Cloud Monday - Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus - Pt2 - Let Down By Controls And Camera

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing the PS2 version of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

In Part 1, https://youtu.be/tphGJ4lCw88, the charm of the game was very evident. it was also nice how each section we had to clear was nice and short and different from each other. that continued in this section with the boss also being different and unique but importantly only needing 4 hits to be defeated. The level design is mostly solid as well. the gameplay doesn't feel like a chore, nor does it feel like it's dragging on.

But it's really hampered by the controls and camera. the controls are just too sluggish. i don't think that this is a result of the game being streamed to me via PlayStation Plus either. I wonder if it's because PS2 games used a cable to connect to the console and had a different polling rate than Bluetooth controllers. basically, does the game check on what's being inputted fast enough. it's a frustrating experience pressing a button and often not seeing it happen on screen fast enough and then occasionally seeing it happen on time. it makes the jumping difficult. 

An example of this is the boss at the end of the video. for a while i couldn't jump up and down and press the button fast enough to start the next up jump before i was hit. the boss was moving faster than i could. so i had to try and start a little ahead of the boss so by the time he had caught up with me he got tired and i could hit him. i doubt this was the actual strategy, tho if it was please say so in the comments, and instead it's a result of the weird controller lag.

I'm not saying it's impossible for it to be caused from streaming the game. but i've played enough of these games to know that it's only ever been an issue in one other game. 

The camera was also another frustration. i felt like i was fighting it too often and it kept getting caught in the level. I had to make some jumps based on guess work. what really didn't help was that i couldn't change the camera to inverted. back in the day, it was a somewhat normal camera scheme, but nowadays inverted is the norm. 

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus very much feels like the first game. it has great ideas and some not so great. what i'm curous about, and may check out in the next video, is whether the PS3 HD version of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus controls any differently. if it does, would i prefer to have better controls and camera or the ability to save and rewind. i'm very curious to try the PlayStation 3 version.

Cloud Monday - Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus - Controls Take Time To Adjust To, Go Slow

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PS2 version of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

PlayStation 2 games have recently come to the service as games you can download or stream from the cloud. so far, whilst the emulation software has been a good match-up for the service allowing us to save when ever we want, perfect for a service that only gives us a 20 second warning before disconnection, one of the main issues has been whether or not the gameplay is worth it.

Resistance: Retribution, https://youtu.be/jEs97ouESk8, was interesting as it's the only game i've played that had in-game tweaks to the analogue sticks. for G-Police, https://youtu.be/P9QIJwNAhGs, not being able to tweak them made the game near impossible to play. so i was very curious how a more recent title would handle.

There are two things i noticed right away, the camera and the jumping. both took time to adjust to. there were no in-game options to change how the camera works. but i've played games like this so it go easier. the jumping and character movement in general took a little more time. it felt like, and i tried to show in-game this, that there was a little lag between what i pressed on the controller and what happened in-game. 

This is such a rare thing with games being played from the cloud that i can't say for sure if it is a cloud streaming issue, or if it's an issue with the original PS2 game or an issue with the emulation software. it wasn't game breaking, but it did take me a few minutes before i was able to jump out of the initial starting area. it can't be denied that when i tried to test the lag, i could press the button and there was a short delay before Sly jumped.

There was only a second or two of video artefacts during this, so like many of the PS1 and PSP games emulated they seem to stream well as video. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus looks great upscaled to 1080p on PS4. the one thing i thought that didn't upscale as well was the audio. out of everything i played, it came across as the weakest part of this release.