It's day two of February's Splatfest weekend so today's video focuses on the Tricolor game mode in Splatoon 3. Things were only a little better than yesterday. Matches generally took a minute to be found, there was one game disconnected and a couple of games where teams played with one fewer player. Check out yesterday's video at https://youtu.be/qAMJOuPzT_8, it took an hour 45 to play 15 games then and today it took an hour 30!
The goal of Tricolor is for all three teams to play together. two, with only two players on each team, would team up against the third team, who has four players. Unfortunately, this doesn't often work brilliantly and i've never played a Tricolor Sunday with all games working out like that. often it ends up with three of the same team going up against each other. This week, i only did 3 "proper" Tricolor battles and it felt bad. i really did start to lose enthusiasm by the end. I also only ever played as the defending team 4 times so again it was boring doing the same thing soo many times.
It's a Splatfest weekend so today's video is on the "What's the best day of the weekend? Friday, Saturday, or Sunday?" Splatfest in Splatoon 3. I chose to join Team Saturday.
The biggest takeaway for me from today, Saturday, of the Splatfest is how bad the online was. I had 4 games disconnect during gameplay and more in lobbies waiting for games. on top of that were times when i waited minutes for a game, with one wait 3 minutes or more. Splatoon 3 has incredible matchmaking in that the wait is typically 20 seconds or less. so for it to be soo long today sticks out even more. i recorded nearly 1 hour 45 minutes of video and cut out the waits and disconnections and the video is about 1 hour 2 minutes. that's 40 minutes of waiting. By the end i was really fed up and my enthusiasm had dried up. i just wanted the 15 games to be over. I can only hope it went better for you.
For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Disaster Town Tycoon from Rogue Harbour Game Studio. I Played this on my iPhone 14 Pro, but it's also out on Android.
The screenshots and video on it's app store page make it look fun and inviting. It certainly got my attention. But it also left a lot unanswered and i was very curious about how a lot of the game would actually work. So i went into this looking for answers and i would say i came away with plenty.
As ever, one of the first things i look for is how the screen is used. all to often, games are ported to Apple from Android and things like the UI haven't been changed to fit iPhone screens. That's not the case here. the Dynamic Island has plenty of space at the top and never gets in the way and at the bottom, the Dock has some room too and i never caught it instead of hitting a button. Another important answer i want to know is how the game integrates adverts. Once again, it's a positive answer in that they're optional. we're given bonuses for watching them and none are forced upon us.
Something many games get wrong or fail to see through to a logical conclusion is the tutorial. If a game has one, they're typically too short and/or lack all the information you need. In Disaster Town Tycoon the tutorial takes you through a lot of the early game. it often simply explains things as well as showing how the game is played. Every new menu is explained, too. if i can complain, i would say that the tutorial could tell you to click on things to get an explanation and that it could be expanded at the start to help explain how to complete certain tasks.
Disaster Town Tycoon is one of the most polished games i've come across. it did come out in 2023 and it has been updated a lot, but i think it does the basic well enough that it would've been in my 2023 Free To Play Mobile Game Of The Year Awards, https://youtube.com/shorts/bF8H8VqQVVQ. The game is colorful and it works great with the art style and building designs. the characters have a fun look to them that doesn't look out of place. I even enjoyed the humour and greatly appreciated how it told us near the beginning why there are people living in a disaster prone city. that was such a small detail that really helped create a world and a reason why.
I hit the grind by about 20 minutes but was able to continue for a little while longer before needing to stop and wait. In some games that's come across as a lack of things to do and that the game doesn't have much depth. I didn't get that from Disaster Town Tycoon. more than once it tells us that we could come back later for free stuff and the pacing of the game goes very naturally from somewhat speedy to somewhat slow so that when the grind starts it feels like a natural time to put it down and let it idle.
I highly recommend Disaster Town Tycoon. I also think it would appeal to more than just the idle crowd. the graphics, the art style, the humour, and more importantly the initial tutorial make this one of the most approachable games i've played on iPhone.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Quadroids, developed by Blue Loop Studio and published by Fabloo Games and Just for Games.
The screenshots for this game on the PSN got me really interested in this game. But i was very aware that this was a puzzle game with a lot of death and i'm typically not good at them. so i was keen to try out the demo.
It starts out with a very informative video that shows off the basic loop of the game, you play, you die, and it helps you get to the end. We do get a bit of story before a all too brief tutorial that really didn't help that much. We don't get all the levels from the first section of the game so it's possible that there are other tutorial sections, but i don't think that's the case. I don't typically mind a poor tutorial, but the game is monitoring how many moves you make and it is scored. i would've liked a practice room, or a practice dream, just to try and get the basics done. it's very much level after level.
By the final level, i was already out of my depth and struggling to play it. i am concerned that it'll just keep on getting more difficult. that's why i'm glad that there is a demo. it's clear that the game has some great ideas, but i'm happy to have tried out the demo and learnt that it's not for me instead of paying for it, struggling to progress, and ending up regretting a purchase and possibly souring my thoughts on the game.
