Hello and welcome to Part 10 of the new series here on QTE Gamers!
The goal with Stories on Tuesday is to play games with a heavy focus on their story. this can be Visual Novel games, like today's game, or it can be something more episodic. For me, it's a style of game i've not really explored. i have several games across a few platforms that i haven't played but i bought them because i wanted to. So now the time has come for me to experience these sorts of games.
Our debut game is Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz. I have the game on PS4 via DISC but i'll be playing the PlayStation Plus version of the game that's been downloaded to my PlayStation 4.
In this part we continue looking at our Grandfathers daily activities and try to put together his final moments on the day he died. We ended Part 9, https://youtu.be/8RUeZNVCapo, realizing one of his coats was missing so that was the main goal at the start of this video. But as we ended up at the site of his murder we ended up finding something far more shocking that had reverberations between several of the people we had met since we came to New York. We headed back to Silver Snow to follow this new lead and what we uncovered points to certain individuals and possible danger ahead.
If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, head over to Ko-Fi. there, you can subscribe to the "Stories on Ko-Fi" which will let you watch all the stories. This tier will always be one week ahead of the free video on QTE Gamer's YouTube Channel. Or, of course, you can head to https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers and donate via PayPal.
This week's Cloud Monday video is part2 of playing the PS4 version of The Wild at Heart, from developers Moonlight Kids, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
Part 1, https://youtu.be/00DYIf7y46g, was one of the smoothest experiences i've had with a game on this service. that's not just in terms of how well it's suited for being streamed from the cloud but also because of how well the streaming went. Part 2 wasn't as smooth, but it didn't really take away from my enjoyment with the game.
throughout the video i had small little nitpicks and suggestions on how things could've gone a little better, but in the grand scheme of things they're not that important. it's just because a lot of the game is so good, it really it just the small things that are noticeable.
for the majority of this video there were no issues with the streaming. there were only a couple of moments of stream tearing, where grey would appear on the screen, and a connection warning. I live in an apartment building so these issues usually appear when streaming a PS4 game. what's important is that i wasn't concerned nor worried because of how frequent the game auto saves. i knew that if there was a disconnection, i wouldn't have lost much progress if any.
Personally, i do think my choice in part 1 of setting the difficulty to "Wanderer" was the correct choice for me. i'm enjoying playing for the story, one that i don't know where it's going to go. i feel that "Adventurer" might've pulled focus away from the story and exploring and made the game into something else. But it's great that such a choice exists. if you played The Wild at Heart at one of the difficulty levels, trying out the other via streaming the game is a great option to have as you get to try it without having to download it.
So The Wild at Heart is definitely a highly recommended game from the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service.
This month's Splatoon 3 Salmon Run item is the El Rey Calamar. The goal for this video was to get 1,00 points. that way i get the item twice and have a go at defeating a King Salmonoid.
This #Salmonrun might be the best i've ever been a part of. it took just 5 games to get the 1,000 points and out of those 5 my team mates and I managed to clear 4 of the 5, with that other one being a loss in the third round. We faced a King Salmonoid but could only get it to half health. whilst it's not beating it, it's definitely one of our best attempts.
For Online Saturday this week i wanted to try Predecessor. Other than Pokemon Unite, i've not really played a MOBA before so i saw this as an opportunity to try one out. i got it on PlayStation 4 but i didn't know that this is an early access game. the PSN Store page and the games own home screen didn't highlight this. it wasn't until i saw in-game it say "Early Access In Development" that i knew this. Communication is one of the issues i had with this game.
Don't get me wrong, there is a tutorial and as this is my first MOBA i very much welcomed it. but it finished way too soon. it mentioned the basics, but then when it came to the real thing i had soo many more questions that the game never even tried to answer. I know it's early access, but surely they would've focused on the How To Play part.
Even tho it's early access, the game is out and there's things to buy for it so as far as i'm concerned it's open to criticism. Graphically, i have no issues with it. the game looks great, the world and character designs are varied and also look great. But the performance on #PS4 was all over the place. there were times when i noticed no issues, there were too many other times where there was a noticeable stutter and on occasion that stutter could be measured in seconds. I'm not sure if the lack of BGM is due to a bug, the game not having any, or just my recording set-up.
