Demo Play Thursday - Gunbrella On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Gunbrella . This game, from developers Doinksoft and publishers Devolver Digital,  is already out not only on Switch and PC.

The demo for Gunbrella, and the game itself, has been out for a few months now so the complaints i might have with the game could all be resolved by now if the game has been patched. i don't have the game so i can't do the comparison, but if you have it and played it it would be great to read your comments about how things have changed or how they are now in general.

There's a lot to like about this game after playing the demo. graphically, it looks great. more detailed than 8 or 16bit games but also not too blocky. there's a decent amount of movement in the foreground that helps give life/energy to the world, with decent backdrops helping to set the scene, and a sky with rolling clouds. The music is also good to listen to and works well, especially with the boss at the end of the video. i would be interested in hearing more of the music for sure.

For the most part, the controls are really good too. general movement is responsive and whilst the initial jump may not be that high it does feel satisfying in how it works. When we get to use the Brella for an additional jump, the sense of movement and speed is greater but i mostly felt able to control things just as easily. But, movement is also tied to shooting. If you jump up, the gun points up. if you move right, the gun points right. The right stick is also tied to shooting and something about having both control the gun just didn't work well with me.

I admit that it's only a demo and i could just need more practice. i often had issues when dealing with enemies. i would jump at an angle, try to shoot, my gun would be pointing up at an angle, i would miss the enemy and typically end up getting hit by them. It could be that after practice and more time i would be able to adjust and come up with a different strategy. But in the hour i played with the game, i never really got the hand of it.

The game didn't offer any tips or suggestions beyond the basic tutorial either. and that's something that i wasn't impressed with during the demo. It felt like the game did the minimum when it came to tutorials for the player. last weeks game, Knight Vs. Giant: The Broken Excalibur https://youtu.be/2slErl63Nz4 showed how to not only do text on screen but how to use the space effectively with added video tutorials. the text on screen approach here felt dated like the atheistic the game is based on. It wasn't just the tutorials. the items in the store and inventory had the bare minimum information. i had items that sounded like permanent upgrades and some that seemed to be time based. but the game never told me any of that. It's the same when looking up your tasks. there's a lot of space used by such few words. 

One of the more annoying parts of the demo is when i follow the instructions of a text box and it doesn't work. the game explained about food. i did what it said, and nothing happened. There were a couple of instances in a library section where text seemed to be out of order. i would encounter a scenario, get past it, and then read a text warning me of it.

One weird thing about this demo is that in the more than a hour i played, it never once said it was a demo! It's possible it might've after the boss i couldn't beat. i suspect that's where the demo might've ended, or after the quests related to it had finished. after trying that first boss i feel like i should've tried this demo on Easy, not the Normal i picked or the Hard it defaulted to.

I'm glad i tried out the demo. i was a little curious about this game. i now know that it's maybe not for me, but i can come away from it appreciating what it got right and maybe if a "Directors Cut" or "DX" edition were to come to other platforms then maybe i'd give it another shot.

Backlog Conquering - CounterSpy On PS3 - Part 3 – Another 3 Missions

CounterSpy is the current Backlog Conquering Wednesday game. i'm playing this version of the game on PlayStation 3. It came out across the PS4, PSV and even mobile in 2014 from developers Dynamighty.

I'm definitely feeling the increase of difficulty. In one level i died so much that i triggered the DEFCOM countdown and had to race past the bad guys to stop it with mere seconds in hand! The difficulty is done with a mix of increasing the number of enemy soldiers in a location and giving them helmets so it takes more bullets to headshot them. But this highlights how, in my opinion, the game isn't balanced enough for it. the price of ammo is so high and it's rare to find any in a level. we don't get much money for completing a level and after paying for ammo, it rarely feels like we have enough for the formulas we use to help balance the difficulty better.

The story is still enough to keep me going, but i'm getting to the point where not much else is. gameplay wise i feel like i've seen it all and it's just getting more and more unfair as i play.

There will be a third part to this game. whilst the gameplay is getting difficult, the story is getting interesting. 

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Amon 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 Amon Cup Revival! (2023/12/4 9:00～2023/12/11 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

This week is the Amon Cup Revival. i have played this cup before, https://youtu.be/Zi80Cke8aUU. That video is shorter than this one and i did much better in that than this one, too!

I thought i understood the gimmick this week but i guess i didn't fully. it was difficult to understand how effective each thing i tried was. sometimes i seemed to do a lot of damage whilst others i didn't. i couldn't really tell why. i only faced a couple of people this week and they also seemed to struggle against the final boss. But even the computer managed to beat me this week!

This week i played against:

Zargus - Rank 76

JOKER - Rank 30

Switch Funday - BONUS - Tetris 99 - 37th Maximus Cup - Warioware: Move It!

This weekend there is the 37th Maximus Cup in Tetris 99. the prize this cup is a Warioware: Move It! theme. I haven't played this game since the last Maximus Cup and it showed. i was very rusty and made many mistakes. it was surprising that i finished as high as i did in the first video considering all the mistakes i made. Overall i'm happy to have finished high 3 times even tho i wasn't playing good, but i'm not satisfied with my performance as i'm still on the hunt for my first win at Tetris.

