Online Saturday - Rocket Racing - Not Very Welcoming For New Players

*Apologies for the microphone issues. i'd understand if you don't want to listen to me in this video. So i have uploaded another video which is just the racing and no commentary. you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/-JWYdT-rPlg.

For Online Saturday i played the PS4 version of Rocket Racing from developers Psyonix. it's an online racing game built on Fortnite tech. It was my first time playing it. i was surprised that the install for it was over 60GB! it must've downloaded the whole Fortnite game. however, i don't know for sure as there's a lack of information on the PSN Store page.

This lack of information from the game to me was frustrating throughout this video. it's a shame because the actual gameplay was fun and the tutorial was great. but there's no tutorial outside of the game. and for me, who's never played this before and never used this lobby before, it just wasn't intuitive enough. this happened early when i ended up doing the tutorial twice as i thought pressing up meant doing the tutorial instead of it meaning choosing game mode.

I also had an issue with my first try of the Metalica stage as there was no audio and no sound effects! i quit the game to change settings on my PlayStation 4 so i don't know if it was quitting the game that fixed it or the settings. but this, combined with no tutorial for the lobby screen just gave a bad first impression.

These  lobby screens on console are often poor, my first video on Trackmania https://youtu.be/we766gY1WPw, and Pokémon Unite https://youtu.be/OMKdxzCkOwI, are examples of this. even the recent Star Wars: Hunter game has a busy lobby screen https://youtu.be/648VolmhSuA but at least that game tried to explain it all. Rocket Racing made no attempt.

There were also issues when trying to play some levels made by other people. none of them would load and i don't know why. i could only get the Metallica stage and the Ranked Mode stages to load. Again, Ranked mode wasn't really explained. i don't know what stages are on it, i doubt i played against real people in a couple of stages, and progression wasn't explained nor do i know where any of that stuff is.

Gameplay is good, tho i would have liked the game to explain how to do boost starts, is just that everything else about Rocket Racing was a frustrating mess and just not welcoming to new players. all it needed to do was, when the game takes me back to the lobby after the tutorial, ask if i wanted a lobby tutorial or not. it's hard to recommend Rocket Racing for new players. but if you have time to figure it all out, the gameplay is fun. but there aren't many people playing it so waits could be long.

Mobile Friday - Tokyo Debunker - Fully Voiced Characters, Good Design, And A Story I Want To Read

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Tokyo Debunker, from developers ZigZaGame. i played this on my iPhone 14 Pro.

Tokyo Debunker is a game that hasn't really topped the mobile charts, but it has stuck around since it was released. it's one of those games who's App Store page doesn't really reveal what the game actually is. So i was very curious about it and was excited to give it a go.

In the hour i played of Tokyo Debunker, it comes across as a story focused game. but it's told in a manga/comic book style. the characters 3D on a 2D background, or that's how it seems because they have a subtle black outline to them that adds depth to them. I haven't met that many characters, but each i have met were very different from each other. what really helps is that each of them is fully voiced, too.

There is gameplay here, but in the hour i played there wasn't much. from the first hour it's a little difficult to work out how the story and the gameplay segments fit. i can speculate that we're going to go to areas and in the story there'll be enemies which we'll then have to defeat via gameplay before we're able to continue the story.

as well as fighting, we also tried out a rhythm based mode and a school building mode. i didn't do well with the rhythm mode, but thankfully we're able to replay them and get the rewards we missed. the school building mode is fairly typical for a idle game. you spend money to build a classroom. you add a character to the room and now it earns money. you can upgrade the classroom and earn more money. whilst it seems separate, it does tie into the fighting. you need items to upgrade characters and these are eared from the classrooms.

Another highlight is that this game didn't install extra game data when i started it. nor did it force the shop upon as at the earliest opportunity. the tutorial is decent, too. overall, Tokyo Debunker's first hour makes a great first impression. if you're looking for a story focused game, i'd recommend giving it a go.

Version 1.3.1 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Morkull Ragast's Rage On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Morkull Ragast's Rage, from Disaster Games and SelectaPlay.

Unfortunately, i can't recommend this version of the demo. as you'll see in this video, it has a few bugs that affect gameplay, some iffy English, visual and maybe audio issues, and ultimately i wasn't even able to even end the demo.

Even from the start of the demo, there's nothing on the screen saying it's a demo nor is there a link to the #eShop. i assume that this is from the start of the game, but there's no mention if there's a save. so it's possible that you'll have to do the start in the demo and then again when it's released.

