Mobile Friday - SushiMon Defense - The Game As A Whole Falls Short, But I Would Still Recommend It

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried SushiMon Defense from developers Dreamplay Games, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I start this video by talking about what caught my attention from it's #App Store page and whether or not it could pull it off. what i failed to talk about was whether or not "Random Summon! Random Merge! Random Level Up! Random Skills!" would equate into a fun experience. after playing it, i think SushiMon Defense is a fun simple game at it's core but fails to build on it. you could say it's a roguelike and therefore it's fine for it to not tell us a lot about it but i can't help but feel that it tries so hard with it's tutorial at the start for that to be the case.

SushiMon Defense isn't perfect. the tutorial stops before key gameplay mechanics are explained. the summon animation didn't show the first time, so when it did the second time i thought that an advert had started playing but then it abruptly stops in a way which makes it seem broken as nothing really happens in the animation. i was surprised there was an animation as the comic introduction worked so well, i thought they would've used that. i also feel that at times, the controls weren't responsive enough and the game insisted on doing upgrades whilst i was trying to move stuff which caused some minor issues.

And yet, the core to SushiMon Defense still holds up. i want to continue playing it, i haven't deleted it off my phone, unlike a certain Jump King, and i would go so far as to recommend it. but it's going to fall short of game of the year and may not make my top 5 as the game as a whole falls short.

Version 14.4 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Nif Nif On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Nif Nif.

Via the Mobile Friday series, I have tried several roguelike deck builder card games. I'm always interested to see what unique spin they're going to have on that style of game and how they're going to introduce it to the player. Will they go hard into the Roguelike aspect and not even offer a tutorial or will they focus on story and world building. When i saw Nif Nif on the eShop, i was intrigued by it's style and that it seemed to focus on animals. i wondered if this game was aiming at a much younger audience.

Quite quickly it's revealed that the goal of this roguelike deck builder is to clean and to stay clean. the foes you face on screen are dirty and seem to want to get our character dirty, too, so it's up the us, the player, to pick the best cards to deal with it. this concept is introduced smartly in the tutorial and it uses videos to show how to play the game. But much like the mobile games of this type, the tutorial in Nif Nif stops early and forgets to get across key concepts of the game and what on screen icons do. as it's a demo i felt OK experimenting myself.

I don't think Nif Nif is aimed at a young audience. it's still a Roguelike game and as such it still has a level of difficulty. the first area we play in doesn't feel like it's been designed to be a low level beginners area. personally, i feel this is a missed opportunity. the game already starts with a great tutorial, it could've continued into concepts and suggestions throughout this first area before letting things get more difficult from the next area onwards. This demo only has the first area and i couldn't beat it on my first try, in-fact i beat it on my third. But like all good roguelikes, you can see that i learned from each run and did the next one better.

I enjoyed my time with the demo for Nif Nif and would easily recommend it for those curious about the game. it was designed with the developers autistic son in mind, so if someone in your family is Neuro divergent it could be something to try too.

Stories on Tuesday - Arcade Spirits - From Start To Finish On PS4

The Stories on Tuesday game was the PS4 version of Arcade Spirits from Fiction Factory Games. this was a playthrough of the disc version of the game, published by PQube.

With the story concluded, i have put all the parts together into one long story, from start to finish, including the credits and post credits scene. 

You can check out the previous parts of this playthrough:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/iPaMcNIB-pI

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/BBr3lviaf2s

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/n2QOLAQm--M

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/S0aaJtoLQz4

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/KeyDE9FhxBE

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/TYxIMh05j-Q

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/2Q3D-sutzCE

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/58EgAPImlIQ

Cloud Monday - Humankind - Part 2 - Great Fit For Cloud Gaming, Poor Fit For Consoles

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing #Humankind on #PS4 via the #PlayStationPlus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model #PlayStation4.

In Part 1 we learned that the game saves after each turn and that it also has manual saves, too. this already makes it a great fit for being played in the Cloud as we're only given a 20 second warning before a disconnection. but by the end of that video, i was starting to wonder if the console port was actually worth playing.

i could hear audio issues and now we've had a much smoother streaming experience in this Part 2 i feel like the audio is just poor in the game. This PS4 port also felt like a degraded version of the game because of the visuals. we got to meet more characters in this part and each of them looked low quality. from my recordings, i know that the game isn't 1080p either, tho i don't have the ability to determine what resolution it runs at. But the thing that bugged me the most about this port was the apparent decision to prioritise esthetics of accessibility. 

The menus are a joke. you'd really have to get right up close to your TV to read them and the game has no options to increase the size of them either. the tutorials were also frustrating because of their size but also in their timing. there were other minor inconveniences like the camera and cursor being separate meant that i would often see something i'd want my troops to investigate but would have to wait for the cursor to manually move from where it was, resetting the camera to that spot.

