Hello and welcome to Part 12 of the new series here on QTE Gamers!
The goal with Stories on Tuesday is to play games with a heavy focus on their story. this can be Visual Novel games, like today's game, or it can be something more episodic. For me, it's a style of game i've not really explored. i have several games across a few platforms that i haven't played but i bought them because i wanted to. So now the time has come for me to experience these sorts of games.
Our debut game is Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz. I have the game on PS4 via DISC but i'll be playing the PlayStation Plus version of the game that's been downloaded to my PlayStation4.
In comparison to Part 11, https://youtu.be/653QoTugqm0, Part 12 felt a little less frantic but with an even higher body count! I was wondering if Part 12 might be the final part but it turned out not to be. things slowed down a little and a few days pass across this part. But the threat never goes away and now one of our closest friends is involved the stakes just keep getting higher.
If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, head over to Ko-Fi. there, you can subscribe to the "Stories on Ko-Fi" which will let you watch all the stories. This tier will always be one week ahead of the free video on QTE Gamer's YouTube Channel. Or, of course, you can head to https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers and donate via PayPal.
This new Backlog Conquering game is being played on PlayStation 4 but it'll cover the PlayStation Vita version as well. on PSV, the game was released as Tearaway back in 2013 and i do have that version. Like this PS4 version, i haven't finished it either so this is my chance to tackle Tearaway twice! ( i know there are differences in the controls and how you interact with the games, but you know what i mean.)
The start caught me by surprise as the game starts it's narrating before it's even revealed all the developer logos. It's a bit long, but it's uniqueness works for me and it gets to the point where the narrators interact with "you" and thus begins the events at the start of the game.
another thing the game does well is it's tutorial. it's impressive how it manages to balance telling us how to something whilst giving us the chance to use it with some imagination. One of the better features is the "Squirrel" as this guide will pop up if it thinks you're struggling to offer advice. so many games don't offer help after the tutorial and just leave it up to the player so it's nice that this game will try and help. It doesn't make Tearaway: Unfolded feel too easy either, but it's nice to have regardless.
It takes time, when playing the game, to get used to not having a jump button. i could see places i wanted to reach and for most of this video my first reaction is to press X for jump. as i played, what i learned is that there are ways to get anywhere if you're meant to get there. this often takes shape as ramps, flowers, and spring jumps. part of the puzzle is seeing somewhere you want to go, maybe there's a collectable present you want to get, and working out how the environment is set up for you to get there.
I really enjoyed what i've played so far so i will do a few more parts at least. i'm curious if the game does anything fun when you come back to the game. i'm also wondering if there'll be any more fun interactions with the controller. i know that we're able to backtrack with our current abilities so i may give that a try in part 2 as in this part i already found a white mystery and later in this part i was given a tool to deal with it.
Hello and welcome to Part 11 of the new series here on QTE Gamers!
The goal with Stories on Tuesday is to play games with a heavy focus on their story. this can be Visual Novel games, like today's game, or it can be something more episodic. For me, it's a style of game i've not really explored. i have several games across a few platforms that i haven't played but i bought them because i wanted to. So now the time has come for me to experience these sorts of games.
Our debut game is Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz. I have the game on PS4 via DISC but i'll be playing the PlayStation Plus version of the game that's been downloaded to my PlayStation 4.
A lot happened in this part. Part 10, https://youtu.be/vfva7DWmvVo, saw us getting a lot of information which we dealt with in this part. much of this part goes how i expected it to. for a few parts now i had been making some assumptions and most are revealed here. But things take a dramatic turn around the half way mark and just keeps on going. Whilst the change of pace is welcomed, it does feel like a lot happened much quicker in this part than any previous part. but it has reenergized the story and i'm maybe even more excited to continue the 5th, and final, Chapter of this game.
If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, head over to Ko-Fi. there, you can subscribe to the "Stories on Ko-Fi" which will let you watch all the stories. This tier will always be one week ahead of the free video on QTE Gamer's YouTube Channel. Or, of course, you can head to https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers and donate via PayPal.
For Online Saturday i'm back with Foamstars, from Square Enix and Toylogic. Foamstars is out across PS5 and PS4. I'll be playing the PlayStation 4 version of it.
