Demo Play Thursday - Sand Land On #PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Sand Land, developed by ILCA.

From the PSN store page, it was made clear that this is more of a sandbox rather than a demo that follows the story. this was so surprising that i actually included the store page to highlight this. If you play this demo before buying Sand Land, then you'll get some in-game bonuses when you start the game. unfortunately, these bonuses do not apply to games that have already started. 

I haven't read nor watched anything about Sand Land before, so one of the draw backs about this demo's approach is that it doesn't introduce anything. i knew that there's sand because of the game's icon and name. but i was a bit surprised by how much of it there was. The characters look familiar because of Akira Toriyama's style. This meant it was clear that two of them weren't human whilst the third was. But with this demo not having any story, it was kinda irrelevant.

As this demo is set sometime into the game, we also miss out on a tutorial(s). what we get is text in a box on the screen. no videos, no practice, just text and maybe a picture. I have played a number of Bandai Namco games and i believe this maybe the case in the final game to. this is a shame as i found the on screen buttons missing a crucial reminder that Triangle is how you dismount the vehicles. A proper tutorial would've also helped remind me that right on the D-Pad brings up the vehicles screen and that most of the enemies in the game should be dealt with by one of your vehicles.

One of the reasons why this video is so long is because of the time it took to understand the controls and what the game expects you to do. i imagine that this becomes apparent naturally when playing the final game. But after my time with the demo i'm actually thinking of going back in my own time to try again some of my mistakes and to see what happens.

The demo does have a few limitations. we're unable to enter the town that's directly next to us. in exploring the map, we also came across invisible boundaries. I also imagine the issue we had with the #Icharbe Ruins is also due to demo limitations. there's no levelling up, no improving skills, and we came across a gap that we just couldn't cross which i imagine is due to those limits.

Exploring was fun. the dessert had a few enemies to tackle, with the humans being the most difficult as they use machines like us. it wasn't all sand dunes, there were canyons, rocky outcrops, and a few ruins.

for a PS4 game, this certainly looked great. it had the look of an anime but it controlled very well like an action game. i imagine the PS5 version might be able to use HDR to take advantage of the beautiful day night cycle as well as better shadows and maybe even ray tracing. But on PS4, Sand Land is more than good looking enough. in some ways, this demo felt too small for this game and i'm genuinely interested in the final retail game.

I do recommend people try out this game. it feels more casual than an RPG, but more involved than some other games made from an anime. Sand Land is a single story, so this has the chance to be a much more complete game. The demo has other benefits as it gives in game items to new saves in the retail game after this demo has been played. I would've liked a bullet point or two of things i could do or even a hint like "try heading east". i just didn't enjoy the open sand box approach, especially when learning how to control the game.

Stories on Tuesday - Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz - Part 5

Hello and welcome to Part 5 of 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 part, i continued near the end of Part 4, https://youtu.be/P6wRke544uk, just before i was killed. i was a little surprised i continued so close to when i died. it showed that out of the three choices, i probably picked the one that resulted in my death. I picked a different conversation path and was fine from that point onwards. there wasn't much story before our characters finished reminiscing and we were back to the "present" in this game. with the flashback to an earlier game finished, the game ended Chapter 1 and began Chapter 2.

Chapter 2 introduces the police characters and fleshes out our grandfathers life. we learn about his favorite places to visit, to eat, to drink, and we meet some of his friends along the way. i was taken aback by a little bit of racism which reminded me that this is a serious story being told. I''m still eager to continue playing and to see how things shake out with the suspect that was introduced near the end of this part.

If you're interested in watching the stories unfold without my commentary, head over to Ko-Fi. there, you can subscribe to the "Stories on Ko-Fi" which will let you watch all the stories. 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 - Death Stranding - Part 1 - Good Cloud Game With Skippable Cutscenes And Manual Saves

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

This game is a bit of an enigma. it's not new, and yet the podcasts i listen to haven't spoiled the story. many haven't really explained what you do in the game beyond the simple delivering and building routes. I do know that it's fairly cinematic with a decent amount of cutscenes so i was very curious as to how it would work as a game being played from the cloud.

