Home Artists Posts Import Register

Downloads

Content

At $60 a pop, a new AAA video game is no small investment, especially when projects these days are rarely released in tip-top shape. By resisting buying new titles at launch, though, can we force better outcomes for all of us? Or do we (as enthusiasts) simply lack the fortitude to effect real change? Let's discuss. Plus: Why do some publishers sacrifice short-term financial gain for long-term viability? How come Sony trademarked PS6, PS7, and other terms for machines that don't yet exist, and may never? Have we ever played a game that uncannily reflected our real life situations and feelings? When it comes to settings, which do we enjoy more: Sci-fi or fantasy? Listen to this week's mailbag-centric episode of SS+ for all that, plus much more (including a bit of spoilerless TLoU2 leak talk).

Files

Comments

Tim J Weckwerth

Lol we change to Friday and the Last of Us news drops on a Monday. Can't win hahaha

Bryan Finck

That's why I didn't care if it changed or not, always going to miss something no matter when you record. And like it appears they did here, if they have a bit of time they can always add something to the end.

Anonymous

Virtuous Mission?

Marco Maluf

Wow fresh episode! 💙

IslanderButNotLong

Unfortunately a victim of the leaks for TLOU Part 2 😔😔 stay away from them if you can!

Juan Paolini

Here I was thinking that I'd have to save those back-to-back spoilercasts for later since I haven't had a chance to play those games yet. So I'm thankful for you doing them intermittently (not sure if this is the right word in English but hoping the message gets through). I appreciate you guys!

Anonymous

Hey C-Men! Thanks for doing this one. I like the spoiler talks well enough but, I don't have the time to play through the new releases right now because of work and a huge backlog. Once I get the time, I'll definitely be playing through all these games and subsequently giving each spoiler talk a listen but, brightened my day to get something I was able to listen to right now! XOXO Edit: Also, in regards to Ellie breaking immersion, I swear I saw an interview with a lead developer from ND a long time ago where that issue was brought up and he just straight up said they either couldn't or didn't have the time to make the AI work correctly. So, they just decided to make Ellie essentially invisible to the enemies during stealth. He said something to the effect of it being one of the biggest regrets/things they wish they could have gotten right before it shipped.

Remington James

Strange having a SS+ episode drop today, had to do a double take 😂 keep it up boys nothing but love & support from me

Real Radec

I agree with Chris 100% about padding Sonys schedule by making more PS1 remakes like MediEvil. Maybe thats what the Bluepoint purchase will be for lol. Also Twisted Metal 2012, Starhawk and especially PS Allstars were underrated gems. Dont let Chris' hate boner for PSAS distract you from that fact.

Anton Kaye

Bah, I voted for keeping it same. Forgot it was changed.

Michal Dudic

I was totally tuned out for the two announced spoilercasts so this mail bag episode was an extremely pleasant surprise. Good call! hope you feel better soon, we rely on you!

James Galos

Being locked inside working with no escape I have been able to keep up to date on all my podcast and game finally!

Andrew

I’ve seen a lot of justification on twitter that “muh naughty dog is shitty so they deserve this”

Travis Johnson

Chris' consternation over Star Wars lore has me chomping at the bit to recommend he check out the both awesome and disappointingly unfinished masterpiece KOTOR 2, which has some of the most inspired writing on the nuances of the force in almost any piece of Star Wars fiction. It was recently given a massive overhaul update on PC and even includes Dualshock controller support now.

The Rose Experience

I had TLOU2 spoiled for me unfortunately, there are trolls everywhere and it was sadly forced on me. All I'm going to say is this is going to make Mass Effect 3's ending look mild and I'm stunned at how bad it all is. Not sure what Neil thought with all of this but people are going to hate it, immensely.

Michal Dudic

it's like switching to a different line at a cash register. it always works against you.

Jesus Garcia

Lol around 36:00 I realized that I’m the minority of people who are fascinated by the GI Joe stuff and the convo.

Edwin Garcia

I think one of the reasons he switched the days up was to give Sacred Symbols room to breathe due to the increased PlayStation podcast competition on Tuesday. Just a random thought.

