Cloud Monday - Ghostbusters: The Video Game - Remastered - Part 2 - A Better Streaming Experience

Today's Cloud Monday is part 2 of playing Ghostbusters: The Video Game - Remastered on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service.

In part 1, https://youtu.be/-nblypjQEv8, there were many instances of streaming issues. most were small and didn't affect gameplay, but they were distracting and detracted from the overall presentation of the game. But, in this series i play the games twice to check what an average playing experience is like. and for Ghostbusters: The Videogame Remastered this was a good thing as i felt that it was better, more consistent, this time round than part 1.

I didn't make much progress into the story, i think when i played this when it first came out i played it on an easier difficult level to focus more on the story being told rather than the gameplay. i don't remember it being this difficult. the game has thrown a lot of enemies at us so far. as there wasn't a let up in the action, i paused the game to do some upgrades which genuinely felt like they mattered. i feel like i was close to the next big bit of story, rather than the action to action that had been happening recently, but it was feeling a little clunky by today's standards. it felt like there was more fights than needed and sometimes more talking than what's needed. i wonder if it was padded out a little to make it a longer game.

Streaming from PlayStation Plus Premium wasn't faultless, but it was noticeably better than in part 1. the biggest difference between the two videos is the frequency of the issues. both had them, but they were far more frequent in part 1. We did get a warning in part 2 about the connection, but even then i didn't notice a big drop in resolution or issues like Macroblocking. the issues today was far less of an issue and not that distracting.

I feel that Ghostbusters: The Video Game - Remastered is a fine game to stream. when there are issues they don't seem to get in the way of gameplay. but due to the game's graphical style, it is often noticeable when they occur. 

Switch Funday - River City Ransom - My First Time

Welcome to Switch Funday!

For many years i've heard countless people on websites, podcasts, YouTube, etc talk positively about River City Ransom and it's series of games. i've never owned any of them nor played any of them but when i was browsing the Nintendo Switch Online platform apps i saw it. so i decided to play River City Ransom for the first time via the NES version.

All i knew going in, from what i had heard over the years, was that the music and graphics were great and that it played well. after playing it, i can say that they were right. the music was fun and a couple of tunes sounded familiar. the story was simple, to the point,  but  perhaps a tad light. tho i admit i didn't complete the game so there could be more to it. but what was there was enough to explain what we were doing and to get me to move forward.

the typical side scroller issue of not being in the correct row as your opponent was frustrating, but much newer games have also failed to completely fix this so i didn't hold it against River City Ransom but i felt that it's worth mentioning. the game's checkpointing, tho, is worth talking about as it's one of the reasons i stopped a little earlier than planned. when i was fighting close to the shops, it putting me back to the last of the shops made sense. but as i moved further and further away, it kept bringing me back to the shops which meant a longer and longer walk/run to where i was. and with enemies respawning, there was no save area. at the end, i just ran and avoided all of them.

River City Ransom being on this service means that i could rewind gameplay to before i died. and whilst that's certainly an option, the lack of recovery, or seeming lack of it, whilst i was away from the shops also was frustrating. i didn't use the rewind feature because there was no point. if there was no way to get more health, then rewinding was pointless as i was just going to die anyway. i thought that it would be quicker to just dies and respawn than try to rewind my way through the game.

I don't know if was about to reach a new respawn point, and yes the game is old and the first of it's series, so whilst what i said above did become frustrating, it didn't break the game for me. i happily created a suspend point and i intend on coming back to the game in the future. if you have this game as part of Nintendo Switch Online, then i do agree with what people have being saying for a long time now, it's well worth playing and i did enjoy myself.

Online Saturday - Splatoon 3 - June's Big Run Event

Welcome to Online Saturday!

This weekend is June's Big Run Event in Splatoon 3. This event has the Salmonids attacking the Undertow Spillway map. this is the biggest difference between the regular Salmon Run mode and Big Run. Salmon Run has it's own set of maps whereas Big Run uses maps from the online mutliplayer. 

Today's video is a little longer than usual as i had two attempts at beating the King Salmonoid. both times tho ended up in failure. Out of the 11 Big Run matches i did, i only managed to complete 3 of them. My high score from the event is 68 Golden Eggs. trying to get the most Golden Eggs is the goal of Big Run. at the end, my high score of 68 will go up against the high scores of everyone else who tried it.

Mobile Friday - Neodori Forever - When Style Comes Before The Player Experience

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Neodori Forever from Strobetano. when i recorded the video i didn't know that the game was also out on Switch and PlayStation 4.

It's hard not to go into this game thinking you'd be getting an experience similar to Ridge Racer or Out Run, basically one of those arcade style racers from the late Mega Drive early PlayStation era, and i admit i thought that was what i was going to get. it feels like that, to a certain extent, was the goal of the developers. the graphic style, the art style, the play style, and the music all work together to create a game which pulls on nostalgia but in a modern way.

You can hear it in my voice as i play the game how my excitement and enthusiasm dwindles and becomes more frustration with it. it has all the things i mentioned above but it seemingly completely drops the ball when it comes to the players experience playing the game. right from the off it drops you into a race with no tutorial or no option to practice in a time attack mode. there are other instances of it not providing information. for example, i still have no idea why i was collecting coins. i have no idea what the police did. and it took too long for me to work out that the fuel canisters were actually replenishing my health.