The biggest issue i had was a repeat of the bug that cropped up in Hawked, https://youtu.be/T9KZofqgVFo. In that game, the X and O buttons did the same thing or nothing, this meant i couldn't even start a game as the in-game graphics and in-game controls didn't match up and did nothing. In Predecessor, this same issue happened in the store. i could get into the store, but i couldn't get out unless i hit start to get the options up. i could exit the options and be returned to gameplay. this was the only time i spotted this bug, and like Hawked i will message the developers but even the latest Hawked patches didn't fix the issue, hence why i haven't gone back to do another video.
The lack of communication also affected what i could play. seemingly, all i could do was play against the Ai. i tried switching to different regions, but to no avail. If the servers are only up at specific times, then the game itself needs to message that. i shouldn't have to go hunting for that information myself, especially for a situation like this where i played this game on a whim.
Actually playing it wasn't fun. so much of the UI around the screen just wasn't communicated to me so i ignored it. when i tried to use it, it did nothing that i could work out. the first game i tried was essentially a stalemate and not fun. i tried a second game with a different character and had a much better time and my Ai Team mates and i did win that game. but it didn't feel that satisfying.
Strangely, what i was most satisfied with were the controls when using a gun. The weight of the character, the way they moved, the speed of the camera, it all worked well together in such a way i was reminded of #Killzone. If the developers had taken this engine and built a arena shooter and still had many different character classes, i would be far more excited to play that than this MOBA. The speed of the character was great for moving around, but getting around the map was far to slow. Whether that's getting from your core to the enemy, respawning, or teleporting back to your core, it all felt to slow and ruined the momentum of the game and my team's drive to the finish.
There are a number of smaller complaints about Predecessor, but ultimately it boils down to me saying that i wouldn't recommend this game for anyone who hasn't played a MOBA before. maybe gamers who understand the style of game will enjoy it, understand it, and be able to get the most from it. But for me, it's lessened my enthusiasm for trying MOBA's in the future and even tho it's free, i can't really recommend it for those unfamiliar with MOBAs.
For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Oops Dragon. I Played this on my iPhone 14 Pro.
There are two reasons why i decided to try this game. the first is the name. it's fun and ridiculous. I was very curious how they were going to refer back to the name in the game. Honestly, in this video i don't think i get an answer about where the name comes into it other than there are dragons to fight. The second reason why i wanted to play this was to see if this really is a game or if it's one of those "scam" games that are mostly adverts with some gaming inbetween. Oops Dragon's iOS page doesn't have any in-game screenshots, it's just artwork, so i didn't even know how it'd look. at least with this, i can say that yes it's a game.
It's not the most complicated game, but what's important is that they got the basics right and have a great platform to build from. there's a decent, if a little slow, tutorial that showed everything we needed to do. The game's idle mechanic didn't get in the way of gameplay and whilst i quickly understood the loop of the game, it took around 40 minutes before the grind, and the need to turn it off and wait, emerged. Another great feature about this game is that there are no intrusive ads. the game has some self promotion, which i wasn't too concerned with, but other than that there were no ads in this video. the game gave us the choice to watch them, and would've rewarded us with in-game benefits if we did.
Oops Dragon is a game that can be played on handed. coupled with no ads and no additional downloads, Oops Dragon comes across as a great choice for commuters or casual players. there are some "auto" features, too. the main aim of the game is to collect vases, break the vases, and equip better equipment. in doing so, we're able to progress further into the game, level up, and get better vases. We're able to automate most of this. the game plays itself in the background, we can automate vases being destroyed, attacks are automated to. what's left for us is choosing whether to equip the better equipment and to level up stuff.
Oops Dragon does have a couple of minor issues that don't really get in the way, but stick out mostly because of how solid the rest of it is. The one that annoyed me the most was the lack of a countdown timer for when things recharge, or an in-game tutorial explaining how to recharge them if it's not a countdown timer. The other is the music and sound effects. each area as a different song, but it's fairly obvious when it loops. and the sound effect of breaking a vase was grating so when i found out how to turn it off, i did. the tutorial could've pointed us towards the settings as it's not in the most obvious place.
