Hades

GWJ Conference Call Episode 728

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 (PS4, PC), Spelunky 2 (PS4), Hades (PC), Among Us (PC), Blaseball (Web), Cheats & Mods, Your emails, Announcing the GWJ Secret Stan 2020, and more!

Click Here to Download!

Amanda, Julian, and Rich to talk about some of our favorite cheat codes, mods, and hacks for game accessibility.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about, or whatever else is on your mind.

Giveaway Codes for Crusader King's III are for are for Steam. Giveaway recipients will be announced on the next show!

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Comments

I'm a huge Supergiant fan, loved Bastien, loooooooooooooved Transistor, loooooooved Pyre, so I'm really looking forward to Hades. Bought it a while back on Epic, just need to find some time to sit down and play it.

About cheats and mods... I'm so, so thankful I wasn't brought up with those "gatekeepy" mentalities. We had guidebooks, cheat codes, hintbooks (though I think my dad drew the line at calling the hintline because those were so pricey). I still know some codes from way back when (WarCraft 2 and StarCraft): glittering prizes, power overwhelming, it is a good day to die, black sheep wall, make it so, ...
And then I started playing Oblivion in ... 2007? And modded the eff out of that. No, wait, mods were a thing before that, I modded the bejeesus out of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, and Icewind Dale 2 too (and got somewhat involved in the modding scene too).
Sure I want to enjoy the game as it was intended, that's what happens most of the time. But if I'm stuck and need a walkthrough, I'm not letting that get in the way of my enjoyment of the game and I'll have zero shame in pulling up walkthrough.

Direct download link?

AUs_TBirD wrote:

Direct download link?

Click Here to Download!

(As a hint, you can always just take a previous CC link and just update the date in the name. Last week the link was "traffic.libsyn.com/secure/gwjcc/GWJ_Conference_Call_09_16_20.mp3", so just replace 16 with 23 and there you go :))

00:01:11 Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2
00:18:11 Spelunky 2
00:26:50 Hades
00:34:06 Among Us
00:42:13 Blaseball
00:52:57 Cheats & Mods
01:11:22 Your Emails
01:26:53 GWJ Secret Stan 2020

CptDomano wrote:

Click Here to Download!

(As a hint, you can always just take a previous CC link and just update the date in the name. Last week the link was "traffic.libsyn.com/secure/gwjcc/GWJ_Conference_Call_09_16_20.mp3", so just replace 16 with 23 and there you go :))

Awesome, thanks!

AUs_TBirD wrote:

Direct download link?

OOPS! Thanks for the reminder! Turns out the link was there, and invisible, because I forgot to put the text in there. Sorry about that.

Picked up Among us and Hades. Nice to hear Julian on as well!

*hides from wife*

I paused the podcast so I could get Among Us on iOS and it was already on my phone. I have no recollection of ever downloading it, and I never noticed the tile on my screen. Could have something to do with the roughly 200 tiles that are already there.

-

As far as cheats go, my fondest memories are from Socom 2 on PS2. The game gave you loads of settings options for creating online PvP matches. That wasn’t cheating because it was built into the game. The cheating came when my friends and I would tweak the settings on our room so that crazy weird stuff would happen in the game. I remember doing rocket launchers only in really small maps. That was just mayhem and most people got a kick out of it. There were other trolly setups that we would do as well. Hard to remember.

Oh yeah. Didn’t Street Fighter 2 have some wild codes? Maybe they were just part of the game. I think I remember a hyper mode where all of the animations went super fast and it was total bananas.

I can speak to the standing desk question. I got an adjustable one several years ago because of all the press how sitting is bad. I tend to go all out when I buy into something and stood practically all the time at it, and since I don't work and gaming is my main past time, that is a lot of hours.

I loved it. I did mind standing for long periods of time. My back and legs felt not as tight as they did as when I sat. But, I noticed one evening that my foot was swollen quite a bit. I went to the Dr. and he said I had some venous insufficiency. We don't know for sure if all the standing did that, but it is thought to have at least contributed. So the best bet is to mix it up and stand for an hour, and then maybe sit for 30 minutes. Walking / calf raises / squats are all good to keep the blood flowing. You don't want to stay on one position for too long and using those leg muscles helps circulation.

Now I've got to wear compression sock, which I'm not happy about. I don't find them too uncomfortable but they sure look dorky. It's like I'm wearing the tall athletic socks I used to wear as a kid in the 70s-early 80s.

FWIW, Robc, sitting is even worse than standing for venous insufficiency. The only thing that prevent it is movement since that contributes to keeping the blood flowing, fighting against gravity, back upwards towards the right side of the heart.

