For this week's Mobile Friday i tried #Catstaurant: Cat Chefs, from developers Superbox, on my iPhone 14 Pro.
I've tried a few of these animal restaurant idle games but often there's a compromise which makes the overall experience less than it could be. sometimes it's amazing animations at the expense of something, or a good story but somethings off, or it's just poor overall. Going into Catstaurant: Cat Chefs i wasn't really sure what i was going to get.
It would be easiest to say that Catstaurant: Cat Chefs doesn't stick the landing, to such a degree that it almost feels like it's only half complete and they released what was playable. for example, the tutorial starts great but then just stops. the art is nice, but it's very repetitive. the music is fine, but you can hear the loop. the story looked interesting, but was never mentioned again. but the weirdest one was that i don't really know what the idle mechanics are for this idle game as at no point did it tell me. whether that's the tutorial's fault, the story's fault, or the developers simply forgot, it fits into the thought that perhaps Catstaurant: Cat Chefs wasn't finished but released anyway.
As it is, i can't recommend Catstaurant: Cat Chefs. there are elements about it that are good and work well as a commuting game, but they're not enough and i can't recommend it on it's potential as there's no guarantee it'd ever be reached.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club: Tokimeki - Roadmap to Future.
As part of Stories on Tuesday, i've been playing more visual novels and that also includes demos. Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club: Tokimeki - Roadmap to Future is a style of visual novel i've not tried before as most of the games on this channel have been more serious or sad.
this demo at no point says that it's a demo so it's unclear if we're getting the full start of the game or if our save will carry over to the main game. there was no trailer nor link to the eShop either. The demo also ends rather abruptly. so as a demo experience, it's not great.
As for the story, i felt that it started strong and it gave the main cast of characters surprising depth to what, at first, seemed like shallow answers. But after the introductions and back stories were over, the style of story telling changed. Our character has lost some of their memory so the goal of the game appears to be that i need to re-make social connections to help remember. but the gameplay to do this makes the game feel more trial and error than i expected. we are free to choose where to go, but during the whole day we can only make 2 choices. in this video you'll see how sometimes my choice led to a character interaction with me and sometimes it was just me watching characters interact with each other. i found this style of story telling and gameplay unsatisfying.
If i make the wrong choice, my connections with my friends don't improve. but it's very difficult to make the right choice. it's not a 50/50 decision as there are so many choices to choose from, and with each day consisting of only 2 interactions, i felt genuine pressure to try and succeed at what amounts to at guessing. so for me, Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club: Tokimeki - Roadmap to Future isn't the style of visual novel i want to play.
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. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have.
In Part 13 we made our way to the Flying Fortress and this Part focuses on the journey through it to beating Tiamat and getting the final crystal. it was also nice to get to look out of the window at the world below. to finish i got the sword Excalibur so i'm looking forward to trying it out in the next Part. one highlight from this part was discovering that my Master didn't need weapons equipped and now he's soo much more stronger than he had been up to this point.
The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the PS4 version of Arcade Spirits from Fiction Factory Games. this is the disc version of the game, published by PQube.
This is Part 1 and it covers the first in-game day. it's unclear how long or short the other days will be so i don't know how long videos will be going forward or whether each part will be one or two days.
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Hotel Transylvania: Scary-Tale Adventures on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
I haven't done many games aimed at a younger audience as part of this series but when i saw there was a game from the Hotel Transylvania universe i thought this would be a good one to try as i've seen the first 3 Hotel Transylvania movies and enjoyed them.
None of the actors from the movies return to voice their characters in this game and for the most part it was fine. the only character that was really noticeable was Dracula. he's voiced by Adam Sandler in the movies, but here i felt that his character in the game sounded the most off but that could also be because he does the most talking in the game.
Much like the previous game i tried out for this series, Hotel Transylvania: Scary-Tale Adventures doesn't have a manual save system. there is an auto save system but it's difficult to trigger. what's really unclear is whether or not there is a checkpoint system and if it's tied into the auto save. i did perish and when i respawned it wasn't at the start of the level but rather somewhat close to where i failed. But there's nothing shown on screen to indicate that there's a checkpoint and i don't remember spotting the auto save whilst traversing a level. So that does mean, even just from Part 1, that i wouldn't recommend playing Hotel Transylvania: Scary-Tale Adventures from the cloud.
The game itself is a little rough. i did find myself fighting the camera a little but some of that could also be down to a little stick drift in my controller. the camera had some lag which could be down to the game being streamed but i suspect that it's an trait of the game as this is something that very rarely comes up in this series. There was some extreme pop-in as well, which is down to the game and not that it was being streamed. you can see fairly close to the camera that objects, shadows, and background elements would appear when directly in front of the camera and disappear when i moved the camera.
