Kusan: City of Wolves On Switch - Demo Play Thursday

This week's DEMO is the Switch version of Kusan: City of Wolves, from developer CIRCLEfromDOT.

Kusan: City of Wolves is a top down shooter where you're scored on how well you beat a level, similar to the Hotline Miami games. As much as defeating enemies is a priority, there's a puzzle element in how best to accomplish this. In this demo i get to use my fists, a knife, and a gun to clear all the enemies from a set level. The enemies also have weapons, some which can hit the player before the player can attack them. 

This puzzle element initially was quite interesting. i'd enter an area and have a knife wielding enemy Infront of me. i could punch them, but that alerts the gun wielding enemy and they immediately shoot me. the puzzle element is how to get past these two. in the video you'll see me try to punch and hide, punch and go backwards to where i came from, or even punch the knife guy into the gun guy taking out both in one go.

Kusan: City of Wolves has a fast retry system so if you fail it's very quick to start again. But this stopped being fun when the gun was introduced. the ammo wasn't unlimited so instead of just working out how best to take out the enemy, i now had to try and manage my 5 bullets. it wasn't clear, not explained, how or where i got them back and the randomness of when it happened was frustrating. Maybe if it explained things clearer, then i wouldn't have as much of an issue with it. 

But another issue is that we had a knife at the start and then never got to use it again. so what was the point of the knife? Maybe the game's story explained what happened, but as the default speed for telling said story was so fast, it's quite possible i missed how or when i lost my knife. We start the game trying to save someone's sister and then we're trying to save a bunny, but i thought the sister was taken again, and by the time i finished playing the demo i got a little confused with the game's story.

I feel like Kusan: City of Wolves tried to do too much too soon and it ended up frustrating me much quicker than i expected. As a demo, it also fails to mention that it's a demo or clearly explain what's in it. i don't know if my save will carry over to the final game either. So it's not a great demo but i'm glad i tried it as i know i don't mind this style of game, it's just i would rather play something simpler or something that ramps up slower than Kusan: City of Wolves does.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted On PS3 - Part 2 - Backlog Conquering

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.

Our new game is the PlayStation 3 version of Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Due to music copyright issues, there maybe times in the video when there is no sound due to it having to be muted. if this is the case, i'll turn the music off in Part 2 and we'll just have car sounds instead.

My goal for this part was to try and win some of the Most Wanted races. By the end of the video i had won races 10, 9, 8, and 7 but it wasn't straightforward. the Alfa Romeo in 10 was difficult because when i won the race the car crashed before i could take it out. it never respawned into action so i had to do the race again until i won and then i shut it down just before it took itself out once again! Race 7 was against a Lexus and whilst i won it i wasn't able to shut it down so it appears throughout this video as a black symbol on the map and appears now and then.

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/JZaXTO-LMKI

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Reforged - Part 2 - Cloud Playing Recommended - Cloud Monday

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing the PS4 version of Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Reforged via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

Part 2 of playing Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Reforged was interesting for me as it was all new. i had talked about my previous experiences with the game in Part 1 and how i didn't get far at all. SO it was nice to leave all that behind and explore more of the game's story.

I was still fighting with the game's logic at times, i tried to explain my reasoning as i went, so i'm very grateful that there's a hint system. if i had to think of something that could possibly be affected by a degraded streaming experience it would be this system. when it's activated, sparkles appear on screen but these aren't too big nor are they very flashy. they're just noticeable. but out of the whole game they would probably be affected the most by any issues from the stream.

With that being the only main issue i can see with the game, this means i do recommend playing Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Reforged from PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service. it has a robust auto save and manual saves are quick and easy , too. Combined with the larger more colourful art design, rather than finer smaller details, i think Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Reforged  would hold up well if the resolution dropped or if there was macro blocking. 

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

Banecraft: Idle RPG - Good Basics, But No Story. Some Bugs And Lack Of Information - iPhone Friday

For this week's iPhone Friday i tried Banecraft: Idle RPG, from Game Duo, on my iPhone 14 Pro. 

The App store page for this game caught my attention. the pixel art looked great but it was the story, where you were the top demon only to wake up the following day as a lowly human, that interested me the most. I thought that this game might lean more towards the RPG elements of it's name with a deep story, rather than the idle elements, but after my time with Banecraft: Idle RPG it feels like the App Store page has more story than the game itself.

There's a general lack of information given to the player from this game. There's a soul mechanic that's just there, and i never really fully grasped it. sometimes it makes noises, sometimes numbers go up, but the only thing that i understood from it was the merging mechanic, and for some unknown reason the higher the merge level the better our attack.

