Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to episode 13 of from 8bit to 4k. I'm your host this week. I'm Jack Sohlman and I've got with me Mike of many names.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: How's it going everybody?
[00:00:21] Speaker B: And we've got Pillow Pet. The whole crew's here.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: Hello.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Guys, we have a Discord. Come join the Discord and hang out. Play games with us. Tell us about games. Tell us about your thoughts on the things we talk about.
Link is in the episode description. Also, shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius Esquire, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting the podcast at the Shout out tier. Guys, we couldn't do this without you. You keep the podcast on the air. We are part of the 4Wards podcast network and if you head on over to patreon.com the 4Wards podcast, $1 a month will just tell us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show and $10 a month will get you into that shoutout tier to get shouted out at the top of every episode.
And all of those perks do apply to the main four Awards podcast as well. If you're a League of Legends person and want to improve at League of Legends, that's what that podcast is about.
So guys, what have we been playing the last couple weeks?
What do we feel like talking about? That's I guess the real key is what have you been playing? Slash, what game do you want to talk about? Mike, you got a lot in your list. I'm going to make you kick it off.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: All right, so I'm going to start with what I teased a little bit of last week. Last time we. Not last week, last time we played, I just mentioned that I had just installed a game called Crypt of the Necrodancer and I got to sit down and play some Crypt of the Necrodancer. It's a fun fucking game. I like it a lot. Unfortunately, there's one thing about it that I don't, don't like specifically because of how I do things. Crypto the Necromancer is a very. You have to be focused on this game or you are screwing yourself over. If you let your focus drift to other things, it's over. Because it's very, very beat centric. But not in like the same way that Guitar Hero is beat centric in that you have to hit certain timings on things. You do have to move to the timing. But if you aren't paying Attention to the timing directly and what that does to everything else around in the game. You very quickly just end yourself and. And. And lose your run. Because it is of course, another roguelike. Because I'm a big fan of roguelikes and we're gonna be talking about another one of those in a minute.
The music in Crypt of the Necro Dancer is really fun. Really fun.
I am yet to actually try and put my own music in to test that. That's something on my list to try and do in the near future when I get a little bit better at the game to begin with.
It has a like, not immediately upfront apparent story that starts popping in once you've beaten that first level. And it's. It's really interesting. I like it a lot.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Mike, I have a question for you. Do you own a Nintendo Switch?
[00:03:00] Speaker A: I do. My controllers have Drift.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: The reason I ask is that Crypt of the Necrodancer has a Nintendo exclusive spin off game called Cadence of Hyrule. You may want to check that out.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: I remember hearing about that game.
[00:03:13] Speaker C: It is so cozy.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: If you like Crypt of the Neck Dancer.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: I think like I. I am on a slow save to getting a Switch two because I want to get one. It's just something I want to do. Partially because I want to get a Switch 2 and partially because I need new stick Drift and I don't want to buy new sticks.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: You, you know, you can just replace the sticks themselves.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: I don't want to. I just. I just rather have a Switch two because they. A Switch two is a better thing. And I want to get one because eventually they're going to stop releasing things for Switch and Switch two. I know they will. They always do. And something is going to come out on there that I want to play on Switch 2. So I may as well get the.
[00:03:50] Speaker C: Switch 2 calling it right now.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: And I don't play. I don't play my Switch enough right now for me to warrant fixing my Switch instead of waiting for a Switch too.
[00:03:59] Speaker C: I'm gonna call it right now for the Switch 2. We're gonna be getting an Ocarina of Time Majora's Mask remake. Calling it that.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: They've. They've done that many times.
[00:04:08] Speaker C: Not a remaster.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: It's called. No, no, no. They've remade it many times. It's called every Zelda game ever since that isn't Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom because they can't actually come up with new Zeldas.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Well, that, that true, but I mean like a Complete remake. I'm calling it at least an oot. Like, it's gonna be phenomenal. I don't even know if it exists.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: But it's going to Majora's Mask. But I could see them doing oot.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: They may do a combo between the.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Two, considering that's what I'm kind of thinking.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: It's the only one, I think, besides Tears of the Kingdom that's a direct sequel.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: All right, I'm gonna talk briefly.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: I don't know that we care about Spirit tracks or Zelda 2 is a direct sequel, actually.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Also true.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah, Zelda 2 is weird.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Okay. I love Zelda 2. It's just weird.
I'm gonna keep my Metroid talk brief.
I mentioned before about how disappointed I was by Metroid Prime 4. So now I'm playing through Metroid Prime Remastered because the original Metroid prime is still a 10 out of 10 video.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Game, one of my top five games period.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: And Metroid Prime Remastered A looks freaking good. You can occasionally see the. Oh, this obviously was a GameCube game. Like, when it does a close up of some of the, like, Omega Pirate face and stuff like that, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah. This is very 2001 coded. But most of the rest of it, like the environments, the texture work, and everything in the remaster, looks really good.
And oh, my God, it's so nice playing Metroid prime with proper controls. And it runs so smooth on the switch.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: The music sounds somehow better. They've done an update to it and it's so good.
This is environmental soundtrack, like, at its peak.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yep. And so I'm almost all the way through the game. I have two artifacts left to collect so that I can go fight the penultimate boss and then go to the final area.
So I am. I am very close to the end.
