Mobile Friday - Jump King - It Looks Great But Feels Like A Basic Port With Inconsistent Controls

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Jump King from developers Nexile, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I went into this video not knowing that Jump King was an existing game on other platforms, but i called it early on that it felt like this was a port of a game. i guessed that it was a port of a game designed for a bigger screen like a folding phone and i was kinda right as it was a PC game first. it's a little weird how the game doesn't take full advantage of the phone's screen and doesn't have any options to let the player move the controls around either. the options are extremely basic and are only for the sounds, there's no language options, no accessibility options, and no graphical options.

The music might be broken in this game, or this version of it. i'm unsure so if you know if what i experienced was normal, please let me know in the comments. it's unfortunate that it was so obvious when the music looped as it got quite frustrating. couple this with some grating sound effects, and i honestly wanted to turn all the sounds off but i couldn't because i was recording a video. this has never happened before. then there was the odd sound that came out of a bird, my first thought was that it was a low quality burp! there was also the incident when i got music when i reached a stage and then never got it again.

another complaint i had throughout was the lack of feeling from the game. it never used my phones vibration, nor did it give any visual clues other than a button was being pressed. this lack of feedback made it tough to learn how to play the game. Jump King does not have a tutorial or on screen prompts, it doesn't have a section designed to teach us mechanics either.  we're dropped straight into the world and that's it. not having any sort of feedback gave me the impression that the game is inconsistent, maybe even a little random. Then there was the moment when an old guy said i could glance and look up, but of course they never said how to do so and i never worked out how to do it. 

Jump King may have a retro aesthetic about it, but on mobile it's design just feels old and not in a good way. maybe this sort of community exists on other platforms, but here on mobile it feels like Jump King was just a basic port with little to no thought about taking advantage of the platform it's on. i can't recommend it as i can't think of any group that it's for on mobile.

Version 1.0.10 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Through the Nightmares On #PS4

For this week's #Demo Play Thursday i played the #PlayStation4 version of Through the Nightmares.

I'm not good at challenging platforming games but i do like to try them. l'm always hoping to find one that'll be difficult, but not necessarily punish me for finding it difficult. As the player, i'd like to feel that there's a chance i can improve. i think Through the Nightmares get's pretty close to this so even tho the demo got tough, i did actually finish it.

Through the Nightmares starts with a nice small level that serves as it's tutorial and i think it works great. not only did i learn what most of the buttons do, but i got a little taste of how the platforming sections may work. there was a decent sense of satisfaction from this little introduction stage. the second stage introduces an item. it's presented as some sort of checkpoint. but when you complete the level you realise there's a bonus for completing the level and not using it, so of course i tried the level again this time without dying. playing Through the Nightmares in this demo was a pleasant experience, but that's not to say it was an easy one.

The game says on it's PSN page that it's not an easy game, that there will be a challenge, and i certainly restarted plenty of times during this demo. what helped was the choice of using the checkpoint item and/or that restarting when you did die was very fast. using the checkpoint doesn't mean you haven't completed the level. thankfully, Through the Nightmares will let you continue if you haven't collected everything. all you need to do is complete the level to unlock the next.

Most of the challenging platforming felt fair. the game is smart to introduce a mechanic, let us try it out in the level, then let us try it out on something more challenging. the demo ends with us facing off against a boss and throughout the encounter we have to use all the skills we've learned so far. this felt like a fair encounter until the encounter changed it's gameplay style. then it felt a little cheap, like the margins for error were even tighter than before. but, again, with quick restarting and thankfully a little checkpointing from the game itself, rather than the item, it didn't take long to conquer the boss and finish the level.

I enjoyed my time with the Through the Nightmares DEMO and came away with it knowing that it's a tough game but also feeling that i could perhaps do it. so as a demo, i think this worked great. it'd be great to hear from you if you played the retail game and how difficult the later levels are. it also wasn't clear if our save carries over from demo to retail game. but i think the demo for Through the Nightmares is well worth checking out.

Backlog Conquering - Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition On PS4 - Part 3

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.

Part 3 was interesting as it helped develop some of the villainous characters and their back story. We also got two new cool abilities, with the chicken especially being one i didn't suspect. we didn't take the story too far forward, but by learning about other characters and getting and trying out our new abilities i feel that Part 4 could be really interesting. There's a chance that we're going to be visiting places we've already been to before and my guess would be that the point is to use our new abilities to explore new places and complete more quests.

You can watch other parts:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/y20ZZ5IllmY

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/OxoUuZ8dYno

Stories on Tuesday - Arcade Spirits - Part 8 - The Final Part

The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the PS4 version of Arcade Spirits from Fiction Factory Games. this is the disc version of the game, published by PQube.