After just 1 Part, Hotel Transylvania: Scary-Tale Adventures doesn't feel well designed for being streamed from the cloud but itself has some issues as well.
For this week's Mobile Friday i tried mo.co, from Supercell, on my iPhone 14 Pro.
Currently, mo.co is an invite only game so of course i applied and was granted an invite. if you're interested in trying out mo.co, head to https://mo.co/en/ to apply for yourselves.
Honestly, i think i came into this with the wrong impression of what the game was. i read it was some sort of monster hunting game and immediately i thought of the famous series from Capcom. mo.co is not that but you do seek out and destroy a lot of monsters in it. it's more of a monster exterminating game. there are locations where the locals are having issues with monsters, you go to these areas, deal with it, and then head back home. It's an experience designed for mobiles and short bursts of gameplay.
The gameplay is simple and yet satisfying. but what makes mo.co interesting is how it integrates an MMO experience into the game. When you travel to locations you are not alone in the world. there maybe main A.I characters in the world but there are other human controlled characters. everyone is here to achieve a goal but at no point does the game force us to team up. But if you're next to someone else and they kill a boss enemy, you both can get xp. if you use a area of effect heal move, that'll heal any other human character near by regardless if you're on the same team.
There are sections of this video where i don't team up with anyone, there are times i stumble upon a group tackling a boss and i join in. this is all done with no communication. towards the end of this video i did unlock a mode called Rifts. this mode has to be done in teams of 4 and it challenges the 4 players to defeat a boss as quickly as possible. your time is kept and the challenge is to defeat that boss with other players in a quicker time.
In this first play of mo.co i didn't unlock all the game modes so i don't know how deep the MMO elements go, but for now i like how relaxed it is about it. the game is also relaxed when it comes to finishing tasks and quests. often i would defeat the required enemies and not rush back to home and instead either help out those nearby, go to a hidden chest, or just keep on fighting. the experience is over when i choose it to be.
mo.co has been long in development and it shows because it is a very polished experience. even at the craziest screen filled moments i never noticed any lagging or graphical issues. the music is fantastic and the graphics have that bright "chunky" Supercell style. but i was surprised how barebones the tutorial was and some things in game are made much clearer than others. it feels like it's aimed more for "traditional gamers" than a causal audience but it wouldn't take may tweaks to make it more accessible to a causal audience.
Even tho mo.co is invite only at the moment, i do recommend it. i really enjoyed my time with it and i'm genuinely curious about the other modes i've yet to unlock and whether there's an actual story here.
For this week's #Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Rusty Rabbit.
At first glance, i assumed Rusty Rabbit was another in a long line of shovelware on Switch but after checking out the eShop page and reading that somewhat famous companies Nitroplus and NetEase were behind the game i was really curious to see what they had come up with.
I did go into this demo expecting it to look worse than it actually did. there was something about the screenshots and video on the eShop page that made it look like a lower resolution game and got me thinking that this would be a lesser experience in comparison to the PS5 version of the game. thankfully this is a great demo and that wasn't the case.
this demo makes it clear that it is a demo but more importantly it says that the save file from this demo will work in the retail version of the game, it's something that a lot of demos don't mention. there are also links at the start of the demo to get the game from the eShop and at the end of the demo. as an experience, it's certainly one of the better demos i've played as part of this playlist.
Right from the start, this demo for Rusty Rabbit impresses. the music on the home screen was great and it's great throughout. the main character Rusty is well written and performed. he was surprisingly likeable, more so when the other characters were introduced. the tutorial is good and smartly incorporates mechanics into actual gameplay, dishing them out a little at a time so it's never overwhelming. that approach also works well with the #Metroidvania style of gameplay in Rusty Rabbit. we have more abilities at the start than when the demo ends but it's well written into the story as to why.
The story is teased a little bit more on the eShop page than it was in this demo but the world building and some of the back story revealed do help make it less obvious how little story we're going with at present. i am curious as to where it's going to go and what other characters will be introduced.
If i had to pick a shortcoming after playing this demo it's that i don't know who we, the player, are. at times it feels like Rusty is talking directly to us but because the world is presented so cohesively, it does make me wonder if Rusty is breaking the 4th wall or if there's more to it.
I highly recommend the demo for Rusty Rabbit. it presents a great first hour of the game. if you're interested in a character driven metroidvania with rpg elements, then this is well worth checking out.