Switch Funday - Pokémon Unite - December's Unite Weekend

Today's Switch Funday video is on Pokémon Unite. as this is the first full weekend of December, it's a Unite Weekend. this means i'm able to use any #Pokemon i want in the unranked online modes. my goal with these weekends is to try out several new #pokémon i don't have and hopefully find some new favorites. 

I got a bit confused at first and did a quick match before realizing that i wanted to do standard match. so the first part of the video is different from the next 5.

As for this Pokemon Unite weekend, i went in wanting to give a few Pokémon a go. one of them was Clefable. it's a Pokémon i used to use a lot in Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow, so it was a nostalgia pick. Scizor was a Pokémon i was curious about. i wondered if it would be a strong physical attacker and it was. i enjoyed my time with it and may get it in the future. up next was, what i thought, a sillier choice but also one that uses ranged attacks. Cramorant is a Pokémon i've never used before in any game and i didn't expect much from it here. but i was pleasantly surprised how useful it became. It's #Unite move is a little risky as we essentially become a turret stuck in place, but i had a much better time with it than expected. it's another Pokémon i wouldn't mind having. Delphox was a Pokémon i was curious about as to whether the game would lean into the physic or fire moves. ultimately, i didn't have a great time using it. But whilst using it i was reminded about Mr. Mime and that's what i used in the 5th video. i have played against many Mr. Mimes and they all seem to use barriers. i wanted to see what other moves it got and i had fun using Physic and Power Zap, it was great being able to attack and move a lot. i didn't take full advantage of it's Unite move, but it's now a Pokémon i wouldn't mind having. I finished with Sylveon as i'm making my way through the Eeveelutions. I didn't have as much fun with it as i have had with Leafeon and Glaceon so i probably won't be getting it any time soon.

Online Saturday - Splatoon 3 - December's Big Run Event

Welcome to Online Saturday!

This weekend is December's Big Run Event in Splatoon 3. The event takes place on the Barnacle & Dime map. Throughout the video i'll make the mistake and think that this is the eggstra event and talk about this video https://youtu.be/fohHFUg29QU. i hope this wont be too confusing for you.

This went really well. I aimed to get the item twice and as that seemed easy and the recording was under an hour i went for 1,000 points! it only took 7 games and my teams and i came up against the new Salmonoid boss Megalodontia. we faced off against it twice but it's a very tough boss. the first time was at high tide and with the boss being so big, it was tough to avoid whilst also dealing with the other enemies. the second time started better but as a team we got wiped out fairly quick. having it appear from below is tricky to deal with as the ink put down is rarely ours. by this point, there's so much enemy ink that getting around is slow. it's tough to ink, attack enemies, dodge the boss, and attack the boss. in that second game i also had a weapon i didn't like to use.

Mobile Friday - Honkai: Star Rail - A Good Console Game On Mobile, But Not A Good Mobile Game

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Honkai: Star Rail on my iPhone 14 Pro. This game from miHoYo and Cognosphere  is also out on Android, PS5, and  PC.

Honkai: Star Rail is Apple 's iPhone game of the year for 2023 so as i'm thinking about my own top 5 games of the year, i was keen to play this game that i somehow missed when it first came out.

But, you must play the first hour of this game on Wifi as there are TWO content downloads you must do to play the game. there's a small, in comparison to the second one, download before the game starts and there's a second that's 12GB in size before we've even finished the first tutorial part of the game! I'll be clear, this means the game won't be my Number 1 game of 2023 as these additional downloads mean the game isn't designed for mobile players. Such things are from MMO's on PC and Consoles and are tolerated there because they have an online connection. but on Mobile where people have data caps, it's not acceptable. 

Something else about how the game plays makes me think that the game was developed first on consoles and/or PC first is how the camera works, especially in comparison to how the character moves. the camera is much slower to move, often requiring greater thumb movement, whilst the player character moves much faster. In this video you'll see and sometimes here how i have to move my thumb on and off the my phone to try and keep up. This makes playing the game handheld a little less stable. there's no Bluetooth controller support either.

Something we see more and more on current gen consoles and that has existed on PC for a long time are graphical options. they're here, too. But implemented in a much poorer way. there's no information provided as to what changes each option does to the game, how much performance is lost or gained, or even what's recommended for the phone you're playing it on. So far, all these things make the game feel like a so-so port of Honkai: Star Rail from console and PC to iPhone.

I'll be the first to admit than an hours look at this game isn't enough. i don't know if there are other additional downloads, for example, nor do i know if the game's story improves over the issues i had with it in the beginning. One of the things that stood out the most was how the games describes what's happening to the station we're on whilst what i saw didn't match that. the station is under attack, there are enemies and fights, and i just saw a couple of enemies hanging out. there seemed to be no damage to the station, no alerts or alarms, and no real haste from the characters. This issue came up near the end when one character says they're going to check up on another. we later meet up and they tell us the situation with that character. then we meet that character and how it looks in-game doesn't match the description and then it goes on to act like this is it's first time meeting any of us. It's like the story telling and the designers aren't talking to each other, or it could be a translation issue. what ever it is, it took me out of the game.

The game does look amazing. the heat on my phone gives the impression that it is being pushed somewhat hard by this game. the music is good, too. the design is bright and clear, and the UI is generally smart if a little small at times. the game does make great use of the screen and the dynamic island never got in the way of things. So there are many positives about this game, but if i was given the choice of playing this on phone or console, i'd go with console. 

(Version 1.5.0 Played)