Friday, March 10, 2023

Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade - Cooking Mama: Cuisine! - The First 45 Minutes

This fourteenth video in the new Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade series is on Cooking Mama: Cuisine! I Played this as part of my Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade series, i think this game is exclusive to the service.

I have never played a game from the Cooking Mama series before so i thought this would be the best opportunity to do so. i kinda knew what to expect going in as i've reported on games in this series before, like Cooking Mama 3. but Cooking Mama: Cuisine! still managed to surprise me.

Unlike the recent Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade games Simon's Cat: Story Time, https://youtu.be/SJtlwaqB-KI, and SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit, https://youtu.be/WXm7dhyASyg, where it's the player who determines how long they play the game for as both are full of content, Cooking Mama: Cuisine! has a daily limit. it's an interesting way to get players coming back for more, as each day has a different number of food items you can cook with. There is also an event happening right now, too.

this video is around 45 minutes but that wasn't because of the daily limit. i think i only did around a third of the daily content available. I don't know how that'll change when you start to repeat recipes. as it's my first time playing the game, everything was new and undiscovered. the only reason to redo recipes you had already done seems to be to get a "perfect" 3 star score. there are some cosmetic things you can buy so that's also another reason to do recipes again.

The artwork for the game is familiar. i recognise the main character, and her in-game model looks really good. but other than that, grapically this game looks inconsistent. there are times when flowers look really good, but they're just decorations and the food you've cooked looks ... well ... not like the description, putting it kindly. there are one or two food items that look good, i think the cucumber was an unlikely highlight.

Another inconsistent thing about the game was the controller support. i would suggest it's better to play the game using touch controls than a controller. there are some weird button choices, for example you press "B" to go to the back button but have to then press "A" to go back. a bigger problem i had was the analogue stick sensitivity. it felt like it went from 0 to 100 too fast. i could move the stick and nothing would happen, then i'd try to move it a little more and it had gone all the way. this meant that there were a couple of cooking mini games that were difficult, and one i nearly failed at.

For fans of the series, it's a good way to play the game a little each day and have it be a little different. but it's not a game that shows off the power of Apple Arcade or things like multiplayer. it is being supported and there seem to be themed events so it could be a good game to keep on a  phone and play now and then. but i think it'd be a bit of a  rough time to play the game on anything else, especially if there's no touch screen.


Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Backlog Conquering - Pyre - Part 15 - The Final Part

Welcome to Backlog Conquering.
Today's video is part 15, of playing Pyre on PlayStation 4.

With all the games i play in Backlog Conquering, i don't set out to finish them. the goal is simply to play them. there were moments whilst playing through this game where i thought about putting it down and moving on. but ultimately, there was a certain something that kept me going. 

For this video, we continue on from Part 14, https://youtu.be/kWi1d_O_Ruk, about to start our sixth Liberation Rites. It went really well, it was maybe my best win since the first time we did it. through that i was able to send Tae back to the Commonwealth. But it was clear that there would only be one more Liberation Rite left.

I liked how the game, through the characters, tried to reduce the pressure on me. But the twist as to who we'd be up against was a little obvious. that final rite was perhaps the best i performed. i tried as hard as i could with who was left in my team. But the twists weren't over! when the rite was finished, the game changed the Liberation Rite rules and did it in a believable way that felt natural to the game we played. this meant, tho, that i wasn't able to send back to the Commonwealth who i had originally selected.

And the story tells the end. throughout the game there's some amazing art and beautiful visuals, and yet it told the end via text. the story of the end that i got was good, but it lacked the fanfare that some cool art would bring to it. we do get to read what happened with every character in the game. but again, the game kinda fumbles as the most disappointing story we're told is that of our character.  the credit sequence is cool and has a nice song.

