably have cool fiction, but my fear is it's going to be something like, like what Apex was to Titanfall, right? Like they have references between them, but Titanfall was interesting to me. It was like single player campaign. It was cool. I wanted more of it. I don't care about Apex. It doesn't matter if your characters have bios and descriptions and stuff. A shooter, a multiplayer shooter is not the place to tell a narrative story. So.
00:27:42
Speaker
Trying to take a counter example. I don't know if there is one. Yeah. Yeah. I hope that marathon is successful enough that they're like, Hey, let's also make the games. We kind of want to make like the single player shooters or whatever. Right. And they get some of that freedom, but the company, if you're just looking at the games that come out on the shelves, you can help for that.
00:28:06
Speaker
In the background, Bungie may not be in that position right now. Bungie could be owned by Sony pretty soon if they don't close the gap on their numbers. When I say Bungie owned by Sony, I mean their IPs will be owned by Sony.
00:28:26
Speaker
prolific game antagonists. Like probably the most common one for a lot of people would be GLaDOS from Portal. Yeah. But Radon. Radon. Jesus. Roshan. No, no, no. You're thinking of Shodan. Shodan. Shodan. We got there.
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, like these iconic antagonists that will be like quoted forever and live on just from like their history. Like, I mean, to be fair, they did remake, um, that game within the last couple of years. Yeah. System shock came out last year, the remake. Yeah. But the reason that happened is because of how prolific the original System Shock was and how unique Shodan was as a character as far as like.
00:29:13
Speaker
talking with you, um, even the Southern Bioshock where you have your announcer and you're like, Oh, he's helping me out. He's a cool guy. Oh my God. He's a son of a bitch. Like it was cool to have those characters play like such an important role. Yeah. Versus, um, here's your generic.
00:29:35
Speaker
a mustache twirling evil type thing over the top. The overseer like enemy. The opponent who's clearly outclassing you and they could screw with you and just ruin your day immediately if they wanted to. Yeah. I know it says before when we talk about good character design, I like a sympathetic antagonist. So where you're like, oh fuck, I see where they're coming from.
00:30:02
Speaker
They're bad, obviously, but like, I don't know. I kind of get where they come from. Like, I want a little bit of that.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah. Like I want fear and respect. And I know this isn't the, this isn't the, the system shock topic. Like I don't think show Dan was necessarily that, but, um, because she's basically just crazy through the process of going rampant, which is like the in-universe term for it, both in halo and in marathon. Um, but like.
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it would be different in systems track since that wasn't a Bungie game, but like she's kind of traditionally evil, but she's like, she sees you as an insect, right? She is of a higher life form. So your journeying through the station, you accomplishing these tasks, sometimes for her, sometimes subtly against her are like little acts of rebellion.
00:30:58
Speaker
in a way, but it's an enemy that you can kind of like hate because she sees you as so very little, right? Look at you, Hacker, running through my corridors. Yeah. I freaking love that, and I'm a feared that Marathon will not carry that forward where they could, right? Like if you go back, I'm gonna mention Friend of the Show, Mandalore's videos,
00:31:25
Speaker
If you check out his videos with Gianni voicing Durandal, excellent. Bungie should have just taken that and been like, this is our next game. Get Gianni, put him in Durandal. It's all we need. It'll be freaking awesome. But we'll see. It's in the zeitgeist, right? People are still talking about AI.
00:31:47
Speaker
Right? Like it's a thing. Yeah. Like I always love the discussion around between like machine and man as far as ethics, identity, like exploring that whole thing. Very fun to me. Again, love worst world season one. Check it out if you haven't seen it. Don't look up spoilers. Don't watch other seasons. Thank you. Yes. They will spoil the first season. Not in the same way.
00:32:16
Speaker
But like, I feel like if you said like, oh, there's going to be AI in a movie, my brain immediately will go to like some Zoomer on TikTok talking to like an AI girlfriend. Yeah. And it being like, hey, this is a current thing versus what it could be. Yeah. Part of the excitement of war games back in 1980 something.
00:32:40
Speaker
was like, hey, what if we had this military supercomputer that had the capability to fuck everything up? But it was essentially played as a game. So from the computer's perspective, it doesn't value human life. It doesn't know. It's just trying to solve a problem. But then to have the capacity to destroy humanity on that scale,
00:33:05
Speaker
But yeah, again, it brings up interesting points of discussion. It's a fun thing to explore versus just, oh, my anime porn will now be, I can Google more of what I want for my fetish.
