This part had it all, friends becoming enemies, enemies becoming friends, war, betrayal, death, and it still had a surprise at the end. it was a lot of fun!
This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Sonic Frontiers on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
It's nice to bring back Cloud Monday. the main difference with the return is that in Part 2, i'll make my opinion clear and "badge" the game if i recommend playing it via the cloud, if i don't, or "user beware". feel free to check out the rest of the playlist, i think i've made the video titles mostly clear as to what my thoughts were.
For Sonic Frontiers, my main concern was how clear the world would be if Sonic was moving fast. unfortunately, it never really was an issue in this first part of trying out Sonic Frontiers. the open world segments don't really open up enough to go full speed and the more traditional stages i've done so far are short. in terms of gameplay, it's probably a negative but with how empty the open world has been it's actually a good thing for a game being played in the cloud. if the bitrate of the video stream decreases, or the resolution drops, or if there's lag in the controls, having an open world full of enemies would be really tricky. but here i'm not concerned about it.
In this Part, the stream held up well. i noticed no lag in the controls nor did i notice any drops in the video stream. i am concerned with the controls as even with how good things were i was having some issues controlling Sonic. there was a situation where i was trying to make a jump but my character's shadow wasn't below me indicating where i would be landing. there were also a couple of instances where the camera wasn't helping and pointing in the direction i needed to go. i was trying to make some jumps or trying to reach jump pads and i was unable to lock on or work out where to go. if i'm having this much trouble when things are going well, i imagine this would be a big negative playing Sonic Frontiers in worse conditions.
This biggest issue i had was with the game's save system. there is an auto save, but it never seemed as frequent as i would like. there is a manual save system but the game never told me about it and when i found it was seemingly unable to manual save for nearly the whole of this video. with the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming service, there's a 20 second warning before disconnection and after this first part i would not feel good trusting Sonic Frontiers' save system. the game does make it clear when it won't allow manual saves, but that didn't seem to match a lot of my first hour with the game. i couldn't work out why it didn't work.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Leif's Adventure: Netherworld Hero, from OneManOnMars Art & Games.
This demo has been available on the Switch eShop for a while but i don't think it's been updated since i downloaded it a while back. i was initially curious about this game as i wondered if the main character was from another Swtich game i played called No Place for Bravery (https://youtu.be/uLe1gCu_fe4) but it's just a coincidence. what i was curious to see was the hand drawn art. i wondered if there'd be a lot of repetition, a focus on backgrounds, a focus on animation, or all the above.
after playing this, approximately, hour long demo i can say that the art work is mostly fantastic. in this demo we play through several distinct areas and they look great. the characters also look unique and good. the only thing that i noticed was certain animations looked a little off. the major one being when a character jumped down into an area, but in doing so they rolled up a little and it just looked off and unrealistic to even this game world. a simpler "superhero landing" would've worked better. there were a few minor issues with the animation when i did something the game wasn't expecting.
This didn't just affect the animation but it also affected gameplay. an example of this is right at the start of the demo, instead of moving right to start the tutorial i went left. by going right i would be told what the buttons do, but after going left i was in a situation where i had to figure out what the buttons do to get myself back. an example of how it affected gameplay was when i played with the snowball and went into a loft area. because i hadn't gone through the door, the loft event didn't trigger for me. when i went through the door later, the loft event started and i had to go back into the loft and get the item.
What i missed whilst playing Leif's Adventure: Netherworld Hero's demo was any kind of feedback from the protagonist. people in our village talk, a ghost talks, some weird bad guy talks, and yet we don't. with a game that comes across as story heavy like this one did in this demo, it was weird to have no kind of feedback from our character. especially when things get really weird when we chase after the bad guy and end up somewhere extremely different. it also was a little weird with the ghost character. they seem underused and i kept expecting it to give exposition or to help answer any of the "why" questions i had.
the last thing i want to mention is the platforming. at the start it's quite decent as we're given a surprisingly giant leap. but it wasn't long before i got to what looked like a simple jump and i failed a few times. the platforming required getting to the very edge of the land to jump and it was just weird when you consider how high we can jump. earlier, there was a situation where the height got in the way and caused me to miss a simple looking jump in a pub.
There's no denying that the art in Leif's Adventure: Netherworld Hero is good. i was curious about the story, too. but playing as our character wasn't a great experience from a combination of strangely hard platforming and the fact they're too silent in a world that seems not silent. it is a good demo in that we get to experience quite a lot and get some interesting story. but i don't understand why the link to the eShop page is at the end and not at the start. at least it did end with a new trailer that showed much more of the game ahead.
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.
Here it is, the final Part of my playthrough of Poison Control. in this video we have the final battle against a familiar foe and not who we thought it would be after the end of Part 13. the ending is nice and feels like it went how it should. there is an after credit scene that adds another happy ending to this game.
I had a great time playing Poison Control. it's not the oldest game in my backlog, but it's one of those games that came and went without much fanfare. for me, it was a good time and i had fun. it has some lows with it's bugs, but overall it's a game i'd recommend playing if it's in your backlog.