Anthony J Sanchez

Thanks for answering my space question! You guys are awesome! PS: hang in there Colin. You and Chris bring joy to so many people and I greatly appreciate what you guys do.

Anonymous

Hey Colin you should definitely stream on twitch and play games I think you’d have a good bit of your audience tuning in and it would be worth your while financially. I think I speak for most of us when I say the more of you we get the better!

Philip Andersen

More people need to be more like me and vote with their wallet, and not just in gaming, same with cults of companies like Apple, When they do a good product, yes do buy it, but when people keep buying and accepting the crap they do, it sends wrong signals u fools... and companies will milk u for it.

Jeremy Miller

I've always said if you don't want to support the company, but still want to play the game, just wait a few days and buy it preowned from Ebay. That way they don't get a single cent but you can still appreciate the developers hard work.

Brett Carlson

I just want to make a comment to Colin and all the fans in this thread. The idea that you can make a value proposition off leaks is wildly off the mark. I have not seen the leaks and don't plan on it, but I know that regardless of the plot points you have to actually experience the entirety of a video game to understand it. If the Last of Us 1 plot had leaked people would have called it trash. The Last of Us does not have an original story. The reason its beloved is because of STORYTELLING. Not the contents of the story. Its the journey of Joel and Ellie. The reason why video games are a special medium is because THE PLAYER HAS AGENCY. You are not just reading a book. You are physically interacting and assimilating yourself into a journey that is possibly 20-25 hours long. How do you know how the story beats are built up? How do you know how much you'll feel for the characters at the point of these plot reveals in the game? Endgame spoilers leaked about the time travel and people hated it, and then when they actually EXPERIENCED the entire peice of content they sang a different tune. Gameplay and the telling of a story is 80% of a game. Mass Effect 3s ending is considered bad by a vast majority..........the game was still a 9.0. No one says Mass Effect 3 is a bad video game because of how the story played out. Thats audacious claim. All I know is time and time again the video game has looked upon Naughty Dog to tell intricate stories and they always handle them with great care. I have the utmost confidence not in the SUBSTANCE of the story, but the EXECUTION of it. Thats my opinion. Not saying you need to buy the game, but if your really are a Naughty Dog and Playstation fan you shouldn't think the entire experience is terrible because of out of context plot points. Just saying.

Kevin Sullivan

I am in complete agreement about the value proposition of waiting to play games although I admit I am more patient than most. There tend to be one or two games per year which to me are an immediate play (this year only TLOU2) and the rest I am willing to wait on. As a massive Borderlands 2 fan, I am waiting on Borderlands 3. Gearbox announced one year of support, including four paid expansions. Inevitably, there will be an edition bundling all of this for the original game price. There have been many improvements through patches such as cutscene skipping, inventory management, balance adjustments, level cap increases, and countless other small quality of life improvements. I feel I will gain a significant improvement in my experience with this game if I wait until it is "complete" for lack of a better term to play it.

LastStandMedia

Well, that was my thought process. That seemed like an unfair thing for people like you, so I changed it up.

LastStandMedia

Sony would be silly not to scoop up Bluepoint, though maybe Bluepoint doesn't want to be bought!

LastStandMedia

Yeah, there's simply no justification for it. As a lawyer said on Twitter, even if there was a breach in monies owed (which is unclear and unlikely), that doesn't justify this leak. Sony should sue the ever-loving shit out of the person, and I'm pretty sure they will.

LastStandMedia

We have no context for the spoilers and we don't even know what's real. I'll remind everyone that TLoU was "spoiled" in 2013, and much of it wasn't even true. I don't want to know more than what I saw, but I'm sure the game is going to be amazing.

LastStandMedia

The only reason I switched was to allow us to be more timely with news. I could care less about the competition; our show does more traffic than both of them on podcast services. <3

LastStandMedia

I probably will, I just need to figure out how. I have an Elgato, so I just need to sort it out on my end.

LastStandMedia

The thing about voting with your wallet is it only works if it's a movement, and not small groups of individuals. Nothing will change if these publishers don't get hit where it hurts. It's sad, but true.

Jeff Pollard

For a minute there, I thought it was Friday. Just kidding. Another great episode as always. Thanks guys!! Noticed the new read at the end, Colin. It's good to change things up. Keeps everyone on their toes!