One annoyance I have about the remaster is every version of Metroid Prime 1, since the original has taken steps to remove the ability of the player to break the sequence that was intended of the game. An example of this, how this impacts me where I'm playing it casually. I'm not trying to speedrun Metroid Prime Remastered. The tunnel to one of the artifacts that's over a bunch of phazon. They added a whole bunch of extra rocks. You have to bomb to get through that to make it take longer so that you cannot do it before you become immune to the phazon damage. This means that for playing it casually, I go there when I'm supposed to and suddenly it's way More annoying. It literally took over a minute of just okay, move forward two steps, bomb this block. Move forward two steps, bomb this block. Over and over. That's fucking stupid. Retro.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Why now? Like you. You say that there are some things they have done that are correct. Which my best point in playing this. Like I've never been someone who goes back and 100% games a tonon. My first full replay through of the game when I was in college. I died exactly three times. Two of which were to the final boss. One of which was to getting into somewhere where I couldn't get out of because I didn't have the weapon I needed. They've gotten rid of a lot of that problematic like I didn't have a plasma gun and I could not open the door without it. Yep.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: I'm. I'm happy about those changes. I don't actually mind that they fixed the. The skip to get space jump as your first item.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Because that was just kind of dumb. It breaks the game. It was very, very easy to do. But some of the stuff that does impact casual play like that tunnel I mentioned. There's a couple other ones they annoy the heck out of me. Like just. It's a 25 year old game that is widely considered a masterpiece. Just give it the updated coat of paint and the updated controls. We don't need the other BS.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah that one attention potentially breaking the game at this point.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah. No one speedruns Metroid prime remastered. Almost all speedruns are on the original GameCube version of the game. There's no reason to make the game worse for casual players in the remaster. And this is on top of all of the changes that they made in subsequent releases. Like there's a later GameCube release. Like if your GameCube copy is the like Player's Choice or whatever they called it back then before trilogy. Even the GameCube version that is like Player's Choice, the one where it was $20 brand new, is a patched version of the game.
[00:08:41] Speaker C: The.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: The setup that was done in the original version that is the fastest setup to get space jump first doesn't work anymore. And there's a few other changes. Then the Trilogy version patched even more speedrunning stuff and some soft lucks that could actually apply to casual players. And then the remaster does more. And I just don't get this.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: The.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: The. The rule of thumb when patching a game should always be for any game.
Does this impact casual first time players? If someone's just playing the Game normally will they ever encounter this is the answer. No. Okay, then unless it has a detrimental effect such as crashing the game, it.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Should be left in or like mine, where you cannot progress the game. You are locked in a room.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah, like fix softlocks. Don't fix things that speedrunners can do because it doesn't hurt anything. For speedrunners to be able to do crazy bullshit in your game, it means people get excited about your game. 25, 30 years later, one of my friends started playing Super Metroid for the first time ever because she has seen me playing Map Randos and wanted to try the game. Because Super Metroid is a game that's. Before patching was a thing.
All the stuff just exists. It just is. Unfortunately this did give her a little bit of a warped idea of what you're supposed to do in Super Metroid and she was trying to gate glitch and stuff, which is not what you need to do in the base game. But just, just you don't need to tamper with those things because people will find enjoyment. There's a reason Super Metroid and Metroid prime, the original version, are still speed ran to this day. They are competitive speed games.
Alright, that's enough of me on my soapbox pillow. What is this about Ashes?
[00:10:24] Speaker C: So a few episodes ago, I can't exactly remember when I was talking about Ash's creation. I was giving it a little bit of hype, saying, hey, you know this.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Game, I remember this, this game, you.
[00:10:35] Speaker C: Know, it's not bad.
It's, you know, I've given my quick experience with it. I played it for like 30 minutes and I was like, you know, this game isn't really bad, but it felt kind of scammy to me. When I started playing it, I was like, even for a pre release, I was saying, you know, people are, you know, review bombing in. I was like, give it some. It wasn't for me. So I refunded it. I was like, I'm gonna wait until this game gets some polish because I'm just not enjoying fell off.
It is dead. It died.
So I pulled it up because I didn't do a whole lot of research into it trying to figure out why it died.
So what happened is as. As of February 2026, I think this was about two weeks ago when this all started happening.
Ashes of Creation has essentially collapsed following reports of developer Intrepid Studios filing for bankruptcy, leading to massive layoffs in the game being pulled from Steam.
The project, once a massive Kickstarter success, now faces Allegations of fraud from investors, with reports of financial mismanagement and the resignation of the founder, Steven Sheriff. Sheriff, maybe.
So after this huge, successful push for Alpha on Steam, tons of money, people bought into it to get early access and play this game because everybody was excited. The mmo, you know, the wow killer, as everybody always calls them.
And then like, not even a month later, month or two later, it's just shut down, like, and everybody lost their money.
So a lot of people are very, very upset. Rightly so. So, yeah. Ashes of Creation. Dead, dead before it even got going.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Yeah, this, this game as of the 28th, was creating its Alpha.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: That's, that's a bummer.
[00:12:37] Speaker C: And like I played it, you know, and it felt like an mmo. Like, you know, a little weird.
Nothing ever will ever get to me personally the feel of, you know, wow, how wow is as an mmo. And you got Guild wars and they all feel really good. It's got a very strong universe and just good, good feelings when you're playing the mmo. It's. It pulls you right in. This one didn't have that for me. So I was just like, ah, this ain't for me. You know, maybe it'll come, maybe it'll start eventually. It was just PvP based and not really up my alley because I'm a casual gamer now. Like, I don't like to do the PvP on MMOs because I'm just not good at it anymore. Like, give me an enemy that doesn't have a brain and I can beat it. Give me someone else on the other side that, like, I can't deal with it on MMOs.
