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.
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.
I was lost at the start of this Part. i knew that i had to head for Lufenia but the guide i was using wasn't as accurate as i would've liked. but i got a hint in Gaia and eventually found it. The Mirage Tower was easier to find and easier to navigate than i expected. But with no Inn this part, i still have to be careful and i made sure to heal my team up at the end as i'm looking forward to exploring the Flying Fortress in the next part.
I have combined all 7 parts of my playthrough of Coffee Talk into one story. Linking the videos was difficult so after every two days, like how each part is two days, there is an abrupt change of music as it goes into a loading screen.
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
In Part 1 I was surprised that there didn’t seem to be any way to manually save in this game. There are Auto Saves, but they don’t seem to be as smart as I would like for a game being streamed from the cloud. We’d get an auto save when moving from area to area in a town but out in the wild they were less frequent and rarely after a lengthy conversation.
So to me, it wasn’t surprising that when I was given the 20 second countdown, before being disconnected from the service, I was unable to leave a conversation and therefore unable to trigger an auto save.
So whilst I’m not going to recommend people stream this from the cloud, I am also not saying Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization is a bad game. It has a few quirks and I’m certain the sound issues weren’t from streaming it. The combat is solid and I do like how the story lets us learn more about the past, which is useful for those like me who hasn’t played any of these games before, or carry on like we know everything already.
For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Fishing Fantasy -FishingRPG-, on my iPhone 14 Pro, from TrickStArStudio Games.
Fishing Fantasy -FishingRPG- is one of the simpler games i've played as part of this series but that's not a negative. there is a great tutorial that shows off every aspect of the game which makes Fishing Fantasy -FishingRPG- one of the more accessible games i've played. another aspect of the game that makes it accessible is how most, if not all, of it is playable with just one hand.
As a game centered around fishing, Fishing Fantasy -FishingRPG- hasn't over complicated that aspect of the gameplay. you have a rod, attach bait, and throw out the line. when there's a bite you hit a button and get a fish. if that fish is a higher level than you, you hit that button repeatedly. the fish you catch are recorded and there are quests around this. by catching fish and completing quests you gain exp and level up. as you level up you unlock more locations and equipment to use.
One aspect of the game i would've liked a little more was the story. our character wakes up in this world but in terms of story there was a lot at the start of the game and not much else in this video. there was no clear indication when the next story beat was coming. as the game is centered around the fishing, this isn't that much of a negative. but it's something i missed and maybe a reason why this video is shorter than other Mobile Friday videos.
I do recommend Fishing Fantasy -FishingRPG-. it's not the best but it is satisfying. i'd like more story and a better English translation, but both of these don't detract from what this game sets out to do.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Pilo and the Holobook.
i didn't know anything about this game before i started playing the demo, but on the eShop, i did like the look of the game and that you'd be scanning. i was hoping that this demo would help show off more about the game and what you're doing. I think it did a great job at that.
The demo seems to be taken from the first hour, or so, of Pilo and the Holobook, from the start until our encounter with hints of the big bad of the game. nearly all the game mechanics have a tutorial and we seem able to play the game at our own pace. the biggest frustration was the one time the game required us to do something that wasn't tutorised. in the dessert, there's a moment where we need to corral some electric sheep and i missed it the first time and accidently stumbled upon the solution my second time there. a mechanic the developers don't make use of is our own character quipping or talking to themselves possible solutions to an issue. i can see this being a possible stumbling block to progress.
But on the whole, Pilo and the Holobook looked great, played great, and was really chill. i could've finished it sooner but i genuinely enjoyed walking around and scanning. the music was fine but, as i said in the video, i feel like this would be a good game to play whilst listening to a podcast.
I didn't get the impression that Pilo and the Holobook was purely aimed towards kids, but it did feel like it would be suitable. as an adult, i did enjoy my time with the demo and wouldn't say no to getting it when it comes out. if you're curious about a game where scanning is the main mechanic, then this is a great demo for you to try. but after playing it i'd almost say the game itself is worth getting without playing the demo.
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.