00:33:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's a lot more interesting and I don't want to disqualify marathon. Maybe they'll touch some of these tropes, but the genre is going to inform some of what they can do. And that's my fear is yeah, this could have been really cool. It already was really cool. I actually played like the original marathon games and yeah, we'll, we'll see where they go with it, but I'm a feared
00:33:46
Speaker
I mean, has there ever really been a major IP that had a genre shift as far as its gameplay where that genre shift actually did well?
00:33:58
Speaker
An example would be something like Halo 2, I mean Halo's always been a shooter, then they had Halo Wars. The spinoff and that was kind of an RTS. I think it did okay. I think that was part of the situation though for Halo Wars was like, what is the competition for RTS on consoles? Halo Wars was not considered a good game on PC, but it was like, oh, this is an RTS we can actually play on a console. So I guess by default,
00:34:25
Speaker
In its weight class, there were that many other contenders. I can't think of anything super readily off the top of my head where a genre shift really improved it. But I know that there's examples out there. So if you guys have them, send them in. I can't think of it. Sorry, I'm trailing off the beaten path a little bit. How do you feel about Tekken 8?
00:34:49
Speaker
I'm probably not going to play it. But I'm sure it'll be fun to watch on YouTube. I'm in a very similar boat. I would enjoy playing it for two hours, and then I'd be like, OK, I'm good. I like the coolness aspect of it, but I'm not going to learn combos. I'm not going to put on the easy mode to go through the story or anything. I appreciate it from a distance.
00:35:16
Speaker
Well, my main problem with it, I know what it would be, is I would pick up Kazia, I would try my forwards down diagonal input, and one move would come out, but not all of my special moves, and I'd be confused.
Fighting Games and JRPGs: Interest Levels
00:35:29
Speaker
I'd be like, how am I supposed to play this? Because that's the way he works in Smash. It's just forward down diagonal and then some other move. What do you mean it's more complicated in Tekken?
00:35:42
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure the multiple frame perfect inputs necessary that I'm not going to sugar coat it combo is definitely they're going to make it easy mode for eight. But yeah, not too much. I think also I'd have on teching.
00:36:03
Speaker
This is the most surprising one. I don't have, I'll be, maybe not confused, but what do you have to say in the defense of Earth Defense Force 6 being on this list? So I watched, it must've been Seth's video on Earth Defense Force 5. Okay. And it seemed like a team shooter where like you're defending Earth basically from aliens, whatever forces are like coming in.
00:36:30
Speaker
And it's like the scale of it goes super crazy to like where you can have a guy who's constantly calling down nukes, you're fighting giant bugs and other things. Yeah. It just seemed very silly. I'm like, I could see some people getting behind this. Um, so I am kind of curious to maybe follow more news on it and see if it'd be like a fun team shooter experience. Cause also it has like specific classes you can be too.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah, it kind of, I actually wasn't familiar with the classes things. I'm looking at some gameplay now. And I mean, other than like the low poly nonsense, which is kind of ubiquitous for this type of game. It doesn't look bad.
00:37:14
Speaker
I guess a lot of it's gonna come down to like, how does it feel to play with friends? But it always reminded me when I'm seeing the Earth Defense Force stuff, it reminds me of like Starship Troopers. It's just like, oh yeah, just a bunch of people fighting bugs or something like that, right? Fighting bugs. Uh-huh. The only good bug is a dead body. I'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill them all. Never even seen that. I need to someday.
00:37:43
Speaker
That's it. That's your full list. So if you want to take a break, I'm going to spend the next time next half of the podcast talking about my stuff. Kicking it off early in the year like a dragon infinite wealth comes out this month, actually. I'm not going to buy it immediately. This is my hot take. I have multiple Yakuza games I could actually play before picking this one up and some like a dragon.
00:38:15
Speaker
I mean, I'm still, I'm a fan of everything that Yakuza does now since I've had some playtime in like a dragon. But at the same time, I know it's going to be a commitment to get into a lot of time. It is still very much like a JRPG.
00:38:30
Speaker
And I give a shit about the writing characters because they do make it very compelling. But I also know I'm not always going to be in the headspace to want to sit down for a soap opera degree of sitting down for four hours for that. This is the blackout curtain type game. It's great for the situation I have in the basement. I want to be in a cave. I'll cease to exist for a period of time. But it's really like a PTO game. I don't want to actually get through it.
00:39:01
Speaker
That can be a little bit rough. You've got to maintain relationships and play with friends and stuff like that. So even shorter mention though, like so Skull and Bones is a Ubisoft game.