It's really sad to see, like, it didn't go anywhere and really scummy to see what this board of directors or whatever did to this company. And I hate, I hate that this happened to people. Like, I'm sorry that you lost your money.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: The original owner and then this happened.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: I don't know exactly.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: He resigned because of this.
[00:13:48] Speaker C: And then he, he tried to say that the board of directors made a decision and he wasn't happy with it, so he resigned. But at the time he was the board, like, it was just him from my understanding. So it kind of just seems like at this point it, it's coming off like he got money and he bailed.
So it's really scummy and I hope that's not. I'm sure more truth will come out.
There's gonna be some lawsuits, there's gonna be some issues and I'm kind of Be following it a little bit. So when more updates come, I'll of course talk about them here because we're else to talk about them.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Stay tuned for more.
[00:14:30] Speaker C: So, yeah, if you're listening and you played this and you bought into it and didn't get your refund from Steam, I apologize, hope, sorry you didn't go through it or sorry that you went through it.
And I hope that Steam does the right thing and gets their money from these people so they can give their money back to you.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: All right, Mike, what's the next game you want to talk about?
[00:14:53] Speaker A: We're going to revisit a game that I've talked about a couple times because I'm progressing through it again.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: I was, I was talking with one of our listeners and you know, he, he's been someone who I've just been hanging out with in the Discord. He's been having a great time talking with him and I like playing league with people. I don't like playing league alone as much. And he's like, I'm, I'm not able to do anything, but I'm happy to watch play. Like, I don't really want to play league. There's a game I've been meaning to pick up and finish again, but I kept putting off again, I'm gonna bounce back into Hollow Knight. And he'd had almost no interaction with Hollow Knight to begin with. He hadn't seen much of it. And I got to get back into Hollow Knight and play some more Hollow Knight and I got to progress probably another couple hours into Hollow Knight and that I think, outside of something else we're going to talk about later. Hollow Knight is probably going to be the first thing that I work push on and stream is trying to do my completion in Hollow Knight.
I'm reminded why this game is amazing.
I finally progressed a little bit. Like I was having problems with the, the Mantis. They're, they're just, they're a, they're a hard boss. And I'm sitting there going, you know, I, I'm just coming back in after a little while. I can't, I'm not feeling it right now. I'm not in my groove anymore. I need to go do something else. And so I started to rewind around the world and I found two new areas I'd never been able to get into before. Like, oh, I have more places to go. Let's go here. And I ended up fighting a brand new section that I didn't know I had access to, which was These, these tunnels underneath the main city, the City of Tears. And I got to fight a dung beetle who was like the happiest, jolliest man around. And it was a really fun fight. And then I got to go up into the like top section of the city and face one of the more like interesting bosses in this. I. I do not remember his name. Soul something. It. It starts to give you this experimental thing that you feel a lot more in Hollow Knight Silksong where there are these weird experiment things going down in the city and you're like, what the hell is going on? And you get to see someone who is drowned in the soul magic of the game and obviously you kill him and steal his power and now you have more soul magic. So I now have opened up a couple more areas. I'm probably gonna try and progress through the city soon or go down through those sewers below it and see what else is down there.
I know some things I shouldn't know because of Silksong because I'd already like. I. I read a full on like storyline of Hollow Knight before I. I played Silksongs that I had a background in it even if I hadn't played it. So like, I don't. I don't have gameplay understanding of what's going on, but I have a story understanding of what's going on, which means I know something's coming that is really interesting and I have no idea how they're gonna deal with it.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: So out of curiosity, because you're going back and playing Hollow Knight after Silksong, is it feeling like going backwards or is it feeling like it's its own like thing that is great on its own regardless one has Silksong soured it anyway, noticeably different.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: And that is a good thing. But it also, you can tell at some point specific things that are, that are similar to Hollow Knight and Silksong are the just basic auto attack functionality. The basic auto attack functionality is noticeably smoother in Silksong. They updated it and they made it better. However, everything else around that is pretty unique between the two and so I don't have to worry about gameplay feelings on like the tools. That Hollow Knight Silksong is very centered around his herd or toolkit. I don't have to worry about that situation at all because that does not exist in Hollow Knight. You. You do mostly soul magic stuff, which is very, very different because she does not touch soul magic leg at all. Almost not at all. So you have a very different like secondary play portion in each of them. The Exploration is undoubtedly fantastic across both of them. It's noticeably like an extenuation of the world, an extenuation of. Of this grand narrative they wanted to tell.
And there is a little bit more speed to.
Oh, I lost her name.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Hornet.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Hornet. There we go.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: She's so much faster.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Hornet. Hornet has a much faster movement. I've taken to making sure I always have the dash thing activated on him so I can dash move across the world to move a little faster.
Hornet makes the movement of the game more fluid. That does not mean I am not enjoying myself with Hollow Knight. The amount of times when I have to purposefully stop and think in Hollow Knight is more than it is in Silksong, which requires a lot more difficult timing movement. But. But the baseline like this is still some of the, or if not the best Metroidvanias in existence. I. I absolutely adore Silksong, and Hollow Knight is giving me more of that feeling. In a different manner. I can get back into the groove a little bit noticeably not having certain things, so I have to adjust because I obviously know I'm in a lower portion of the game. I'm nowhere near where I was in Silksong. I beat that. So I'm obviously missing some of my powers. But I've played games back from the beginning again, and that's not a big deal, so not having the same degree of powers isn't an issue.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Fair enough. All right, I'm gonna be brief.
