It's a Splatfest weekend so today's video is on the "Who do you spend the holiday's with?" Splatfest in Splatoon 3. Our choices are between Family, Solo, or Friends. I chose to join teamsolo.
This was the first time i've played Splatoon 3 this year, as my previous videos had focused on Pokémon Unite. i was expecting to feel rusty and the first game certainly felt like it. but i felt ready after that and my team mates and i managed to win 8 of the 15 games we played. it was disappointing that out of the 15 games, only 4 were against Family teams. Family also felt the easier of the two to beat, so from my point of view Team Friends are the biggest rivals to Team Solo.
Welcome to one of the final Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday videos!
With the series being retired on YouTube and finishing over on Ko-Fi, https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers, i'm celebrating by showing off the Quest Mode.
This video is part 2 and it shows the second set of 5 dungeons in Quest Mode. i had already finished up to the 10th dungeon, but it was nice to come back and try out some of the new teams i have unlocked since i've been playing Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition.
Come back next week for what could be the final part.
Today's Switch Funday video is on Pokémon Unite. as this is the first full weekend of January, it's a Unite Weekend. this means i'm able to use any Pokémon i want in the unranked online modes. my goal with these weekends is to try out several new Pokémon i don't have and hopefully find some new favorites.
I think i have influenza so i chose not to commentate after the intro. it also meant i wasn't playing my best and with some Pokémon i wasn't have a great time. The Pokémon i enjoyed the most using was Tyranitar. it's not a Pokémon i see often being used and i don't know why as it is strong and i thought it delt a lot of damage. I didn't find the new Meowscarada fun to use, i felt the same with the recently released Mimikyu. Lapras was far to slow and didn't seem to have enough bulk or deal enough damage. Espeon and Dragapult were fine. i did enjoy Dragapult's Unite Move, but i don't think i enjoyed either enough to buy them.
Today's Online Saturday video is on Pokémon Unite. My goal in Panic Parade is to beat consistently. So far, my team mates and I have only managed to beat it once and unfortunately that continues today. even with the better stats my Pokémon had, in these 7 matches we didn't really come close to beating Panic Parade.
I discover a great set for Venusaur that worked well and that i enjoyed using. so try out Sludge Bomb and Petal Dance!
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Gates of The Mind. This game, from developers Gaga Game studio is set to come out later this week.
On the eShop page the game describes itself as a "...2D Hardcore Platformer" so i was curious to try it out to see what the level of difficulty actually is. Unfortunately, i don't think calling it difficult is the right word. i think unfair is more accurate. this is a short demo that i assume is from the start of the game, and whilst there is an attempt at a basic tutorial of how the controls work, the game fails at tutorialising how the game works. only through trial and error can that be solved.
One issue with this is that i broke the demo and had to die at one point. there was another where a dangerous enemy was able to damage me whilst i was in the air, even tho their attack hit the ground, and once it hit me even tho it was off screen! if this is the start of the game, it's going to throw a lot at the player and most of it will be unfair and in a way specifically to damage the player.
the music and sounds in the demo are also suspect. the sounds especially seem to be mistimed for the most part. ultimately, even tho this a really short demo, it was enough for me to learn that i don't want to play it. even if they're able to patch the bad English, tutorials, and level design, it won't fix the basic issue of the games design. i can't recommend Gates of The Mind.
Welcome to one of the final Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday videos!
With the series being retired on YouTube and finishing over on Ko-Fi, https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers, i'm celebrating by showing off the Quest Mode.
This video is part 1 and it shows the first 5 dungeons in Quest Mode. these are dungeons i have finished a long time ago, but it was nice to come back and try out some of the new teams i have unlocked since i've been playing Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition.
Come back next week for what should be the final part.
For Switch Funday i'm trying out TemTem for the first time. it's a game i've been aware of, but not one i've tried. i bought it in an Amazon sale here in Japan and was eager to give it a try. I am a big Pokémon fan and have been playing those games since Pokémon Blue. I Knew this isn't going to be exactly like Pokémon, but i was wondering if my past experiences would help of hinder my enjoyment of TemTem.
