Switch Funday - Pokémon Unite - 6 Matches From March's Panic Parade

Panic Parade is back so for Switch Funday i had to play it and start levelling up my stats. As everything has been reset from the previous Panic Parade, these 6 matches are a little slow and show me progressing up the difficulty rankings as i reach certain Wave targets. 

Online Saturday - Pokémon Unite - March’s Unite Weekend

Today's Online Saturday video is on Pokémon Unite. This is the first full weekend of March so it's a Unite Weekend. this means i'm able to use any Pokémon i want in the unranked online modes. my goal with these weekends is to try out several new Pokémon i don't have and hopefully find some new favorites. 

This might be the last of these videos for a while as i only have 2 Pokémon who i haven't played as. For today, the real surprise was Gyarados. i had a lot of fun using it. as Magikarp, it's not very powerful but once it evolved it dominated. it honestly feels a little broken and will probably be rebalanced, either as Gyarados or perhaps making you use Magikarp for a couple more levels. I didn't enjoy playing as Mew or Gengar, they were a bit too frail for how i like to play and Gengar in particular didn't seem to hit as hard as i expected it would. Zacian and Urshifu were strong as you'd expect for legendries and i had some fun with them. It was kinda more fun to play as Metagross's previous evolutions as they moved much quicker than it did. but overall it was fine to use. Out of all of these, there wasn't a Pokémon that stood out as a must buy. 

Mobile Friday - Slime Hunter: Monster Rapmage - An Approachable Roguelike That Needs More Tutorials

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Slime Hunter: Monster Rapmage from Rainbow Rabbit Games.  I Played this on my iPhone 14 Pro, but it's also out on Android.

Typically, i'm not a fan of roguelike games. often, they can be quite difficult and not very accessible. But on the Appstore, Slime Hunter: Monster Rapmage lists itself as a "Hyper Casual Shooting Roguelike" and i was very curious about this claim so that's why i wanted to try it.

For the most part, i think that it does succeed. it starts with a "cute" video and carries that into the tutorial with a Slime acting as your teacher. graphically, it's not highly detailed but it all works together. Even the music comes across as casual. So in playing it, i didn't feel the pressure and frustration that often comes with roguelikes.

But where this game stumbles is another important aspect of roguelikes, it fails to explain the loop. In roguelikes, there's often a reason why your character fails. sometimes it's how you learn what comes next, whether that's in a level or what a boss does next. in other games, you use the time between loops to level up and improve your stats by spending a gathered material. In Slime Hunter: Monster Rapmage, you're collecting money, equipable items, and materials for those items. But the game never tells you to go and equip, it never tells you to level up items, and it never shows you how to do either. 

The tutorial had been so good so the fact it stops at such a critical point in the game is a big mistake. Slime Hunter: Monster Rapmage's loop is simple, you do a level and get as far as you can. If your character levels up, you can improve your stats. if you have collected an item, you can equip it, and if you have collected materials you can use them to improve those items you've equipped. Once that's done, you go back in with the aim of going further.

During these journeys in the dungeons, the controls are nice and simple. your character will shoot it's weapon when it's not moving and you move your character with a single finger touching the screen. by double tapping, tho sometimes i felt like this didn't work that well, it activates a super attack. This one handed gameplay is great for those commuting but also means it's very accessible for a larger audience. Helping you are relics. at certain points in these dungeons, you will unlock 3 relics and get to choose 1 to equip. there's a large variety of them and they affect gameplay in different ways, but typically either attacking the enemy or boosting your stats. These are random so each run in a dungeon is going to feel different and helps mitigate the repetitive nature of roguelikes.

I do recommend Slime Hunter: Monster Rapmage. it is disappointing the tutorial stops at the critical point of explaining the loop of the game. this will put some people off. but with a little exploration of the menus, many will work out what to do. It's a recent release so there's a good chance things will get even better. So i would recommend it to play now but also to keep on your phone and check out it's updates to see if they do improve the tutorials and make things easier enough for you.

Demo Play Thursday - Master Key On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Master Key, developed by the solo dev Achromi .

Master Key is a black and white, tho there are other color palettes to choose from, RPG where you play as a fox who uses a key to attack. the game's e-Shop page made it clear that the aim is for us, the player, to go and explore the world ourselves rather than have the game lead us. This was true with the demo as well. it appears that the game wasn't changed for this demo as there was no mention that we were playing a demo, no mention of whether our progress carried over, and no tutorials.

The game relies on using pictograms to help explain what you need to do in some instances, but i personally found them a little difficult to read once they moved beyond faces that some NPCs would have, or my interpretation of them wasn't right. This lack of information also meant that there were instances where i just didn't understand what was happening, the biggest one being the cup of coffee. the music was faster, but other than that i just couldn't work out if it did anything or not. I also found the shop to be difficult to understand. not every item is labelled with a picture of what it does so i simply had to guess. I highly recommend players get the map as soon as you can. there was a point in the middle of this video where i felt like i was going round in circles and making no progress until i had enough money and worked out one of the items was the map. once i got it, i was finally able to make progress once again.

I understand this is a stylistic choice but clearly a con of it was how it made playing and making progress in the game more difficult. for some players this won't be a negative thing whilst for me and others it made the game more frustrating than it needed to be. But that's why Master Key having a demo is a great thing. It gives people a chance to actually try before they buy, for them to work out if this is something they want to play or not. for me, i'm actually glad i played the demo as there is a lot to like. the music for one is fantastic, i wouldn't say no to getting the soundtrack. the art is also really good. our character looks different from all the other characters. the world isn't overly busy and yet every place we went to looked really good with more than enough detail to make out houses, shops, fountains, and coffee carts.