I have started streaming Beat Saber Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Now that I'm unemployed. It's probably going to be earlier in the day, but I'm going to stick with that.
So every Tuesday and Thursday, I'm playing Beat Saber.
I love rhythm games.
Back when it was like, the new hotness, I was an avid Dance Dance Revolution player. Beat Saber absolutely captures that same feel of, like, just. I'm just having fun vibing to music, slashing notes, because that's what Beat Saber is. You wield lightsabers and slash note blocks that fly at you in VR.
It's a lot of fun. I am streaming my workouts because I'm letting my Twitch chat keep me accountable.
Even just having, like, I've only done it, like, four times so far in the past year. I can tell I'm getting better. Like, noticeably better. The DDR muscle memory of, like, learning how to read note patterns in a rhythm game is coming back to me.
It's a lot of fun. I have tons of custom songs installed from the Beat Saber modding website. That's most of what I play. Because the. The default library of songs is mostly stuff I don't care about, if we're going to be honest.
Not my kind of music. They have very little metal. And unfortunately there's not a ton of good metal versions of songs or metal metal maps of songs in the custom song community. But at least other genres I like are represented there. So it is what it is. I've been having a lot of fun with it. I've been getting my workout, sweating my ass off. And I'm gonna stick with it every Tuesday, Thursday. That's what I'm holding myself to.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: Heck yeah.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: All right, Mike, I'm gonna go to you again.
This pillow. You have less of them, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna come back to you in a moment. Mike, what in the heck is Death Must Die?
[00:22:12] Speaker A: I had mentioned I was doing more roguelikes and Death Must Die as a roguelike. It sort of.
The name is sort of self explanatory. It is not full as. I mean, I do not believe it is fully released.
They're. They're still releasing stuff for it.
Is it still early access? It is still early access. Okay, so this is another early access game. It is a cheap early access game, like without a sale. It is currently $7.
And the death Must Die is sort of like a mix of Vampire Survivor in that you have waves of things coming at you and you have powers that you gain as you go on, but you are mixing in a bunch of roguelike other things. You have an inventory for equipment that you have to keep up with the standard rarities of things.
It has Hades like powers that come from the gods.
There are separate sections of different powers. So like you'll have spells and summons and attack modifiers and. And dash modifiers.
And it's essentially the other gods have decided that Death needs to go and the players are being empowered by those gods.
In Death's house. You sort of chase down the other realms that Death has done things in and are killing his like supporters or people who he has empowered. And then right now there's only two major zones and seven heroes, I think maybe eight heroes by now.
Each of them does mostly the same thing as in, they have an auto attack and they have a bunch of spells. And the spells are not unique to the characters. The, like the boat. The boons that are happening are universal from the Gods. Every single person can gain the same boons from everyone. However, each person has an inherent talent tree that makes them unique. To play baseline. I'll Give an example. There is a.
There is a wizard. She's just like a sorceress wizard and she has ridiculous just base auto attack casts and she can, based on other casts, give other new spells. There is a druid who will at certain points in time transform herself after a cooldown to become a new thing. Right now I have a bear and a cat. The cat does ridiculous damage. The bear becomes a tank. This is pretty obvious. So you can sort of go back and customize as you progress forward to change those things.
Obviously there's like challenges to do and equipment to work on. It's a fun like different feel because of how many other genres it's sort of yoinking from because it's part Hades, part vampire survivor, part other games. Like you have a, a rhythm to the game that is familiar whilst also having like this unique combo to all of it together.
I, I have a great deal of fun with this.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Fair enough.
All right, I'm going to talk briefly about this because it's not a game that's out yet, but if you guys remember, I told you about a game that I love called Crosscode. I still think you should play it. However, the reason I'm bringing it up here is I saw on Steam a notification that apparently they're now offering Crosscode T shirts like brand new as of this week when we're recording. I went to check it. Unfortunately they don't offer my size, so I'm bummed about that. But then in the notes after the, in the same announcement they mention that Steam Next Fest is happening next week and Steam Next Fest is basically a Steam event where people get to show off upcoming games.
And the next game from the people who made Crosscode is called Alabaster dawn and it has a demo right now, but there's going to be an updated demo for Steam Next Festival.
So that's what I wanted to briefly talk about is holy shit. The Crosscode devs are making another game. It's called Alabaster Dawn. I'm excited for it. I think this is number one on my Steam wish list.
[00:26:17] Speaker C: Now.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: If it's not number one, it's close to number one. And yeah, it's. It is literally the number one thing on my wish list. It's the thing that moved to the top after Silksong came out.
So yeah, Steam Next Fest next week there will be a new demo. Go check out the demo for Alabaster Dawn. They even said in like in the info for Alabaster dawn, if you play the demo, the intention is that the demo has two parts, the beginning of the game. Any saves you make there will actually work when the game comes out. So you can just continue from where you played in the demo and then it'll also have a segment from later in the game that that progress will not carry over to the full game. So you can get a taste for how does it start and then how does it feel once you're into the. Into the thick of things.
[00:27:09] Speaker C: I always like when Steam does these events because that usually means some really good discounts. I'm hoping that this game crosscode has a good discount where I would expect so.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: And that's part of why I wanted to highlight this as I would expect there will probably be a crosscode discount during Steam next fest. Please play Crosscode.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: It's so good.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: This is genuinely one of my favorite video games.
