Monday, May 22, 2023

Cloud Monday - Humanity - Part 1 - Some Issues Streaming This New Game From PlayStation Plus Premium

Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing Humanity on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service.

This is a new game from Tha and Enhance Experience that is out across PS4 and PS5. this is the newest game i've tried out on PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service and i chose to play it because i wondered how well having soo many people on screen at the same time would hold up, whether the stream would suffer from macroblocking or other issues.

The game itself isn't as sharp or bold and colorful when compared to some of the recent games we've played on this list. graphically, it has it's own issues on PS4. the one that annoyed me the most was the seeming lack of a shadow of my character. this meant that it was really hard to judge where it was in a 3D space. you'll see in this video that i jump off stuff a fair bit. other things i noticed include how low resolution and low framerate the shadows were.

There might've been a few other things, but it's hard to tell because the game also suffered from streaming issues. for example, the game is a bit murky and not sharp so it's difficult to know if there were resolution drops. my fear about macroblocking came true and it appeared more than once. it was so strong a couple of times that there was even zebra striping. near the end, the warning about the stream came up, too. stream tears weren't that common and even tho there was macroblocking it never really got in the way. unlike recent games who rely on sharp high resolution art and suffered because many issues were soo distracting, with the art style and limitations of the PS4, these issues didn't get in the way of Humanity.