I'm going to say it helped. TemTem doesn't have an introduction to the game, it just starts at the character creator. i think this is a missed opportunity. i went in knowing nothing and started knowing nothing of the world nor of it's online stuff. lacking soo much information really doesn't make this game that approachable, especially for a younger audience. I don't know who the character in my house was as there was a name but no label, or anything in our conversation, about if or how we're related. the game rushed to the character creator and then to start, it forgot the why. but as i knew Pokémon, a beginning like this is something i've experienced before so i wasn't too lost.
Not having any TemTem in the intro meant when it came to choosing mine, i could only really go on looks. the game doesn't say if they evolve, just their name and their strengths and weaknesses, something which isn't explained until much later in this video.
So whilst the opening isn't great, there is much to like about the game. graphically it's good and it isn't plagued by technical issues the recent Pokémon games have had. there are more loads and they do tend to last just a little longer than i would want. but i think i would take that over a buggy mess. the battle mechanics are different to Pokémon as TemTem introduces a stamina mechanic. it didn't introduce it that well as an opponent showed the negatives of it before the tutorial did. but it is a mechanic that works well so far and helps push the player to rotate the TemTem's used in a battle. a secondary benefit of all this rotation is that TemTem's, so far, only gain experience by actually being in the battle and not just being in your party. This is something older Pokémon games did before Experience Share is obtained. so i don't mind this mechanic as it balances with stamina. but i could see how modern Pokémon players might find it a bit old fashioned or that the battles might be a bit slower.
Stamina is one way TemTem differentiates itself from Pokémon, but another is of course the TemTem themselves. so far the designs have been fun and very different. the type chart is much more difficult. it would've been nice to have it on L3 or R3. but the game could also do a better job of showing us not only the type of each TemTem but also how effective the moves are. i got confused because i thought i read a tutorial that said once a TemTem is caught i'd know what moves are effective against it. and then when i faced it in battle i couldn't see that information.
The final confusing thing about this game is the online part. so far, the game has done nothing to justify why there is one. it's been on since i got my first TemTem and there's been no tutorials as to why there's online, what i can do with online, or if i can turn it off and play solo. but it's possible it'll be explained a little further into the story. a game like TemTem could have a very long story and i could still be in the basic tutorial.
So there's a lot about TemTem that feels like the first game in a series. some simple mistakes, basic things i'd expect to be fixed and/or improved upon in a sequel. but critically there is enough here for me, an older Pokémon Fan with decades of experience, to enjoy. in a way, i came away from this first hour thinking this is a game designed for someone like me rather than someone coming across this style of game for the first time. i'm currently thinking of playing more with this game, maybe even with videos on here!
Today's Online Saturday video is on Pokémon Unite. My goal in Panic Parade is to beat it. I have done 14 matches so far and not come close. But in today's 7 matches my team mates and I did it. in the 5th match, with Alolan Ninetails, we beat all 15 waves of Pokémon!
I did record a commentary track but it got corrupted. So enjoy 7 matches without commentary.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch game Another Code: Recollection. This game, from developers Cing is set to come out in January.
I was interested in this demo because i didn't play the original game on Nintendo DS and i was curious which of the two games included in this collection we would get to try. on the eShop page, it doesn't provide information about the demo, it seems to be for the main game itself. so going in there were a few questions.
right from the beginning one big question was answered immediately as the game informed us that our save will be carried over from the demo to the full version of the game. Tho, what it didn't say was that we have to do a manual save ourself as the game only has an autosave. On the demo home screen we're also welcomed with a link to buy the game from it's eShop page which is a great thing that not enough games do. it makes me feel like some effort and attention was put into this demo, even if it's just the start of the first game.
the final big question left is, after playing it for over an hour, do i want to buy it and continue the story. Honestly, no. what i played in this first hour probably did more to turn me away from the game rather than hook me. I wasn't that keen on how the story was told, especially with a flash back we had to play through, and a conversation on the boat that felt weird to have when surely we would've had it before in the past. The gameplay was also a little frustrating. i mention a few times in the video that i didn't like how slow the camera was, but i could just about deal with it. despite how good the game looks, the thing that took me out of the experience the most was how emotionless the character's faces and body language was. the main character looks great, but her face shows little emotion. the same with the character we meet near the end of the video. the emotions i imagined they'd be feeling were replaced with that person starring blankly straight faced.