For this video i wanted to try out the online Squad Missions. These take place on specific maps and have a team of 4 players work together to defeat 10 waves of enemies. i tried out the Sunny Funny Factory, Rap Wrap Scrapyard, and Bath Vegas Marina Bay maps in Normal difficulty and i also tried out the Lucky Funky Street, twice, in Hard difficulty.
when you finish your attempt, you're awarded points towards the current season, i went up from 3 to 6 during this video, your own personal level, i went from 19 to 21, and Miracle Dust. This dust is important as you use it to level up your stats, that are used by any character you play with. I didn't realise this so my first attempt at Hard Difficulty didn't go well. but that's also down to the stats of my team mates. to upgrade your stats, head to the "Upgrade Energy Core" section, to the right of Squad Mission, and chose which stats you want to upgrade. during this video i put everything up to Lvl 1 and then a few others up to Lvl 2.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog from developers Space Colony Studios.
This was an example of me seeing cool icon art and deciding to download because of it rather than me reading what i was about to play. so i was taken aback when this turned out to be a visual novel. But i wasn't deterred from playing it because it's a visual novel.
I'm going to be upfront and say that i stopped playing the demo because it broke. i reached a point where the demo would not progress and nothing i did would fix it. you can hear me talking through the button presses i was trying. Unfortunately, whilst this was a demo breaking issue it wasn't the only one i came across. right near the beginning i found navigating the option menu nearly impossible due to the lag in the controls. you can hear me say when i've pressed a button and a second or more later see it replicated on screen. The menu area and parts of the game also had an issue where pressing a direction on the controller once could mean it's done twice in game or not at all. safe to say this demo is a buggy mess to the point where i can't recommend it on PlayStation 4.
That's not to say there was nothing good about this. far from it. the music is fantastic and the artwork was amazing. when it came to setting the scene and story telling, i was hooked. i would've liked the option for bigger text and for the game to offer to automatically progress the story, but this is a demo and i haven't tried the final version. It's a shame their website doesn't list a way to buy the soundtrack because after playing the demo i'd like to get it.
As a demo it's not good because not only does it have issues but it also broke to the point where i couldn't continue. But this also makes me concerned that the game itself might have issues when it's released. there are hints of a cool story that i was really getting into, but i don't even know if my save from the demo will carry over or not. there was a real lack of communication in the demo. so overall i can't recommend the demo nor the game. but i would say it's one to watch out for. if reviewers say it's fixed then it could be something cool to try out.
This will be the last part of playing Deponia on PlayStation 4. It's a game that i have had for a long time and i had heard a lot of good things about it. But in part 1, https://youtu.be/BebaNadnGTw, it became clear that the game's logic and mine weren't quite matching up. it meant that how the game wanted me to play it wasn't how i wanted to play it.
I want to be clear that i'm not saying it's bad or broken, just that i personally found it difficult to play. I decided to give it one more try. now i knew what to expect, i went in knowing that i need to see everything, collect everything, and yet that still wasn't enough as by the end i was still stumped. I wasn't a fan of the collecting and seeing everything either as it was clear a couple of times that i had done things out of order and it messed with the story a little.
When the game was telling the larger story, rather than the small stuff during the puzzle sections, i was hooked. i enjoyed the humour and watching what happened. for me, i would've like this to have been a movie or cartoon/anime. for me, Deponia is at it's best when it's telling it's story.
So there will be a new game next week and it won't be any of the other Deponia games. i'm not saying that i won't ever play them. but for now, i want to try something else.
Hello and welcome to Part 10 of the new series here on QTE Gamers!
The goal with Stories on Tuesday is to play games with a heavy focus on their story. this can be Visual Novel games, like today's game, or it can be something more episodic. For me, it's a style of game i've not really explored. i have several games across a few platforms that i haven't played but i bought them because i wanted to. So now the time has come for me to experience these sorts of games.
Our debut game is Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz. I have the game on PS4 via DISC but i'll be playing the PlayStation Plus version of the game that's been downloaded to my PlayStation 4.
