Demo Play Thursday - Epic Mickey: Rebrushed On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Epic Mickey: Rebrushed from Purple Lamp.

Even tho i had a Wii, i never actually played it before. back then, whilst the idea was very popular there were many complaints about the execution and i wasn't into Disney enough to give it a go. But with this "Rebrushed" version, i was curious if they could not only make it look modern but also feel modern.

One thing i bring up a few times throughout this video is how slow it feels whilst Mickey looks to be going so fast. it must be that the levels are big and Mickey is small, but even when running there's no great sense of speed. i would go so far as to say that the running speed is closer to what i expected the walking speed to be. The only other minor complain i have about how it feels to play it is that sometimes it was difficult to judge jumps. once or twice it was because the camera got in the way, but other times it was a mix of the lack of speed and difficult to spot shadows making it hard to judge 3D space.

there is a lot of other things that this did well. graphically, i was impressed. it doesn't feel like the Wii version but HD, it looks like they went through the game and re-did a lot, if not all, of the assets. the controls are good, the music is good, and everything is nice and clear. If this was the version that came out originally, i probably would've tried it.

But i still came away with many questions about this game. i feel like the game doesn't talk about the consequences of our actions. as i say in the video, there's a disconnect with it being a Disney game and us having the ability to destroy the world. it feels wrong, it feels like there's a morality system at work that the game doesn't reveal. i felt like i was second guessing myself, wondering if i should be creating, that in doing so i would get a better ending. the same applies to the enemies. we can destroy them or make them our friends. then the demo introduced a guardian system that gives us one use guardians, but we need to create or destroy to get a guardian of that type. It honestly felt like the game was adding too many mechanics to the game when all i was interested in was the story.

So whilst it is an effective demo, after playing it i'm not interested in getting Epic Mickey: Rebrushed. i do recommend people try it. but for me, it just didn't do enough to answer all the questions i had about the game.

Stories on Tuesday - Loopers - Part 1

This Stories on Tuesday game is Loopers, also known as ルーパーズ in Japan. i'm playing the Switch version of it, but there are other versions. It was developed by Key and this version was published by Prototype. I'm playing the Japanese version of the game so the audio is in Japanese but there are English Subtitles.

In this Part 1, i included the developer and publisher logos at the start of the game and i also included the music video. In this part i also did nothing with the story. it's just playing out and for nearly the first hour i did nothing but watch. 

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. so far this is the fourth game in this series and the fourth different way of telling a story. but i hope in Part 2 to play more of a role. But Part 1 was good so far. i am hooked into the story and eager to see where it goes next.

Switch Funday - Splatoon 3 - Grand Festival Weekend Splatfest Tricolor Battle – 15 Battles 11 Wins!

Welcome to Switch Funday.

It's day two of The Grand Festival Splatfest so today's video focuses on the Tricolor game mode in Splatoon 3. 

In yesterday's video, https://youtu.be/oYNfVZFVY4I, i never played against any Team Past teams so i was unsure what would happen today. So i was very happy at the end of this video that all 15 matches were up against Team Past and Team Present. it also went very well today, my team mates and I managed to win 11 of the 15 games we played.

In recent videos i had used weapons that fit a theme. today i had no theme, just weapons that i thought would do well on the new Grand Festival Stage Map. So in this video i used the #Bloblobber, Inline Tri-Stringer, and N-Zap '89.

Online Saturday - Splatoon 3 - Grand Festival Weekend Splatfest Battle – 15 Battles 4 Wins!

Welcome to Online Saturday!

This weekend is a Splatfest weekend in Splatoon 3 on Switch. the question being asked this Splatfest is "Which is the most important to you? Past, Present, or Future?"

I picked Team Future and played 15 matches for them. My team mates and I never played against any Team Past, all 15 games were against Team Present. it was a very competitive Turf War with some close games, but we only managed to win 4 of the 15 battles we did.

I was in the mood to use Blaster weapons so today i spent 5 games each with the Custom Blaster, the Custom Range Blaster, and the S-Blast '92.

Mobile Friday - The Elder Scrolls: Castles - I Can't Recommend It

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out The Elder Scrolls: Castles, from #Bethesda, on my #iPhone 14 Pro. 