It's possible i might've enjoyed the Nintendo DS original more than this Switch version because the DS is a portable handheld that was, at times, used as a book. it's limited graphical abilities, when compared to the Switch, might've helped hide the emotionless characters. This demo did a good job at showing me that this game, or this version at least, isn't for me.
Welcome to Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday! Sit back and either watch me play through, with no commentary, the cup or leave it running in the background as BGM!
I play and earn all the achievements from The Christmas Cup 2 Revival! (2023/12/25 9:00～2024/1/1 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.
This week is the Christmas Cup 2 Revival. i have played this cup before, https://youtu.be/voAWLOkg6qg. It took me much longer back then to win as the other players were highly skilled and i found it tough to do the gimmicks.
But this time i found it much easier. thankfully i was up against a couple of players and still got a few wins. i also managed to beat the boss a few times. the gimmick of making a cross with hearts wasn't too bad. but it was a little more difficult to get a high enough combo to do big damage. sometimes i felt that i wasn't getting the luck i've had in other Cups.
This will be the final Achievement Run on the public YouTube channel. after this, the series will go to my Ko-Fi page, Ko-fi.com/qtegamers, and i'll be starting a new series on Tuesdays from next week.
For Switch Funday i'm back with F-Zero 99 as over this Christmas period a new special league is available. Not only that, as i haven't played it in a while i was also keen to check out the recently added classic league.
The tricky thing is that the Frozen Knight League and the Classic Mode are both in rotation so it could be difficult to play both in the same video. thankfully i was lucky and i got to try out both, as well as some Team Battles and F-Zero 99 modes.
The Frozen Knight League seems to be nothing more than an aesthetic change to the circuits with some bonuses for the player after playing a certain number of races. I found the Classic Mode to be more interesting as it reduced the number of players to 20, dropped the spin attacks and skyway, and was presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio. all these made the game feel a little more retro. but it still had the element of racers being removed from the race if they didn't reach a certain position threshold.
Today's Online Saturday video is on Pokémon Unite. My goal in Panic Parade is to beat it. last video, https://youtu.be/DAtMquAG-vA, i got to the final difficulty level and in this video my aim was for my teams and I to beat it. unfortunately, neither of us were able to get to wave 15 nor finish it. it seemed like wave 13 was the best we could get to. nevertheless, it was a fun time. there's commentary during this videos because i wanted to relax today, so sit back and enjoy the matches.
Welcome to Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday! Sit back and either watch me play through, with no commentary, the cup or leave it running in the background as BGM!
I play and earn all the achievements from The Christmas Cup 1 Revival! (2023/12/18 9:00～2023/12/25 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.
This week is the Christmas Cup 1 Revival. i have played this cup before, https://youtu.be/PEehcIe-5jA. I managed to get a few wins in that video before someone tough came in and beat me.
It finally happened, i finally got 5 wins back to back! I have played over 70 of these cups and never managed it before, but today i finally did. but that's because it finally happened, i faced no human players! this is the first time that i never faced someone else. The Ai got a few bonuses here and there, but they were never a match for me this week. so whilst i won and even beat the boss a couple of times, it's a shallow victory because it wasn't against any human players.
This weekend there is the 38th Maximus cup in Tetris 99. the prize this cup is a Super Mario Bros. Wonder theme. It was nice playing Tetris again so soon after the 37th Maximus Cup a few weeks ago. unlike that time, i felt that i was much more ready for today and had some great games. the 3rd, 4th, and 5th games saw me around the top 15, but it was actually the first game which was most challenging as even tho i only finished 26th, it was going very fast as that game was over 6 minutes long!
How did it go for you? let me know in the comments. and of course, if you got the win, let us know as this week 10th was the best for me.
