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 4 wasn't as story heavy as Part 3, this time the focus was more on getting to places. along the way, the platforming levelled up and got a bit more tricky. we were having to use more and more of our abilities in combination with each other. at the end of this part, i did get stuck for several minutes on a difficult platforming section and once i completed it i saved and ended the part. but there were a couple of sections earlier where i decided against trying over and over and just moved back onto the main path.
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Sand Land on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
I checked out the DEMO for Sand Land, https://youtu.be/Vb6Z6DHvTJ4, back in March 2024 so i knew what to expect from the game. the difference here is that back then, the demo was installed on my PS4 and this time it's being streamed from the cloud to my PS4. What i'm focusing with Cloud Monday is how the game's save system works and whether or not all the sand dust in the air makes the drops the quality of the video i'm watching, much like how YouTube struggles with fireworks and confetti.
This was one of the clearest streams to my PS4 i've had in a long time. if there were any issues, they didn't last more than a second. the game looked great throughout and the stream didn't seem to have any issues with the sand and dust. i didn't notice any drop in bitrate or resolution whilst playing this part of Sand Land.
The game makes it clear what the auto save symbol is and i did clearly see it during gameplay. but, i was never able to see the actual auto save file. so, at the end of this video, my guess is that it auto saved after the fight but i'm not too sure and would have to check my video. Thankfully, i got access to the manual saves in less than 10 minutes. getting to the save option and saving also seemed quick. on PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service, we're only given a 20 second warning before we're disconnected. unless we're in a cutscene, which we can skip, getting to the save menu and saving should be fine.
It's only been 1 hour, but i've enjoyed my time with the game. the characters are fun, the world has an interesting story, and it looks great on my base PS4. i'm looking forward to the next part and maybe i'll keep playing it in my own time.
For this week's Mobile Friday i tried SushiMon Defense from developers Dreamplay Games, on my iPhone 14 Pro.
I start this video by talking about what caught my attention from it's #App Store page and whether or not it could pull it off. what i failed to talk about was whether or not "Random Summon! Random Merge! Random Level Up! Random Skills!" would equate into a fun experience. after playing it, i think SushiMon Defense is a fun simple game at it's core but fails to build on it. you could say it's a roguelike and therefore it's fine for it to not tell us a lot about it but i can't help but feel that it tries so hard with it's tutorial at the start for that to be the case.
SushiMon Defense isn't perfect. the tutorial stops before key gameplay mechanics are explained. the summon animation didn't show the first time, so when it did the second time i thought that an advert had started playing but then it abruptly stops in a way which makes it seem broken as nothing really happens in the animation. i was surprised there was an animation as the comic introduction worked so well, i thought they would've used that. i also feel that at times, the controls weren't responsive enough and the game insisted on doing upgrades whilst i was trying to move stuff which caused some minor issues.
And yet, the core to SushiMon Defense still holds up. i want to continue playing it, i haven't deleted it off my phone, unlike a certain Jump King, and i would go so far as to recommend it. but it's going to fall short of game of the year and may not make my top 5 as the game as a whole falls short.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Nif Nif.
Via the Mobile Friday series, I have tried several roguelike deck builder card games. I'm always interested to see what unique spin they're going to have on that style of game and how they're going to introduce it to the player. Will they go hard into the Roguelike aspect and not even offer a tutorial or will they focus on story and world building. When i saw Nif Nif on the eShop, i was intrigued by it's style and that it seemed to focus on animals. i wondered if this game was aiming at a much younger audience.
Quite quickly it's revealed that the goal of this roguelike deck builder is to clean and to stay clean. the foes you face on screen are dirty and seem to want to get our character dirty, too, so it's up the us, the player, to pick the best cards to deal with it. this concept is introduced smartly in the tutorial and it uses videos to show how to play the game. But much like the mobile games of this type, the tutorial in Nif Nif stops early and forgets to get across key concepts of the game and what on screen icons do. as it's a demo i felt OK experimenting myself.
I don't think Nif Nif is aimed at a young audience. it's still a Roguelike game and as such it still has a level of difficulty. the first area we play in doesn't feel like it's been designed to be a low level beginners area. personally, i feel this is a missed opportunity. the game already starts with a great tutorial, it could've continued into concepts and suggestions throughout this first area before letting things get more difficult from the next area onwards. This demo only has the first area and i couldn't beat it on my first try, in-fact i beat it on my third. But like all good roguelikes, you can see that i learned from each run and did the next one better.
I enjoyed my time with the demo for Nif Nif and would easily recommend it for those curious about the game. it was designed with the developers autistic son in mind, so if someone in your family is Neuro divergent it could be something to try too.
The Stories on Tuesday game was the PS4 version of Arcade Spirits from Fiction Factory Games. this was a playthrough of the disc version of the game, published by PQube.
With the story concluded, i have put all the parts together into one long story, from start to finish, including the credits and post credits scene.
You can check out the previous parts of this playthrough:
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing #Humankind on #PS4 via the #PlayStationPlus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model #PlayStation4.
In Part 1 we learned that the game saves after each turn and that it also has manual saves, too. this already makes it a great fit for being played in the Cloud as we're only given a 20 second warning before a disconnection. but by the end of that video, i was starting to wonder if the console port was actually worth playing.
i could hear audio issues and now we've had a much smoother streaming experience in this Part 2 i feel like the audio is just poor in the game. This PS4 port also felt like a degraded version of the game because of the visuals. we got to meet more characters in this part and each of them looked low quality. from my recordings, i know that the game isn't 1080p either, tho i don't have the ability to determine what resolution it runs at. But the thing that bugged me the most about this port was the apparent decision to prioritise esthetics of accessibility.
The menus are a joke. you'd really have to get right up close to your TV to read them and the game has no options to increase the size of them either. the tutorials were also frustrating because of their size but also in their timing. there were other minor inconveniences like the camera and cursor being separate meant that i would often see something i'd want my troops to investigate but would have to wait for the cursor to manually move from where it was, resetting the camera to that spot.
There were aspects of the game that gave me the "one more turn" vibe and you can see that by the end of this part. but it wasn't satisfying, i wasn't enjoying my time with the game. so whilst this game is a good fit for being streamed from the cloud, i don't think it's a good fit on the PS4.