It's a shame that little effort has been put into the demo. as the game isn't out, it's our first introduction to it and it's a bad first impression. i say it's a shame because the art is great, when there's music it's good, and i quite liked the humour and 4th wall breaking. but after playing the demo, i personally wouldn't pre-order the game. i'd wait and see if the released version is just as buggy.

Backlog Conquering - Tearaway: Unfolded On #PS4 - Part 7 – The Powerful Accordion

We continue Part 7 at The Lab. In Part 6, https://youtu.be/afEhpxT5Eag, we had ended it at The Lab leaving Part 7 for us to explore it, and we do for most of this Part.

What i'm excited for when playing Tearaway: Unfolded is that in each part we're introduced into some new mechanics. It's very interesting to see what they will come up with next. what's equally as impressive is how well it works with the game. and in Part 7, it doesn't disappoint. 

But instead of a new ability, we get a weapon! it really shakes up the game. we loose the ability to control the wind, but we gain a weapon that's amazing for battling the Scraps and for solving the puzzles. whilst we have it, it's a lot of fun. But by the end of this part, we seemingly loose it!

This Part ends with us falling into caves that look fantastic and i'm excited to explore in the next part.

Stories on Tuesday - When the Past Was Around - Part 4 - The End

Hello and welcome to Stories on Tuesday. It's part 4, the final part, of playing When the Past Was Around from developers Mojiken Studio.

After getting stuck in Part 3, https://youtu.be/61wtpGQNsHQ, i looked online before playing this part to find the solution to opening the safe. turns out, what i assumed to be instructions on the blanket was kinda true but what i actually had to do was count each of them in that scene.

From then on, things went quite smooth. i still had my notes from the week before so i was able to quickly solve some puzzles that required the music notes and the shapes. i found the end of the game and the start of the game to be a more pleasant experience than the middle. the puzzle difficulty really swung from easy to hard. i would argue that this did have an impact on the story. At the end, when things were getting serious, it did feel thematically weird that we were having to do puzzles when all i wanted to do was progress the story.

I don't think the story is bad, i just feel like the choice of puzzles weren't always the best, or that the game didn't do well enough to telegraph what it expected of the player. But in a game with nothing to read and nothing is spoken, there's always an element of doubt as to whether or not the story i took away from this was the intended story. Either way, i am satisfied with the story, but because the puzzles in the middle were frustrating the overall experience could've been better.

Cloud Monday - Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus - Controls Take Time To Adjust To, Go Slow

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PS2 version of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

PlayStation 2 games have recently come to the service as games you can download or stream from the cloud. so far, whilst the emulation software has been a good match-up for the service allowing us to save when ever we want, perfect for a service that only gives us a 20 second warning before disconnection, one of the main issues has been whether or not the gameplay is worth it.

Resistance: Retribution, https://youtu.be/jEs97ouESk8, was interesting as it's the only game i've played that had in-game tweaks to the analogue sticks. for G-Police, https://youtu.be/P9QIJwNAhGs, not being able to tweak them made the game near impossible to play. so i was very curious how a more recent title would handle.

There are two things i noticed right away, the camera and the jumping. both took time to adjust to. there were no in-game options to change how the camera works. but i've played games like this so it go easier. the jumping and character movement in general took a little more time. it felt like, and i tried to show in-game this, that there was a little lag between what i pressed on the controller and what happened in-game. 

This is such a rare thing with games being played from the cloud that i can't say for sure if it is a cloud streaming issue, or if it's an issue with the original PS2 game or an issue with the emulation software. it wasn't game breaking, but it did take me a few minutes before i was able to jump out of the initial starting area. it can't be denied that when i tried to test the lag, i could press the button and there was a short delay before Sly jumped.

There was only a second or two of video artefacts during this, so like many of the PS1 and PSP games emulated they seem to stream well as video. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus looks great upscaled to 1080p on PS4. the one thing i thought that didn't upscale as well was the audio. out of everything i played, it came across as the weakest part of this release.

Switch Funday - Pokémon Unite - Battling Cynthia's Team In Solo Mode

For this Pokémon Unite video i wanted to try out the Solo Mode. at present, it's against Cynthia, from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. there are a set of challenges you're tasked with completing and in doing so you earn points. these points earn you in-game items. i show off these challenges after the first match and then again after the fifth match.