In this part we continue looking at our Grandfathers daily activities and try to put together his final moments on the day he died. We ended Part 9, https://youtu.be/8RUeZNVCapo, realizing one of his coats was missing so that was the main goal at the start of this video. But as we ended up at the site of his murder we ended up finding something far more shocking that had reverberations between several of the people we had met since we came to New York. We headed back to Silver Snow to follow this new lead and what we uncovered points to certain individuals and possible danger ahead.
If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, head over to Ko-Fi. there, you can subscribe to the "Stories on Ko-Fi" which will let you watch all the stories. This tier will always be one week ahead of the free video on QTE Gamer's YouTube Channel. Or, of course, you can head to https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers and donate via PayPal.
This week's Cloud Monday video is part2 of playing the PS4 version of The Wild at Heart, from developers Moonlight Kids, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
Part 1, https://youtu.be/00DYIf7y46g, was one of the smoothest experiences i've had with a game on this service. that's not just in terms of how well it's suited for being streamed from the cloud but also because of how well the streaming went. Part 2 wasn't as smooth, but it didn't really take away from my enjoyment with the game.
throughout the video i had small little nitpicks and suggestions on how things could've gone a little better, but in the grand scheme of things they're not that important. it's just because a lot of the game is so good, it really it just the small things that are noticeable.
for the majority of this video there were no issues with the streaming. there were only a couple of moments of stream tearing, where grey would appear on the screen, and a connection warning. I live in an apartment building so these issues usually appear when streaming a PS4 game. what's important is that i wasn't concerned nor worried because of how frequent the game auto saves. i knew that if there was a disconnection, i wouldn't have lost much progress if any.
Personally, i do think my choice in part 1 of setting the difficulty to "Wanderer" was the correct choice for me. i'm enjoying playing for the story, one that i don't know where it's going to go. i feel that "Adventurer" might've pulled focus away from the story and exploring and made the game into something else. But it's great that such a choice exists. if you played The Wild at Heart at one of the difficulty levels, trying out the other via streaming the game is a great option to have as you get to try it without having to download it.
So The Wild at Heart is definitely a highly recommended game from the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service.
For Online Saturday this week i wanted to try Predecessor. Other than Pokemon Unite, i've not really played a MOBA before so i saw this as an opportunity to try one out. i got it on PlayStation 4 but i didn't know that this is an early access game. the PSN Store page and the games own home screen didn't highlight this. it wasn't until i saw in-game it say "Early Access In Development" that i knew this. Communication is one of the issues i had with this game.
Don't get me wrong, there is a tutorial and as this is my first MOBA i very much welcomed it. but it finished way too soon. it mentioned the basics, but then when it came to the real thing i had soo many more questions that the game never even tried to answer. I know it's early access, but surely they would've focused on the How To Play part.
Even tho it's early access, the game is out and there's things to buy for it so as far as i'm concerned it's open to criticism. Graphically, i have no issues with it. the game looks great, the world and character designs are varied and also look great. But the performance on #PS4 was all over the place. there were times when i noticed no issues, there were too many other times where there was a noticeable stutter and on occasion that stutter could be measured in seconds. I'm not sure if the lack of BGM is due to a bug, the game not having any, or just my recording set-up.
The biggest issue i had was a repeat of the bug that cropped up in Hawked, https://youtu.be/T9KZofqgVFo. In that game, the X and O buttons did the same thing or nothing, this meant i couldn't even start a game as the in-game graphics and in-game controls didn't match up and did nothing. In Predecessor, this same issue happened in the store. i could get into the store, but i couldn't get out unless i hit start to get the options up. i could exit the options and be returned to gameplay. this was the only time i spotted this bug, and like Hawked i will message the developers but even the latest Hawked patches didn't fix the issue, hence why i haven't gone back to do another video.
The lack of communication also affected what i could play. seemingly, all i could do was play against the Ai. i tried switching to different regions, but to no avail. If the servers are only up at specific times, then the game itself needs to message that. i shouldn't have to go hunting for that information myself, especially for a situation like this where i played this game on a whim.
Actually playing it wasn't fun. so much of the UI around the screen just wasn't communicated to me so i ignored it. when i tried to use it, it did nothing that i could work out. the first game i tried was essentially a stalemate and not fun. i tried a second game with a different character and had a much better time and my Ai Team mates and i did win that game. but it didn't feel that satisfying.