All right, Pillow, I heard about this and I'm gonna let you explain it because I'm so flabbergasted. Please explain to me how a new class has been added to a 25 year old video game.
[00:27:43] Speaker C: So I don't know if it was planned or if it just happened, but I did, you know. So Diablo 2, Lord of Destruction, 25 years old. As you mentioned, it got a brand new class added to it, the Warlock. The reason they did this is to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Diablo franchise.
So as part of the reign of the Warlock dlc. So that's the only part about this that bums me out is it does cost US$25 for the DLC to be able to play the new class, which to me seems pretty steep for a 25 year old game.
But it does come with a lot of. It's kind of like a pseudo new expansion for Diablo 2 because it does come with some quality of life changes to the loot or to like the inventory system comes with.
If you know about Diablo 2, the ancients battle, it comes with a hardcore basically version of the Ancients Battle which is going to be like really hard to beat.
Put a bunch of other new things to it. And of course you get your now in World Warcraft when you buy things or when you buy packs, you get furniture for your housing and stuff. For the current Diablo, I just, I just thought about it like it's a Warlock class, summon demons and all sorts of things. I think they added it to the new Diablo as well. I not really sure but I'm pretty sure they did.
They did not. Okay, so this is just Diablo 2 exclusive. All right, so yeah, it was okay. The Warlock has was introduced across the franchise. Diablo 2, Diablo 4 and Immortal all have Warlock.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Now 4 had a Warlock essentially as a base class.
[00:29:45] Speaker C: So yeah, Diablo 2, Blizzard like 25 year old game. Like man, here's a new class with which is it's not like Diablo 2 probably doesn't have like a massive player base. I'm assuming it's going to have the same kind of people that play World of Warcraft classic. Like people that want to play that older game because that's the game they like. It's not like it's going to bring in new players.
So it's kind of cool that Blizzard updated version.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: It's not the base graphics they have.
[00:30:14] Speaker C: Done like it is for the remaster, it's not like for the original. It's not for the original Diablo 2.
It is for the remaster which I don't even know if you can play the original still.
I don't know why you would unless you're trying to go pure nostalgia based.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: There's, there's a lot of mods for the original Diablo 2.
[00:30:36] Speaker C: True.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: If you want to go real classic, real hardcore and be like the mate. The reason the genre is a thing is Diablo 2. Diablo 1 was a good game but Diablo 2 is the reason this is a popular genre.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: That's pretty much it. All I brought today was just gaming news because the only thing I've been playing is World Warcraft and you guys don't want to hear about that again.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: We'll get some new stuff on that in a couple weeks.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: All right, Mike, let's round this out with the friend slop you and I have been playing. Tell us about your friend slop game.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: My friend slap game. Right? Well, I play a every Thursday. I have a bunch of friends from mostly here, but a bunch of old friends. And we either do hang up, meet up, do D and D go out to eat food or when we can't meet up, like since, you know, I was sick for two months. Essentially we do online gaming and depending on the week there are three or four of us. So we have to decide, you know, what game can we play that has three player multiplayer, four player multiplayer. And we just so happen to have four this time. So we're like, you know what? Helldivers got an update recently. Let's all pull out Helldivers again and take a look at Helldivers 2. It's still fun guys.
Helldivers 2 has that feel to it still. They've put in a lot of work especially with the robots to make them less frustrating. Baseline. So like it doesn't feel as horrid as it did at the beginning. Two face robots, the Illuminated are now the horror story. There they have that third third faction. Now there's the Illuminate, which are the other alien race from the base game. They've done a ton to expand the like the difficulty section where you no longer have to be in the peak difficulty to get everything. You still have a chance at the lower difficulties to gain the things to upgrade your machinery. Because not everyone likes playing at that max difficulty.
I've just been playing a bunch. Like I probably spent a good 10 hours this last couple weeks playing with friends. We've done. We've done the almost exclusively the new.
The new section of the cyborgs because they had a brand new set of missions that were there. They put up a bunch of new maps and a couple new enemies and who. Boy, that was. That was a pain in my ass.
Fun fact. You can have in the like short term like 12 minute mission in that section. They have an ability to jam you from calling in things. And that's one of the like side things.
Every single one of the side things can be the same one. So that you have nowhere on the map you can use your fucking. Your calls. That mission was hell. It was. It's fun as fuck. Even when we're like bitching about it like this. I have a story to tell now because of that mission. Because we took just too long on that mission. Still beat it. But like we barely went over time because we couldn't call in anything and we had the. The. Oh man. There's only one person alive. You better get the fuck out of there because you can't call people in. It's still a fun game to play with.
I just think Helldivers 2, like they did a good job. They did a good job.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: It's a genuinely good game. We should play it together again sometime. It's been a long time since you and I played Helldivers 2 together.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: Yeah, like it's. It's a. It's a good game to play with friends. It's a very different feel and it still has that intro sound to the level that just gets you excited to play that. That is one of the best sounds to start a game with. The intro when you get dropped from the drop pod from your helldiver makes.
[00:34:17] Speaker C: You think of democracy.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: It gets you raring to go in a manner that has no business working.
[00:34:29] Speaker C: And the flowing capes like they just make you feel like a superhero.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Capes should come back. We need to get capes back.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:34:37] Speaker C: You know, speaking of like bringing back capes, I still, I want a like night's watch from Game of Thrones. Like full on cloak.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: I want a cloak too. I'd love a cloak.
[00:34:50] Speaker C: That way when it snows here at home, I can just stand out and be like, ha, winter's coming.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: The classic shit needs to come back. Like, come on, let's get some cloaks. Let's get some capes.