It's hard to think of what else the game did right. the only other highlight i can think off is how, in the settings, there was an option to resize the UI. i tried it out and found what i thought worked. but then throughout the rest of the game the Dynamic Island and the curved corners of my phone's screen got in the way. thankfully it rarely was anything critical or important, but it just highlights how the developers had a goal and implemented it but in such a way that it didn't fully take into account the player experience.

It's worth mentioning that there were no extra downloads starting the game for the first time. but i can't recommend this game for those on data plans due to the excessive amounts of adverts.  i recorded around 50 minutes of gameplay, but ended up having to cut nearly 7 minutes of it due to the adverts in the game. i think in all there were 18 adverts. each time, the game never asked my permission to play them. there was no warning either. there's no health system, there's no energy system, there's no countdown. the adverts just ended up playing after every race attempt, win or lose. imagine playing the game for 45 minutes 5 days a week. lets say that's 15 unskippable adverts. i dare to think how much data 75 video adverts would use up.

So, for the second week running, i can't recommend getting this game on iPhone. it's just a bad experience for the player. However, getting this on console could be much better as there wouldn't be soo many intrusive adverts, each with a different quality, length, and even aspect ratio. plus, console versions would be better adapted for controllers and offer rumble. as for me, i have deleted the game.

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Miya 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 Miya Cup! (2023/6/5 9:00～2023/6/12 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

This is up there as one of the shortest videos for this series. There were no connection issues, battles finished quickly, and there were no pauses. it's definitely one of the smoother cup runs i've done. in the 6 games i played, there were 3 wins, two 2nds, and a third place finish.

I mostly understood the gimmick this week, but i didn't manage to beat the boss. it looked like most the people i played with didn't beat it either. later on, you'll see i start adding more "L" shape matches but i don't think i quite grasped which colors gave me the bonus damage.

This week i played against:

ルーチア - Rank 65

しろねこ - Rank 62

キグナス - Rank 64

ブロ:BR - Rank 67

ふーー - Rank 78

Cloud Monday - Ghostbusters: The Video Game - Remastered - Part 1 - Control Lag And Other Things

Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing Ghostbusters: The Video Game - Remastered on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service.

This  is a game that i have played before when it came out before in 2009. i don't remember what platform i played it on, maybe it was Xbox 360. but i haven't played it since. Ghostbusters: The Video Game - Remastered is a new game to the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service and i was curious and excited to go back to it after all these years. the length of this video is an example of how much i was enjoying it, but also how the start of the game just flows from scenario to scenario.

But it wasn't a smooth experience. quite quickly i noticed how much like a PS3 "Pro" game it looked like, and later on i'd wonder if the video had some Ai upscaling done to it because there was some sort of fuzziness to the details. Another thing that i noticed quickly were the controls. there was some sort of lag to them. in the video i stop near the beginning so you can hear when i press a button and when action happens on screen. it's enough to make my timing feel off and for it to affect gameplay later when we unlock the dodge.

As for the streaming, from the beginning, on the station, we have a couple of instances of macroblocking and zebra striping near the bottom of the screen. the striping doesn't happen again but there are a few instances of macroblocking throughout the video. there are numerous occasions when stream tearing happens and parts of the have grey on them. i don't think i noticed any resolutions drops, but there were some other instances were other things seemed to be happening that weren't related to the game itself. it's hard to describe as they were fleeting, but sometimes it looked like wrong colors, other times it seemed a combination of a tear and macroblocking. i don't know if the laggy controls are another symptom.

unfortunately, the video decided to die when i went to the speed test. thankfully the audio remained.

Switch Funday - Splatoon 3 - Playing The First Challenge Event

Welcome to Switch Funday.

I teased it in yesterday's video, https://youtu.be/RRILIgS2XWU, that i was going to try and do the first Challenge Event. i managed to get in 10 battles, winning 4, before i ran out of time.

What you'll hear throughout a lot of this video is confusion as i try to work out how this Challenge Event works. whilst the new weapons were all clearly shown, i feel like what this event is wasn't explained clearly enough. i feel that by the end, i got somewhat of a grasp of what this was all about. i'll try to explain it, but feel free to add in the comments if i make a mistake.

For the first Challenge Event, the challenge was simply playing the two new levels that were added in patch 4.0.0 (the Sizzle Update). a restriction was that only the primary ability of your gear would be activated (the first pin on your gear, not any other pins). A level/score for your ability is created over 5 matches. for me that was 808. any wins after that increases that score, whilst losses reduce that score. (i tried to show this a couple of times in this video). the "winners" are those who rank with the highest scores. you could play any of the three time slots, your highest score across all three would be your final score.

Looking at the Splatoon 3 Wiki, https://splatoonwiki.org/wiki/Challenge, it seems there's another challenge on June 6th so i may have a go trying to get in at least 1 time slot. the following other Challenges are listed but i don't know if i'll have time to try them all. but the challenge on 15th June sounds fun as i'll get to try out randomly selected weapons.