Trying to manage four screens, each uses a different button, with a surprising amount of timing required to manage and progress, was a bit too much. at the end, the game has a demo end screen and in the bottom left it lets you try out a later level and i couldn't do it. This ending screen is nice but it's the most that the game acknowledges that it's a demo. the developers were perhaps a little too focused on trying to the theme of the game going over treating it like an actual demo.
But i do recommend you try out the demo. Playing the game does a better job of explaining it than just screenshots and a trailer. actually having to kill your character in the right spot, having to manage the timing of two characters so they meet at the right time, it's something that's better experienced through playing. the levels we get to try seem to be a good collection of new ideas. my guess is that in the game you'd get a level with a new idea, and the following level is that idea used in a different way, whereas in the demo we got to try out all the new ideas and mechanics.
This is part 2 of playing the PlayStation 4 version of Titan Attacks!, from developers Puppygames, as part of Backlog Conquering. But it will also be the final video on this game.
The goal of Backlog Conquering isn't to finish a game, it's to play a game. Unfortunately, i've now played Titan Attacks! and i didn't end up enjoying it. There are some neat ideas, the music is great, and for the most part i do like the presentation of the game. it's just playing it that's the issue.
I found Part 1, https://youtu.be/i50TzJrbBcI, to be much more difficult than i expected for the first level of a game. and in that video i tried out the Moon stage and the jump in difficulty was surprising to say the least. What this part showed me is how the levels are more difficult. it's not just more enemies that need stronger weapons or more hits to destroy. there are asteroids, enemies dropping bombs, enemy vessels crashing, enemy drones crashing, enemies shooting down, aliens to capture or shoot down, and one of the more annoying additions were the bombs that let out a blast wave. Combined, these all felt like they were all randomly set rather than being crafted to work together or in tandem. this meant there were no patterns to learn and where you were or next to you were the targets for the enemies. Several times i found myself trapped, forced to take a hit, and when there were many enemies on screen i simply had to take many hits.
That randomness just didn't feel like fun, it felt like i needed luck more than skill. The game tries to even things out with an upgrade system, but it felt broken. i could never seem to earn enough money to get the required upgrades. it was luck whether or not the UFO that flies across the screen dropped money or something else.
I couldn't defeat the Moon boss and by the end of the video i had no interest in continuing. Titan Attacks! is an old game and this PlayStation 4 port feels old with old ways of doing difficulty. by the time of the console ports, it really should've been a "DX" style upgrade that would modernise the game's mechanics whilst keeping the art style, direction, and music that i enjoyed from my time with the game.
Next week's Backlog Conquering video will feature a "new" game.
This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PS3 version of Brink via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4. I have previously uploaded the PlayStation 3 XMB game Previews for the Beta to Brink, version 1.00 https://youtube.com/shorts/uWjRVuGWWZ0 and version 1.01 https://youtu.be/AQGrYqGH7Bg, but it was so long ago i don't really remember much about the game. i know that it didn't do as great as they expected and i remember there being some complaints at the time, but i don't remember what specifically the main issues with the game were.
It starts well with an interesting intro video detailing the story of the game. it tries to provide both the point of view of both sides as when it finishes it asks you to pick a side to play as. Whilst the following character customisation section was easy to navigate, i wasn't a fan of the character design. i didn't like how at this point, it asks you to customise and at first glance it looks like there are lot's of options, but in reality a lot are locked behind progress. i would've preferred the lock stuff to be separated.
Brink has an interesting approach to the tutorial in that it's a video, longer than i expected. it's very detailed and seems to go over everything. There's bonus XP for watching it. i was just surprised that there was no where to go and practice it. the video is a lot to take in and i honestly forgot a few things as i played.
The online servers for Brink are offline, but it does have a single player mode. i was really interested to see how this would work not just in this game but also as something that's being played in the cloud. some of the best designed games are those with lots of auto saves and manual saves. It soon became apparent that the single player part of the game is built inside the multiplayer. It was never made clear if your progress was being tracked with an auto save, so if Sony does disconnect you from the service you could hop back into where you were, or not. personally, i think that there is no auto save/check pointing and if you're disconnected you'll have to start again from the beginning.
As the single player mission are timed, the compromise is that you won't loose too much progress other than the mission you're currently playing. But the fact it's being played inside a multiplayer shell also means how it works is kinda interesting. What took me a little time to realise is that i can respawn. i kept on expecting my team mates to heal me but when i understood the respawn mechanic other aspects started to make sense. i had noticed that the enemy was relentless but so where my team mates. but i also noticed that players on both sides were getting killed. now i understood that both sides have a respawn mechanic. A bonus to dying is that you're able to respawn and change your job to suit what's happening. I only tried out the medic, but by the end of the video it was clear that the medics job in this mode isn't that beneficial as the Ai players die so quickly.
I wouldn't say the Ai players are that smart either. it wasn't too frustrating playing with them, but it certainly was unpredictable. Ultimately, it's great that we're able to still play this game. it looks good, the cinematics were great, but i still don't like the character art styles. aspects of the game feel very modern, so it's possible the game was ahead of it's time, but there are certainly aspects of it's design that feel very much of the PS3 generation. Having the ability to play it on PlayStation Plus in the cloud is a bonus, but it's clear that the game isn't designed well enough for it. Part 2 of playing Brink is will probably be more about experiencing this past game.