So even tho Master Key isn't for me, it's still a game i'd recommend people try and this demo is a great way to try it. 

Backlog Conquering - Teslagrad On PS4 - Part 2 - Hard Platforming And A Bird Pooping Bird Bombs

This is part 2 of playing the PlayStation 4 version of Teslagrad, from developers Rain AS, as part of Backlog Conquering. Part 1, https://youtu.be/0VcP1mdl1rs, got a little rough towards the end as i was seemingly stuck in a loop.

So in this Part 2 my first goal was to head back to the start. this was the right move as along the way i found where i needed to go next. This meant the first half of Part 2 went really well. there were some tricky platforming that required several deaths to pass, but what was a first for this game was that it took time to try and tell a story. there were special, almost, theatre rooms where on stage we're shown 2 parts of the story of Teslagrad. it's the kind of world building that had been missed so far. the only story we had was right at the beginning of Part 1. since then, we've only seen pictures but with no context.

The Boss battle of this part was weird but in a good way. Part 1 had a boss, too, and it felt the same. both were difficult, both required a little strategy, but in a way both felt easier to beat than some of the platforming sections. I hope this continues, but i fear things may get more difficult. The weird part of this battle was that the "bird" we were fighting would poop out smaller flightless birds that would explode. this required careful management as they would destroy the stage.

The final part is getting a new power-up. even in Part 1, it was clear that we didn't have all the abilities we needed to continue. the pictures on the walls teased others who had the same arm as us but who were also wearing different clothes. Well, we got it and it immediately opened up the game and tho i didn't try it in this video, i could think of sections of the game where i could use it.

I ended this part at the start of a new section, a section that looked like it uses our new ability but also requires hard platforming. I'll tackle that in part 3.

Stories on Tuesday - Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz - Part 1

Hello and welcome to the new series here on QTE Gamers!

The goal with Stories on Tuesday is to play games with a heavy focus on their story. this can be Visual Novel games, like today's game, or it can be something more episodic. For me, it's a style of game i've not really explored. i have several games across a few platforms that i haven't played but i bought them because i wanted to. So now the time has come for me to experience these sorts of games.

Our debut game is Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz. I have the game on PS4 via DISC but i'll be playing the PlayStation Plus version of the game that's been downloaded to my PlayStation 4.

In this first part, i play until Chapter 0 is finished. Going in, i didn't know anything about the game or that it's actually part of a series. The voices are in Japanese and the text is in English. This was not something i could change.

If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, i take no offense. from Wednesday February 28th i'll introduce a new tier on my Ko-Fi page. this will have Part 1 as well as Part 2. This tier will always be one week ahead of the free video on QTE Gamer's YouTube Channel. Or, of course, you can head to https://ko-fi.com/qtegamers and donate via PayPal.

Cloud Monday - Tales of Arise - Part 1 - Manual And Auto Saves Are A Great For A Cloud Based Game

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PS4 version of Tales of Arise via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

I had previously looked at another BANDAI NAMCO RPG to see how it worked as a game played in the cloud, but across Part 1 https://youtu.be/z4pOFUlwWsg and Part 2 https://youtu.be/japHcD6uFlA it was clear that Scarlet Nexus wasn't designed with the cloud in mind. the biggest issue that game had was that you could only save at specific points, there were no auto saves and no manual saves. it worked out that there was about 20-30 minutes between the save points in the first couple of hours of the game.

Tales of Arise is a newer game and i was really curious if it was designed with the cloud in mind or if it followed the formula in Scarlet Nexus as that game seemed to have been a success. Tales of Arise is a game i had heard a lot of good things about across videos and Podcasts, but i couldn't remember anyone talking specifically about it's suitability as a game being played in the cloud.

i can say that yes, there are auto saves and there are manual saves. it takes a few minutes before we get access to the menu and manual saves, but the auto save seems to be fairly regular. Saving itself is also really quick. the only issue that i can see playing this game in the cloud is the large amount of cutscenes, whether that's the anime style ones or the comic books ones. there is a lot of story and the game tells it fairly quickly and often in Part 1. If i were to get the dreaded 20 second warning before i was disconnected, there's a good chance i would have to skip a cutscene or two and therefore some of the game's story.

I had a good time in Part 1. it's refreshing how successfully Tales of Arise incorporated anime style animation from the beginning so when it's used later it's not jarring. the comic book style tho uses in-game graphics and it doesn't look that great. i think i understand why they did it as it's typically used when characters are just standing and talking to each other. it's a different way to show a conversation between characters. The only criticism i have with the anime style is that it's perhaps a little too different to the art style used in the game. The #PS5 version could be a bit closer, but i doubt it as characters look a little too different.

Graphically, i don't think the game runs at 1080p but it looks like it does. it does lack the finer details but often it's not an issue because the art and design of the game make up for it. the coloring throughout is impressive. The PS4 does let it down a little with textures sometimes taking longer to load. there were a couple of instances where the game had finished with a story beat, given us control, and then finished loading in the textures.

This isn't an issue with streaming the game from the cloud. the only issue i noticed was screen tearing. this is when grey appears on the screen. often it appears for less than a second, but because it's grey it sticks out soo much and is very noticeable. I didn't notice any lag controlling the game and it managed the transitions from gameplay to animation without any issues. So combing these positives and the great saving features, Tales of Arise looks to be one of the better RPGS to play in the cloud.