There were aspects of the game that gave me the "one more turn" vibe and you can see that by the end of this part. but it wasn't satisfying, i wasn't enjoying my time with the game. so whilst this game is a good fit for being streamed from the cloud, i don't think it's a good fit on the PS4.

Mobile Friday - Jump King - It Looks Great But Feels Like A Basic Port With Inconsistent Controls

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Jump King from developers Nexile, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I went into this video not knowing that Jump King was an existing game on other platforms, but i called it early on that it felt like this was a port of a game. i guessed that it was a port of a game designed for a bigger screen like a folding phone and i was kinda right as it was a PC game first. it's a little weird how the game doesn't take full advantage of the phone's screen and doesn't have any options to let the player move the controls around either. the options are extremely basic and are only for the sounds, there's no language options, no accessibility options, and no graphical options.

The music might be broken in this game, or this version of it. i'm unsure so if you know if what i experienced was normal, please let me know in the comments. it's unfortunate that it was so obvious when the music looped as it got quite frustrating. couple this with some grating sound effects, and i honestly wanted to turn all the sounds off but i couldn't because i was recording a video. this has never happened before. then there was the odd sound that came out of a bird, my first thought was that it was a low quality burp! there was also the incident when i got music when i reached a stage and then never got it again.

another complaint i had throughout was the lack of feeling from the game. it never used my phones vibration, nor did it give any visual clues other than a button was being pressed. this lack of feedback made it tough to learn how to play the game. Jump King does not have a tutorial or on screen prompts, it doesn't have a section designed to teach us mechanics either.  we're dropped straight into the world and that's it. not having any sort of feedback gave me the impression that the game is inconsistent, maybe even a little random. Then there was the moment when an old guy said i could glance and look up, but of course they never said how to do so and i never worked out how to do it. 

Jump King may have a retro aesthetic about it, but on mobile it's design just feels old and not in a good way. maybe this sort of community exists on other platforms, but here on mobile it feels like Jump King was just a basic port with little to no thought about taking advantage of the platform it's on. i can't recommend it as i can't think of any group that it's for on mobile.

Version 1.0.10 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Through the Nightmares On #PS4

For this week's #Demo Play Thursday i played the #PlayStation4 version of Through the Nightmares.

I'm not good at challenging platforming games but i do like to try them. l'm always hoping to find one that'll be difficult, but not necessarily punish me for finding it difficult. As the player, i'd like to feel that there's a chance i can improve. i think Through the Nightmares get's pretty close to this so even tho the demo got tough, i did actually finish it.

Through the Nightmares starts with a nice small level that serves as it's tutorial and i think it works great. not only did i learn what most of the buttons do, but i got a little taste of how the platforming sections may work. there was a decent sense of satisfaction from this little introduction stage. the second stage introduces an item. it's presented as some sort of checkpoint. but when you complete the level you realise there's a bonus for completing the level and not using it, so of course i tried the level again this time without dying. playing Through the Nightmares in this demo was a pleasant experience, but that's not to say it was an easy one.

The game says on it's PSN page that it's not an easy game, that there will be a challenge, and i certainly restarted plenty of times during this demo. what helped was the choice of using the checkpoint item and/or that restarting when you did die was very fast. using the checkpoint doesn't mean you haven't completed the level. thankfully, Through the Nightmares will let you continue if you haven't collected everything. all you need to do is complete the level to unlock the next.

Most of the challenging platforming felt fair. the game is smart to introduce a mechanic, let us try it out in the level, then let us try it out on something more challenging. the demo ends with us facing off against a boss and throughout the encounter we have to use all the skills we've learned so far. this felt like a fair encounter until the encounter changed it's gameplay style. then it felt a little cheap, like the margins for error were even tighter than before. but, again, with quick restarting and thankfully a little checkpointing from the game itself, rather than the item, it didn't take long to conquer the boss and finish the level.

I enjoyed my time with the Through the Nightmares DEMO and came away with it knowing that it's a tough game but also feeling that i could perhaps do it. so as a demo, i think this worked great. it'd be great to hear from you if you played the retail game and how difficult the later levels are. it also wasn't clear if our save carries over from demo to retail game. but i think the demo for Through the Nightmares is well worth checking out.

Backlog Conquering - Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition On PS4 - Part 3

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.

Part 3 was interesting as it helped develop some of the villainous characters and their back story. We also got two new cool abilities, with the chicken especially being one i didn't suspect. we didn't take the story too far forward, but by learning about other characters and getting and trying out our new abilities i feel that Part 4 could be really interesting. There's a chance that we're going to be visiting places we've already been to before and my guess would be that the point is to use our new abilities to explore new places and complete more quests.

You can watch other parts:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/y20ZZ5IllmY

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/OxoUuZ8dYno