Aniimo - A Bad First Impression, But Has Some Interesting Gameplay Mechanics - iPhone Friday

For this week's iPhone Friday i tried Aniimo, from Pawprint Studio, on my iPhone 17e. This was recorded using the phone's screen recorder function with my audio recorded onto my computer.

Aniimo describes itself as an "Open-World Creature Collector" and in this video i do get to see that side of the game. But it's not without faults. 

Aniimo makes a bad first impression. it immediately starts an additional data download. there's no warning, no message about doing it over wi-fi instead of a mobile network, it just starts it. The amount of data being downloaded is also large, coming in at over 11B. But even when that's finished, we still can't play the game as it has to prepare the shaders. in all, it took nearly an hour before i could even start the game. Then we're forced to sign up to the game, there is no guest option. i always prefer to sign up as a guest and then if i like the game i'll sign in with Apple. 

The character creation screen is next but i had a couple of tech issues here. there is a lot of fine detail to play around with and we could spend a lot of time here. but i had trouble with the costume aspect and then when i went to start playing the game it took me back to the start of the creator with an error message. I don't know why this wasn't dealt with when i initially tried to move on from this part, rather than at the end when i want to start the game.

With how long it took to download the additional data and install it, my phone was quite warn and the game decided to set the graphics to low. i didn't realise this until near the end of the video. there are moments when the low setting really does look quite poor. often some graphics would look out of focus or too soft. But this isn't the reason for when i got stuck against a plant quite early on. the game describes itself as open-world, but there are invisible walls to watch out. i got stuck on one and the game didn't notice. i didn't know how to unstick myself and it took a little time before i opened the options and found a way to manually unstick myself.

The last thing that gave the game a bad first impression was how, at times, the game was poor at telling it's own story. right at the start there's an example where it's clear that our character can't catch anything because we don't have the equipment. But the game then makes us catch something. We do have a camera and we use it a couple of times. but then when i want to use it, for no provided reason i'm unable to. There are moments like this throughout this video and you can hear me constantly questioning what's happening.

Thankfully, Aniimo has some really interesting ideas that made me want to keep going and seeing what it has to offer. for me, i kind of stopped caring about the story by the end as it was the game mechanics that i wanted to try out. a fun one is the #Twine mechanic. this is poorly introduced earlier when we're first up against boss enemies. But by the end it's revealed that the game will automatically turn it on when appropriate. so i was able to just run into water, Twine would then activate, and now we're one of our caught monsters, one who can swim. we can Twine with them to attack, to fly, or even to help capture other monsters.

This first look wasn't able to show off the House mechanic, that was revealed by the App Store. nor was i really able to do more with research. i also had a couple of eggs that i didn't know what to do with. What's important is that i wanted to keep on going, i wanted to see these things, i wanted to explore the world and find hidden chests. I also wanted to learn more about the monsters in this world as a couple of rare and powerful ones are teased to us throughout this video.

So Aniimo makes a bad first impression. it has story telling issues, it has tech issues, and it doesn't always give the player enough information. thankfully the game mechanics are good enough to earn a thumbs up. But this mobile version needs work and i would understand if people held off and waited for a few updates to come out for it.

Version 1.0.3 Played

Another Eden Begins On Switch - Demo Play Thursday

This week's DEMO is the Switch version of Another Eden Begins, from developer Studio Prisma and publisher Wright Flyer Studios.

The eShop page for this game describes it as an RPG designed by RPG fans, specifically highlighting Masato Kato who has worked on a number of RPG games either with Square or freelance.

Another Eden Begins did feel like a RPG that ticked all the boxes. though at times this did make the game feel a little predictably and troupey. I wouldn't say it made the experience bad, Another Eden Begins is a solid RPG, but it certainly didn't make the game feel special. From the 2-3 chapters i played, of the 6 available in the demo, i don't think i worked out what the game's unique hook or gimmick is. the eShop page says that New Game+ is a feature and there are multiple endings to the game. 