There's an instance where the game tries to introduce a really interesting team up mechanic where summons can be shared. but i didn't understand it. for something this different, more information or examples were needed. maybe even a "fake" group should've been offered so we'd fully understand how it works. from the sounds of it i thought it worked like sharing in the Dragon's Dogma games.

The other thing that annoyed me about Banecraft: Idle RPG was a bug that happened 3 times. in each time, the majority of the screen dimmed, apart from the top, and none of my touches worked. the game continued playing in the background but wouldn't accept inputs from me. so each time i had to quit and reload the game again. I'm not sure if the light at the bottom of the screen was also a bug or something happening in the background. there was also an instance where the guide pointed to something and then almost immediately pointed elsewhere.

Banecraft: Idle RPG has got a lot of the basics for this sort of game right. there's magic, fiends, and dungeons which work as expected. there's summoning and equipping. So the game works. but it's the extra stuff where it falls short. for example, there's the idle mechanic but i have no idea how long it'll collect money for as most games cap it, forcing the player to interact with the game and restart the collection.

There is more to this game than what we saw in this video as there were more things left to unlock, like alchemy. for what it is, Banecraft: Idle RPG is fine. but the potential is there for something really interesting. The game isn't quite there yet and may never reach it. but if you like the music, the art, and the mechanics, then Banecraft: Idle RPG is still a fine game to play. but it's closer to the middle score than most games which received the top score.

Version 2.18.0 Played 

Turnip Mountain On Switch - Demo Play Thursday

This week's DEMO is the Switch version of Turnip Mountain, from developer JanduSoft.

This is a climbing game where you control the left arm with the left analogue stick and the right arm with the right stick. This demo only has, what seems to be, the first two stages from the game. there's a very basic tutorial that shows how to control each arm and how to go up. But once you start a stage you're immediately faced with new scenarios the tutorial has failed to prepare us for.

Even though there are only two stages to play. each stage is very long. there's no mention if there's a checkpoint or save but thankfully if you do end up falling off the map you restart on the same screen you started last. a downside to the stages being so long is that the music starts off really nice but by the end of the stage it's been repeated so many times that on both stages i played it started to grate a little.

i don't think i fully grasped the controls to this game. going up is easy enough, but sideways was always tough. there's a move where you can jump up high and fast, but i wasn't consistent at it and found doing the same move on the diagonal really tough. a video plays on the home screen showing off future areas of the game and after what i went through in the first two stages i didn't find what's coming exciting.

There is a story to this game and the starting animation shows us how we got to where we start the game and where our ultimate destination is. but i can't help but wonder if the gameplay is getting in the way of telling that story. i wondered in the video if maybe the game had an easy setting which cut the stages into smaller sections or cut them in half so we could progress the story faster.

At no point did Turnip Mountain say that i was playing a demo. there's no mention if there is a save, or if said save would carry over to the retail game. But i'm glad i tried out this demo because i now know that this isn't a game that interests me.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted On PS3 - Part 1 - Backlog Conquering

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.

Our new game is the PlayStation 3 version of Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Due to music copyright issues, there maybe times in the video when there is no sound due to it having to be muted. if this is the case, i'll turn the music off in Part 2 and we'll just have car sounds instead.

For me, Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a PlayStation Plus game that i got a long time ago. i've never played the PlayStation 3 version of the game but i do have it on PlayStation Vita and have played it quite a bit on there. So this may not be a series of videos where i complete the game, but i'm going to race around and get cars for a few videos.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Reforged - Part 1 - Now With Hints - Cloud Monday

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PS4 version of Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Reforged via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars is a game i've tried to play on #PS1 and #GBA but i never made much, if any, progress in the story as i never truly understood how it was trying to tell it's story.

The option is there to play the game as it used to be, not just with original graphics but also with it's original gameplay. I went with the mode called Story as this had some modern benefits like removing items from conversation once they've been used but more importantly it adds a hint system.

The hint system helped me a lot in making progress. it's possible i got further in this video than i have in my previous attempts. but the hint system also highlights the game's logic isn't quite syncing up with mine. i don't think it's that the game is set in the early 90's, it's probably more down to my lack of experience with such point and click story games.

The game works well being streamed from the cloud. the auto save seems fairly robust but it's the ability to do manual saves, and that the saves themselves are quick, that's great. when you only get 20 seconds to save before being disconnected, accessible and fast manual saves are a great thing to have. With this being a point and click game, progress only happens when the player wants it. so if there are issues with the stream, you can wait it out, save, or do both and the game is waiting.