Demo Play Thursday - Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf DEMO On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf, from developers Wishfully Studios.

I hadn't heard of this series before so i hadn't played it. with it being a sequel, there's always the concern that you need to have played the first game to fully understand what's going on. but with this demo, that's not important as the developers have given us somewhat of a unique demo, or at the very least a style of demo i have rarely come across.

In the Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf DEMO, instead of spending a lot of time at a specific point in the game, we're treated to 5 segments from the game. the first four focus more on the game's puzzle platforming mechanics and are set outside but the final one has us using that knowledge and more in an indoor setting.

i thought it looked great and the music was nice too. the puzzle platforming wasn't too hard to work out either. often, things of interest are slightly highlighted by light. what also helps is that the section you're in is often small so there aren't too many factors to worry about. but as this demo isn't from the start of the game, there were a couple of times where it took a bit of time to work out what to do. i have to imagine those who played the first game and those who start this game from the beginning will have a greater understanding as to what both characters can do. as i didn't, there was a fair bit of trial and error and process of elimination. for me, it wasn't troublesome as the game has a very quick restart and very generous check pointing. but i wonder if an easy difficulty could be introduced that would offer more hints as to how to interact with the world. for example, i didn't realise my companion could use their powers and become/take over other animals but a prompt, perhaps shown as a memory, would've helped a lot.

I did enjoy my time playing Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf. the difficulty felt right and the characters and world were interesting. the demo ended with a trailer showing much more of the game. but i do come away with little to no idea what the game's story is all about but i don't think that detracts from the experience. i'd recommend trying this demo if you're interested in the game.

Cloud Monday - Cursed to Golf - Part 2 - A Good Game To Play From The Cloud

Today's Cloud Monday is part 2 of playing Cursed to Golf, a game from Chuhai Labs, on #PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service.

In the first video, https://youtu.be/vP5cDfpa8ek, i had issues with the game, rather than streaming it from PlayStation Plus Premium. Knowing that things like button prompts are going to be an issues, i went into part 2 hoping for things to go a little smoother. and for the most part they do. Once again this game streams mostly fine from PlayStation Plus Premium. There is the occasional hiccup, but nothing that interferes with gameplay and rarely is it noticeable. 

But what i've learned from playing this game is that i'm not good at it. i tried to not let that cloud my judgement as the point of Cloud Monday is not how good the game is, rather it's how good the game is as a streaming game. In my opinion its one of the better games for streaming due mostly because of how frequent it saves. But the point of the game seems to be try and try again. It's not a big issue if you fail, the game wants you to learn, to practice, and to try again.

I do think that the game has some minor issues throughout, things that kinda got annoying across the two videos. So, for me it's not a game i will continue to play. it does have a lot of good points, like the graphics, the animations, and of course the soundtrack. Those are good enough that i would recommend people try it from PlayStation Plus Premium. 

Cloud Monday - Cursed to Golf - Part 1 - Frustrated By Wrong Button Prompts

Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing Cursed to Golf, a game from Chuhai Labs, on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service.

I chose to play this game as, even tho i don't play nor watch Golf, i'm surprisingly interested in new gameplay mechanics of Golf. for example, I did a video on RPGolf, https://youtu.be/s0g33alW1Go, which also has a fun RPG take on golf. I was disappointed by the game play mechanics, but a huge issue for me was that the on screen button prompts never matched what my controller did. This was a huge barrier and there's a section where it want's me to stop a ball and i couldn't. i ended up smashing all the face buttons and it worked. But this was hugely frustrating and it did sour my experience with the game.

I was a little annoyed that practice wasn't a tutorial, but thankfully the game does ask when you start the story if you want to do the tutorial. But i actually failed the tutorial and was confused when the game just let start. i would've thought that it would've asked if i wanted to try again. so by this point i had failed practice and failed the tutorial and was worried this game was going to be really difficult. thankfully i did manage to complete a couple of holes by the end of the video.

So whilst i was having trouble with the game, streaming it from PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming was fine. i'd go so far as to say it was perfect. i never saw any streaming issues and controlling the game was fine, too! the game also appears to save after every hole, so if there is an issue at most you'll lose just one hole. Granted, these aren't your typical golf courses so it could take a bit of time to complete them. I don't think it's a big issue as the game seems built around playing the courses a few times and optimising them.