In the end, it's strange that whilst the game is able to tell such an interesting story with such unique characters, that it should continuously stumble when it came to the story of the main character does hurt it. the main character, the character you control, becomes the weakest part of the game and as the rest of the story is so strong, it really does stick out. that's kinda the review of the game. it's a game with some high points, but it's low points stick out so much in contrast. But i am glad i played it.

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Okuninushi Cup - 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 Okuninushi Cup! (2023/3/6 9:00~2023/3/13 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

This was a difficult week. what was strange was that it wasn't just difficult for me, but it was difficult for many of the other human opponents too! I had one game against the computer and i won it. but when i played against others, i came top 3 a few times but i also came a lot lower. But so did the other players, too. 

It's frustrating to have a bad week, where no matter how hard i tried i never seemed to grasp what i was meant to do. but it's heartening to see that i wasn't the only one. near the end you'll see that i work out what i need to do, i need to make a cross of one color. well, i probably needed to do more, but it seemed to help at the very least. 

It would be great to have some comments as to what i did wrong because i don't really seem to know.


Monday, March 6, 2023

Cloud Monday - Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 - The First 50 Minutes

Today's Cloud Monday is back to me trying out different genres of games on the PlayStation Plus Premium Service. for these next two videos, i wanted to try out a fighting game. the only problem is that i'm not good at the typical Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Dead or Alive style of fighters. So i went with a game in the vein of Naruto Shippuden Ninja Storm Games, a style that i'm familiar with and tend to do better with.

Unfortunately, i didn't get to do much of the game. not because of the online streaming service, it ran mostly fine. but the game's own design stops you from doing anything other than creating your own character for like the first 20 minutes. then you're thrusted into a world, tasked with finding the old Kai, and given the run around. the people give you hints and tell you where to go, but they suggest i should use my map to find specific places and none of the buildings are labelled on my map. the only way i knew where to go was because of a different mark showing quest locations. this could be an annoying thing later if i have multiple quests on the go.

The game does introduce the rules for the hub world in an amazing way by using cinematics to show what you can't do. but when they try to go into the tutorial stuff, they're not as elegant and you're forced to do specific things before the tutorial will continue. instead  of many small tutorials, it felt more like one very long tutorial with a fight at the end that i seemed to have won through little effort on my part.

So whilst the game is a little rougher than i would like, streaming it was fine. it wasn't perfect as i still had to go into PS4 account management and restore my licenses, which i always do before recording, and when i went searching for the game the PlayStation Plus "App" on PS4 crashed once. but streaming the game itself was great. i didn't notice any issues from streaming it, nor did i notice any sort of lag with the controls. the game has some rough spots with pop-in, but that's an issue with the game rather than the streaming service. 

Saturday, March 4, 2023

Online Saturday - Splatoon 3 - Big Run March Event

Welcome to Online Saturday!

I'm back with Splatoon 3 to try out the second Big Run event. i played by my usual Salmon Run rules, get enough points to earn the item twice so i can chose to keep the better of the two. But i didn't expect it to take soo long! 

This was such a rough event that i even dropped a level because of how bad it went. out of all the games played, i think i only managed to complete it three times. so this video is mostly just my team and i failing over and over again. i can't remember the previous Big Run event being soo difficult. i mention it in the video, but sometimes the randomness of these and Salmon Run events kinda doesn't work well and it leads to an unpleasant gaming experience as we lose.

But when we did win, it felt amazing. i think only once was it somewhat comfortable. the rest of the time it was very tight and for me personally it was a tense time. it was a bit of a shame that my team wasn't able to defeat the new King Salmonid that was added to the game. before it was a very tall and very rotund shaped creature but now it's like a Gyrados flying snake looking creature. this made trying to hit it difficult, well that and the fact the game throws everything at you. we came very close to defeating it but just not enough.

Friday, March 3, 2023

Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade - SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit - The First Hour

This thirteenth video in the new Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade series is on SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit. I Played this as part of my Mobile Friday: Apple Arcade series, i think this game is exclusive to the service.