Pirates, RPGs, and Skepticism
00:39:15
Speaker
It's kind of vaguely similar. It looks vaguely similar to Sea of Thieves. I don't expect the monetization to be as good coming from Ubisoft compared to what Rare did for Sea of Thieves.
00:39:30
Speaker
And it also kind of, it has nice graphics, but I have concerns about this game, like in how it's landing. I think it literally is directly competing with a type of game where I feel like if you're interested in pirate games, like you're playing Sea of Thieves. So I'm not sure, I'm not sure for this one. It's also been delayed for like five years at this point. So, I don't know.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah. I think you already have something so major in the market and you have Ubisoft of all people being like, we will also do that. Yeah. You're going to have just like a shitty hollow copy. That's my fear. That's my fear. Even with all that time in development, it has to
00:40:17
Speaker
It has to really land in a lot of ways to be continually competitive with something as developed as Sea of Thieves, which has a crazy amount of content now. We haven't had an episode on it, but we've talked about it a couple times and it's excellent. For the type of game it's trying to be, it's so freaking good. Sea of Thieves, I mean.
00:40:41
Speaker
Also, you said it so many times that I have to see if these nuzz fit in your mouth. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mario versus Donkey Kong, February 16th, same day. I'm not going to probably pick this one up. I made a joke here. I put a joke in the margins. You could also just play Smash. Mario versus Donkey Kong. Well, I didn't. I mean, I've heard the name, but I don't even know what the gameplay for that is.
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the short of it that I read was, I mean, it is kind of the traditional Mario versus Donkey Kong platforming scenario, like the original, you know, Mario versus Donkey Kong, climb the tower type setup with the barrels. But there's also some co-op elements and some other stuff. So I don't know exactly what this one's going to look like.
00:41:29
Speaker
Nintendo doesn't always give you a lot of a preview, but if you want to see more, you can always look it up, check some gameplay, see if it makes sense. I'm not usually too much on the first party Nintendo train at launch. So no, I need it to be like a very specific game once every two years.
00:41:49
Speaker
She's like, we need another 2D Mario. I'm like, all right, nice. We'll check back with you later. Yeah, it's not on my list, but they are doing like a remake of Thousand Year Door, Paper Mario Thousand Year Door should be coming out this year as well. That's something I would be interested in. But knowing Nintendo, they'd be like,
00:42:05
Speaker
60 dollars, please. I'd be like, dude, no. Uh huh. Yeah, they like to charge their full price almost all the time. So moving away from Nintendo for a second. Also in February, February is kind of a stacked month as far as my list is lined up last epic or last epoch, February 21st. This is an early access game currently, but it's an action RPG, I think.
00:42:34
Speaker
something like Path of Exile, Diablo, whatever, with more of a focus on being playable in single player and co-op modes. It's been out for like a while in early access. I put 25 hours in it and it was a good time. I enjoyed it. It's been a while since I don't recall everything about the experience. But if it's still fun on launch, I might try to grab a friend or two and play through it kind of in a similar experience to something like,
00:43:02
Speaker
I want to say Grim Dawn, I think it was called, or Titan Quest. I can see that. What would you say, at least for this game, how does it stand out from some of those other games, like the Allure Path of Exile?
00:43:19
Speaker
I don't think it has as much complexity necessary, but it does have faster progression. It's not intended to be a live service game where you're like, hey, I'm going to be playing this character for months on end. This is like, oh, I played a month of it. I beat the game. My character is really well developed. It has good gear.
00:43:39
Speaker
Everything is on a faster ramp because it's closer to that single player campaign style of commitment than keeping people playing the game in perpetuity. Beyond that, I would have to refresh my knowledge of some of the mechanics. I knew that they had some interesting mechanics as far as like ability placement and things like that and picking stuff. But I couldn't give you a direct comparison to the Path of Exile like a galaxy right now. I think the last time I played this was a couple of years back.
00:44:09
Speaker
in early access. I will say this has been on my Steam wish list for a little bit. So when that time comes around, I'll probably join you. Nice. Awesome. Whether you want me or not. The match is set to private. How does he keep getting in? Speaking of joining, whether we like it or not though, next list on the game also February. Again, kind of stacked. Sons of the Forest.
00:44:32
Speaker
For those who have been listening for a long time, you'll know that we did an episode on the original The Forest.
Space and Strategy: A Look at Homeworld 3
00:44:41
Speaker
And the early impressions of Sons of the Forest have been pretty good. How are you feeling about this one? I will play it if it's not at full price.
