Mobile Friday - Tomb Raider Reloaded - A Different Take on a Tomb Raider Game

Mobile Friday this week is Tomb Raider Reloaded, a recently released game that's out across iOS and Android stores from developers Emerald City Games and publishers CDE Entertainment.

I'll admit that this is the most of a Tomb Raider game i've played since the first one came out on PS1! it's a series that i've never really played, and i won't say which it is but it's not the biggest series i've never played/played much of. So going in, i didn't particularly care about how they treated the serie's past.

I think you'll see throughout the video that the game never really grabs me. for the most part, in the 50 minutes i played, the gameplay was mostly solid. i say mostly because controlling it still felt a little off. i thought that maybe there was some lag or some issue with where you were controlling the game on screen. for example, on screen you can see where i initially touched to move. but my finger would be much further away from that spot by the end. the game also did the thing of saying we could buy something for it with no context as to what any of it meant. i don't mind free to play games advertising their own items/bundles/deals/etc... But what i do mind is when they offer something that the game itself hasn't explained/tutorialized or even been shown in the game.

It's a great looking game. i don't mind the art direction they went with for Lara's design. the music is fairly minimum and didn't grab me that much, but i did like the voice acting. it's just that i was getting bored by the end. we played through soo many stages in this video and they were mostly the same premise. we also did a couple of boss battles and they felt like bullet sponges. the game feels slow. in one way that makes our character feel more human whilst those around maybe a tad faster. but it also slows down the pace of the game that kinda goes agains the games own design. the stages are small, they feel like they should be completed fast. but Lara moves a little slow, the enemies take more bullets than you think they'd need, and the lack of rumble disconnects the player from the action in an unexciting way.

Backlog Conquering - Malicious - Part 3 - 2 More Bosses Defeated

Welcome to Backlog Conquering.

Today's video is part 3 of playing Malicious on PS3.

With part 2, https://youtu.be/pps7CfcmAow, being such a success i came into part 3 with some confidence. i didn't try that stage that has bested me across two videos so far, so that meant i would be trying two new stages. and like part 2, i managed to defeat those bosses!

It was interesting facing off against them as they were strangely similar. the first boss could fly and was fairly fast. the second boss could climb and jump and was even faster. and yet, the boss fight was completely different between them. the key difference was the stage itself. one stage was very open, the other was narrow and vertical. this meant it felt like the stages were just as much as part of the boss as the boss was itself.

This means, going into part 4, there is just one boss left. the same boss i've not yet managed to defeat. and whilst i've been getting stronger after each boss and getting new moves and abilities, the game keeps telling me that my opponents have also gotten stronger. so i go into part 4 not completely sure i'll be able to defeat the final boss at my first attempt.

Backlog Conquering - Malicious - Part 2 - 2 Bosses Defeated

Welcome to Backlog Conquering.

Today's video is part 2 of playing Malicious on PS3.

The first part of playing Malicious, https://youtu.be/ButMJkFE_P4, didn't go well. i played for nearly an hour but i was unable to beat the one boss i tried. I began to think that today would be the same, especially as i couldn't remember what some of the controls were, more specifically the power attacks and healing.

But with a bit of luck in randomly pressing buttons to find out what they did, i found i could change weapons. i never discovered this in part 1 and finding this in part 2 changed everything. couple this discovery with myself getting into the groove on how to play this game, part 2 became a lot more fun than part 1.

The game continues to look great and we got to see two new locations. the controls are still a little off, and we ended up needing to use more buttons too! but now there was hope and a drive to go forward. so there will be a part 3 and i will try out some other locations.

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Apollo Cup - 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 Apollo Cup! (2023/4/17 9:00～2023/4/24 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

This was a better week. i got a lot of top 3 finishes. but yet again i was unable to beat the boss. the gimmick was clear, get a big combo. but that also meant that it felt like this cup was done to luck more than skill. only once or twice did it look like my opponents beat the boss and often they scored similar to me. So whilst it felt easy, it also feels like i didn't quite get it right.

This week i played against:

たくむ（まやごはん）- Lvl 59

くうたん - Lvl 59

KrisKros - 49

Lee - Lvl 60

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.