Eleima wrote:

FWIW, Robc, sitting is even worse than standing for venous insufficiency. The only thing that prevent it is movement since that contributes to keeping the blood flowing, fighting against gravity, back upwards towards the right side of the heart.

Thanks Eleima, I try to make sure I move around but sometimes when I get in the zone with I game I realize hours have gone by My watch has a move timer on it that I usually notice, but sometimes I miss it. My standing mat has a nice edge on it that can do some calf raises on so helps when I'm standing.

Isn't it better to mix standing and sitting rather than only standing? I do keep my standing sessions longer than the sitting ones though.

robc wrote:

Isn't it better to mix standing and sitting rather than only standing? I do keep my standing sessions longer than the sitting ones though.

Maintaining any single position isn't good (bedsores say hi!). The human body has evolved to be dynamic - two legs is not an inherently stable configuration, so it kind of had to. Chairs and standing still for a long period of time are both very, very, very recent developments, in evolutionary timescales.

My favorite exploit/cheat in a game was probably Fable 3. You got a lot less money on the good path, and I was getting broke, but the speed at which your investments paid off was in real time and the speed at which the plot progressed was done via in-game events. So I stuck my character in a place where I knew he wouldn't be bothered ... and went to bed. Next morning: problem solved!

Did anyone ever buy the Sierra hint books that you needed a slip of transparent red plastic to read the hints? Those were high tech!!!

The answers would ramp up so as not to spoil the game straight away. I’ll never forget one of the questions from a King's Quest guide:

Q : Where does Graham put all of the items he picks up?

A: The same place Superman puts his street clothes when he flies.

PaladinTom wrote:

Did anyone ever buy the Sierra hint books that you needed a slip of transparent red plastic to read the hints? Those were high tech!!!

Yup, sure did. I mentioned hintbooks in my post at the top of the thread, and you all know I was raised on Sierra adventure games.

Jonman wrote:
robc wrote:

Isn't it better to mix standing and sitting rather than only standing? I do keep my standing sessions longer than the sitting ones though.

Maintaining any single position isn't good (bedsores say hi!). The human body has evolved to be dynamic - two legs is not an inherently stable configuration, so it kind of had to. Chairs and standing still for a long period of time are both very, very, very recent developments, in evolutionary timescales.

Jonman is absolutely correct, any position for an extended amount of time is not going to be great. Gotta keep moving.

I can neither confirm nor deny the rumors that I named the Secret Stan thread what I did just so I could hear Amoebic say, "Yeet this holiday," but it was indeed spectacular.

I just wanted to add my experience with cheats and modifications.

In almost all open world games, after a while, I hook up cheat engine and look for a cheat table with increased speed movement.
After I spent some time in an area I really dislike the backtracking or just sometimes slow movement, so I just reduce that part of the game.
A great example of this is Dragon Age Inquisition, which I would never have completed without toggling x3 walking speed in the Hinterlands since I still had that "I want to see all things" mindset.

I also sometimes cheat around mechanics I don't enjoy, or just to make the game focus on what I really enjoy.
So I might increase drop rate for games with grinding, or make certain minigames auto-pass if they're getting annoying.

One more example of cheating is actually in Incremental/Idle games, which I play as a mini game to learn about decompiling and modifying them.

I almost never do "god mode" cheats, but rather "x1.5 rates" cheats that give you a boost in those, otherwise I lose interest way too quickly.

And one final note: Please never cheat at multiplayer games.

Azapa wrote:

And one final note: Please never cheat at multiplayer games.

Vexed that I can only like this once.

Blaseball is 2020 GOTY, calling it now. Here's my list:
1. Blaseball
2. Blaseball
3. Blaseball
4. Blaseball
5. Blaseball
6. Blaseball
7. Blaseball
8. Among Us
9. Some weird indie stuff
10. Blaseball

I played a lot of Doom and Descent with cheat codes because I am bad at games. The only way I could beat SMB3 and a bunch of other NES action games was with game genie.

Why am I picturing someone trying to get into Blaseball in about a year and asking out loud, "Wait, this was originally about baseball?"

My experience with blaseball was vague interest, then confusion when it seemed all I could do was place bets on games, then homerbackingintothebush.gif when I realized that enjoying Blaseball required Twitter.

Jonman wrote:

My experience with blaseball was vague interest, then confusion when it seemed all I could do was place bets on games, then homerbackingintothebush.gif when I realized that enjoying Blaseball required Twitter.

Aha! That's why I don't really enjoy Blaseball. Because f*ck Twitter.

Thank you for that insight.

The Discord is pretty great, too.