00:44:50
Speaker
with people once. I like the forest. I can't imagine they're going to be doing too, too much beyond that. Again, it's that sequel question of how do we keep some stuff that players liked, but how do we also separate from the first game?
00:45:07
Speaker
because I mean like you're again on I assume the same island maybe another island maybe is actually propagated but you kind of know what's going on in the forest universe if you played the first one so I'm expecting kind of more of the same but better
00:45:27
Speaker
Yeah, it might be kind of hard for them to land that, right? A lot of the intrigue in the first game is like, what is going on? It's kind of a lost situation of stuff hidden under the island. The things I'm looking for in improvement here are like, one, can they continue the story and keep it compelling and captivating? And then two, have they improved kind of the balance of doing things above ground and doing things below ground?
00:45:54
Speaker
Because that was definitely my biggest gripe, I think, coming out of the first game was like, by a sort of necessity, they had to give you everything you needed if you were in a cave or a facility. And it completely invalidated anything above ground. Like, nothing above ground actually mattered. No, it's...
00:46:14
Speaker
It's kind of that thing where I think their assumption is the player will be, ah, I need to, you know, secure myself, have safety, have shelter, build up a base. And then at the point you're like, things keep attacking me. I need to explore for other resources, other things. You find yourself in a cave and you're like, okay. And you start exploring more caves and then hopefully you'll eventually find the correct cave or try and navigate very carefully.
00:46:40
Speaker
down a hole to actual endgame stuff. So it is cool how that is done, but yeah, if you just hang out in caves, you'll be fine.
00:46:53
Speaker
Yeah, they kind of had a, this is going to be a little bit of a weird comparison, but something that like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom did is they had to give you all your tools at the beginning of the game because they didn't know in what order you were going to challenge. You were going to encounter obstacles, right? And the forest actually had the same issue.
00:47:11
Speaker
It was like, we don't really know when you're going to be entering these caves. So every cave is going to have nutrition, like granola bars and Molotovs and whatever else you need to fight down there. And sometimes like significantly better gear than what you could get on the surface a lot of the time.
00:47:29
Speaker
So in a more ideal setup, I think you would be gathering supplies above and then exhausting those supplies and you're spelunking. I feel like that's how it should be. Yeah. And maybe they should have encouraged some way to specifically have you go into the caves. Yeah. I mean, you find out eventually that enemies are not going to chase you from the outside world into the caves.
00:47:55
Speaker
But maybe having like a, oh, we should check over there. Just one voice line, right? Yeah, Subnautica kind of did that by having the drop pods for the first phase of the game, where you would be getting beacons that like you could actually activate, like the distress beacons for the drop pods. And they were incentivizing you to explore specific areas of the map and increasing difficulty.
00:48:21
Speaker
But they stopped doing that by the end of the game because they're like hey, we're not holding your hand anymore. You need to explore and Yeah, I think I hopefully they learned some of those lessons for Sons of the Forest I know you could play it now and answer those questions as to whether those are Fully resolved or not, but I would rather play it in its complete state at this point, especially one month out. Oh My god, it's one month
00:48:48
Speaker
Yeah. A little bit of change, but a month and change and it's freaking right there. I don't like change. Change. I don't believe in it. Point stars, a blow them up. Continuing through this list, some of these more to say, some of them less.
Anticipation and Nostalgia
00:49:07
Speaker
March 8th, we've got Homeworld 3. Homeworld is a space RTS.
00:49:14
Speaker
game with a really cool conceit, which is you have a mothership and you have a probably relatively small fleet and through gathering resources or capturing enemy ships to get raw resources, you continue to build more ships from the mothership. But there is no homeworld to go back to. There's no resupply. It's just you and what you can gather together. It's a little bit of a dead genre, but they did do a remaster.
00:49:44
Speaker
of Homeworld 1 and 2 a couple years back. And it could be cool. I'm not sure what they're going to do with it, though. Always glad to see more things still kind of existing in the RTS space, even if I'm a little bit removed from it now. Just don't remember the glory days of growing up on Starcraft. And I really don't care about Warcraft 3 in comparison. Yeah.
00:50:11
Speaker
This game is very much different than that. You could screw yourself over in the previous homeworlds by like, if you had an Achilles type, what's the word for it? A victory where you almost lose. Pyrrhic? Yes, exactly, thank you. A Pyrrhic victory. If you had a Pyrrhic victory where you lost almost all of your forces, it's like, all right, well, bandage your wounds, because you're going to the next fight with the same army, right? So it kind of turned into this. I hope you can get ahead, because if not, you will get behind.