Last week i played Simon's Cat: Story Time, https://youtu.be/SJtlwaqB-KI, as i was curious how a game typically associate with mircotransactions and limited playing opportunities was going to be adapted to a free game on the Apple Arcade service. that was the same reason why i chose to play SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit.

i went in thinking it was just a runner but after the first level i was wrong. i thought it was an endless runner like Sonic Dash, Minion Rush, and Temple Run. but it turned out to be an Auto Runner like Super Mario Run and Rayman Mini, which i looked at in this series 9 videos ago, https://youtu.be/65ZdmAz0GfE. Once i knew what type of game this was, it was easier to understand how it worked as an Apple Arcade game with no microtransactions. much like Simon's Cat: Story Time, the limit is your own time.

It starts with an introduction to the story. it's not animated, but it's voiced. then it puts you straight into the first level. what tutorial there is is done by telling you what to do in game and letting you try it. the first few levels are fairly easy but they don't feel overwhelming even tho the game is introducing the mechanics.

In this video i completed the first couple of locations, and throughout the game slowly showed different things that can happen in a level. whether that's different layouts, different things to navigate, and the idea of different paths you yourself can take or your companion can help you take. we get Patrick first and he's able to bust down brick walls. near the end of the video we get Squidward and he's able to tell us where the Spatulas are and use jellyfish to create platforms. The levels are designed in such a way that it's probably not possible to complete them in one try. it'll take 2 or 3, or more, play throughs of them with different characters and taking different routes to get the 3 Spatulas and all the coins.

Once the second location was finished, the game opened up 3 other play style options. i finished this video by trying them out, but again it's another example of the game getting continued support and being full of content. Like Simon's Cat last week, this would be a fun commuting game to play on the phone as each level is only a few minutes long, but because it's dense with content it could be played for a long time on a Mac or AppleTV.

I'm not a fan of SpongeBob SquarePants, not because i don't like it but rather because it's not something i grew up watching. i missed it when it came out. this means i've not played any of the games, tho i have now downloaded SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated. but i would still recommend this game for Apple Arcade Subscribers. it looks fantastic on my phone's screen and there's no issue with the Dynamic Island. it's a game targeting a wide audience age and ability level and does a great job in doing so. i feel that it's something causal gamers can play but also having depth and replayability for those looking for a challenge. especially when the daily challenges and shorter F.U.N sized levels are available after completing the second location.

Thursday, March 2, 2023

Backlog Conquering - Pyre - Part 14 - Winning The Fifth Liberation Rites, Getting to the Sixth

Welcome to Backlog Conquering.
Today's video is part 14, of playing Pyre on PlayStation 4.

In part 13, https://youtu.be/Znj2rtF1pHU, we started by doing the fourth Liberation Rites and loosing. we did a couple more rites before ending it at the start of the Fifth Liberation Rites.

My main goal was to win the fifth Liberation Rites and to send Ti'zo to the Commonwealth. I thought that by sending a creature that the Commonwealth hadn't seen before, it would benefit the plan. I won the game, i sent him to the Commonwealth, but it would be much later into the video until we heard if i had been successful. Turns out i was, tho not quite in the way i expected. but i'll take it!

Much like the previous video, things are happening faster than before. but i have also noticed that some things seem to be slowing down. for example, the amount of rites needed to be completed before getting to the Liberation Rites is reducing and making the game faster, but the social elements of the game also seem to be reduced. so one part of the game is getting faster, but the social side is slowing down. it is possible that the choices i've made have contributed to how the social aspect of the game is playing out.

I finished the video at the Sixth Liberation Rites. but i don't really know who to send back. it's starting to sound like there will only be this and one more Liberation Rite. i got a trophy for sending three people back to the Commonwealth so a part of me believes i've reached the minimum needed for a "good" ending. but i'd like to give it a go. so i have some time to think about who i want to send back, and perhaps more importantly why i think sending them back is a good move.