Mobile Friday - Vampire Survivors - Fun Gameplay Hobbled By Everything Else

*I APOLOGIZE THAT THE QUALITY OF THIS VIDEO IS POOR. I DIDN'T NOTICE MY CAPTURE CARD WAS HAVING A DIFFICULT TIME WITH THIS GAME*

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Vampire Survivors on my iPhone 14 Pro. This game from  Poncle Games is also out on #Android and consoles

Vampire Survivors was released last year to much fanfare and praise but i held of from playing it because it looked like a console game ported to iPhone rather than being designed for it. A long time has passed and this hasn't changed so i decided to just try it.

Unfortunately for the game, it still looks and plays like a console game ported to phones. it got off to a bad start when it glitched the first time i loaded it up vertically as the final few pixels at the top failed to load and left me with a black banner. most of the game feels too small, and due to the games artstyle, not very distinct. the enemies are perhaps the only highlight because they're bigger than my player character or visually distinct from each other. tho there were some that i couldn't make out what they were.

One option would be to zoom in. but the area i saw on my phone already felt smaller than normal, more so when the game put up borders, for no apparent reason, that gave it a 4:3 feel rather than making full use of my screen. it's a baffling choice that irked me throughout my hour with the game.

This game is also not very accessible. it tells you nothing about how to play it or how to make progress in it. The garliclike genre is fairly new and the team are making some big assumptions about mobile players and the time they're willing to put into something in comparison to console gamers. it's so bad that i wouldn't recommend this game to any casual gamer unless they're playing one of the many knock off games.

the real frustratingly thing is that the gameplay is great. i've got enough experience to know what the gameplay loop is, that and i heard about this game across many podcasts. it's a bit uneven at this early point in the game and i wonder if it'll ever balance itself once you buy upgrades, but once you get going with more upgrades and abilities it gets really fun.

It's just nearly everything else around it holds it back from being truly great. it's not a complete package. But it's fun enough that i won't be deleting it either.

(Version 1.7.103 Played)

Demo Play Thursday - Snakebird Complete on Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Snakebird Complete. This game, from developers Noumenon Games is out from today.

Snakebird Complete is the combination of Snakebird and Snakebird: Primer that has been updated for the Nintendo Switch. i was unfamiliar with them and wanted to try this demo to see how they use the game Snake as a puzzle game.

This demo appears to be the beginning of the main game. we have access to both islands, tho it was never explicitly said to us how to get to the second island. unfortunately, even tho it's the start of the game, the tutorial of this game is minimal at best. the first level does put up a controller to help show what buttons do what, but i was using a pro controller and not a Joy-Con that was on screen. we are taught how to move and control, but surprisingly we're not taught that we can't move back or what the goal of the levels with fruit is. 

I'm familiar with Snake so i knew what to do, but i was surprised that the game never told us what it wanted us to do, what the goal of the game was. Thankfully, the game doesn't penalize mistakes. there are no limits on how many moves you can make either. But again, the game also fails to mention that we should use the pause menu as not only can we add a grid to the screen to help us understand where the birds can go, but there's also a hint system too.

It is possible that the demo is buggy or incomplete. for example, on the first island we were able to play level 49 for some reason. But with the game out now, i don't think so. I also don't know if our progress from the demo is carried over to the final game. 

The demo is effective in that we understand how the mechanics and puzzles work, and that there's no penalty for failing. But after playing it, i'm not that interested in playing a game that tells us so little. when we went to the second island, i had to infer that the spikes were dangerous as the game didn't tell us but it was only through playing that it became clear that it was only falling on them that was the issue. I worry that there'll be other obstacles and mechanics later that be poorly communicated about and be an added frustration to the puzzle itself. 

Backlog Conquering - CounterSpy On PS3 - My First Four Missions

CounterSpy is the new Backlog Conquering Wednesday game. i'm playing this version of the game on PlayStation3. It came out across the PS4, PSV and even mobile in 2014 from developers Dynamighty.

When this came out in 2014, i remember a lot of talk about how it looks and sounds. And it does, it's a beautiful game on PS3 and it's soundtrack is great. Another unique, more so at the time, feature of this game was how the levels in each mission are randomly built. So this means the levels you see me take on in this video maybe different to others in other videos.

This is a double edged sword however as i felt that the second mission, the first one after the tutorial, was much harder than i anticipated. I died and quickly learnt that i'd have to be more careful. it highlighted that whist the game is good in highlighting where the enemy soldiers are, the camera in the game actually obstructs our view in comparison to what our character sees. An example of this is how at the start of the missions there's a solider warning, but we can't see said soldier until we're very close so dealing with them can be down to reactions rather than planned or stealthy. 