Strangely, what i was most satisfied with were the controls when using a gun. The weight of the character, the way they moved, the speed of the camera, it all worked well together in such a way i was reminded of #Killzone. If the developers had taken this engine and built a arena shooter and still had many different character classes, i would be far more excited to play that than this MOBA. The speed of the character was great for moving around, but getting around the map was far to slow. Whether that's getting from your core to the enemy, respawning, or teleporting back to your core, it all felt to slow and ruined the momentum of the game and my team's drive to the finish.
There are a number of smaller complaints about Predecessor, but ultimately it boils down to me saying that i wouldn't recommend this game for anyone who hasn't played a MOBA before. maybe gamers who understand the style of game will enjoy it, understand it, and be able to get the most from it. But for me, it's lessened my enthusiasm for trying MOBA's in the future and even tho it's free, i can't really recommend it for those unfamiliar with MOBAs.
It's time for a new backlog conquering game and this time i've started the PlayStation 4 version of Deponia, a game developed by Daedalic Entertainment that is out on many other platforms.
I have had this game, as well as others in the Deponia series for a while now but i haven't started any of them. I don't know what i expected from the game but i think it's clear from the video that i wasn't expecting a point and click adventure game. it's a style of game i rarely play as i don't often do well with them.
I feel like this first part is just an hour of me struggling over and over again. i did enjoy many aspects of the game and it's humour worked well. I don't think that i quite grasped the game's logic during this part. I know it's an old game that originally came out on PC and there are aspects of it's design that feel old or like it was designed for an audience used to this style of game as there are few concessions to help newcomers like myself.
I think i wil do a part 2, but i'm not quite sure as yet.
Hello and welcome to Part 9 of the new series here on QTE Gamers!
The goal with Stories on Tuesday is to play games with a heavy focus on their story. this can be Visual Novel games, like today's game, or it can be something more episodic. For me, it's a style of game i've not really explored. i have several games across a few platforms that i haven't played but i bought them because i wanted to. So now the time has come for me to experience these sorts of games.
Our debut game is Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz. I have the game on PS4 via DISC but i'll be playing the PlayStation Plus version of the game that's been downloaded to my PlayStation 4.
In this part we wrap up our time in Silver Snow, tho i do wonder if we'll be back, by correctly working out who is a murderer. The game's story seems to come across like everything is finished now and things can return to normal in Silver Snow, but Deadalus themself moved out a while ago and is still at large. We return back to New York with Chapter 4 and it starts with us retracing the final steps of our Grandfather to try and work out what he was working on, seemingly in secret.
If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, head over to Ko-Fi. there, you can subscribe to the "Stories on Ko-Fi" which will let you watch all the stories. This tier will always be one week ahead of the free video on QTE Gamer's YouTube Channel. Or, of course, you can head to https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers and donate via PayPal.
This week's Cloud Monday video is part1 of playing the PS4 version of The Wild at Heart via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
This game, from developers Moonlight Kids, isn't one i knew about. The Icon on the PSN drew my attention but it was watching the trailer that made me interested in playing the game. i was impressed that the game looked like the icon and whilst the gameplay shown looked like Pikmin, there were extra ideas that seemed cool. So i was keen to play this game to see if it played as well as it looked.
A great idea at the start is we, the player, get to choose our style of playing. i went with a story focused style, but if i wanted a challenge i could've chosen the second style. i prefer this more than just a simple difficulty slider. I do think it made a difference as i never felt like difficulty or challenge was getting in the way of the game telling me it's story. i was happy to make regular progress.
That's not to say there aren't issues with gameplay. it does feel like the game is lazy when it comes to tutorials. an example early on is how it just puts on the screen use the left stick to climb. that could've easily been taught to us through gameplay at the start if we had to climb down from a bunk bed for example. there are a few moments where stuff is put on screen when it could've been an in-game example. other times, i feel like the game could've offered hints, the one that i didn't work out for a while is that our vacuum can be used to collect the spritelings too.