Oops Dragon is certainly one of the better idle games i've played this year and a solid choice for younger gamers, casual gamers, but i would say it's got enough depth for more "seasoned" gamers too. I do recommend downloading it and trying it out.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Umbraclaw, developed by Inti Creates Studios.
Whilst i wasn't great at playing at this demo, i actually had a great time with it. Umbraclaw doesn't say how big this demo is and i don't reach the end of it during this video. It feels like it is the actual start of the game.
The most noticeable thing about Umbraclaw is the art style and design of the world. I played the Switch version and it looked great and played great, too. it's out on PS5 and i imagine it will look impressive in 4K. What was key is that the game's style doesn't get in the way. there are a lot of colors on screen, but the details are still there and everything from the platforms to the enemies are clear and easy to spot.
The demo starts with Chapter 0, which acts mostly as a tutorial before the main aim of the game starts with Chapter 1. the tutorial isn't the best, it does offer pictures to try and show what to press and what happens, but it comes across as the game telling you everything at once. With there being a Chapter 0, i feel like the tutorial could've been spaced out better. It wasn't until the end of the demo that i remembered there's an upgrade mechanic as the game also doesn't seem to have reminders.
The upgrade mechanic seemed to be the solution to the small gripes i had with the controls. for example, i felt like the basic attack's reach was a little shorter than i wanted. The first upgrade can help fix that. Umbraclaw has a few other mechanics that really set it apart from other games. the biggest is how death works in the game because you're already dead. So when you "die" in the game, it's not game over. You're a cat, so you have 8 more "lives" left. you respawn stronger than before with new powers. There are many of these different powers, each offering something either to attack, to defend, to evade, or to platform. The game is open in saying that you can die and get a bunch of these powers and that's a strategy. But there's yet another twist. each time before you respawn, you have a choice. use up "hope", the main currency in the game, to stay the cat you are or become more feral and get stronger. Not just in attack power, but also in the amount of hits you can take. But as you're bigger, certain non critical areas of the map are now off limits.
There is another, more feral, stage. but the trade off is that you remember less and less of your previous life and the reason why you're making this journey. For me, i found it useful to go feral because of how much health it grants you. Umbraclaw isn't too hard, but it has a decent challenge as a cat because it's a one hit KO. The game does let you revert back to a cat at certain points, like at the end of a stage. there is a sense of not only strategy about all this, but also replay-ability and challenge.
The other game mechanic of note is one that i'm just as impressed by. All too often i come across games where the game is gated by ability. if you're not good enough, then you can't access the whole game. But with Umbraclaw, not only are there 3 game modes you can choose from before you play, the game will notice that you're struggling in a section and offer to lower the difficulty to the easiest one so that you can make it through and continue the game. I personally would play this game on the easiest setting so i can enjoy the combat, the story, the world, and the music. but for the demo i tried it on the default setting, akin to medium. and in this video i did get stuck and took the game up on it's offer to switch it to easy so i can get to the end and continue the game.
This demo for Umbraclaw isn't the best in some ways because it fails to communicate what it is. i don't even know if my save file will carry over to the main game. But it is super useful because i'm very interested in the game now i've played it and i highly recommend the demo for anyone who is interested just from looking at the screenshots like i was. Umbraclaw is more than a puzzle platformer, there are hints and influences from other genres and games in this. The important thing is that it all feel's cohesive and i'm genuinely interested in it now i've played the demo.
It's time for a new backlog conquering game and this time i've started the PlayStation 4 version of Deponia, a game developed by Daedalic Entertainment that is out on many other platforms.
I have had this game, as well as others in the Deponia series for a while now but i haven't started any of them. I don't know what i expected from the game but i think it's clear from the video that i wasn't expecting a point and click adventure game. it's a style of game i rarely play as i don't often do well with them.
I feel like this first part is just an hour of me struggling over and over again. i did enjoy many aspects of the game and it's humour worked well. I don't think that i quite grasped the game's logic during this part. I know it's an old game that originally came out on PC and there are aspects of it's design that feel old or like it was designed for an audience used to this style of game as there are few concessions to help newcomers like myself.
I think i wil do a part 2, but i'm not quite sure as yet.