Today's Online Saturday video is on Pokémon Unite. Panic Parade is back for this year's winter season and i was keen to play it. the last time Panic Parade was available as a game mode was back in August. in this mode, instead of it being Player vs Player (PvP) it's Players vs Enemies (PvE). So it's 5 of us up against the computer. The enemies come at us in waves. in these 7 videos, we work our way up the difficulty levels. the higher the difficulty level, the more waves we face.
The goal is to play, get as far as you can, and earn event points. when you have enough points, you can spend them on levelling up your stats and these will be applied to any Pokémon you use. With better stats, you can go further and earn more coins, which can be spent on leveling up your stats. there are also other things to buy in the store if you complete Panic Parade.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Silent Hope. This game, from developers Marvelous is already out on Switch and PC.
The demo for Silent Hopes seems to be taken from the start of the game, with no changes made for it being a demo, and lets us play through to finishing the first stage and letting characters get to level 10. What's great is that the save from this demo will work in the final game so you can carry over your progress.
And you may want to do that as i enjoyed the demo. This isn't the best start of a game that i've ever played, i do feel like the tutorial is missing key messages and is mostly just text on screen. But for the most part, the game will have some control over your first time diving into the abyss. it just feels that the game chose to go with immersion at the expense of its tutorial.
The demo lets us understand the basic gameplay loop. there's an abyss and the goal seems to be getting to the bottom. the demo has the first level and in it are 10 floors to go down, with things getting more difficult as we do. on top, there are other characters doing tasks we set but what's interesting is that we can swap places with them at certain points. in the demo, health recovery seemed limited so what i did was to swap out someone on low health for a new character fully healed. this made going deeper even easier.
Each character controls differently and they all have different stats. this made going deeper more enjoyable as i got to try out different styles. But there's more to this as at the end of the video i found out each of the 7 characters can unlock even more fighting styles so i imagine that'll make them feel fresh.
This demo shows that the start of the game may not be the best for new players and there are a few small things i felt could be better. but as a demo i do think that it worked well as after playing it i'm now interested in getting it. i would also like to get the soundtrack, too. the game looks great on Switch, mostly plays well, and could be a good choice if you're looking for something to play in 30 minute chunks, maybe on a commute or on breaks. the story may not be the driving force some would hope, but in combination with the gameplay and overall loop i came away from this demo thinking that it does enough.
Welcome to Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday! Sit back and either watch me play through, with no commentary, the cup or leave it running in the background as BGM!
I play and earn all the achievements from The Pixel Sitri Cup Revival! (2023/12/11 9:00～2023/12/18 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.
This week is the Pixel Sitri Cup Revival. i have played this cup before, https://youtu.be/oxQec5wx4ZM. That video is short like that one, but in that video i was unable to defeat the boss whereas this time i did it!
The gimmick this week was one that i't a fan off. but i was lucky in that it didn't get in the way too much. The gimmick is a square that changes the orb, inside said square, color. But this gimmick didn't change color to all the available colors, instead it was limited to a small set of colors. There were also fewer stages this week in comparison to last week so it was easy to get to the boss but it was very tough. i only managed to beat the boss once. This was also the second week running where i only played against 2 other human players.
For today's game i wanted to try out the Game Boy game Castlevania Legends from Konami. it's a relatively late release on Game Boy coming out from 1997 but it's not one i remember. I didn't get into Game Boy until the Game Boy Color and Pokémon. but i am familiar with the Castlevania series and i was curious as to how such a game would work on Game Boy.
I was pleasantly surprised how faithful to the early Castlevania games it felt like. the team at Konami did a great job bringing the series over the Game Boy. Every enemy looks distinct and clear, the backgrounds are slight but work. even the music is great. But that difficulty is too much.
all the monsters move faster than your character and the controls seem sluggish, too. often i felt like i was inputting commands but it wasn't happening on screen. This game also suffers from respawning monsters, something i'm not a fan of. I tried out the game on the regular difficulty, so perhaps on "Light" mode things will be toned down. I speculated in the video that maybe it's hard because the game is short. looking at the map, it did seem like there weren't many areas in the game.