I played on Switch and i thought the game looked great. As with many, if not nearly all, games that use character art i felt like there wasn't enough. often the character art didn't match the emotions of the scene. the characters were still on screen and often those showed more emotion that the art. But not with all characters. some characters felt like they had less art and their models had less motion and emotives. It's just another example of how fine it was to play, but how it's also not going further to get a 8 or 9 out of 10.

Some of the story didn't make sense. one part in particular made no sense as the weapon shop guy was supposed to have the day off and be closed, but the shop was open and he helped out seemingly free of charge. magic also seemed a little tact on. there were orbs floating around that we can interact with, there was an explanation of how important the orbs were, but they never did anything. And the cats, towards the end of this video, were another frustration as it seemed like they would follow us and help out but i never saw them help.

Another Eden Begins is fine to play. it's looks and music are at a higher level than the world and it's story telling. the pacing maybe a little slow, the loading a little long, but it's still a game i would be happy to play, maybe more of a PlayStation Plus kind of download rather than purchase at full price.

Puppeteer On PS3 - From Start to Finish - 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 game Puppeteer. this game came out in 2013 and was developed internally by Studio Japan. this game can be played in 3D and with PlayStation Move controllers, but for this series i'm playing with the DualShock 3.

I really enjoyed playing Puppeteer. the way it told it's story kept me very interested. there were a few gameplay mechanics that could've done with better communication as to how to do them, namely the jumping over obstacles whilst scissoring, and the basic jump. But the frustration with them was fleeting and the characters were fun and charming through to the end of the game. You may want to check out just before the credits as the game does give us one final surprise. If you can't get Puppeteer, i would highly suggest trying it via PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming service or watching a video like this one as it's a game that should be celebrated and not forgotten.

For this video, i took all 8 parts i made and cut out some of the "fluff" between curtains and acts. if i died once, i kept that in, but when i died multiple times at the same spot i showed the first death and when i respawned that's the one where i succeeded. i made a mistake with the volume, forgetting to raise it up and equalize it across all parts, so it's a little quieter than i would like.

Part 1- Act 1 Curtain 1- https://youtu.be/oHrOaXSuSsY

Part 2 - Act 1 Curtains 2 and 3 - https://youtu.be/Ti2e3_u6Hxc

Part 3 - Act 2 - https://youtu.be/AyXafK0G4KQ

Part 4 - Act 3 - https://youtu.be/HFUUYC04mV0

Part 5 - Act 4 - https://youtu.be/0jql54duy8A

Part 6 - Act 5 - https://youtu.be/B6Gwpk6vgks

Part 7 - Act 6 - https://youtu.be/7r6ybvGyc9I

Part 8 - Act 7 - https://youtu.be/9v_nL0_G3Y4

Vampire Survivors - Part 2 - Can't Recommend Streaming It From The Cloud - Cloud Monday

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing the PS4 version of Vampire Survivors via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

Part 1 was the worst or one of the worst experiences i've had streaming a game from PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service. thankfully, i do each game twice, on a different day and at a different time, to get a better average of the experience. Whilst i didn't get any disconnections in this part, it continued to be a struggle to play Vampire Survivors.

The biggest issue we have when we stream the game is the degradation of the visuals to the point where it affects gameplay. instead of the small characters, they become macro blocked which means they become larger squares of color. In Vampire Survivors, squeezing past the enemy is a legitimate way to survive but when macro blocking starts it's almost impossible as the narrow gaps are gone and replaced by blocks of color from enemies close to each other. 

Another negative becomes obvious as you get better at the game. to beat a level you have to survive for 30 minutes. but there appears to be no checkpointing and no way to save during a run. If the visuals get soo bad, or if the 20 second disconnection warning appears, there's nothing we can do other than to quit and hope the game saves in-time.

It's hard to think of a useful positive reason to stream this game from the cloud rather than downloading and installing it. I did download it and have played it a few times since and it's such a better experience that i can't even suggest streaming the game if you're curious. Vampire Survivors should only be played downloaded on your console. it's such a bad experience i can't help but wonder why it's on the service at all.