00:50:43
Speaker
which is very interesting. Games generally don't play that way. So we'll see what it ends up being. Next on my list, also March, Dragon's Dogma, March 22nd. This is kind of like more of a hardcore RPG. The previous one would have been Dragon's Dogma, Darker Risen. And it's been a long time since I played it, but I remembered it being
00:51:08
Speaker
pretty serious. I would wait for reviews on this because I think it also had a lot of bugs at launch. But it's kind of cool that they still exist. I don't know nothing about Dragon's Dog. That's fair. Yeah, I wasn't sure whether I should wait for a quip or just immediately move on. I was like, I don't think this is going to be this is going to have as much discussion as Marathon.
00:51:34
Speaker
Um, next one on my list and we don't have a specific date for this, but final fantasy 14 Dawn trail, which is, as far as I can tell, basically the beach episode for final fantasy 14.
00:51:47
Speaker
I have an admission that I still sometimes think about going back and playing that game because I remember running dungeons and having fights and things like that and having a good time but to be completely honest once you get to the end game of an MMO and you have a full bar of 150 buttons and you have to track buffs and are you doing your rotation right and all the things that actually make up an MMO
00:52:11
Speaker
That stuff can be less engaging for me, I would just say. It's easier to get tired of that.
00:52:25
Speaker
And I know Dave's not coming back to play this one, so I'll just jump to the next game on my list, which was Warhammer 40K, Space Marine 2. So this one's coming out September 9th. And I had some good experiences with the first game for Space Marine. It's a third-person shooter. And it's got good feedback. The voltage feels really good. It was co-op.
00:52:55
Speaker
which is really cool, but it's kind of that traditional 40K power fantasy. It definitely had a lot of jank when that first one came out, and it sort of falls under that type of game where if you're just playing AAA games, it might not really be when you pick up, but to be honest, a lot of games that release in the 40K space are like that.
00:53:17
Speaker
My hope is that this one improves pretty significantly. But again, 40K space, their games tend to be hit or miss. I don't have a lot of faith that it's immediately going to land. I'm going to call a pause because Dave's gone fully offline.
Wrapping Up and Listener Engagement
00:53:44
Speaker
All right, welcome back. So this hasn't actually happened before, but Dave's internet has completely died. I'm not sure when it's going to come back, so I'm just going to rapid fire mention some of the other games I'm looking forward to this year. Thankfully, we made it through his list, but it's just you and me now, a very personal podcast.
00:54:04
Speaker
I'm looking forward to Angerfoot that's made by Free Lives and published by Devolver Digital. No release date officially announced for that, but it's basically 3D Hotline Miami, which is up my alley. That isn't exactly what I'm looking for.
00:54:20
Speaker
I'm looking forward to Animal Well, also to be announced, or the release date to be announced, made by Big Mode. The gameplay looks fine, but honestly, I'm just kind of tracking this because it's the first game published by Big Mode, which is Video Game Donkey's publishing company.
00:54:37
Speaker
The rest of these also no hard release date yet. Corekeeper, which is currently in early access. I know it's a kind of crafting survival top-down style game and that classic RPG style and genre.
00:54:56
Speaker
with some boss fights, it's cooperative. I've got a good number of friends who have already played this, but it should be coming out this year if plans hold. Hyper Light Breaker, which is a 3D action game in the vein of something like Hyper Light Drifter, which was the previous game. It should be co-op. It looks really good. It has some notes of Risk of Rain 2 in it. So if you like that type of game, this might be one you want to track.
00:55:25
Speaker
And then the very last one I have on my list here is Lightyear Frontier, which looks like a farming game with mechs.
00:55:33
Speaker
which I don't know exactly what that means, but I like mechs and I like farming, so there you go. If you guys have interesting games that you want to send in, things where it's like, hey, I can't believe you didn't mention X, feel free to send those in. It's Soapstone Podcast at gmail.com. And as always, you can always jump into discussion on Facebook, facebook.com slash Soapstone Podcast.
00:56:02
Speaker
Dave, again, has the winner, so he won't be able to say goodbye. I'll say goodbye for him. As always, we'll see you in the next one. Hey everybody, I'm back. Can't believe Jake was trying to censor me like that by D-dossing me very rude on his part in my thoughts and opinions. Anyway, just want to say thank you for listening again to this episode. We'll see you next week and have a good one. Bye!