This is Part 8 of my Arcade Spirits story and the final part, my story is now complete. stay after the credits for a bonus scene!

You can check out the previous parts of this playthrough:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/iPaMcNIB-pI

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/BBr3lviaf2s

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/n2QOLAQm--M

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/S0aaJtoLQz4

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/KeyDE9FhxBE

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/TYxIMh05j-Q

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/2Q3D-sutzCE

Cloud Monday - Humankind - Part 1 - Auto Saves Every Turn Make It A Good Choice For Cloud Streaming

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Humankind on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

I don't have too much experience with games of this genre in recent years. So a part of me went into this video expecting things to be slow but also hoping for a great tutorial. i found the tutorial to be disappointing throughout this video but thankfully it wasn't slow. Humankind not only plays at a decent speed it also is very quick in between turns. It's just that it doesn't give out information, and when it does it was often a turn behind or even getting in the way of what it was trying to show. thankfully for Humankind, the focus of this series is checking out how suitable a game is for being streamed from the cloud.

it was hugely surprising that the game never showed us or told us how the auto save system works. Soul Hackers 2, the previous game in this series, made it clear what the auto save was, when it worked, and proudly displayed it on screen when it did. With Humankind, i didn't discover that it was auto saving until i went hunting for the manual saves. thankfully, the manual saves were clearly labelled so it was easy to work out that the game is saving at every turn. that is fantastic news, as we the player are only ever given a 20 second warning before we're disconnected from the game. this means, if our turn is just starting we can wait out the countdown. if we're finishing or have finished our turn we can press square to end our turn and the game will auto save for us, and of course there are manual saves.

Whilst this aspect of the game was great, playing it was rougher than i would like. it didn't come across as very welcoming to new players to the genre. it also wasn't very accessible in some respects because i was unable to increase the size of anything. i don't sit close to my TV and it's not that big, so there were times when i couldn't work out what buttons it was showing via pictures.

Going into Part 2, what i will be interested in is if the time between turns grows larger and larger. at the moment, saving and ending turns seems very quick and under 20 seconds. but if it grows too large, maybe even the auto save won't be great.

Demo Play Thursday - Rally Arcade Classics On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Rally Arcade Classics.

In the PS1 and Game Boy Color era, when it came to rally games i was far more interested in the arcade style games. i remember playing V-Rally, tho i don't remember which ones, and enjoying the rally style but arcade feel. for me, i was really interested in Rally Arcade Classics as it wasn't clear from the eShop how arcadey or how realistic it would be.

When you start this demo you're greeted by a screen that details what's included in the demo. this is fantastic and something that is rarely seen. what they fail to mention is that online leaderboards for every race in this demo are also available! the only downside to the start of this demo is that it assumes you'll go to the options and check the control section. at no point does the game tutorialize the controls. this isn't a big issue in this game because of how short the races are and how quick the game is able to restart, but it feels like a bit of an oversight when so much else about this demo comes across as bespoke and having had time put into it.

There was one more thing that i thought the game was lacking whilst i was playing it and that was the ability to play against the ghosts of other players. as this was a demo, it could be that it's not in the demo. But this was a fully featured demo so i suspect this is the case in the full game. it's a shame as we can clearly see where we stand against other racers in the standings. but at least we have that and we're able to race against our own ghost in the attempt to better our times.

after playing this demo for Rally Arcade Classics i can say that this is the arcade rally game i've been looking out for. it has time limits that some more arcade style games have but the cars have a feel more akin to more serious rally games. you can't just "cheese it" and win, there has to be some element of skill. but because it's arcade style, there's some forgiveness about it and it's less serious. each of the 4 cars i raced in felt different, looked distinct, sounded different, and for me i enjoyed racing the Alpine more than the others.

If you're looking for an arcade style rally game similar to those released on the PS1 and PS2, but not so much those released in arcades, then Rally Arcade Classics from Net2K Games is well worth checking out. the graphics were fine with this Switch version but i wouldn't say great. however the nigh racing worked very well and for the most part the graphics around the car were good enough. the short tracks mean draw distance isn't important, but when it was when i was racing down Monaco hills i could see the other cars ahead on track further down. the only complaint i have with this part of the game is the main music. it repeated far too much. but, the music isn't a critical aspect of the game so turning it down to focus on our co-pilots advice would make sense anyway.

Backlog Conquering - Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition On PS4 - Part 2

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.

after some initial stumbling as i tried to remember the controls, playing Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition was a lot of fun. it was nice to finish the area we were in, explore a new city, work through a whole new area with a water riding section, and finish exploring another new city. i didn't expect the final city to be so interesting, i only started exploring because i could so i was surprised to learn a new move that was really useful. i'm having a lot of fun so i will return with Part 3!

You can watch other parts:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/y20ZZ5IllmY