Mobile Friday - Cat Snack Bar - A Grinding 35 Minutes

Mobile Friday this week is Cat Snack Bar, a game that's out across iOS and Android app stores by treeplla.

This is a game that had been advertised to me in a few games and i was curious if it was actually as cute and fun looking as those videos showed. i had an idea that it might be an idle game, but no idea how it would go about doing that.

Starting it for the first time, it became quite clear how it was going to work. there is an option to buy red crystal/ruby gem things, but the game's main push is for you to watch adverts. whilst it's nice that it's not recommending/pushing purchases, what's not great is how little reward there seems to be to watch an advert. for example, when you watch an advert you get 5 minutes of double earnings. in other games i play that is 4 hours of double earnings. 

another thing that becomes clear quickly is that the game gets grindy quicker than other idle games i've played. a while ago i checked out Star Trek: Lower Decks: The Badgey Directive, https://youtu.be/5rA9Fb4SVhI, and that video is much longer than this one. that game didn't start to feel grindy until near the end of the hour. Plus, that game is also telling a story so it was nice to stop and read the story. in Cat Snack Bar, i started feeling the grind by the third stage of the first area. the first two were done in around 10 minutes, but after 20 the third stage was maybe half way there. the first area had a further 4 stages.

It does look good and cute, the colors are bold and the designs work. for picking up and playing for a few minutes it's fine. but the game's poor music, loud sound effects, and immediate grind do work against it. i feel like the first area needs rebalancing to get players to the main goal, to the thing that was highlighted in adverts and in treeplla's own videos, they need to get players to the first big shop where we, the player, can see and watch the cats in action all at once. but until then, the grind is the main thing holding back the game for now.

Backlog Conquering - Outland - Part 3 - The Second Boss And Maybe The Final Video

Welcome to Backlog Conquering.

Today's video is part 3 of playing Outland on PS3.

This is a longer video as the difficult ramped up. the difficulty increase was a combination of more difficult platforming and more difficult game mechanics. the gameplay "gimmick" of this game revolves around colored energy. it has mostly taken shape in that you have to be the opposite color to an enemy to attack it and the same color as the energy balls to not be damaged by them.

But even by the second video, https://youtu.be/hovQECR-WGs, some of this was getting repetitive. with the enemies it's been mostly fair, just hit them more or watch out for when they attack. but the colored energy balls has been getting more difficult and frustrating. you can see, especially in this video, that dealing with it really slowed down the pace of the game and by the end i was becoming frustrated with the controls combined with the platforming and timing that i rather took the hit than deal with it.

After three parts with the game, there was little driving me forward. there still was little to no story, and now with the difficulty increase i lost my drive to progress in the game. There's no denying that the game looks great. but there's also little else pushing me forward in it. after 3 parts, the mechanics and gimmicks were getting repetitive and in a couple of cases i'd go so far as to say they were unfair. the second boss is an example where the game requires a lot of platforming, but there's an argument that the game's platforming is one of it's weakest parts, which means the boss felt a little unfair as it wasn't just my skill letting me down but the game's own platforming too.

Backlog Conquering - Outland - Part 2 - A Boss and Another 45 Minutes

Welcome to Backlog Conquering.

Today's video is the first video with a new PS3 game. for the video i played through the first 45 minutes, or so, of Outland. It's a game from Ubisoft and Housemarque. 

I've had this game for a long time. i speculated early in the video that i probably got it as a PlayStation Plus game. i didn't really think about it until i used it in my PS3 XMB Game Preview Series, https://youtu.be/WIh3ZkDSCLY. Going in, i didn't really know anything about it other than it's a Housemarque game.

This was an interesting first 45 minutes. the first thing i noticed was how gorgeous it looked. My capture device said it was 720p, but it looked so crisp, vibrant, and detailed that it could easily have been 1080p. technologically speaking, it's also run really smooth and i haven't noticed any issues with it, unlike Papo & Yo which i just finished as that game had all sorts of issues like screen tearing and framerate dips.

But it's story hasn't grabbed me. so much else of this game has, but the story we've had so far is very brief. there's not really been a great answer to "Why?" and the world we're playing in sure looks great, but again there's no reason why it looks the way it does. there'll be a part two and i look forward to seeing where it goes.

