Online Saturday - Trackmania - Not Recommended For First Time Players

For today's Online Saturday video, i played the new-ish Trackmania on my launch model PS4.

Lets start with the title, i do not recommend this game for people who haven't played any of the previous Trackmania games. In the video i go so far as to say that i consider this game to be somewhat rude and maybe even insulting to first time players. If it was a new studios first try, i'd maybe be a little les harsh, but when it's Ubisoft and new game in a long running series it's hard to think of any excuse as to why a game from both working together could be soo inaccessible for new players, and in some respects downright lie to them. 

This version of Trackmania is a free to play game. i knew that going in. so everything i saw i expected to be all that was available to me. for example, i didn't see any track building stuff so i wasn't expecting it. but the truth is that it wasn't all for me. but the game doesn't tell you this right until your ready to click go. i do not appreciate this, the game is simply lying to me, teasing me.

This lack of information runs throughout the game. for most of this video, i had no idea what i was doing or why. i simply had to learn as i went cause the game spent no time trying to educate me. there wasn't even a tutorial! the game does have training but, as i show in the video, all it says is drive. it doesn't tell you the best times, there is no ghost data as an example, nor does it even explain why you're doing this challenge in the first place. what added to the frustration was that you can't restart either. you had to complete training for a chance to do it it again better. And you'd want to do it again as there are medals to win, tho at not point does the game ever say why you want them.

Game modes are equally uninformative, they're just names. you won't know what any of them do until you click on them. so i learnt that Royal mode was the game's Fall Guys equivalent. the big differences being you're in teams and you have no idea what challenges await ahead of you as your dumped onto a track and have to go. Even when you're playing this mode the game lies to you. when your teammate completes a section you can press O to with them to the next. Pressing ∆ restarts you to your last checkpoint. that is until it doesn't and it jumps you ahead without warning.

Another example of the game doing it's own thing was in Arcade Mode. i assumed this was simple arcade racing. But no, i was put into a team and our team was up against 3 other racers in their own team. That's easy to adjust to, but when the level started it was a warm-up. it gave no extra information so i had to assume it was to allow us drivers to give the lap a go before we raced. However, the warmup just stopped before i got to the end and i have no idea why. Why would the game let us practice if it wasn't going to let us practice?

The racing itself isn't that great either. the cars are skittish which means they're not satisfying to drive. there's not a huge sense of speed either. the connection of the car to the track is fairly non-existent, and graphically the whole thing felt too simple, under populated, and rather bland.

So even as a racing game, it's really hard to recommend. there are other issues shown in this video, like my initial inability to find the garage or workout to choose a skin for my car there. So what does this game have going for it. well, it's Trackmania. the wacky track designs that you can race on is Trackmania. whilst they're there, and other prominent games don't have them, it's the sole reason i can think of for anyone to play this game. but other than that one reason, i just can't recommend this game. i deleted it after recording this video.

Mobile Friday - Super Cat Tales: PAWS - Finishing The First World

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Super Cat Tales: PAWS from NEUTRONIZED. I played this game on an iPhone 14 Pro so i also had a look at whether or not the Dynamic Island was an issue.

This is the third game in the series and i hadn't played any of them before today. i don't think it's important to have played any of the other games. its possible that those games may have added some back story for the characters and the world, but for the first world that i played through it didn't seem to be an issue.

the game doesn't feel like the first in the series. it's very polished and refined, and when you combine it with the graphic style and the bright bold colors, it makes an impressive first impression. So much so, that through the hour of playing i could only come up with some small critiques where and there. that was until i came across a bug. for some reason an advert played after a level had started and once i was able to close it and get back to the game, it was clear that the game had taken my last command of pressing right and was stuck on it. i could press left and the character would briefly go left but as soon as i let go the character went back to going right even though i wasn't touching the screen. what was more unfortunate was that this part of the level required me to run on a treadmill like device and it just wouldn't activate. i had to kill the character and restart that level.

The adverts were really the only issue i had with the game. they're soo bad it almost felt rude and even though the game is as great as it is, the adverts can't be ignored as they are part of the experience. Super Cat Tales: PAWS is a free to play game and i have no issue with there being adverts. but the way they're handled feels so rough and sloppy compared to the refined game. the first advert came out of nowhere and didn't ask for permission to play or at least give me a heads up. the game is played horizontally and yet most adverts were vertical, so they were tiny on the screen. and even the horizontal adverts didn't fill the screen so there were big black bars either side. it's a shame they couldn't so something like play an advert in-game, like in the sign they use to advertise paying for the game to remove ads.

The controls are simple, there are two buttons; left and right. each time they add a technique to what those two buttons can do, they do it brilliantly with a simple graphic showing how it's done. that's something i can really appreciate and it really makes the game accessible. something else that makes the game accessible is that your character can, mostly, take a hit. the cats run into enemies to defeat them, unless they have a pointy end, but if you make a mistake and walk into them it's OK as the enemy will have taken a hit and you won't have died.

Even tho i only played through the first world, the variety of levels was quite impressive. it didn't feel samey nor did they feel too difficult. with a control scheme as simple as this game has, the levels feel like they take full advantage of it with their layout but with the art direction and colors, the levels also were clear to navigate and i always knew where to go. there is one exception and that's the home base. i feel that maybe a little tutorial is needed to act as an introduction to show what's where. it felt more luck than design that i managed to complete that section.

Super Cat Tales: PAWS is a game i do recommend people play. it's great there's no additional download when you start the game, but people need to be aware that the game will throw video ads at you. there weren't as many as last weeks Neodori Forever, https://youtu.be/peXQekqMcTM, but there was one that did kinda break the game. it only happened once so for now i'll assume it's a bug. Super Cat Tales: PAWS gameplay and design and art and music and characters, i feel, are well worth it. But that does mean this maybe a wifi only game for some people.

Backlog Conquering - Foul Play - Part 2 - Finishing the First Play

Welcome to Backlog Conquering.

This is part 2 of playing Foul Play on PlayStation 4.

In part 1, https://youtu.be/fLzEjnrlZks, i started playing through the first play and after 50 minutes i had finished Act 3. so the first thing to do today was to try and finish it. thankfully i did and i even got to Act 3 of the second play.

The game's charm, art style, and turn of the last century English is still fun. But the brawling sections just feel like they're a bit too long. it's not that they're difficult, it just feels like they're taking too much time to get through. i'm enjoying the story and how it's told, so for me i'd rather be spending my time doing that. the Brawling sections just feel like they're padding and not really adding much to what i'm finding interesting.

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - June Bride Cup 1 - 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 June Bride Cup 1! (2023/6/12 9:00～2023/6/19 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

After winning the first game, i thought this was going to be an easy cup. but it turned out to be much more difficult. i had some bad luck with combos but there were times that i forgot about making the "+" shape and tried to make as many combos as i could. this was a mistake as the "+" was simply soo much more powerful. so this week, i admit it's somewhat my own fault for some of my poor games. sometimes the other players also had a bad match and sometimes the matches were really close. this week, the highs were high and the lows were low, but thankfully i got to play against many players so it was fun.

This week i played against:

ASADESU - Rank 46

ノガ - Rank 67

とめ - Rank 67

ほれぁ～ - Rank 75

さい - Rank 88

りょうじ - Rank 58

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.