Demo Play Thursday - GIGASWORD On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of GIGASWORD from Akupara Games and Studio Hybrid.

I saw the pixel art on the PSN and thought it looked great, but i hadn't watched a video for GIGASWORD so i was surprised when it started playing how good it was. But what's odd is how there are times when there's no music, not even some ambiance. going from some really great music to nothing at all to then more music was quite odd. You'll have to let me know in the comments if this is the case with the retail release of the game or not.

I quite enjoyed the start to GIGASWORD, i thought the opening segment worked great as a tutorial. the level design and puzzles worked great. nothing felt challenging and progress was nice and smooth. But one problem with this demo is how little it communicates to the player that this is a demo. when you start, there's nothing on the home screen that says "demo", nor is there any links to pre-order/buy the game from the PSN. the demo doesn't say what the limits to the demo are either. so i got to a point in the demo where i couldn't make progress and i have no idea if that's because i missed something or if that's the demo ending.

Or it could be a result of the demo crashing. it's not often that a demo fully crashes in this series, but it happened here with GIGASWORD. i got to the PS4 home screen, submitted the PS4 error report, and loaded up the game again. But once i was back in the game, i never made any progress. You'll have to let me know in the comments if i missed something in the demo or how this differs from the released game.

Even tho it crashed and i'm not thrilled with how little it communicated to me how it's a demo, i did enjoy my time with GIGASWORD. i thought the balance between platforming, puzzles, and fighting was spot on for just starting the game, i really liked the pixel art, and the music was fantastic and cleverly hid the loop. so if you're curious about GIGASWORD, i'd recommend checking it out.

Backlog Conquering - Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy HD On PS3 - Part 9

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 Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy from the 2012 The Jak and Daxter Trilogy that remastered the games and brought them into HD. This series is my first time playing any of the games from the initial trilogy, tho i have played the PSP game Daxter.

Check out the other parts of this play through:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/fvi6KUY0vD8

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/bf7Obhhh8K4

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/oMqaSd8rB4k

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/OCL0AqLHW-o

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/6fpsgoVY6cY

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/sTmZpFlQ1Ps

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/jlGBporjYVw

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/bLaY4ko2VC0

Stories on Tuesday - High School Dog Simulator - 4 Different Endings Played

For a one off video, i played the iOS Visual Novel High School Dog Simulator from Shibamaru.

The game has 16 endings, but for this video i played through 4 of them. You'll have to let me know in the comments what happens in the other stories.

Cloud Monday - Patapon 2 Remastered - Part 1 - No Auto Saves But Playing To The Beat Is Fine

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PS4 version of Patapon 2 Remastered via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

I've not really tried a rhythm game as part of Cloud Monday so it was always going to be interesting whether the delay from streaming from the cloud would make playing the game much harder or even impossible. i admit, i may not have a lot of natural rhythm and i can easily loose focus and loose the beat. so i'll be honest, i can't say for sure if streaming this game from the cloud was the reason for issues i occasionally had or if it was just me.

But Patapon 2 Remastered's attempts at helping the player actually also make it a decent game to stream from the cloud. The game doesn't rely on just audio cues or just visual cues, it uses both. when you watch this video, watch the frame of the video as it pulses to the beat. having both means that if there's an audio issue, you can still see the beat and if there's a visual issue you can still hear the beat. In this part, two or three times we got some Stream Tearing where the video we're watching from the cloud had grey patches in it. but because the i could still see the frame and was often focusing on it to stay on beat, the Stream Tearing was never distracting and i was able to keep the beat fine.

The only real negative i have after this Part is that i don't think the game has auto saves. we're able to do manual saves from the main home area, but once the action starts we're unable to pause and unable to save. i tried to find auto saves, but i couldn't find it. Patapon 2 Remastered also has a weird thing where when you save the option screen backs out as if you hit cancel by mistake. a couple of times i had to check whether i saved or not. Whilst the saving is quick, it'd be nicer if the game made it clearer that it had saved.

Demo Play Thursday - Outlanders On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Outlanders from Pomelo Games and Big Games Machine.

I'm a bit behind schedule when it comes to demos so Outlanders is already out now, but i am glad i played it. It's one of my longer videos and yet i only completed the tutorial and 2 scenarios. i don't think i finished the demo nor do i know how much more there was to it. I never saw this demo say it was a demo

I appreciated that the demo came with a tutorial, but it wasn't as comprehensive as i expected. it taught the basic controls of the game but never went into how this game can be won. what's particularly frustrating is how the first scenario i played differed from the tutorial. i think the first scenario should act as a tutorial, too. there appears to be a village elder/leader that doesn't really have any interactions with us, so they would've been great offering some advice and tips.

That's not to say this is an overly complicated game. Outlanders tells the player what their goals are for each scenario, but not how to get there. this does mean that even tho i achieved and completed the first scenario, i do think i could go back and maybe do it 5 minutes quicker, if not more. This is also true for the second scenario, which i barely finished in the time limit. as this is a demo, i don't know if there is a reason to go back and re-do past scenarios. if this game was on a PlayStation or Xbox console then perhaps there would achievements to get by re-doing past levels, but here on Switch i don't know.

Personally, i enjoyed my time with Outlanders. it does have that "one more turn" appeal to it. if it had leaderboards where i could compare my completion time with my friends, then it could become a chill game to play and a competitive one to play, too. if you're curious about this, i would recommend trying out the demo. it isn't as complicated as a Civilisation game, but some of the core Outlanders mechanics are different enough that it may take some time to adapt. the key mechanic i understood was dismantling and moving gathering jobs. for some aspects of village life, you do need to move things around and more people from job to job.

Stories on Tuesday - XBlaze Lost: Memories - From Start to Finish

The playthrough of the Stories on Tuesday PS3 game XBlaze Lost: Memories, from Arc System Works and Aksys Games, is now finished.

The only editing i had to do to get this video under the 12 hour limit was to increase the speed of the majority of the loading to double it's normal speed. so this video does have the post credit scene.

Check out previous parts:

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

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/sY-nYy_MXxQ

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/w28xapHoB5w

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/_fXKI60OVu8

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/dM2MF4rEMWY

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/3ZWKSu685X0

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/pfw0d4SU9n8

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/_EoAXrMH-C0

Part 9 - https://youtu.be/Qj-RbugUJmc

Part 10 - https://youtu.be/P24kH_GSjPQ

Part 11 - https://youtu.be/48QBEpqc-kk

Part 12 - https://youtu.be/ilXAW6n7mT8

Cloud Monday - Legasista - Part 2 - The Cloud Is An OK Way To Play If You Don't Have A PS3

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing the PS3 version of Legasista via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

After over 2 hours of gameplay, i wasn't able to finish the tutorial for Legasista so there are still some questions i have about this game that i wasn't able to answer, the main being whether you're able to save in the dungeons or not. during the tutorial, i wasn't able to, but i wondered if in longer dungeons if there would be save options. if you know, please let me know in the comments.

You're able to manually save before you enter dungeons in the hub world. there is an auto save option that has to be turned on. it will save when you return from a dungeon but as we found out in this video it won't save until character conversations have finished. there is an option to press Start to skip the conversations to try and trigger the auto save or manual save, but there doesn't seem to be a way to read the conversation that was skipped.

Having some way to manually save is better than nothing. Legasista is also a game that hasn't been re-released on other platforms, it's only on PlayStation 3. so streaming it from the cloud is an OK way to play the game if you don't have access to a PS3. but it's not perfect and a disconnection could set you back a lot if there's no way to save in a multi level dungeon.