After spending an hour with it, i can't recommend it. i'm just as surprised as you are. the game has been in development for such a long time that it's surprising that it's launched in a somewhat broken state. when zooming in and out in a mobile game causes soo many issues, it's not good.

But it's not just that. it's design feels old, if not actually designed with mobile in mind. the best example of that is just how poor the tutorial is. more than once it would mention something and not even tell me where it is or how to do the thing it wants me to do. Tutorials in modern big mobile games tend to be a little more hand holdy, it's a smart way to slowly introduce game mechanics to the player but also it slows the player down so that the "grind", if there is any, is delayed or hidden. in The Elder Scrolls: Castles, i felt like i was grinding away fairly early on. and there are whole important aspects of the game that are never explained, like the whole day night cycle.

And talking about the design, it feels like the game was made by two teams who didn't talk to each other. one team did the mechanics whilst the other did the story beats. but in the hour i played, neither worked well together. for example, in these sort of games you need characters working to produce goods. but The Elder Scrolls: Castles would continuously bring up things it wants us to do that took characters away from making the goods the game had also told us we need. the most frustrating of these was getting a shrine we could get married at, but to do so meant removing one or two characters from making stuff. later, we got the ability to make a bed so that those characters could have a child. but again, you have to remove those characters from working. up to this point, i had only gained 2 or 3 extra characters which wasn't enough to fully populate all the jobs i need to survive. But that's not all as the game had also introduced the ability to sell stuff to earn money, which i needed to do, so i not only needed goods to survive but also goods to sell, and then there's the goods i need to help villagers around the castle. it ended up with the game wanting me to do two different things that weren't compatible with each other.

With the content being so thin that the grind started early and the game mechanics fighting each other, i'd hope that the story at least would be what saved The Elder Scrolls: Castles. But i'd argue there's little to no story. apart from our father at the start of the game, there was no significant story element for the rest of the hour. there were small interactions that helped talk about what was happening outside the castle, which we couldn't see happen, but other than that i felt like the game had no story to tell.

Even the graphical style of the game felt old. it looks fine, but it doesn't wow me. the style they've gone with doesn't look great zoomed out and has little to no character until you zoom in. The castle itself looks odd, especially the areas yet to be built on.

It feels like Bethesda tried to shoe horn The Elder Scrolls into a "Fallout Shelter" style of game and in doing so they lost what makes an Elder Scrolls game fun to play and what makes a Fallout Shelter game interesting and unpredictable. what we have here is a bad Fallout Shelter style game that's also a bad Elder Scrolls game.

Version ? Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Eden Genesis On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the #PlayStation4 version of Eden Genesis from Aeternum Game Studios, @AeternaNoctis. 

Backlog Conquering - Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut - Part 6 - The Final Mission

Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.

Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut is a game from Born Ready Games that i've had on PS4 since it game out on the PSN. 

In Part 5, https://youtu.be/Y9rd6TzgSv8, i attempted the final mission. we ran out of time and failed it. i thought i got close to beating it then, but after trying it again in Part 6, i was a second or two from beating it in Part 5. I did complete Mission 13 and beat the game, but it looks like i got a "bad" ending. i haven't looked up what i needed for the better ending, but the trophy hints that the outcome of Earth is important. 

This Director's Cut version of Strike Suit Zero comes with some extra missions that aim to tell stories from the war. i tried the first two. the first one was simple and over in 13 minutes. it was a scenario and whilst it told the story of an individual, it didn't really tie-in with the story i had just finished well enough. this section felt tacked on and not really fleshed out. the second mission gave us the opportunity to do better than what actually happened in the war and that felt a little weird when compared to Part 1. it almost felt like Mission 2 was from a "What If" game mode. i didn't beat it and it didn't make me want to try again so this is probably the end of the Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut.

With that in-mind, i played the credits and was shocked that it was a Kickstarter game and how long that section of the credits ran for. poor use of screen space aside, i could believe that the credits took nearly an hour and there was no reward, like an upgrade or weapon, for watching it from start to finish. I will take all 6 parts and make a Start to Finish video for next week's upload, then i'll move onto a new game for this series.