Cloud Monday - Dragon Quest Heroes - Part 1 - 45 Minutes Blighted By Streaming Issues

Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing the PS4 game Dragon Quest Heroes on the PlayStation Plus Streaming Service.

I wanted to try out a "musou" style game as part of Cloud Monday as i thought it would be an interesting challenge for a streaming service. often these games have many enemies on the screen at once with many FX and particles, basically many things that can make it difficult even for YouTube.

However, what i got in the 45 minutes and even a bit before i started recording was far worse than i expected. it has been many weeks since i had a PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming experience as bad as this, it was Assassin’s Creed: Origins last year, part 1 https://youtu.be/X5e1b-JPh70 and part 2 https://youtu.be/ZCjvWJLaZ-Q. there wasn't one specific issue, this video has all the issues. Stream tearing, macroblocking, resolution dips, to the point that a couple of times i got the warning message.

But, even tho there were streaming issues, playing the game wasn't too bad. the game's art style is simple, clear, and colorful which meant even when things got bad it was still mostly possible to work out what was happening. plus, the control scheme for this game means you can smash the buttons and often attack something. the streaming issues were a negative.

But, in this series we always play each game twice so come back for part two and we'll see if it's just as bad the second time. it'll be on a different day at a different time. for Assassin’s Creed: Origins, it didn't help. but for the other games i've played, it usually does help.

Switch Funday - Mario Kart 64 - My First Time

Welcome to Switch Funday!

I have been using the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack's Virtual Consoles to catch up with some games i've never played before. today, i chose to play Mario Kart 64. I recently tried out Mario Kart on the SNES, https://youtu.be/ytuZQssV_7Y, and this was the final Mario Kart i hadn't played before. i learned a lot about that game from user  @SuperNickid  , i recommend reading what they wrote if you're unfamiliar with that game.

i didn't quite know what this game would be. would it lean closer to the SNES version or would it lean closer to the GBA and GameCube versions. thankfully, it feels more arcadey, more balanced, and generally more fun to play. The reason this video is so long is because i tried every map!

there were a couple of things that still annoyed me about this version of the game. the main one is that you must finish in the top 4 to progress. that's more similar to the SNES original than later games. another was the lack of characters. i played as Kooper in the SNES game but that character was not in this one. thankfully the character's looked much better, much closer to how you imagined they look. a great example is how much better Yoshi looks.

Another big improvement were the weapons. in the SNES original, i learned how the weapons work as whilst playing it i couldn't understand what was happening. characters have their own weapons and they have endless amounts of them. here, it was much more familiar and it felt much more fair. if i have a complaint it's that the red shell Ai was really quite bad at times. i would say the drift mechanic was also much improved and it felt a more vital part of the gameplay. in the SNES version it's more a jump, but on the N64 it's more a drift that also can give you boost.

I had much more fun with this game. it feels more like the first game in the series than the original does. it also feels more fair and better balanced. even tho i lost some races, it didn't feel like it was the computer cheating. It's well worth trying and it still looks good, too!

Online Saturday - Meet Your Maker - A Difficult Introduction

Welcome to Online Saturday.

Today's video is on the newly released Meet Your Maker. i was playing this on PS4, a launch model, as part of PlayStation Plus.

Going in i knew very little about this game. but from some descriptions and the game's own policies and warnings i knew there was some sort of online component. i had assumed it was raiding as a group, kinda like Destiny, but for this video at least i was wrong.

i learned quickly that, again for this video and this early on in the game, the goal is to raid other user made bases. turns out it was simpler said than done. other than the two very basic tutorial bases, i failed to complete a raid in any of the other bases i tried.

The problem is this game is too new. users try bases, they score bases, and bases are assigned levels. but the two i tried were clearly far too advanced for someone just starting the game. especially the second level i tried. the main weapon i have only has two bullets that i have to get back if i want more. but with flying enemies, who knows where the bullets end up and that's what happened. in the last try, i couldn't find the bullets and had to try running. i do have a second weapon, a sword, but it's useless against flying enemies.

The second level i tried is also annoying because it lets you climb to the top of it with some ease, and there's nothing there. the two levels i tried feel like they were built without the grappling hook in mind. the problem the game has is that the grappling hook is soo good, it almost needs to be it's own category because once players understand how to use it i imagine level design is going to ramp up in difficult. there is a guide that seems to follow a path to the goal, but as i was unable to build my own level due to a lack of resources, i don't know how it actually works.

There are positives from the game tho. it handles amazing, almost retro. the same goes for the graphic style as it feels like a Quake/Unreal Tournament era game. i'm playing on a launch base PS4 and even tho the style looks simple, it did look good. the downside of playing on a launch PS4 tho is the long loading times. we're talking minutes, especially for the second level. one difficult the game has is getting the information from the internet, then building the level. it's the same issues games like Mod Nation Racers/LittleBigPlanet Karting suffered from back on the PS3.

i will go back to the game in maybe a month or two once the levels have been better sorted by other uses. hopefully there'll be a patch to address the loading. i'd also like a chance to play with the options before the game starts, seeing as we're already going through privacy notices and what not.

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