Fuck it. We could put, we can put powdered wigs on judges again. That's funny.
Sure.
[00:35:07] Speaker B: All right, my turn for friend slope.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: Your turn for friend slop.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: All right, so I played this game with Kaylaer who we had on a few episodes ago.
She is the master of finding these weird free to play friend slop games.
So I played like three hours of this game called Mecha Break with her. This is a weird like the game has two different sides to it. It has a like PvE, vaguely story driven, but the story's crap and I didn't care.
Like mission based loot game. And then it's also a 6v6 PvP shooter. It's very strange that it's literally both.
It's fun. It's the biggest praise I can give this game is this is a shooter in the long time to kill. Positioning and smart use of your abilities is the way to win. As opposed to a twitchy headshot everyone shooter. Because giant robots. This is a giant robot combat game.
The 6v6 modes are the typical modes you'd expect. There's a payload mode, there's a like control, the points mode, like that kind of stuff. The same as any other shooter. And then the mechs just have a variety of different powers. There's sniper mechs which are vulnerable if attacked, but are designed around big single shots that they have to set up. There's just combat mechs with like machine guns. There's artillery mechs, there's airborne mechs, there's melee mechs. So there's lots of different variety. There are support mechs, lots of lots of different mechs. You can play as and seems to be relatively generous and free to play. Like more than half the mechs are just available to me with three hours of gameplay.
They really want to try to sell you cosmetics because spoiler.
Yeah. It focuses heavily on your pilot when you get into your mech between every match including pointing the camera directly at their ass.
So they want to sell you the cool Outfits to have your character be really hot for those scenes. That's their monetization model more than trying to sell you characters to play as or anything, which is fine. The character creator is actually like really good Loki. Like you have so much control over how your character looks and sounds and like presents themselves. Your pilot can look like however the fuck you want. You can have a freaky looking misshapen human because the sliders and stuff allow you that much freedom. But also you can sculpt like your perfect waifu if that's your thing.
Which is great since it you know, focuses on your pilot on every like load screen for the match.
And then the mechs, you can customize, you can give them different paint jobs, you can apply decals on them. There's, there's a lot of customization.
I had fun. I look forward to playing it again the next time she's playing it with her community. I'm gonna try to join in. It's a fun game. That's all I got for that. It's, it's whatever. I'm not spending money on this game. I don't think it's the kind of game I would spend money on. But I had fun with it. Alright, we have one other topic to talk about and then we're gonna tease something guys. So our topic for tonight is how to introduce your non gamer friends to gaming. Now I wanna preface this, non gamer friends is pretty broad. This is going to include people who maybe did play video games 20 years ago and just stopped for whatever reason. They had kids, life got in the way, whatever. This is going to encompass people who do technically play video games but they're like playing Candy Crush on their phone or that kind of stuff where like they're playing video games but they're not a gamer.
This is going to include like your parents or grandparents.
All of the above fit under the umbrella of non gamer friends introducing to gaming.
So other than avoid waifu bait like mecha break for your introduction, what tips do we have for introducing your non gamer friends to gaming?
[00:39:23] Speaker A: I'd say like probably go for it.
[00:39:26] Speaker C: I'd say like Nintendo brings a lot to the table when it comes to introducing like people that aren't gamers into games. And the first thing that comes to my mind is like Mario Party because Mario Party is usually a kind of like chill, sit back. There is no super stress to it. It can turn into like a game night, you know. Instead of playing like board games, you can just bring out your switch or whatever, you know, you Got it on and play your party or your gaming there.
Just like for my wife, she's not a big gamer by any means, but she likes multiplayer games. Like I can, I could pull out like a Mario game and she'd be like, oh cool, let me play. Even though sometimes it infuriates her because I move so fast in those games, it just turns her into a bubble.
But like my wife's, like I said, not a gamer, but she likes to sit down and play like these fun, you know, games like that she enjoys. Like I got to find. Make sure you find games that they enjoy is the important part.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: So I think that actually you've touched on something that I think is really important.
Gateway games.
Mario Party and Mario Kart are examples of gateway games of they don't need to have core gamer skills to have fun.
But when I think of gateway games, I think, oh, you got that friend who's a gun nut. Play House of the Dead with them. Play a light gun game. They can take their real world skills and have fun in a video game. That game's two player co op. Great. Now they're having fun gaming with you. And maybe they'll be interested in other types of games naturally as like a progression of that same thing. You got a friend who's a car nerd, Go play a racing game in the arcade. Because I'm not going to advocate buying a racing wheel setup if you don't already have. If you have one, like by all means invite that friend over to play with your racing wheel setup. But like go play racing games in the arcade. And they don't need to be good at video games to have fun because they know how to drive.
Yeah, Mike, what were you gonna say?
[00:41:43] Speaker A: I was going to say the first thing you should do when you're like testing this really is know what they like there's gonna have. And first you may want to ask them specifically, hey, what's like your favorite book, what's your favorite movie, what's your favorite blank?
Get a good idea of their like true likes. What do they enjoy? And that is the easiest intro gateway into like as you're talking about if you have a car friend, someone who loves cars. Yeah you can easily do racing games like that or you could do there's mechanic work games people sometimes like building things or working with intro things into that. If your friend really, really likes sci fi. Now you have a bass intro. All right, so we want to start with sci fi stuff.
