Switch Funday - Cassette Beasts - My First Hour

Welcome to Switch Funday!

This week, 4 full games were free to play for Switch Online Members; Tetris Effect: Connected, PowerWash Simulator, Enter the Gungeon and Cassette Beasts. of those, the only one i hadn't played before was Cassette Beasts and i remembered that it got a lot of attention when it came out. In the video, i mistakenly say that the game came out this year when in fact it came out last year, 2023, across many platforms.

I didn't know much going in and i tried to not have many assumptions about the Cassette aspect of the game. i was curious if the developers would lean into the "retro" aspect, maybe give the game an 80's influence, or more into the modern revival of cassettes. after the first hour, it's much more a modern interpretation of cassettes. there was no mention of different materials, there was no 80's aesthetics. 

It's always interesting playing a "monster collecting" type game when Pokémon is such an established type, and one i have a lot of experience playing. i need the game to tell me what it is, to describe it's systems, to show me how it differs from such a known playstyle. i feel that Cassette Beasts didn't quite nail it. they went hard with the story, but left too much unknown and talking to other people didn't provide the extra information i was looking for. There were plenty of battles and i feel that their tutorials were fine, but then they mention types and failed to actually explain it in any detail. i did like that when it came to the "why" of cassettes, the answer was we don't know but it works.

This Switch port also had some issues. the obvious one was the pop-in of in-game elements. with a world as sparse as this, it was very obvious when something, like a tree, would pop-in. unfortunately, it happens quite often throughout this video. another issue i noticed at the beginning was that the background didn't seem to scroll smoothly, there was a stutter. Loading was frequent but thankfully not too long, and then near the end there was an instance where the game seemed to freeze for 2-3 seconds. this is a case where i feel like i'm playing an inferior version of a game. i wouldn't say it's very inferior, this Switch port of Cassette Beasts is playable. but it's noticeable enough where i feel that a Xbox Series version would be a smoother experience.

Cassette Beasts does have some interesting ideas. i liked the idea of Fusion but it felt like it took a long time for that to power up and i only got to use it once. having a shared pool of monsters was also an interesting decision, but without knowing types and what's effective against what it wasn't too useful. there's also a feature where you can "Rewind" a cassette to bring a monster back to full health, but there's no way to know what the health is of any of the monsters from that screen. The whole Monster Catching mechanic was interesting, too. but i don't think it was explained as well as i could've been. unlike Pokémon, when you go to catch a monster it can take several turns and when you do it's more like you saved a copy of the monster to tape and the original monster is still there on screen for you to defeat.

After my first hour with Cassette Beasts on Switch, i'm not too sure i want to buy the game and continue. i don't think that it's a great hour. the game does tease at the game's story and other activities like trying to become a Ranger, but the technical issues and little things like the writing don't give me enthusiasm to continue.

Cloud Monday - West of Dead - Part 2 - A Great Game To Stream From PlayStation Plus

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing West of Dead from Upstream Arcade. I'm playing this game on the PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service.

Part 1 did go too well. you check out that video at https://youtu.be/KltyL6NREyA, but long story short, the game was fine, it was the cloud streaming service that caused me a lot of issues. i'd recommend giving that video a look as it'll contrast greatly against this video as part 2 was almost the polar opposite of part 1.

As streaming it was soo much better, i was able to sit back and enjoy the game more. i already recognised that the game design worked well on the service, so it was nice to simply play and trust that even if i got kicked off the service, the loss wouldn't be that great.

I made more progress and went deeper into purgatory. it was fun trying out different weapons, i particularly enjoyed a flare fun, and when i got the rune to travel from save point to save point i felt like it really opened up the possibilities and gave more reasons to explore.

There are a lot of positives with this game. the obvious one is just how great it looks. even when the stream drops to 720p or less, the game still has it's unique look. It controls well and is very responsive. the only issue i have is perhaps more a skill level complaint in that i just find it difficult to aim and hit enemies. i feel that i would've liked more of a lock on or perhaps a slight rumble with the controller. across both videos, my aim isn't great. the stories a little light, but i can give the game some benefit of doubt as it could also be that due to not being great at it i've maybe not gone far enough, or because the rooms are randomised each run i've just not found the place where i learn more about the game's story.

It's not the perfect game to be played from PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming Service, but it's certainly up there as one of the best. it suffers when the resolution drops and things become unreadable. but other than that, it works well. save points are frequent, but as it's a run based game, the only progress you'd loose at worst is just 1 run. as a rouge lite, i'd recommend it over Rogue Legacy 2 simply because of the more frequent saves.

Cloud Monday - West of Dead - Part 1 - Streaming From PlayStation Plus Fails Repeatedly

This week's Cloud Monday video is West of Dead from Upstream Arcade. I'm playing this on PS4 and streaming it from the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Service. Well, i tried to.

This video is of two halves. the first half is my continued attempts to play the game, as it kept kicking me off, and then my attempts to play anything until eventually, in the second half of the video, i was able to play West of Dead.

The reality is, i'm often having to go through situations like this. West of Dead isn't the first game i've played to kick me off and stop the streaming from the cloud. All the hassle trying to get it to work is also nothing new. it's getting rarer and rarer when i can turn on my PS4 and just stream from the cloud. what i haven't shown, but may do next time, is that i nearly always have to restore my licenses. then i usually restart the PS4 as i end up with the same issues in this video. i did it today before recording but actually had restarted twice, hoping it would help.

PlayStation Plus issues aside, the goal of this series is to see how the game is for streaming and i can say that West for Dead, how little i've played so far, has some positives qualities and a couple of negatives. The negatives aren't that bad, they mostly revolve around the user interface. if at 1080p, for example, it's already a little small, it becomes almost unreadable when the service drops it's quality. But trial and error can help. As for the positives, the biggest one is that the game saves often as there are save spaces in many locations in the map. the game is also randomising the levels each time you die as you're meant to die in the game. so if you are disconnected, some progress is lost but not a lot.

I look forward to trying out the game again in part 2 and hope to have a better experience from PlayStation Plus Premium. I am thinking about making a video showing the hassle i sometimes have to go through just to play a game on the service.