Cloud Monday - Dragon Quest Heroes - Part 2 - A Much Better 45 Minutes, But Not Perfect

Today's Cloud Monday is part 2 of playing the PS4 game Dragon Quest Heroes on the PlayStation Plus Streaming Service.

throughout most of part 1, https://youtu.be/F6vjq33ZTf8, the streaming experience from PlayStation Plus Premium wasn't great. thankfully in this series i do each game twice so we can get a better sense of what to expect. This game is a great example of that because today's video shows how much better it can be streaming the game. to help, i will now include the PS4 Internet Speed Test at the end of the video, taken immediately after the game, so we can see how good or bad my wired connection is.

The title does say, however, that it wasn't a perfect experience and it wasn't. the main thing that happened when playing it the second time was stream tearing. a few times, briefly, grey tears would appear on the screen where there was no data to be displayed. as they were brief and covered a much smaller area of the screen than in part 1, they didn't impact playing the game. Yes, they were a distraction and mostly fairly obvious.

So after two videos, playing Dragon Quest Heroes isn't the smoothest experience. but, the games design, art direction, and game style do help to mitigate the issues in such a way that the game is playable. even when things were bad in part 1, i was mostly able to play it like normal. that's not to say these things are distracting when they happen, they are. but in making the best of what we have, it's certainly more playable that what happened with Assassin's Creed Origins.

Switch Funday - Splatoon 3 - Getting April's Salmon Run Item

Welcome to Switch Funday.

Today i went and got April's Salmon Run item, the Deep Sinker Helm. 

it took nearly an hour and it was mostly fun. i didn't enjoy using a sniper weapon and there were plenty of occasions where my teammates were not using the message function (on the bottom left of the screen) but overall it wasn't that bad. thankfully my ranking didn't go down and it actually went up by the end of the hour. a couple of times we had stages where the Goldie would appear so we got lots of golden eggs and lots of points.

But this was another Salmon Run day where my team couldn't beat the King Salmonid. often, including today, my teammates and i can get it below half health. but it's been a long time since i''ve been on a team that's beaten one. there were a couple of big losses, too. i couldn't try out this weekends Eggstra Work so let me know how it went and how it differs from Salmon Run.

Online Saturday - Kartrider: Drift - A Fun First Hour

Welcome to Online Saturday.

Today's video is on a relatively new kart racer by Nexon. i played this game on my PS4 but it is out across many other platforms including Xbox, PC, iOS, and Android.

Going in i expected two things, kart racing and a drift racing style. needless to say this game delivers on them both and delivers a lot more. This game is not just an online game but has single player modes and options to change opponents from other racers to Ai racers. but it's not immediately clear this is the case. i didn't know that the game is set to Ai and Humans as a default until it asked me whether i wanted to switch to human only players. This isn't something i've seen before and it's very welcomed.

The game has many other accessibility features which make it very approachable for gamers of many different skills. right at the beginning it checks what controls you want to use, and whilst this may seem a strange choice it's because it leads from the next cutscenes straight into the tutorial. but these can all be changed in the settings menu. other accessibility features can be added and controls can be also be changed where individual buttons can be mapped. it would be worth checking these out so you can play the game how you want to play it.

As for playing it, it's a lot of fun. the art style is distinctive and looks really crisp. as with any racing game, it takes a couple of races to adjust to the handling but this game is mostly fine from the beginning as the circuits you start with are made to be easy. the Lobby screen looks great but is fairly simple. it gets the job done i suppose and follows a design language similar to Gundam Evolution, of which there are videos in this Online Saturday Playlist. When you go into the mode select, a surprising amount of modes appear. so much that it's surprising the game doesn't promote them more. it defaults to a Mario Kart style racer with item boxes. but in the option mode there are soo many more to chose from. there's a Gran Turismo style license mode that unlocks more difficult tracks as you progress. there's a speed mode that focus more on racing skill. there's a grand prix mode that's unlocked when you get the B1 License. there's a fun Factory Run mode that pits your team against robot's, each lap the last 8 racers are eliminated and the winning team is who ever gets first. there are two more modes, that i didn't try out this video, with a classic Time Attack and a Custom Race.

Overall, i do recommend people trying this game out. it's a free to play game that has a lot to offer, more than what i got to see in the hour i played it. It looks great and other than an issue with my first Factory Run race, ran near perfectly. i had a lot of fun and i won't be deleting this game.

Mobile Friday - MementoMori - A Well Crafted, Beautiful, First 55 Minutes

Mobile Friday this week is MementoMori: AFK RPG, a game that's out across iOS and Android app stores and PC by Bank of Innovation.

I've had this game on my phone for a while now. on the iOS app store, i thought it had a really interesting art style and the combination of an RPG and an idle game was really interesting. But i don't really remember ever seeing this game topping the game charts. it's possible it did when it first came out, but not recently.