In the hour i played, most of these felt like missed opportunities rather than deal breakers. what i played was good and it had a fantastic soundtrack accompanying it. The game also has a great save system that helped make it be one of the better games to stream from the cloud. not only does it make frequent auto saves with a clear icon when it does, but you're also able to make manual saves. there is a slight cravat tho in that when you reload that save it'll put you either at camp, if you saved there, or at the entrance to the area you entered. But this is all explained by the game, something that is rare to see.
I look forward to part 2. in this part, there were only a second or two of issues due to the game being streamed. i felt no delay in the controls, the audio was fine, and the video quality was high with no dips in the bitrate of the video being streamed to me. so far, streaming The Wild at Heart from PlayStation Plus seems like a great way to play the game.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of SaGa: Emerald Beyond, developed by Square Enix.
I've known about the SaGa series of games for a long time. But the only game in the series i know i played was Unlimited Saga on PS2, and even then i don't think i played too much of it. This recently released demo is a great way for me to check what a new game in the series looks like.
SaGa: Emerald Beyond does a poor job of presenting itself as a demo and what is included. near the start, at the character select screen, i didn't know if i was limited in character because it's a demo of it's a game where you need to unlock characters. I don't know how big the demo is in general and it doesn't say. so i don't know if i came close to the end or not.
A big highlight from playing this demo was the fantastic music from Kenji Ito. i really enjoyed listening to it and there are periods in this video where i'm not talking mostly because i'm listening to the soundtrack. The second highlight for me was the battle system. Whilst it wasn't explained the best, i did find the game's timeline based party focused combat system to be fun to engage with and by the end of the demo i was trying to add strategy to the commands being issued to make best use of it's timeline system. But it was the other systems related to combat that the game did a poor job in conveying and the commands available really needed a more in-depth explanation as to what each did. As did the level up system as i never really understood how it all worked and the game never explained it.
There were a few little frustrations with SaGa: Emerald Beyond but for the most part i could live with them. The one that annoyed me the most, and i complained about the most in this video, was the story taking place in the latter third. It was unrealistic, even for a fantasy RPG, and honestly came across as cheap. my character is an alien and yet no one treated him like one. the world was engulfed in ice, but the way my character talked made him seem callous like he only cared about his mission. it was like two stories were taking place at the same time and little to no effort was made to combine them into anything looking realistic.
For me, the highlights of this demo weren't enough to get other the lows. It's a poor demo and i don't think it shows off the game great. there are too many unknowns as to whether this is just the game we were playing or if certain parts of the game have been removed from this demo. If you're interested in this game, maybe you've played one of the earlier games in the series, or maybe you're interested the battle systems, then this demo is worth playing. But for most others it's not one i recommend trying out.
Hello and welcome to Part 8 of the new series here on QTE Gamers!
The goal with Stories on Tuesday is to play games with a heavy focus on their story. this can be Visual Novel games, like today's game, or it can be something more episodic. For me, it's a style of game i've not really explored. i have several games across a few platforms that i haven't played but i bought them because i wanted to. So now the time has come for me to experience these sorts of games.
Our debut game is Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz. I have the game on PS4 via DISC but i'll be playing the PlayStation Plus version of the game that's been downloaded to my PlayStation 4.
We continue in Silver Snow trying to find out what our Grandfather was looking for. In Part 7, https://youtu.be/QHY2p-Tb9jo, it was made clear that someone didn't want us looking around. We didn't have any more threats in this part, but it was clear that people didn't want to talk about it. A big possibility is that we may have a suspect in the old "Daedalus" case but it's unclear if this person is also a suspect in what happened to our Grandfather.
If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, head over to Ko-Fi. there, you can subscribe to the "Stories on Ko-Fi" which will let you watch all the stories. This tier will always be one week ahead of the free video on QTE Gamer's YouTube Channel. Or, of course, you can head to https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers and donate via PayPal.
This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing the PS3 version of Black Knight Sword via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
From Part 1, https://youtu.be/xdaueEIkV_M, we learned that this is actually the whole game and not just a DEMO like the store page says. we also learned the the Normal difficulty level is surprisingly hard, and the biggest thing we learned is that the game has a weird save system.