Most of Part 12 took place in the The Sunken Shrines. i initially took most of the right turns and ended up at the boss before half way. the dungeon itself didn't turn out to be too dangerous but the boss was the toughest boss we've come across so far. as i took the correct way to the boss, and the water crystal, i went back in to try out the other way and was reward with more loot, exp, and money.
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
I know of but have never played nor watched anything Sword Art Online. But i do know that the main concept is that it's meant to fake an MMO. so i was curious if that would extend to how it saves. MMO's will keep track of your character, what they're doing, where they are, and their stats their end but would this fake one? If it did, it would mean i would never have to worry about the 20 second warning before being disconnected.
But after this first hour it seems clear that there are only auto saves in Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization and, unless it was somewhere i couldn't find or i haven't unlocked it yet, no manual saves. for some parts of this game, like moving around the main town Aincrad, you trigger the auto save when you exit one area and enter another. this might be doable when a 20 second warning appears. but other than that, it wasn't too clear how and when it auto saves nor what would trigger it.
As is somewhat expected for a game of this type, this first part is full of cutscenes, character introductions, and expositions. this means there are minutes where we aren't able to do anything other than continue the conversation or, by using the L1 and R1 buttons, try and skip through it. skipping isn't ideal as for me, someone not familiar with this series, i'd want to watch them and learn about the past and the present. The auto saves are clear in the top right, but if you're going to get a 20 second warning during one of these cutscenes you're going to either miss out on story tell, assuming it'll autosave when it's done, or have to go back and sit through the same story piece again.
From this first hour, the save system and lengthy cutscenes do make Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization somewhat unsuitable for being streamed from the cloud. We'll see in Part 2 if things improve in regard to this. other than that, and the games odd camera delay, there are positives in regards to it's design and it's suitability. the graphics are simple, big, and colorful, which meant when we had some hiccups with the stream it never got in the way of gameplay. the controls feel responsive and i felt no lag there with the stream either.
For this week's Mobile Friday i tried DDDigger, on my iPhone 14 Pro.
it's another game from developers treeplla that may look simple at first but actually has some fun gameplay. You can check out my videos for Idle Lumbercat - Wood Games, https://youtu.be/j074foqCgrg, and Cat Snack Bar, https://youtu.be/hhqyaTmhXw4, if you want to know more about games from this developer. what's interesting about DDDigger, in comparison to those games, is that it's not really an idle game. there is a small idle mechanic in it, but the point is to play to earn coins, use those coins to upgrade weapons, play and go further and earn more coins, and so on.
The tutorial is barely there, but it's just enough to get the basics across and the game is basic enough to grasp it quickly, and if you don't it's not an issue as failing and trying again is part of this game's genre and ties into it's mechanics. no matter how good or bad you do, you'll earn some coins. the graphics are simple but effective. it's clear which levels of dirt has enemies, which have gold, the helpers are also distinct and each weapon is easy to see. there maybe a lot happening at times but i found it easy to see and follow what was happening.
What i'm not too happy about with DDDigger is it's claim that "Offline Adventure. Enjoy the game anytime, anywhere without an internet connection!" that it has in the app store. sure, there was no data download at the start and that is fantastic. but it does have intrusive ads. at the start of the video i was praising it for giving us the choice whether we wanted to get some in-game reward for watching an ad. it didn't bother me that it was offering different rewards at different points for watching an ad. i even praised DDDigger for be smart with it's in-game store ads as it kept them to items we've used. no, where DDDigger goes wrong is having ads suddenly popup after a run. there was no warning, no asking for permission, and i certainly wasn't expecting it to have them because it claimed that it was an off-line game. it appears the ads come after every 2 games played.
In this video, the ad situation wasn't that bad in the grand scheme of things. but i can easily envision that as you get further into the game, you'll need to start grinding out games to earn enough coins to level up stuff. this'll mean having to play more and more games, which means more and more ads. these videos use data and it wouldn't take long for the ads to slowly eat into data limits. because of this, i can only really recommend DDDigger to be played over wi-fi. i had a good time playing it, i really enjoyed the music too, but the ad situation completely changes things.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue from developers Lost Pilgrims Studio.