In this video, the connection to the cloud does get rough a couple of times. in the first half, there were a couple of moments when we got a very brief bit of Stream Tearing, where grey appears on screen. the second half got a little rougher with more Stream Tearing and a couple of instances of Macro Blocking. Overall, it didn't get in the way of gameplay, but they were noticeable because of how good and real world the game looks.

Very early on it was clear that there are a lot of cinematics. i saw no suggestion of an autosave which isn't reassuring. you can press Option and end the cutscene, but if it's your first time like it is for me then that's not an option you want to take. The issue with skipping, so far with just Part 1, is that there doesn't seem to be an option anywhere to watch the skipped cutscene. 

PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service is a platform that will only give you a 20 second heads up before they terminate the connection. with the cutscenes being skippable it's good but what's great is that there is a manual save option when pressing Option. The save is fast, too. So the game does have ways around the limitations of the platforms.

But if i'm unable to catch up with cutscenes and the story that's told, then it may not be the best way to play the game for the first time. There are still things in-game that i don't have access to so it might be possible that option does exist. But for now, playing Death Stranding in the Cloud is a decent option.

Switch Funday - Splatoon 3 - March's Weekend Splatfest Tricolor - 15 Battles 5 Wins!

Welcome to Switch Funday.

It's day two of March's Splatfest weekend so today's video focuses on the Tricolor game mode in Splatoon 3. 

Unfortunately, the headline of disconnects and long waits matchmaking continued into Sunday. this video took nearly 1 hour 40 to record, so even longer than yesterdays! There was only one game disconnect but what was surprising were the two back to back lobby disconnects which meant from match 13 to match 14 was a 10 minute wait! (tho i say 5 in the video it was purely a guess)

The three weapons i used today weren't new, they were familiar to me. I started with the Recycled Brella 24 Mk 1, then switched to the Foil Flingza Roller when i realised my teammates still weren't inking, and finished with the Bloblobber as it's one of my favorites and i wanted to have some fun for the final 5 matches.

Online Saturday - Splatoon 3 - March’s Weekend Splatfest – 15 Battles 3 Wins!

Welcome to Online Saturday.

It's a Splatfest weekend so today's video is on the "'Which instrument would you play?' Drums, Guitar, or Keyboard?" Splatfest in Splatoon 3. I chose to join teamkeyboard.

This wasn't a successful Splatfest for me. i tried out 3 weapons i had bought after my last #Turfwar video, https://youtu.be/AAbH0XWU2jc, using each for 5 games. The Clash Blaster Neo worked well as a shotgun style weapon and i got quite a few splats with it. The Range Blaster wasn't great as it took too long to shoot and could track enemies quick enough. the Splattershot was my favorite out of the 3 i used and was a decent fit for Splatfest. Another reason why i got so few wins was because my teammates didn't know how to play the game. the goal of Turfwar is to ink the most. but in many games i would be splatted and get a look at the map and just sigh with how little of it was inked, especially our home area. the first two weapons i used were not great at inking, they're better at attacking. it's frustrating that my teammates could see the situation and just keep on attacking.

My recording for this video is 1 hour 37 minutes. it's soo long because the matchmaking was much longer than normal. typically, it's 30 seconds or under but today the matchmaking was a long as 3 minutes. i also had 4 games that were abandoned due to disconnections as well as a lobby that was stopped due to a disconnection. This was the latest 7.10 version of the game, but the last few Splatfests have all suffered from longer matchmaking times. it'll be interesting if tomorrows Tricolor mode will have the same issues. 

Friday - Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile - An Unwelcoming Experience For New Mobile Players

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile from Activision. I Played this on my iPhone 14 Pro, but it's also out on Android.

Whilst the game had beta's and a limited release, it has now received a world wide release so i would consider this game for 2024 Game of The Year. Except, it has the dreaded extra download. it's already a 3.93 GB download from the app store but then there's an additional 3.3 GB to install before you can play it. There's no warning about this additional download so do not play this game for the first time on a mobile network. But throughout the game it reads as if the game is downloading higher quality graphics to your phone as you play it. It's possible that because i'm using an #iPhone 14 Pro, it had to downloaded higher quality graphics whilst i played. This is a big mobile cap killer which makes it even more difficult to recommend as a mobile game.

