Demo Play Thursday - UFO: Unidentified Falling Objects

UFO: Unidentified Falling Objects is the first game in a new series called Demo Play Thursday. The goal is to play demos of upcoming, recently released, or older games. i chose to start with UFO: Unidentified Falling Objects as i wanted to play a puzzle game.

I'm familiar with with puzzle games where blocks come down from above, or up from below, and you need to match them together. What caught my eye was the robot with a lazer weapon. This demo let's you play through a tutorial and some of, if not all, the first world of the game. online multiplayer is not enabled and i couldn't try out local multiplayer. 

The goal with your robot is to destroy blocks. the more blocks of the same color together, the bigger the reward for destroying them. you only need to attack one of the blocks as damage will be shared with all the same colored touching blocks. But this is also true with enemies! Whilst it's not explained well, if at all, in the demo how to deal with all the different enemies, an enemy block only has to be touching a block or a chain of blocks to be damaged when said blocks are shot. unfortunately, you're not able to hurt the enemies directly. So with enemies shooting you, blocks falling down, and your attempts to make chains and destroy them, it's a fairly busy and frantic puzzler. One that i'm not good at at all! 

But even tho i wasn't good, i had a good time. i feel that this is a good demo, but it perhaps needs a better tutorial or more explanations for things. There were powerups that i didn't know what i wanted as i didn't know what they did, and there was an enemy i didn't work out how to kill.

Backlog Conquering - RiME - Part 7 - The Final Part

In part 6, https://youtu.be/1p_1m3GFPFE, i got stuck on a puzzle for around 30 minutes. if i solved it much sooner, i might've finished the game in that session. But as i didn't, i went into part 7 not really knowing how much of the game was left to play, and yet feeling like i was near the end of the game, that i was near the top of the tower i had been working my way up.

So part 7 is really short because there wasn't too much left to do in the game. I was lucky that the game, when it started, had moved me to where i needed to be. i finished Part 6 at the final statue i had awakened, but not where all 4 of their "spirits" had congregated. So when i started right where i needed to be, i did my scream, solved a light puzzle, and had to deal with the top of the tower being the bottom and then i got to the ending.

Ultimately, i don't get it. i say it in the video but the truth is i found it much more enjoyable tackling the puzzles and progressing through the world than what the conclusion ended up being. these puzzle parts of the game ended up being better than the game itself. The mystery of the king, the kingdom, the queen, and the other child were never explained, nor were the robots. if i had seen some sign of these at the end then i might've understood how or why they were in the world i had just played through. the story i had created in my own mind from my own experiences, which at times i say throughout this whole series, ended up being nothing like the actual ending. The ending i got didn't match the game i had just played. it's such a big disconnection that not only is it frustrating, it almost makes the game pointless to the point that i think of the game more as a series of puzzles than something with a story.

But that's just me and my interpretation of my own experiences. players from different cultures and backgrounds might have different feelings for the ending. I enjoyed the puzzles so much, especially that i was only stuck twice, that i would still recommend the game. probably best played on a PS5 because it really spun up the fans in my PS4!

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Pixel Ronoue Cup - Achievement Run

Welcome to Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday! Sit back and either watch me play through, with no commentary, the cup or leave it running in the background as BGM!

I play and earn all the achievements from The Pixel Ronoue Cup! (2023/8/14 9:00～2023/8/21 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

I didn't win a single game this week. i played against many other players and they were really good. i managed to often get to the boss and beat it a couple of times, too. But my best result this week was only second. This week was one of, if not the most, competitive cups i have ever played in this series and it was a lot of fun. I was listening to music, @TheBTchannel's The Hopeful Machines that i had put onto MiniDisc (With Electronic Opus versions too), and i was leaning forward a lot. I nearly forgot i was recording a video as i was soo focused on trying to beat the other players.

This week i played against:

Hades - Rank 51

YUKI - Rank 87

Labin - Rank 67

ふたば - Rank 71

おちゃ - Rank 76

SWITCH - Rank 89

souta_そうた - Rank 59

アレルギーのおとこ３ - Rank 78

Dan - Rank 65

Melusine - Rank 81

エ - Rank 57

pyors - Rank 68

Cloud Monday - Scarlet Nexus - Part 1 - Fun Start, But Manual Saves Have Me Concerned

Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing Scarlet Nexus on a launch model PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service. It's a game i have on disc and have wanted to play for a while as it's art style and combat mechanics look really cool.

Those two things don't disappoint during this hour. i noticed no lag in the controls, from what i pressed to it happening on screen, so the combat felt fun, fast, and dynamic. it's early on so i'm not too good at it but i 'm curious how it'll change as things unlock and whether or not there are interactions with another character. As for the art style, it's so unique and colorful with bright neon colors and particles that in some respects it was very noticeable when stream tearing happened and grey appeared on screen as it clashed with the game. But it also meant i wasn't able to notice smaller issues like macroblocking. Once or twice there were bigger issues but they only lasted for a second or two and never got in the way.