Caleb Greer

To your point about game price drops and patches: yeah dude, get stuff like Game Pass, EA Access, wait 2-3 months for sales, and buy the couple games you want full price. :) Every EA game comes to EA Access one year out or less, really, and that service is like 30 bucks a year.

Max Stahl

Most nations on the planet could have done better in responding to the budding epidemic caused by a fast-spreading virus that they had little, accurate information about. Why shouldn't China and the WHO be held to account for their mutual subterfuge? This preemptive "xenophobia" talking point is very bizarre, to me. China isn't a race, notwithstanding the relative homogeneity of their country. Nevermind that could be reflective of racial supremacism on the part of their government. The CCP has no right to speak on behalf of all or most people that are racially Chinese, and they should be denied any excuse to use that to avoid accountability for the global tragedy that they've facilitated. This cannot stand and cannot be allowed to happen again, and we need politicians in office that have the will and wherewithal to tell them to get bent. I love your show, you have my full respect. I've never understood the nature of your perspective on politics beyond how the New York and California living and long-time leftie gaming industry ensconcement dynamics might have skewed it (Virginia is rapidly lurching to the left, too).

Matthew Cooper

This is very true. It's easy now to look back and say "we should have done more, sooner" but that's always easy to say. Lest we forget that the Chinese government (and the WHO, but I repeat myself) were completely lying about the virus at the time. When Trump banned travel from China, everyone called him racist. We have Joe Biden on tape saying so at the time, but now with hindsight he's saying he would have done it sooner, what a joke. Holding the Chinese government accountable for this isn't xenophobia, it's justice.

Matthew Cooper

I want to give another perspective on this pandemic. If bars, restaurants, theaters, etc. were allowed to reopen tomorrow, I would go right back in as I used to. I have essentially ignored Virginia's shelter in place order, living my life as normally as I can. I do not fear getting the virus and assume that I will get it at some point. I assume the majority of people will. The vast majority of those who get it are going to be totally fine.

Matthew Cooper

If 2020 were going to be a typical year, about 2,850,000 Americans would die. The estimates are that somewhere around 60-100K people will die of coronavirus this year, but many of those had serious preexisting conditions that very may have killed them this year anyway. Though let's just assume that 100,000 people die this year of corona, who would not have otherwise: that's 2,950,000 people. There's about 330 million Americans. So, just in general terms someone's odds of death go from 2.85 out of 330 to 2.95 out of 330.

Andreas Lennartsson

Great show as usual! And you are right, in Sweden most of us (or most people I know) never use cash. I myself haven't carried any cash at all for a few years.

John Fazio

Chris’s space wizzard voice was awesome.

superbadisfunny .

Tlou2 leak truly sucks for the workers and fans but I thought tlou1 story was kinda generic and tlou2 leaks story seems to be very great. Im actually more hype about it now

LastStandMedia

Yeah, I just simply can't make a full judgment on the game based on the leaks, AND what I have seen hasn't ruined my excitement for the game whatsoever. To each his own, of course, but... people are being really fucking dramatic.

LastStandMedia

That IS very patient, but you're the kind of gamer that can actually affect change in this crazy industry.

LastStandMedia

Oh, I loved the story of the first one... and the second one sounds good to me from what I've had spoiled! LOL.

Nation Harris

For some reason this isn't showing up in my RSS feed :(

Craig Mcguire

I've said this before that unless you're working in the industry I see no great need to play games day 1 unless it's predominantly multiplayer focused. Like you guys said not only will you save money you will very likely get a better experience.

LastStandMedia (edited)

Comment edits

2022-01-24 05:04:38 Try deleting your RSS link and then put it back into your podcast service. Should fix things. You can always DM me if you have further issues, or reach out to Patreon Support. <3
2020-05-08 23:52:04 Try deleting your RSS link and then put it back into your podcast service. Should fix things. You can always DM me if you have further issues, or reach out to Patreon Support. <3

Try deleting your RSS link and then put it back into your podcast service. Should fix things. You can always DM me if you have further issues, or reach out to Patreon Support. <3