Do you want to talk about like building a Spaceship together. You want to hang out and do stuff like that. Do you want a really story heavy driven game? Do you like, do you like more Star Trek, Star wars etc? And then you can start building from there.
[00:42:38] Speaker B: I feel like you're trying to segue into try to like ease them into Mass Effect.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: Well that was part of what I was going with was like are you going towards Mass Effect or are you going towards like Star Wars? Jedi Survivor. Very different feels in games.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: I think know your audience is just a big one in general.
Just because they're not into gaming doesn't mean they aren't into themes that will come up in gaming. For example, maybe you have a friend who doesn't play video games at all but loves horror movies.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Get them playing a horror video game. The intensity will be so much fun for them. It doesn't need to be a hard game. They can play it on easy.
They will just get into it because they love horror movies and games are drawing on that. But you're in control.
Especially ones that are in first person because those games are fucking scary.
[00:43:31] Speaker C: Resident Evil.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Does your friend like board games?
One there are just computer versions of board games or there's things like Slay the Spire which are card collection games which are basically other board games.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: If they like board games, show them a turn based strategy game. Show them like Fire Emblem or something.
Because someone who likes board games already is gonna be predisposed to the kinds of games that like Fire Emblem or Heroes of Might Magic are.
Because those games draw on board games as inspirations.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Yeah. If they're really big TCG fans, introduce them to the computer TCGs. Because those are generally cheaper.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot cheaper. Although it may not appeal to them because some people who are big fans.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: Of that market, the buy sell market or things like that if they just want to like I. I have an uncle who does not play games almost at all.
Right up until for Christmas a couple of years ago he got his niece a switch and they started playing Breath of the Wild. And he just loves wandering the world.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: He loves just looking around and waltzing and climbing and doing things. Okay. Because it's such a new experience for him.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: You've hit on an important thing. Do not yuck your non gamer friends. Yum. When they start playing a game you love differently than how you play it.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: I watched him play a boss that I could beat in 10 minutes or less than. Less than a minute. Took him more than 10 minutes.
That was hard to say.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: Right. But I don't even Mean that that's a skill difference. Like, they're new to games. Of course they're worse than you at the games. I mean, like, if their way they're having fun is literally just wanding the world, finding korok seeds, finding villagers and talking to people, more power to them. If you're the type of person who's like, I need to find all the shrines, let's go find the shrines, solve the puzzles, do the shrines. More power to you. Don't try to force them to play the game the way you do. This is true across all genres, across all games. They will have more fun playing at their pace, their way than if you try to get them to play it the way you do. I mentioned earlier in this episode my friend playing Super Metroid for the first time because she's seen me doing Super Metroid Map Rando. I deliberately did not give her any like direction or spoilers unless she asked.
She missed Charge Beam on her way to Kraid and had to fight Kraid without Charge Beam, which is very difficult by the way, compared to fighting with Charge Beam because Charge Beam gives you a fallback. I let her do it. I let her make that mistake. She beat the boss eventually and it was much more satisfying for her. If I had told her when she first walked past Charge Beam, hey, stop. Turn around, go here instead to get this item, she would have had less fun.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: There is a second portion of this. Like there is a. If they get really, really frustrated and you've noticed them miss something. Hey, here's something that that I think you're frustrated because you missed a thing. Want me to tell you how to get to it or like gently move people in direction if they don't want gentle to help them go there. There is a third thing we have not talked about and this is like this has become a real big rise with streaming as a whole. Yep. Sometimes people just like playing at your back your pillow. Your friend's grandma was talking about reading behind him as he played a game, talking about the strategy guides.
Sometimes you can be like, hey, a really story intense game that has some real difficulty to it. Maybe they want to experience the story but don't want to deal with the difficulty of the play. You can do that together. Hey, this is our story game together. Let's play this and I'll do the hard portion of the work and you can deal with all the story you want.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: I literally have played entire JRPGs with my wife hanging out playing like Harvest Moon on her switch or something. Next to me. And when I finish the dungeon and get to the next story bit, she'll put the game down, watch the story bits, and then when I get into the boss fight, she goes back to her game and I do the boss fight. She's just, she's basically using me as a let's play while I play through the game. But she's enjoying it and she's still invested in the characters and the story and like talking about the events of the game with me even though she's not playing it and she's not paying attention to half the game.
[00:47:46] Speaker C: I think back on you said don't tell people how to play the game or don't give them unsolicited advice like being a bet backseat gamer is not fun, especially on someone's first playthrough.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: Okay, in. In the same vein, unless they explicitly tell you to do not twink out your friends in a multiplayer game. I've had people ruin Borderlands for me. I remember getting given really high level guns in Borderlands 2 My first time through and the game just wasn't fun. I started a new file to just erase all of that.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: So that's a shame because that game was so fun, right?
[00:48:24] Speaker B: That's why I started fresh. I was like, no, this is ruining the experience. And I'm an experienced enough player to know that I had played the first Borderlands. So I was just like, no, we're just gonna not play with that friend because they're ruining things and we're just gonna start fresh and play our way. And I had more fun doing that. Don't be that friend to your friends.
Don't give them a Tabula Rasa Wanderer Wanderlust Goldrim in Path of Exile. Don't give them the superpowered lightning gun in Borderlands. Let them start from scratch and play the game through and experience it from the start.
Some of my friends have tried path of exile 2 recently. I've been pretty outspoken. I don't like path of Exile 2 in its current state.
They know that I didn't tell them what to do or what I thought was good or bad. I didn't give them any guidance. I answered questions when they asked and I let them experience the game and they had more fun than they would have if I was involved more.