Call of Duty: Warzone is out across PC and Consoles, i gave it a go on #PS4 https://youtu.be/-F5LygJiO2U, when the 2.0 version came out over a year ago. the biggest takeaway from that video was that it wasn't welcoming to new players like myself. I genuinely hoped that time, a new platform, and a new audience meant that Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile was going to be a much better experience. Unfortunately, it's still unwelcoming.

The extra download at the start is one hint that perhaps #Activision wasn't going to maximise the potential of this new player base. that feeling continued throughout playing the game. the only tutorial was the controls, even tho it asked me twice if i played this games and i knew Warzone. i said i didn't know either so what i wanted was an in-depth tutorial of the controls, home screen, menus, goals, etc. what i got was how to control the game.

There is a positive in that i was allowed to play the game as a "Guest" and not link any Activision accounts to the game. But there aren't many other positives about the game. The graphics didn't wow me, the controls are fine but there's no rumble feedback. The user interface was crowded and it felt like the icons were poorly placed. the game never pointed us to the options to help fine tune the game to our needs, but there wasn't a way to try out the changes even if we did make some.

I could go on, but what Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile feels like is a tool for Call of Duty: Warzone on other platforms. It isn't a mobile Call of Duty: Warzone game but rather a Call of Duty: Warzone on mobile game. It's really hard to recommend this to new mobile players, but for those who already play Warzone and are looking to play on the go, then this is fine as it's what they play but on mobile. 

Version 3.3.4 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - UNABLES On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch game UNABLES, developed for consoles by Forever Entertainment.

From the eShop page, i mostly knew how this was going to work. It reminded me of puzzle games back in the PS3 era, in a good way. I wanted to play the demo as i was curious just how well it would actually control.

There are two ways to control the game, the default is via the analogue sticks and there's an optional gyroscope (motion controls) mode. i stuck with the default but there were no options to finely tune them. with motion controls, you can tune the sensitivity. but there's nothing for the default. i personally found them to be too sensitive and not offering fine controls. the first couple of stages can be a bit of a blur because of how fast the camera is moving and swinging around the stage.

I can imagine it'll get easier with time, but this demo only offered 3 stages. each one awards stars for completing tasks in each level. I'm not a fan of these sort of games, gatekeeping the game behind ability seems like a waste of game. especially when you get stuck like i did. i couldn't do the final stage of the demo. i did enjoy the other two, but if i'm getting stuck so early on i worry that i won't be able to complete the first set of levels as i wouldn't get enough stars. there doesn't seem to be a way to play the locked levels in easy mode either. so if i can't progress and i can't play them in easy mode, my guess would be i'd stop playing. Even the demo locked the second and third stages behind star requirements!

Each of the three stages looked very different from each other and what we had to do in them were very different. in the first stage, our goal was to interact with the environment in very simple ways. but in the second stage we  had to interact with our opponent and the referee. The third stage was the most difficult as we had to manipulate a victim across their crime scene. The problem i had more than once was that if the victim gets to their chalk outline, nothing else interacts with them. but i still had a tommy gun and no idea what to do with it. the level didn't finish until i told it to or until the time ran out.

But that incident highlighted that this is a tough puzzle game. there is no hint system and seemingly there is a correct order to solves the puzzles in. I enjoyed the idea behind it but i wanted to play this casually. the ramp up in puzzle difficulty was far too steep even for this demo. i appreciate the creativeness and ideas in each level, but it does feel like difficulty became even more difficult for them to manage. after playing the demo i feel like i wouldn't be able to progress and i would get frustrated that level design got in the way of the puzzle.

UNABLES is a great looking game and i did enjoy the music. i recommend people try out the demo, it does a good job of getting the puzzle ideas across and what is possible. But as for the getting the game, i could only recommend it for those who like a challenging puzzle game and play for that challenge and not for those who play puzzle games casually.