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/eAZPIqeNMD4

Random Dice 2 - A Dice Themed Tower Defense Game With Some Interesting Ideas - iPhone Friday

For this week's iPhone Friday i tried Random Dice 2, from 111%, on my iPhone 17e. This was recorded using the phone's screen recorder function with my audio recorded onto my computer.

THIS GAME IS NOT OUT IN THE USA (at the time of uploading)

I quite enjoy tower defense style games. with this game having it be dice themed, i was quite interested to see how it would work. i don't think the screenshots in the app store quite got across what sort of game this would be. 

It starts with the tutorial. i thought it was very good. everything was clearly explained and we were shown the basic loop of the game right from the beginning. But the first stage i played without it had weird crystals on it and the tutorial didn't come back to explain this new game mechanic. this was true for the rest of this video. i unlocked a supporter towards the end of the video, and again the tutorial didn't start to explain this new gameplay mechanic. 

Random Dice 2 does try to be helpful and tell us what's happening when things are activated during a run, but they appear at the top of the screen soo briefly that i don't think i ever fully read any of them. the game really needs to pause when these appear so we can learn how things work. there were some modifiers activated throughout this video where i didn't fully understand how they worked.

Thankfully, the core gameplay loop in Random Dice 2 so well taught in the opening tutorial, that i was able to just keep on playing. it seems like you're not meant to win. you're meant to make progress forward, earn gold, and use it to level up so next time you can make progress. Thankfully, we're not on our own. in all modes i was joined by, what was probably, Ai team mates and, i'm fairly sure, real world team mates. This was a fun addition to the game. it's clearly shown which of the two is doing the most work. sometimes it was my team, sometimes it was the co-op partner. i don't know if there was a way to interact with them, but it was needed as our goal was the same, last as long as possible.

Random Dice 2 is a recent release but it's been supported a lot with updates. there were features of the game i wasn't able to check out in this video but it's clear from the skill tree that they are expecting players to play it for a long time. i don't recommend games for their potential, but with how the game currently is i would be happy to recommend this to gamers. i know i'm not going to delete it after playing it for this video.

Version 1.1.2 Played 

Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia On Switch - Demo Play Thursday

This week's DEMO is the Switch version of Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia, from developer Ocellus Studio and publisher Microids.

When i was young, i watched some of the Marsupilami cartoon and enjoyed it. When i saw this game on the eShop i was reminded of the cartoon and i was curious about what sort of game this was going to be.

Thankfully, this is a decent demo. we get 3 lengthy stages to play through. each focuses on the unique abilities of 1 of the main 3 characters, though you are able to toggle between two of them during each stage. the first one is the most tutorial heavy but it's a good tutorial. it shows you what button to press and puts you in a scenario where you can use the move. having not paid attention to Marsupilami since the cartoon, i didn't quite know what moves to expect. 

Each of the 3 levels in this demo felt well designed in such a way to show off each of the characters and how switching between them opens up further platforming opportunities. each stage has a secret level to find and beat and musical notes to collect. Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia, in these 3 levels, didn't come across as a hard core platformer but i'd put it up there with #Rayman in terms of level complexity and how well each level is designed. i thought each of the levels i played were fun and enjoyed them. none of them had sections where i thought the platforming was poor or unfair. 

There are difficulty options to choose from. i kept it on normal but there is easy mode which removes damage from the game and makes it a pure platformer. this would make it a nice option for kids, especially those unfamiliar with platformers or who are younger. but even to me, i can see the appeal of playing it on easy. on platforms with trophies or achievements, it would be interesting to see if difficulty plays a factor in obtaining them.

Overall, as a demo it's good. i would've like screenshots or a trailer at the end. but it does have a link to the game's eShop page. i enjoyed playing it so i went and added Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia to my wishlist!

Need for Speed: Most Wanted On PS3 - Beating The Top 10 Most Wanted - 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. I was surprised that there were no major copyright issues with the music, except for a couple of countries. So not only enjoy the racing but also enjoy the music. You can see in the top left, when the track changes, what song is playing.

This is a compilation video showing all the races i won against the game's Top 10 Most Wanted.