Cloud Monday - Elite Dangerous - Part 2 - A Game Well Designed For Being Played Via The Cloud

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing Elite: Dangerous. I streamed this game, developed by Frontier Developments, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my launch model PS4. 

Part 1, https://youtu.be/0tB-9Q96zZgl, went really well and surprised me with how accurate and responsive the motion controls were. This video carries on where part 1 finished. the goal, in game, was to do as the game suggested, take on some trials. This section continued on with the game not really giving enough information on how best to do things. there were a lot of labels so it wasn't too bad, but these small accessibility issues do add up.

Something worthy of praise is how the game has automated certain things. As this is somewhat accurate, the distances between planets and solar systems is vast. so to help with navigation, the game has a system where it locks-on to the planet, takes control of our ship, and gets us there. this has been used to help us dock at stations, too. Having such an accessible feature also becomes useful if the internet connection isn't good. if we lose it, we know what we were doing. if the connection stabilises, then we've probably arrived at our destination.

Whilst the game itself may not be fore everyone, it is well designed to be streamed from PlayStation Plus to us. So much so that i would recommend it. 

Cloud Monday - Elite Dangerous - No Lag With Motion Controls And The Save Peace Of Mind A MMO Brings

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Elite: Dangerous. I streamed this game, developed by Frontier Developments, via the #PlayStationPlus Cloud Streaming Service on my launch model Japanese #PS4.

When i was streaming Cloudpunk, the big issue in that game was that it wasn't clear if or when the game was saving. When i saw that a MMO was on PlayStation Plus i knew i wanted to play it because like Cloudpunk it won't always be clear that it's saving, but because it's a MMO it's easier to accept that the game is keeping track of what i'm doing and where i am.

But for someone unfamiliar with MMOs, this isn't ideal and it's why i mention it in the video title, so it could help someone. I think that the game's PlayStation Store page could have a sentence or two added to help explain how the game handles saves.

I was a little surprised by how rough the streaming experience was at times, we had the connection warning a few times. But i was even more surprised how well the game held up. Stream Tearing was somewhat frequent and obvious against the black of space. But other than that, nothing really stood out as being off due to streaming. I wonder if the game, being a MMO that is streamed, has some tech built in that helped keep image quality as high as it was.

The only issues i had with the game were the game's own faults. the two that stick out the most was the training ship that kept running away out of bounds, so that part took a long time, and having to que to enter a station. Other than that, i felt it was a decent first hour and a good tutorial that was open about not telling the player everything but there is a book that i could read to learn more. the game does kind of let us go a bit abruptly. i think i would've liked a little more hand holding for the next mission, but that'll be in part 2 when i select a mission to try.

A big positive from streaming the game was how good the motion controls where for looking around the cockpit. i felt no lag from using them. the controls in general felt responsive and suffering from no lag. they do take a bit to get used to tho, i was getting shoot and thrust mixed up a few times.

I do have a couple of concerns with Elite: Dangerous as a game that's being streamed to us. none of them were tested in this video, but there's always part 2. probably the biggest concern is how small the text is. i found it legible all throughout this video. But i worry what would happen if the resolution or bit-rate dropped. But for now, it's a good game to stream.