Cloud Monday - Sand Land - Part 2 - I'd Recommend Streaming It From The Cloud

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing Sand Land on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4. My laptop crashed whilst recording this video so my audio is from my backup, from my Mini Disc MZ-RH10 player.

Part 1, https://youtu.be/rKMnNyzb70s, went very well. it was a near perfect streaming experience that allowed us to focus on the game itself. the streaming experience in this part wasn't as great, but it was solid enough for me to come to the conclusion that Sand Land is a great game to stream from the cloud.

we learned that we get access to manual saves very early in the game. in this part we found where the auto saves are listed and that we get useful information like the time of the auto save. this means, when we get the 20 second warning before disconnection it is easy to manually save. a concern i had specific to this game was the sand, dust, and particles on screen. some streaming services, including YouTube, struggle with this and it can result in a degraded video being streamed to us. across both parts, i felt that the video we got never changed.

Visually, Sand Land looks fantastic on my PS4 and with how big the characters are on screen, when we had a little stream tearing it never really got in the way of us seeing what was on the screen. whilst we didn't have it in either of these parts, i would suspect that Macro Blocking would also not be much of an issue because of how big the art is and how it isn't reliant on fine details.

We're early into the game, How long to Beat says Sand Land is about a 20 hour game, so there could be issues later into the game. but there was nothing in these two parts that has got me concerned. if you're interested in Sand Land, streaming it from the Cloud is a great way to experience the game and i'd recommend doing so.

Cloud Monday - Sand Land - Part 1 - Video Isn't Effected By Sand, Quick To Get Access To Saves

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Sand Land on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

I checked out the DEMO for Sand Land, https://youtu.be/Vb6Z6DHvTJ4, back in March 2024 so i knew what to expect from the game. the difference here is that back then, the demo was installed on my PS4 and this time it's being streamed from the cloud to my PS4. What i'm focusing with Cloud Monday is how the game's save system works and whether or not all the sand dust in the air makes the drops the quality of the video i'm watching, much like how YouTube struggles with fireworks and confetti. 

This was one of the clearest streams to my PS4 i've had in a long time. if there were any issues, they didn't last more than a second. the game looked great throughout and the stream didn't seem to have any issues with the sand and dust. i didn't notice any drop in bitrate or resolution whilst playing this part of Sand Land.

The game makes it clear what the auto save symbol is and i did clearly see it during gameplay. but, i was never able to see the actual auto save file. so, at the end of this video, my guess is that it auto saved after the fight but i'm not too sure and would have to check my video. Thankfully, i got access to the manual saves in less than 10 minutes. getting to the save option and saving also seemed quick. on PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service, we're only given a 20 second warning before we're disconnected. unless we're in a cutscene, which we can skip, getting to the save menu and saving should be fine.

It's only been 1 hour, but i've enjoyed my time with the game. the characters are fun, the world has an interesting story, and it looks great on my base PS4. i'm looking forward to the next part and maybe i'll keep playing it in my own time.

Demo Play Thursday - Sand Land On #PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Sand Land, developed by ILCA.

From the PSN store page, it was made clear that this is more of a sandbox rather than a demo that follows the story. this was so surprising that i actually included the store page to highlight this. If you play this demo before buying Sand Land, then you'll get some in-game bonuses when you start the game. unfortunately, these bonuses do not apply to games that have already started. 

I haven't read nor watched anything about Sand Land before, so one of the draw backs about this demo's approach is that it doesn't introduce anything. i knew that there's sand because of the game's icon and name. but i was a bit surprised by how much of it there was. The characters look familiar because of Akira Toriyama's style. This meant it was clear that two of them weren't human whilst the third was. But with this demo not having any story, it was kinda irrelevant.

As this demo is set sometime into the game, we also miss out on a tutorial(s). what we get is text in a box on the screen. no videos, no practice, just text and maybe a picture. I have played a number of Bandai Namco games and i believe this maybe the case in the final game to. this is a shame as i found the on screen buttons missing a crucial reminder that Triangle is how you dismount the vehicles. A proper tutorial would've also helped remind me that right on the D-Pad brings up the vehicles screen and that most of the enemies in the game should be dealt with by one of your vehicles.

One of the reasons why this video is so long is because of the time it took to understand the controls and what the game expects you to do. i imagine that this becomes apparent naturally when playing the final game. But after my time with the demo i'm actually thinking of going back in my own time to try again some of my mistakes and to see what happens.

The demo does have a few limitations. we're unable to enter the town that's directly next to us. in exploring the map, we also came across invisible boundaries. I also imagine the issue we had with the #Icharbe Ruins is also due to demo limitations. there's no levelling up, no improving skills, and we came across a gap that we just couldn't cross which i imagine is due to those limits.

Exploring was fun. the dessert had a few enemies to tackle, with the humans being the most difficult as they use machines like us. it wasn't all sand dunes, there were canyons, rocky outcrops, and a few ruins.

for a PS4 game, this certainly looked great. it had the look of an anime but it controlled very well like an action game. i imagine the PS5 version might be able to use HDR to take advantage of the beautiful day night cycle as well as better shadows and maybe even ray tracing. But on PS4, Sand Land is more than good looking enough. in some ways, this demo felt too small for this game and i'm genuinely interested in the final retail game.

I do recommend people try out this game. it feels more casual than an RPG, but more involved than some other games made from an anime. Sand Land is a single story, so this has the chance to be a much more complete game. The demo has other benefits as it gives in game items to new saves in the retail game after this demo has been played. I would've liked a bullet point or two of things i could do or even a hint like "try heading east". i just didn't enjoy the open sand box approach, especially when learning how to control the game.