Another issue, like with many of these old games on Switch, is the lack of a manual. this game comes from a time where the manuals explained so much of the game, maybe even provided backstory and more. here we just have the game and itself has no in-game tutorial. so more than once i felt like i wasn't fully understanding what i can do, what i needed to do, for example i never worked out how to use the Soul Weapons!
I was surprised that the game uses a password feature. i initially expected all Game Boy games by this point to come with internal batteries for save files, but thinking about it it's possible that this late into the Game Boy and a game that wasn't expected to sell a lot meant they decided against it for cost reasons. Maybe it was more of a Budget Release when it came out.
I'm not feeling well today. So here's a video with no commentary.
There's nothing special happening this weekend in Splatoon 3 and as i'm not feeling great i just wanted to play some games. it's actually been a while since i just sat back and played some Turf War in Splatoon 3. i had bought some weapons and not used them so that was today's "goal", give them a go. I used the new Undercover Sorella Brella and Foil Squeezer, and the Tenta Sorella Brella that was released in the previous game update.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Gunbrella . This game, from developers Doinksoft and publishers Devolver Digital, is already out not only on Switch and PC.
The demo for Gunbrella, and the game itself, has been out for a few months now so the complaints i might have with the game could all be resolved by now if the game has been patched. i don't have the game so i can't do the comparison, but if you have it and played it it would be great to read your comments about how things have changed or how they are now in general.
There's a lot to like about this game after playing the demo. graphically, it looks great. more detailed than 8 or 16bit games but also not too blocky. there's a decent amount of movement in the foreground that helps give life/energy to the world, with decent backdrops helping to set the scene, and a sky with rolling clouds. The music is also good to listen to and works well, especially with the boss at the end of the video. i would be interested in hearing more of the music for sure.
For the most part, the controls are really good too. general movement is responsive and whilst the initial jump may not be that high it does feel satisfying in how it works. When we get to use the Brella for an additional jump, the sense of movement and speed is greater but i mostly felt able to control things just as easily. But, movement is also tied to shooting. If you jump up, the gun points up. if you move right, the gun points right. The right stick is also tied to shooting and something about having both control the gun just didn't work well with me.
I admit that it's only a demo and i could just need more practice. i often had issues when dealing with enemies. i would jump at an angle, try to shoot, my gun would be pointing up at an angle, i would miss the enemy and typically end up getting hit by them. It could be that after practice and more time i would be able to adjust and come up with a different strategy. But in the hour i played with the game, i never really got the hand of it.
The game didn't offer any tips or suggestions beyond the basic tutorial either. and that's something that i wasn't impressed with during the demo. It felt like the game did the minimum when it came to tutorials for the player. last weeks game, Knight Vs. Giant: The Broken Excalibur https://youtu.be/2slErl63Nz4 showed how to not only do text on screen but how to use the space effectively with added video tutorials. the text on screen approach here felt dated like the atheistic the game is based on. It wasn't just the tutorials. the items in the store and inventory had the bare minimum information. i had items that sounded like permanent upgrades and some that seemed to be time based. but the game never told me any of that. It's the same when looking up your tasks. there's a lot of space used by such few words.
One of the more annoying parts of the demo is when i follow the instructions of a text box and it doesn't work. the game explained about food. i did what it said, and nothing happened. There were a couple of instances in a library section where text seemed to be out of order. i would encounter a scenario, get past it, and then read a text warning me of it.
One weird thing about this demo is that in the more than a hour i played, it never once said it was a demo! It's possible it might've after the boss i couldn't beat. i suspect that's where the demo might've ended, or after the quests related to it had finished. after trying that first boss i feel like i should've tried this demo on Easy, not the Normal i picked or the Hard it defaulted to.
I'm glad i tried out the demo. i was a little curious about this game. i now know that it's maybe not for me, but i can come away from it appreciating what it got right and maybe if a "Directors Cut" or "DX" edition were to come to other platforms then maybe i'd give it another shot.