The fact that the game only saves at checkpoints continues to be it's biggest issue. I played Part 2 on easy and found it a much more normal pleasant playing experience. The amount of enemies and how much is needed to kill them feels right, like either this was the default normal difficulty and they decided to make the game harder or they did an amazing job rebalancing the game for an easier difficulty. I was able to progress through the levels quicker and it almost made up for the checkpoint only saves. But when i did die, it wasn't as much fun having to redo what i've already done as it was going forward and making progress. so whilst it is better, it's still not ideal.
The biggest surprise i stumbled upon is that there is a story, of sorts. it's just that you have to leave the game on the home screen for a little bit for the game to show it. So that's why i included it at the start of this video as i imagine many people, like me, might've not known about it nor even seen it.
But the story and better gameplay can't make up for how this game saves. It looks good and has some interesting ideas. but Black Knight Sword's save system is a fundamental issue so bad that it mostly negates all it's good points, as a game being streamed from the Cloud. This makes it hard to recommend, especially for those interested in the challenge that hard mode brings. Black Knight Sword isn't easy to play legitimately outside of the Cloud so that is a positive reason to give it a go. it's short length does work in it's favor. But the first time you're disconnected from the service and find you have to play through several minutes of enemies, platforms, and traps is probably when you should put it down and move on.
For Online Saturday i'm back with Foamstars, from Square Enix and Toylogic. Foamstars is out across PS5 and PS4. I'll be playing the PlayStation4 version of it.
Season 3, MYSTERIOUS SWING, has just started so i went back into Foamstars to check it out. In this video i was able to try out the new character Chloe Noir, she can be bought as part of the Season Pass or can be earned in-game for free by reaching Season Pass level 31. Everyone can use her in the Extreme Party Mode and i played 4 games of 4 Vs. 4 where everyone is Chloe Noir!
Other than that, i warmed up with a couple of Smash The Star games and once again tried Rubber Duck Party in my attempts to win that mode but once more my teammates and i failed to win it. it is still the only mode i've played where i've yet to get a win.
Hello and welcome to Part 7 of the new series here on QTE Gamers!
The goal with Stories on Tuesday is to play games with a heavy focus on their story. this can be Visual Novel games, like today's game, or it can be something more episodic. For me, it's a style of game i've not really explored. i have several games across a few platforms that i haven't played but i bought them because i wanted to. So now the time has come for me to experience these sorts of games.
Our debut game is Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz. I have the game on PS4 via DISC but i'll be playing the PlayStation Plus version of the game that's been downloaded to my PlayStation 4.
In part 6, https://youtu.be/Fo3rUd-CEoU, we learned more about our Grandfathers friends and past. one of them was suspected as being the person who killed him. during our investigations of him, he told us about a town and Daedalus. So in this part, the start of Chapter 3, we set out to this town and began our investigations. this lead us to uncovering events that happened 20 years ago and we quickly learnt that there are those in the town who want us gone.
If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, head over to Ko-Fi. there, you can subscribe to the "Stories on Ko-Fi" which will let you watch all the stories. This tier will always be one week ahead of the free video on QTE Gamer's YouTube Channel. Or, of course, you can head to https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers and donate via PayPal.
This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PS3 version of Black Knight Sword via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
I have know Black Knight Sword was on the Cloud Streaming Service and even when it was #PSNow. But it's always been listed as a DEMO, and if this is true for you too please mention it in the comments, so i've never tried it. I didn't know anything about it either, other than that i've always liked the artwork in the icon. So this video, and part 2, is me being curious if it really is a DEMO or if it's the full game.
I can say that yes, it is the full game. in this part i earn a couple of trophies, something you can't earn in a DEMO. so the listing is wrong, out of date at best, and probably a hang over from the PS3 PS Now days.
it's hard to say what Black Knight Sword is as there's no story to guide us. it bleakly starts and hints that maybe we're dead, but doesn't answer were our suit of armor comes from nor what's happening in the world around us. It all looks good but at times i want the screen to zoon in a bit more. The screen is surrounded by theatre style curtains and the game comes across as some sort of performance. But again, there's no context for any of it, the game just wants us to play.