What was a little concerning for a game being streamed from PlayStation Plus Premium is how the save system works. the game does have an Autosave feature but in this hour i wasn't able to work out how frequently it saves other when entering or leaving an area or after a major battle. But the game, so far, only allows the player to save at very specific places. an example in this video is that it was about 17 minutes between these save points and a lot of story and critical battles took part during that time. I'm concerned as the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service only gives a 20 second countdown before it terminates the connection, whether your ready or not.

Switch Funday - Splatoon 3 - August’s Tricolor - 16 Games and 11 Wins

Welcome to Switch Funday!

This weekend is the  "What’s most important in life?" Splatfest. Yesterday, Saturday, was the first day and i got in 15 games with 4 wins https://youtu.be/wUTQmGapjWE. Today was the Tricolor event and it went much better!

A big highlight for me was discovering a new weapon i like to use. after yesterday's video, i went and bought a new weapon the #Bloblobber! for the first 3 games i used my other favorite weapon, the N-ZAP '89, but all the matches after that were with the Bloblobber.

I thought that the connection issues i had yesterday were better today, in that the disconnections only happened in the lobby rather than in-game, but the waiting for matches in the lobby were just as bad if not worse. Plus, as you can see (On YouTube) in the chapters below, there were plenty of matches were it was just Money fighting with Money against Money. i put a "*" to show which team i was on.

Online Saturday - Splatoon 3 - August's Splatfest - 15 Battles 4 Wins!

Welcome to Online Saturday.

It's a #Splatfest weekend so today's video is on the "What’s most important in life?" Splatfest in Splatoon 3.

Today didn't go great for me. out of the 15 battles i did, my teams were only able to win 4 of them! there were some big losses, too. it has been a while since i last played Splatoon so i did feel rusty. But i also felt that in many of my matches i was teamed with others who simply wanted to attack, rather than do what's needed to win and that's ink as much of the stage in our color as possible.

I also felt, and mentioned it in the video a few times, that it took longer to matchmake this Splatfest than normal. Plus, there were disconnections during the game, of which i left 1 in the video at the start just to show what happens, as well as disconnections in the lobby. it has felt that the recent game updates have made things more unstable. i hope tomorrow's Tricolor event will go smoother, and better for my teams and I.

Mobile Friday - Sumikkogurashi Farm - The First Hour With Version 5.0

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Sumikkogurashi Farm, also known as Sumikko gurashi Farm: Gonna Make a Garden, on my iPhone 14 Pro. The game is also out on Android and whilst it's not new, it has been celebrating over 5 million players recently and in this video i started the game with the recently released 5.0 release.

Simply put, this is a game where you inherit a farm and it's up to you how you make it. the game's tutorial tells and shows you the basics, but stops short. once the tutorial lets go of you, the screen is awash of red exclamation marks, a huge map full of things you can interact with yet or aren't high enough level for, and it expects you to play. all the tutorial needed to do was take me to the Quest, Running Start, or Order sections, do one with me and then let me continue. so in the beginning of taking control i'm a little lost.

It also takes some time to understand the rhythm of the game. you need experience points to level up and money to buy things. but the game does a bad job of explaining how to get both regularly and it takes nearly the full 50 minutes with the game for me to get a sense of the rhythm needed to progress. before that, the game's speed had slowed down and had begun to feel like a grind. This is a game where you are meant to do things, turn it off, and come back to it later. there's very little to do with the game whilst you wait.

But these complaints are not unique to this game, they can be used to describe nearly every other farm management game, as well as other styles of games. with that said, there are many positives that set this game apart. the biggest is the theme, Sumikko gurashi (すみっコぐらし). the game is full of these characters as well as costumes to dress them up in. the world design feels very appropriate, as do the bright vibrant colors. as this is the 5.0 version of the game, there is also a huge amount to uncover as you play. 

In this video i got to level 10 and it already felt like the game was opening up. i ended the game knowing that i could buy a train station, i could help with global goals, and i had barely started to understand the Events taking place and the bonuses associated with them. And then there's my own house and decorating it, as well as decorating and designing the layout off my farm. near the end of the video i went to other farms and they were all very different from each other.

Sumikkogurashi Farm isn't a game to be played for an hour straight. it's to be played on and off. it can use notifications to inform you when it needs to be interacted with. when you do play it, there's always a few things you could be doing. I would say this would make a great commuting game apart from that there was an extra 93 MB download. the game does ask you first before downloading it. But i'd still say it's probably best to get the tutorial out of the way, as well as that download, and then play it whilst your out and about.