I'll admit that going in i didn't know what type of RPG it was and it ended up being a type of RPG that i don't enjoy playing and haven't played much before. i tried to not let that get in the way of my playthrough of this demo. i didn't get to the end of this demo in this video as by the end i really wasn't enjoying myself.
right from the start, even before i started recording, i was waiting for the game to load. that first load took well over 3 minutes, very often showing very unhelpful tips. Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue is built on Unity, an engine that's notorious for how bad it runs on base model PS4s. This demo had already been patched twice to 1.02 so i went in expecting things to go better than they did because after the load was an introduction video to the story that stuttered both visually and audibly.
So, Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue makes a poor first impression. next was the home screen and i didn't mind the notices on screen but they were tiny in comparison to how much free space there was. i saw the bug reporting and as i had encountered a couple already i was going to submit but then it turned out the report form hadn't been formatted for consoles and i certainly didn't want to type out a report using just a controller. there are more issues going into the options as only the font size option showed what it actually did. i haven't played the game and yet it expects me to know what game specific changes can be made without any examples. And even tho i made the font change, it rarely actually appeared as big as i wanted. as far as i'm concerned that option either doesn't work is mislabeled. Another option that didn't seem to work great was the full screen UI Zoom as it looked slightly blurry and weird.
after about 14 minutes i finally get to the gameplay, and here i'm greeted by a great choice. Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue lets the player choose if they want to play it as envisioned by the developers or if they want an easier more story focused approach. i like that they clearly define what the difficulty levels are. But, it talks about achievements which Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue doesn't have.
We finally get to the story and are greeted by small text, not what we set in the options, but thankfully it's voiced. however, at the time, i wasn't really sure who was talking. the art is static, something i'm not used to in the story telling games i play. i imagined that we would be introduced to our character first, not some random person. But as that person talked, i fully expected the rest of the game to feature voice acting and i was wrong. again, in story games i'm used to playing i'm used to not only seeing who's talking but them either speaking the text on screen of adding sound effects. this style of story telling was something i didn't quite get used to by the end of the video. an issue i had with this style were the options of where the conversation should go. i think i disagreed with nearly all the conversation options throughout Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue.
the tutorials were often useful but quite overwhelming and screen filling. but there were times when the tutorials would use words that aren't used in-game as often symbols are used instead. if they use a symbol, the tutorial should use it too. this meant that when it came to money, i was wrong. i thought the round symbol was money but instead it was the colored balls. i needed the tutorial to point this out and it didn't.
I could go on, but i think i've got the point across that there was a lot about Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue i didn't enjoy. there's more in the video, too. some of it will be due to the style of RPG it is, but poor performance and poor tutorials is down to the developers. i can agree that my issues with the story are probably just down to me.
Does Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue succeed as a Prologue, no. calling it a "Prologue" puts pressure on this to deliver a story that makes us want to continue. i don't think it does this. if it was just called a demo, i think it would've been fine and be in-line with other games i've played recently. but i do think "BETA" would've been more appropriate for the state it's in. with the game launching soon, after playing this i wouldn't recommend getting it not only for my issues with the start of the game but also the state of it, too.
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 #PlayStationPortable version of #FinalFantasy. 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 11 i did a lot of little tasks that didn't seem to be a part of the main story line. In Part 10, i did the Citadel of Trials and got a reward. Here, i was able to take that reward and got a buff to my character classes. one thing that was made clear to me in this part was that the guide i'm using is skipping some of the story telling. twice i went off to different places in this video to get a fairy and a warp cube. from my playing, there were no story reasons for this. but in Onrac i talked to everyone and found people who would've given me the story for finding the fairy. i'd been curious if i had been missing some of the story telling and now it's clear to me that i have. i can understand why the guide skips some of it as it's streamlining the experience. but for me i think i would've liked to have got the story and then used the guide to find out where to go next. i don't think i'm going to change things in the future videos as i've already used it as much as i have.
