Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing Dodgeball Academia on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service. This is a game that came out a couple of years ago from Pocket Trap and Humble Bundle.
This is a game i didn't know about, but thankfully it's description on the PSN gave me enough to understand that it's not just a dodgeball game but there's school life and team building, too. It's a recent addition to the service and i picked it as i thought it's bright colorful graphics and artstyle would be an interesting challenge for cloud streaming as issues like Macroblocking would be very evident should it appear.
And it did appear. actually, there were a host of issues throughout playing the game. as well as the macroblocking, there were resolution drops, stream tearing, and stuttering. at times, it did feel like some blurring and blurring might've been from the game itself rather than from streaming it. however, the controls felt fine and i couldn't notice any lag from them.
Whilst these issues were rarely a problem, they were noticeable. But i did forget to do the internet speed test after i was done so i can't rule out the issue being my end this week. i don't think the issues got in the way of gameplay tho. the visuals are big and bright which meant that even when the resolution dropped, i could clearly see everything and when there was macroblocking it didn't cover up any object.
The game also has a robust autosave function as well as the ability for the player to save manually by bringing up the main menu. This means that if there ever is an issue with streaming and the cloud streaming service decides to terminate the stream, there's a higher chance that we can save before it kicks us off. so far, whilst not perfect, i do have to say that this is a good game for streaming so far. there'll be a part two where we can get a sense of how it is to stream it overall, and hopefully i'll remember to do the PS4 internet speed test.