Black Knight Sword is quite fun to play. i started on normal but i think i would change that to Easy and would recommend people to start there. on normal, whilst the combat is fun and easy, the enemies do seem to be sponges and seem to take more hits than you would think to be defeated. A nice aspect of the game is how wide the levels are. it feels like there is often more than one way to get across a level, and with collectables to find it does feel like it's designed to be played through a couple of times.
As a game being streamed to me, i had no issues with the controls. i felt no lag and they felt very responsive. there were no graphical issues either. like many PS3 games, streaming Black Knight Sword was a pleasant experience. But, and it's a big asterisk, there are no manual saves nor are there specific save points. It's all tied into the games checkpoint system and there doesn't seem to be any visual cues as to where or when it happens. So in the event of the service giving us a 20 second warning before disconnection, there's nothing we can do but hope that the last save wasn't too far from where we currently were.
Hello and welcome to Part 6 of the new series here on QTE Gamers!
The goal with Stories on Tuesday is to play games with a heavy focus on their story. this can be Visual Novel games, like today's game, or it can be something more episodic. For me, it's a style of game i've not really explored. i have several games across a few platforms that i haven't played but i bought them because i wanted to. So now the time has come for me to experience these sorts of games.
Our debut game is Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz. I have the game on PS4 via DISC but i'll be playing the PlayStation Plus version of the game that's been downloaded to my PlayStation 4.
In part 5, https://youtu.be/NwYjqhS59SY, we were introduced to the people maybe closest to our Grandfather and one who was a suspect. In this part, we focused on that suspect and learnt about their life and current situation. In Part 6, we finished Chapter 2 of the story by deciding whether or not this friend of our Grandfather is a suspect.
If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, head over to Ko-Fi. there, you can subscribe to the "Stories on Ko-Fi" which will let you watch all the stories. This tier will always be one week ahead of the free video on QTE Gamer's YouTube Channel. Or, of course, you can head to https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers and donate via PayPal.
This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing the PS4 version of Death Stranding via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
In part 1, https://youtu.be/4-ih2i8MSrY, i was surprised how, at first glance, Death Stranding looked like it was going to be a good fit as a game to stream from the cloud. But after playing more in Part 2, it became harder to recommend it.
The first surprise last week were the manual saves. But in this part, 2 things came up which kinda ruined it. the first was that when you can save manually, there are limitations on when you can. In this video i was up against BT's and i thought i would save before dealing with the situation. But the game wouldn't let me save. I showed that the game doesn't tell me when the last Auto Save was or where it would load me back if i were to load another save. I had to trust the game that if i died, it was fine. Then later there was another limitation in our apartment when the control scheme of the game changed. before, i could just press the "Options" button and access the save menu from System. But in our apartment, that didn't work. the first time there i didn't know what to do and continued playing, it's a big reason why this video is much longer. When we were back in there the second time i had an idea about looking for a console and whether that was replacing it. I found one and yes, that's where you save. But the game never told us this and now i don't know if there'll be more changes and limitations further into the game.
In Part 1, it was evident that the game was going to use long cinematic cutscenes and cinematic effects during gameplay, in both parts this can be seen when music starts playing. Personally, i don't mind these and was enjoying the story being told to me. the problem that arose more in this part is how the break-up of the video being streamed to us from the cloud can detract somewhat from the cinematic effect. Whilst these didn't happen often and were very short, they are easily seen. they story being told isn't affected and i heard everything. but it's how it affects the presentation of the story that's the issue, it's a large part of this game.
It's not all negative about playing Death Stranding in the cloud. For those who have played the game before and know the story, playing it in the cloud is a great fit. For those, like me, using the first version of the PS4, streaming the game in the cloud is a great experience because the PS4 fans are very quiet. a game that pushes the hardware hard like Death Stranding can really ramp up the fans and detract from the audible experience of playing the game. But during both parts, my fans were quiet and i got into the atmosphere of the game from the sounds and soundtrack.
But not everyone has played it and not everyone listens to the music and sounds when playing. so, all together, it's more difficult to recommend Death Stranding as a game to be played in the cloud. for most, downloading it onto the PS4/Pro and PS5 would be a better solution. But i would argue that streaming it is a good way to try it out first and then you could decide to download it or not.
