This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PSP version of Daxter on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
Daxter originally came out on PlayStation Portable back in 2006 and it's a game i have played and finished. but it's been such a long time, i was excited to play it again. I've been looking at the new PS1, PS2, and PSP games that have been added to PS4 and PS5 via emulation, trying to find one that still holds up and isn't a novelty or a nostalgia recommendation. Daxter maybe the first one of these games that i've played that i would recommend as a game that still holds up.
Daxter is smartly designed for the PSP. it's level's aren't too sprawling that they take ages to complete. there's a decent amount of platforming and things to do, but it can take 15-25 minutes to complete it. this may sound like that there'd be a lot of loss progress if there's a disconnection from the cloud streaming service. Daxter also has a great check point system and auto save system which helps alleviate those worries. The service does give us a 20 second warning first and Daxter seems to let us save anywhere in the game and it saves quickly.
These features are similar to what the emulated games can do. via the Options button you can chose to save or load at any point in the game. what the emulation software adds is the ability to rewind. but this isn't as big of deal as in other games because the game checkpoint frequently and is very fast to put us back in to the game.
Other benefits are that the game looks great. it was already a great looking PSP game, but it still holds up well in 1080p on PS4. our character, Daxter, is quite big on screen, as is other characters and things like text boxes and enemies, which mean if there are issues with stream tearing or macro blocking it's still fairly easy to work out what's happening and continue playing like nothing's wrong.
Today's gameplay was a little rough with my connection. i imagine it was a bandwidth issue more than anything. i would say that the camera does take a little getting used to. the emulation software has done a great job of mapping the controls to the right analogue stick and i found them responsive. but maybe they're a bit too responsive for the game itself. it was made with different controls in mind and sometimes i found myself fighting the game. this meant that there were moments where i failed to land a jump as i couldn't work out the 3D space well. But with the rewind feature, i wasn't too concerned. it's just a little frustrating quirk of the game.