Sometimes the best way to introduce people to a game is just to be hands off.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: There are a couple of times when you want to be like, hey, this can seem overwhelming. Let me teach you the basics of it so that you're not overwhelmed with information at the beginning. That's one of the big problems that a lot of people had with Warframe which is why a lot of people play it with someone else to help teach them.
That's one of the big problems with Path of Exile is the wall of that screen.
I have no idea how do I deal with this? Sometimes you want to be like, hey, I can help you. I can tweak here.
Sometimes they don't want it.
[00:50:00] Speaker B: All right. Any other thoughts for introducing non gamers to gaming?
[00:50:05] Speaker A: The only other one. It's an extenuation of what I was saying. Sometimes let's plays are just the right answer.
If you think like if you know your friend because of other things, love stories that you've talked about, they just don't want to play a game. Let's play here. I know you're going to love this. Let's deal with this together as a video together.
[00:50:24] Speaker B: I just actually thought of another thing.
Kind of goes back to where I was talking about like play a light gun game with your friend who's a gun. Play a driving game with the friend who likes cars. VR can be a big equalizer because suddenly the game is about your actual movement in the real world, not about how well you press a button. And that can be a huge barrier reduction for people who don't play video games a lot. People who don't play video games a lot. We don't think about this. People who don't play video games a lot are intimidated by the controls.
[00:50:58] Speaker A: There is a reason the Wii is the best selling control system, period.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: Yes.
Like literally the Wii is a better way to introduce your non gamer friends to gaming than any other console. Since my parents still the best console.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: My parents did not want consoles and do a thing. They bought a Wii.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: And then we ended up playing the tennis game together because we all got.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: To play tennis together because it doesn't matter how good the gameplay is. It matters that they're not scared of messing up swinging their arm to hit a tennis ball with a tennis racket the way they are scared of messing up pressing the a button at the right time to hit the ball with the tennis racket.
[00:51:39] Speaker A: So. So one of the other. Yeah, Nintendo is one of the secrets. Like a Switch is very similar still. You're gonna be able to teach them with a switch that you would with a Wii. Nintendo is very geared towards family stuff. It's a great introduction for a lot of older people in the gaming.
[00:51:52] Speaker B: But that's why I give VR is another Example of the same kind of thing. Because everyone knows how to move their arms around, pick things up, aim, etc, because they do that every day in real life.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: The story games that I was talking about, I was talking about one the other day. The Vampire, the Masquerade. These are games that require no mechanics.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:52:16] Speaker A: They are turn based games in general.
Yeah.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: Turn based games or choice games in general are a good way to introduce non gamers to gaming. Telltale games are for this.
There's sometimes a time pressure in those, but you're making decisions. It's not a twitchy gameplay thing.
Visual novels can be a good way to introduce maybe someone who's an avid comic reader to games in a way that is interactive but in a way that doesn't intimidate them. I am not exaggerating, guys. That intimidation factor is the biggest barrier for a lot of non gamers.
They genuinely, they see people who are good at the game and they are afraid of being bad at the video game.
[00:52:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's one of the.
[00:52:58] Speaker B: To be bad at video games.
[00:53:00] Speaker A: That's one of the three big things I think I see as the problem is people who are intimidated by games, people who think games are for kids. We can definitely solve that. There are very adult themed and adult centered games that are not, you know, X rated games. When we talk about that.
[00:53:15] Speaker B: Right. Adult as in games made for adults, not. Not adult as in pornographic. Although those also exist.
[00:53:22] Speaker A: And then there are just like the. The other thing is that people just don't want to learn something new and that is where streaming has really helped. You don't have to teach them something new. You want to share. We get to share and watch.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: Absolutely. All right guys, we're going to end on a little bit of a teaser. We're planning something. We will talk about this next episode.
But we are going to be playing a game together and then we are going to discuss it next episode. So I'm not gonna say what the game is. Listeners, I want you to go in the discord and try to guess what game it is we're gonna play. I know I'm planning on streaming when we do this, Mike, I assume you're gonna do the same.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: Yeah, probably.
[00:54:04] Speaker B: Pillow, I don't know if you feel up to doing that.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: No, I'll probably stream it.
[00:54:07] Speaker B: With things going on in your life.
[00:54:09] Speaker C: Patreons, you're not allowed to spoil it because they know.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: Yes, they know.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: There's a lot about this game that like I am a very big fan of this game. I have played more of it than both of them combined. But it is a game that is a pure.
[00:54:23] Speaker B: Which is saying a lot because it's not like I have a small amount of play time on this game. I have, let's see, I bring, I.
[00:54:31] Speaker C: Bring down that average big time.
[00:54:33] Speaker B: I have 188 hours in this game already.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: I'm close to doubling his time. If you count the mod version, I'm over double his time.
[00:54:41] Speaker B: So we haven't decided yet exactly what version we'll be doing. It may be vanilla, it may be lightly modded. We'll see. But we will be playing a game together and we will discuss that experience of playing it together next episode. Like I said in the Discord, guess what game it is. It'll be fun. I want to see what games you guys come up with that you think we're going to be playing.
[00:55:03] Speaker A: And honestly, your guesses could be good suggestions for potential future games for us.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: Exactly.
We're trying to farm you guys for content.
All right, that's going to be it for from 8bit to 4k for this week. I've been Jack Solman for mic of many names for Pillow pet. Have a great night, gamers.
[00:55:21] Speaker C: Good night.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: Good night, everybody.
