Demo Play Thursday - Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. This game, from developers Tose, is set to come out near the end of 2023.

I've never played a game in the Monsters series but i've known about it and seen enough videos to have a general understanding of how it works. I was curious about how much of a DEMO Square Enix was going to release for the game as they have released some big demo's in the past.

This is a great demo. it has an announcement at the very start explaining clearly that there are limits, that not everything will be carried over to the final version of the game but there are things that will be carried over. And yet whilst i played it, i never felt that the restrictions impacted my enjoyment of the demo. i could see some things greyed out, but as it's the start of the game they are things i wasn't really going to interact with anyway.

With these videos, i try to keep them an hour or less and most games in this series have finished before an hour. I didn't finish this demo and i wanted to keep on playing. for me, that's a good sign of a demo in that when it was over i wanted to keep on playing.

Another sign that this is not only a good demo but also mostly likely to be a very accessible game is how good the tutorial is. it came step by step smartly in the story and throughout this video more and more was slowly being revealed at a nice pace that didn't feel overwhelming. the demo came across in such a way that i feel like the game itself will focus more on story telling rather than mechanics and will do so by making the game very approachable. 

The demo did have some technical issues that seemed separate from the issues the #Switch was having in general. there were some slight hitches where the framerate and fluidity of gameplay felt noticeably off for a brief moment. there was also a moment where a monster seemingly spawned half into the environment. But it was also clear the Switch was struggling a little to run this game. the fans in my Switch were noticeably going, the pop-in was too close to the camera and very noticeable, and some of the graphics just looked like they had a low level of detail and in some instances they looked copy and pasted together. But the game isn't out yet so i can't say for sure if those issues will carry over to the retail version of the game. But as a demo, i do recommend it. it's a fantastic demo and a great look at a game.

Backlog Conquering - Gunstar Heroes - From Start To Finish

This is my "perfect" playthrough of Gunstar Heroes on PS3, as part of SEGA's Vintage Collection that was released via the PSN. i have taken the videos i recorded from all 7 parts and edited them into 1 video. i have tried to remove all the continues and "save scumming" that i did to complete the game. there maybe a couple of instances where health maybe suddenly jumps up or the music may repeat a little, but for the most part you should be able to sit back and watch the game from start to finish. And as a bonus, there's no commentary! so sit back and enjoy the great soundtrack!

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Artemis Cup Revival - 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 Artemis Cup Revival! (2023/10/16 9:00～2023/10/23 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

This week is the Artemis Cup Revival. i have played this cup before, https://youtu.be/qJrQzXP416c. Much like this video, back then i found the gimmick easy to understand but difficult to master.

After last week's video, i decided to try to do this cup on a different day at a different time and it seemed to work. i was up against more other players across more games.

the competition was very tough. i did get a win against the computer, but up against the humans it was soo much tougher. i only managed to get to the main boss a couple of times and i was not able to defeat it. there was something about the 5th and 6th stages that was just difficult.

This week i played against:

Ytelis - Rank 68

E2G6 - Rank 70

あいすのけしん - Rank 68

やん! - Rank 67

ころん - Rank 72

Cloud Monday - Matterfall - Part 2 - It’s Good To Stream From The Cloud But It’s Not As Fun To Play

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing #Matterfall, a #PS4 game from #Housemarque that came out in 2017. In the first video, https://youtu.be/rj3-onwTwrk, Matterfall did well being streamed from the #PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service. But we always play the games twice so we can get a better idea of the average streaming quality.

So in this part 2, it actually was a little worse being streamed from the cloud than in part 1. there wasn't nothing too serious, but there was some minor macro blocking, what appeared to be some bit-rate drops, and some stream tearing. whilst these were noticeable, none of these got in the way of my gameplay.

