Cloud Monday - For the King - Part 2 - Poor Cloud Streaming Experience Didn’t Ruin Gameplay

*Apologies for my audio quality. i forgot to change mic's from the recording laptop's to my Blue Snowball Ice. it's bad from start to finish*

Today's Cloud Monday is part 2 of playing For the King, streamed from PlayStation Plus Premium. This game was developed by IronOak Games and published on PS4 by Curve Digital Publishing. 

Part 1 didn't go well in terms of the game itself. head to https://youtu.be/Uw-QOB-l3Cw to see the many complaints i had about the game. But streaming it from PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service was actually very good. i made several comments about how, whether intentionally or not, the game's graphic design and how frequently it saved works well with the streaming service.

Here in Part 2, that was put to the test. the overall streaming experience from PlayStation Plus wasn't great. there were frequent issues ranging from resolution drops, stream tearing (where grey appears on screen), macro blocking (where fine detail is replaced by squares of color), and what looked line frame time issues or missing frames. Even tho streaming it from the cloud to me wasn't great, the game itself mostly held up ok. the only issue the game has is how it displays texts. it's small and i don't sit close to the TV when i play these games. when the resolution dropped, or when there was macro blocking, the text on screen was an issue. 

For those who have played the game, hard to read text isn't a big deal. but for newer players like myself, it is. But overall, even with the issues, it never got in the way of the gameplay. so if this is a game you enjoy or really want to try, doing so via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service is great option. Plus, as it saves so frequently, i was never anxious about loosing progress as i had trust in the game. admittedly, i didn't have to put that trust to the test.

Cloud Monday - For the King - Part 1 - Great Design For Cloud Streaming, Bad For First Time Players

Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing For the King, streamed from PlayStation Plus Premium. This game was developed by IronOak Games and published on PS4 by Curve Digital Publishing. I wanted to try this game as the screenshots made it look very interesting and cool looking.

But, i had such a difficult time playing it. It's a shame, too, as this game is designed in such a way that it works well as a game being streamed from the cloud. It say's it saves after every turn, tho it doesn't define what it means by turn so i'm left to assume it saves after every character is finished with their turn. It's art style is unique and distinct but critically it doesn't rely on small intricate details, so if there is any macro blocking or resolution drops the impact on how things look would be lesser than other games. Plus it's slow pace and turn based system are less impacted by a poor connection.

So on paper it's a great game to be streamed from the PlayStation Plus Cloud, but in reality it's almost impenetrable for newcomers. And even when there is a tutorial it's either late, out of place, or tells the player to look it up. I would go so far as to say i found the tutorial to be so bad it's borderline rude. I have NEVER played a Table Top RPG before and after my experience with this game i'm not particularly keen on trying one in the future.

I had such a negative first impression from this game that i'm debating whether to do my regular Part 2 or not.