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Academy Cup 1 - 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 Academy Cup 1! (2023/4/3 9:00～2023/4/10 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

This week wasn't too bad, but it wasn't great. i managed to get a couple of wins but i never managed to beat the boss. i feel like i didn't fully understand the gimmick as once or twice i seemed to get stuck and not get that far. Some of the other players i played against also seemed to be in the same situation whilst others seemed to excel. If you can see what i did wrong, please let me know.

This week i played against:

イツや - Lvl 49

まるまん - Lvl 64

マサヒコ - Lvl 61

TERUHIKO - Lvl 71

ヨッシー Lvl 71

II - Lvl 64

MITSURU - Lvl 67

ユルティム - Lvl 70

Cloud Monday - Zack Zero - Part 2 - An Hour With No Cloud Streaming Issues

Today's Cloud Monday is part 2 of playing the PS3 game Zack Zero on the PlayStation Plus Streaming Service.

Last week's Part 1, https://youtu.be/mhPphtnB2To, was over an hour where i experienced maybe a 5 minute period of poor streaming quality over the PlayStation Plus Premium service. in today's video, i had no issues streaming the game. 

The playing experience did have some rough moments, but they were from the game itself rather than from streaming the game from the cloud. the most common issue i experienced was screen tearing. this mostly happened at the, or near the, top of the screen. there were some stutters and what felt like framerate dips. a couple of times the game's own mechanics got in the way, namely that the game has control over the camera but twice i got ahead of it and it caused me to lose some health.

Aside from the game's own issues, it's not a bad experience. if you're looking for something to play on PlayStation Plus Premium, it does offer something unique. i can't think of many games that are sidescrollers that play quite like this. most games tend to follow a Mega-Man style. but this game has a more dynamic camera and plays with perspective more. it can be difficult in places and in this video i felt things weren't as clear as they should, but it should be fine content wise for younger people to play.

Switch Funday - Splatoon 3 - April's Splatfest - An Hour Of Tricolor - 12 Matches But Only 3 Wins!

Welcome to Switch Funday.

As it's a Splatfest weekend, today i wanted to focus on the Sunday exclusive game mode called Tricolor. In the previous Chocolate Splatfest, https://youtu.be/f_IoorNHNJE, the Sunday Tricolor day was the first time the mode had worked perfectly since the game launched. It was mostly fine today, i got to play 12 games, but there were some disconnections, some games took a minute or more to match, and there were a couple of instances where no games could be found.

Yesterday, https://youtu.be/3u3lbMkhguM, i was able to play 12 matches but in all of them i was never up against the BIgfoot Team. between my Aliens teams and Nessie Teams, it was tied at 6 wins and 6 losses. However, today my Alien teams could only manage 3 wins! Tricolor is always difficult, but today felt far more competitive.

I was trying out a couple of new weapons i bought after yesterday's hour. i enjoyed the N-Zap '89 but found the Splatana Stamper more difficult. it'd be great if you could recommend a weapon i should try out. I'm normally a fan of the umbrellas, but i went more attacking this weekend and it was fun.

Online Saturday - Splatoon 3 - April's Splatfest - 1 Hour, 12 Matches, 6 Wins, But No Bigfoot Teams!

Welcome to Online Saturday.

As it's a Splatfest this weekend, today's Online Saturday focuses on Splatoon 3. this Splatfest is a fight between those who believe Nessie is real, that Aliens are real, or that Bigfoot is real. Myself, i chose the Aliens team as i really do believe that aliens are real.

It was one of me better Saturdays, too. i played 12 games and won half of them. the strange thing from today is that all 12 games were against Nessie teams. it could be that here in Japan/Asia, Nessie and Aliens were the top two and that Bigfoot has a bigger representation across America and Europe.

The sneak peak results had Aliens narrowly leading Nessie with Bigfoot a little bit behind. after today's games, it's hard to say who'll win the Splatfest out of Aliens or Nessie. there were some real close games and there were some really big losses. If you play against a Bigfoot team, let me know how good or bad they are.