The thing that got in the way of the gameplay was the game itself. i stopped playing the game because i stopped having fun with it. there's no denying that the game is good to look at, but i found it not as great to play. It's a shame as the game is good to be streamed from the cloud because of how frequent the checkpoints are and that it doesn't mind if you die. So whilst i can recommend the game as one that's suitable to be played from the cloud, i don't think i can recommend the game as strongly as something that should be played.

Switch Funday - F-Zero 99 - 1 Month Later With Patch 1.02

For Switch Funday i went back to F-Zero 99. it had received two updates since i last played it. these updates added more content to the game like new tracks as well as some small tweaks.

The thing that surprised me the most is how much better everyone got at the game. in the first video, https://youtu.be/8aoxu1RiYEQ, from the launch weekend, there wasn't as much attacking as there was in this video. people also seemed more familiar with tracks, making fewer mistakes and using the super boost much more efficiently. 

The new tracks that have been added to the game do, mostly, feel a little more difficult with tighter cornering and more corners. they are still visually cool to look at and the race to get on the track is still fun. but the track with the magnets at the edge, Port Town 2 i think, was not fun at all as i was constantly finding them and being damaged and slowed down.

But the biggest surprise was that after a month since release, it did feel like less people were playing F-Zero 99. I had seen this with other "99" games on the Switch like Pac-Man 99, but even Tetris 99 feels like there are plenty of people playing. trying out the Pro Race mode, it felt like 2/3 of the racers were A.I and about the same for the second Grand Prix i tried. Thankfully the F-Zero 99 game mode seemed mostly full of human racers. but it will be interesting to see if this continues to be popular and what Nintendo continues to add to the game. will they do paid DLC like Tetris 99 or will they continue to add content via patches in a similar way to their other big titles like Splatoon 3.

Online Saturday - Splatoon 3 - Getting October's Salmon Run Item

This month's #Splatoon3 #SalmonRun item is the Brinestone Jacket and like the other Salmon Run items, my goal is to get the item twice and pick the best of the two to keep. It took a long time to get the jacket twice. i had a few games where we couldn't even get past the first wave of enemies. there were two weird moments where in one game there were only 2 players and in another there was a big amount of slowdown that i don't remember experiencing in the game before. in the final job, my team and i did face off against the King Salmonoid but we were unable to defeat it.

Demo Play Thursday - Cross Tails on PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the #PlayStation4 version of Cross Tails.  This DEMO, from developers Rideon, is also out on all current generation platforms and PC.

The reason why i chose to play this demo was because i was genuinely curious about the game. on the #PSN store, not much is mentioned about the story but the screenshots showed that when the characters are on screen, not their character art, they are surrounded by a thick black outline. but it didn't look quite like cell shading that i had seen in the past. 

The most annoying and disappointing part of this demo is the tutorial. it's just text boxes and pictures. and lots of them. the demo does start by saying that there are some limitations to it, but i do think that this is how the retail version of the game treats it's tutorial. it's an old way of doing it and many games have found better ways to incorporate their tutorials into the story and/or gameplay. it's quite important to this game as this game does have some unique features.

the one i used the most in this demo was the auto function. i can set some tactics, but once i've put everyone on the field i can turn on auto and the game's battles will just play out them selves. it's a fun and accessible thing the game does, and when you couple that with the story of the game it lets the player chose to play it like a JRPG or like a Visual Novel. the only downside of the visual novel aspect is that i had to manually continue the conversations, unlike battle mode there's no auto function when characters are talking.

But the highlight was how the characters on the game world looked with their thick black lines and the character art. the art was great with a lot of detail and the black lines on their in-game models worked better than i imagined. it was easy to keep track of the characters in the game world and it just looked really cool.

But as a demo, it has such a disappointing tutorial. it's really bad and becomes a barrier to higher level play. i could understand how after playing this demo some people would be turned off and not want to buy the game. on the other hand tho, there are many good aspects of the demo like a decent story, intrigued, and the fact we only played the beginning of one of the two stories in the game. these are things that some people will find compelling and get the game afterwards. what ever your choice, just be aware that your save game will not be carried over to the retail version of the game.