This game has possibly the most impressive opening hour, or so, that i have experienced since i started this Mobile Friday series. it is seriously impressive, some games don't even come close to pulling off what MementoMori has achieved. This game managed to have a good tutorial, tell a strong back story, introduce characters, integrate game mechanics in to it's game world, all whilst being able to progress the story and add new stuff along the way.

It's also clever in that it blocks off parts of the game. instead of everything being available from the beginning, it blocks parts off until you progress and then it explains each new feature as you use it. For some it could feel a little too hand holdy, but i do feel it's the right thing to do as it helps to focus on what's important, the story.

This is a game i won't be deleting, i hope to play it on and off for a while yet. i'm genuinely impressed how well the opening hour or so has been managed so that it delivers one of the best first impressions a mobile game has ever made.

Backlog Conquering - Malicious - Part 1 - Making Little to No Progress in an Hour!

Welcome to Backlog Conquering.

Today's video is part 1 of playing Malicious on PS3.

I decided to move on from Outland as i wasn't enjoying it too much. Malicious is a game i've had, i think, since it came out but not really played. i enjoyed leaving it's game preview on the XMB and having it as BGM, and that will be coming to the PS3 XMB Game Preview series at some point in the future.

This is the final patched version of the game and i don't really know what that means. it was a big patch, but it didn't change the XMB game preview nor the main screen, other than changing the year to 2012 i think. so it's possible what you see me playing could be a little different. i wondered if it was updated to the 1080p 60fps or if it got a 3D patch.

The title of this video says it all. i played for over an hour but didn't progress the story at all. i did learn a little about how it plays and what moves i have, but i simply couldn't beat the boss i tried. the game's story is explained fairly quickly and it's a little light on details but offers enough. we know we're playing as a vessel, there's an upcoming threat we've been created to destroy. but we're not powerful enough because of those who came before who have not returned the power. so we have to go to them, defeat them, get the power back so we can defeat the incoming Malicious.

That sounds simple enough, but i tried one map twice and couldn't do it. after the first time, i went back and talked to our guide who revealed special moves. it's a shame that the game couldn't find a way to do that in a tutorial or in the real world as it feels like i wasted my time. the levels also have a time limit, too!

the game looks great, it sounds great, and it has some really cool touches like how it loads from the hub world to the world i played in. but it feels like it's a little short on detail and that might've been a choice made to get the game out on PSN quickly. i'll do some research before part 2 and hope that goes better.

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Academy Cup 2 - Achievement Run

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 Academy Cup 2! (2023/4/10 9:00～2023/4/17 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

This was a bad week. i didn't win a single game, nor did i get to the boss. i wasn't the only player having a bad week, a few i was up against also did poorly which meant i got into the top 3 a few times. i thought i understood the gimmick, that a space on the grid would rotate the color of a piece and i would need to make combos and getting a cross would be more points. but the fact that a piece would change color meant it took too much time waiting. it added an element of randomness and time wasting that i didn't enjoy. so not only was it a bad week, it wasn't a particularly fun week. a highlight is the amount of other players i played against, there were soo many!

This week i played against:

さい - Lvl 86

あいすのけしん - Lvl 65

チャッビー - Lvl 73

れ！いんいん＿TN＿ - Lvl 65

shun - Lvl 69

konimana - Lvl 62

HIROKUN - Lvl 74

ころん - Lvl 70

＾-＾ - Lvl 54

いもようかん - Lvl 66

マロン - Lvl 66

さいまる - Lvl 68

しらす - 52

shirasu - Lvl 70

FiIL - Lvl 52

ヤシ - Lvl 65

Cloud Monday - Dragon Quest Heroes - Part 1 - 45 Minutes Blighted By Streaming Issues

Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing the PS4 game Dragon Quest Heroes on the PlayStation Plus Streaming Service.

I wanted to try out a "musou" style game as part of Cloud Monday as i thought it would be an interesting challenge for a streaming service. often these games have many enemies on the screen at once with many FX and particles, basically many things that can make it difficult even for YouTube.

However, what i got in the 45 minutes and even a bit before i started recording was far worse than i expected. it has been many weeks since i had a PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming experience as bad as this, it was Assassin’s Creed: Origins last year, part 1 https://youtu.be/X5e1b-JPh70 and part 2 https://youtu.be/ZCjvWJLaZ-Q. there wasn't one specific issue, this video has all the issues. Stream tearing, macroblocking, resolution dips, to the point that a couple of times i got the warning message.

But, even tho there were streaming issues, playing the game wasn't too bad. the game's art style is simple, clear, and colorful which meant even when things got bad it was still mostly possible to work out what was happening. plus, the control scheme for this game means you can smash the buttons and often attack something. the streaming issues were a negative.

But, in this series we always play each game twice so come back for part two and we'll see if it's just as bad the second time. it'll be on a different day at a different time. for Assassin’s Creed: Origins, it didn't help. but for the other games i've played, it usually does help.