So far, i enjoyed playing the game so will continue into part 2. it's a shame i'm playing this now and not when it came out as the online features have been turned off.

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Valeria Cup Revival - 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 Valeria Cup Revival! ( 2023/11/20 9:00～2023/11/27 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

This week is the Valeria Cup Revival. i have played this cup before, https://youtu.be/TGWaHPERguM. That video took over an hour and a half for me to get the achievements for that week!

It went well for me this week. i won a few matches and i got the achievements quite quickly. but it wasn't amazing. for example, i wasn't able to beat the boss, nor could i get to it regularly. I also didn't seem to have much luck with getting the big combos needed for the big points. But it was fun going up against some human players and having some close matches against them. it looks like they were having just as much trouble beating the final boss as i was.

This week i played against:

かなた - Rank 58

ヘロ - Rank 79

こんたあき - Rank 50

$$ - Rank 73

Cloud Monday - Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot - Part 1 - Good Game Design For Streaming, Unsure For Playing

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. I streamed this game, developed by, CyberConnect2, via the #PlayStationPlus Cloud Streaming Service on my launch model Japanese PS4.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is a game i've been trying to stream for a while now. I try it each week, and since it came to PlayStation Plus it's never worked. Until now! I was really surprised and very unprepared for it, i've been saying for a long time that i couldn't get it to work and, at least this one time, it did.

My thinking behind trying this game is that it's slower pace might make it more suitable for it being streamed. i had hoped that, as a RPG, we'd be able to save more frequently. And it looks like we can. the game also has a decent auto save feature that seemed to be fairly active. so in comparison to Scarlet Nexus, i was more confident that i could either manually save, hit an auto save, or get to a save point in Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot than Scarlet Nexus.

A welcome bonus is how big and simple the characters are on screen. they look very much like their anime counterparts, so when there was some macroblocking i was still able to work out what was happening and wasn't really hampered. this is a great looking game and it feels like you're playing in the anime. so when there is macroblocking or stream tearing, it takes you out of the experience, more than anything else, because it looks so much like what it's based on.

But, whilst there are many positives about the game design and how suitable it is for being streamed from the cloud i can't ignore how other parts of it weren't great for actually playing. In, nearly, every section of this first part there was something that i found annoying or something that made the game less accessible. 

The way it introduces anything new with tutorial cards of screen is simply lazy and something i'll always complain about. it's something that's not that accessible to new players. i'd expect the cards if i was looking for a reminder on how to do something. They have Goku and Gohan at the start, Goku could simply be telling Gohan the basics of fighting and that could've been out introduction. The way they introduce the social aspect of this game is also baffling and a part of the game i didn't know about.

The controls were often slightly worse than i expected, for example the dash is super fast and difficult to use or when you're on Nimbus and there are collectable orbs but you have to seemingly touch them to collect them but that's difficult because Nimbus is slightly more difficult to control than expected. Also, why  can i collect items from afar but not these orbs?

Maybe in part 2 there'll be more context for everything and with more practice things will improve. but as it's been near impossible to play this game just once i'm not sure if/when Part 2 may be.

Switch Funday - Splatoon 3 - November's Splatfest Tricolor - 15 Battles 11 Wins!

Welcome to Switch Funday.

It's day two of the Splatfest weekend so today's video focuses on the Tricolor game mode in Splatoon3. the connection issues and long waiting times for matches continued from yesterday, but on the plus side teamhandshake did much better today in Tricolor than in yesterday's Splatfest Battle.

Even tho my teams and i won 11 battles today, they weren't all big wins. some of them were very close, many came because the opposing teams forgot the golden rule with Splatoon 3, and that is inking. most of the teams i was on focused on inking as well as attacking or defending. this meant i was mostly confident that we had always achieved one goal. this is clear when watching the percentage at the top of the screen.

Online Saturday - Splatoon 3 - November's Splatfest - 15 Battles 5 Wins!

Welcome to Online Saturday.

It's a Splatfest weekend so today's video is on the "What's your go-to greeting?" Splatfest in Splatoon 3. Our choices are between Handshake, fist bump, or hug. I chose to join team handshake.

This wasn't as fun as i had hoped. it was yet another Splatfest blighted by connection issues. it took minutes for nearly all games to be found, and twice games were abandoned due to disconnections. there were also a couple of times when games would continue even tho we'd be down a teammate due to a disconnection. it wasn't great after the last Splatfest, but the game has been patched since then and for things to be still bad is disappointing. As for how this Splatfest went, simply it didn't go great. i would often top the score sheets for my team, but as a team we simply weren't doing enough to ink or work together. so that also adds to the feeling that this wasn't a great Splatfest.