This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing the PSP version of Daxter on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
It quickly became clear in Part 1, https://youtu.be/8O1Ue63OQ7Q, that the PlayStation Portable game #Daxter holds up today just like it did back in 2006. After that part and this, i can comfortably say that this is one of the best PS1/PS2/PSP games emulated on PS4 and PS5. Daxter was already well designed for a portable system, and things like great checkpoints, immediate respawns, and manual saves carry over into streaming this game from PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service.
It's not perfect, there are some issues due to it's age and original platform it was developed for. there were times when i felt i was moving the camera and doing button presses faster than the emulated game could keep up with. this meant i was walking of ledges and not hitting enemies as i thought. this wasn't a huge issue, but something i noticed. something else is that it felt hard to walk in a straight line with Daxter. whilst out and about it wasn't a big issue but many levels have narrow ledges and platforms and more than once i ended up walking off and falling. thankfully, the emulated software has a rewind feature so i was able to quickly get back and try again.
This weekend is July's Eggstra Work Event in Splatoon 3 on Switch. I haven't had much luck with the previous events so i came into this just wanting to get a decent score, one i felt satisfied with, a 1,000 points for the Gatchapon, and if possible finishing Wave 5.
There are a lot of factors that go into whether an Eggstra Work event is going to go well. i feel like this weekends went mostly ok and a big reason for that were the weapons. all 4, tho i only use 2 of them across the 8 matches i played, are weapons i like but also they help create a balanced team. as for the waves, Wave 2 was the biggest pain as it's a glowfly wave. but the others were much more manageable, with Wave 5 being obviously the most difficult. My team mates and I got to Wave 5 twice and came close to beating it each time.
So overall, i'm satisfied with my top score of 116. whilst i never finished Wave 5, i feel like i came close so i don't think i would've been able to get a much higher score.
It's Pokémon Unite's 3rd Anniversary and they are running some events. For today's Online Saturday video i checked out all the different events happening, including the return of Pokémon Parade, by playing Pokémon Unite on my Nintendo Switch.
For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Royal Card Clash from Gearhead Games. I was looking for card games with some interesting ideas, and not just for example Solitaire reskinned, and when i saw the video on the app store page i knew i wanted to give Royal Card Clash a try.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Abathor, from Tesura Games and Jandusoft.
The look of the game is very nostalgic for me. i grew up playing the SEGA Master System and Mega Drive so i saw this and instantly thought of Golden Axe. The screenshots on the eShop did look interesting as the pixel art looked beyond what those systems could output.
Before we get to start, we're greeted with a bare bones home screen that mentions that this is a demo, has a very basic settings page, and allows us to view the credits. But there's no link to the eShop, not even a QR Code. there's a lot of wasted space that could've been filled with stuff that could help sell the game.
But when you do start the demo, there's a very cool character select screen. i wasn't expecting that screen to show you the moves of the character. you see, when you click on a character a gif/video starts playing showing what buttons on the controller do what in the game. it's a simple concept but it really works and i hope other games do something similar.
With our character selected we start at 1-1 and the first thing you notice is how animated the background is. the rolling waves look fantastic. our ship has a bear skin sail that also looks stunning. i appreciate that the devs didn't go all in on the 16 bit style, they've taken the best bits of style from it and modernised it so it doesn't feel dated and stilted. there's lots of little animations everywhere.
It's not just the look of the game, but the soundtrack too. each stage has it's own theme, as does the credit screen and the home menu. the music on 1-1 really made me think of music from the Mega Drive era. But i do have a complaint in that there's not enough of it! it was really noticeable when the music looped and i felt that it happened too quickly.
But my biggest complaint has to be how the controls interact with the game. it's not all bad, i found them to be very responsive. each character also controls a little different from each other. It's just that the critical part of the gameplay, the attacking, just didn't feel right. all the characters i played as had to get too close to the enemy so inevitably i ended up taking damage whether i was attacking, dodging, or parrying. i found it difficult to judge distance, occasionally this was a jump but more often than not i underestimated the reach of my attack. it was frustrating but, perhaps more importantly it wasn't satisfying to attack.
Another example of this was how many hits it took to defeat enemies. with our main weapon i could understand if it was only that that took numerous hits. but every item we picked up seemed to be underpowered to the point where i didn't really want to use them. they did provide range, but if they're no more powered than i am, they weren't special or cool. the same goes to the special attacks did. none of them felt any more powerful than a standard attack. this is probably why i felt more comfortable using the character which didn't have an attacking special, rather she employed a parry which slightly stunned an enemy long enough for me to get all the hits in to defeat it. I highly recommend #Sais as the character everyone should try first.
Abathor does a lot right and i really did have fun playing it. but I can't ignore that the combat just wasn't satisfying. Using Sais did help and maybe i would be able to endure a while longer using her. but that's not exactly a great endorsement of the game. So it's great there's a demo that allows us to try all the characters. hopefully there'll be one that'll make playing the game fine enough. So i do recommend you check out the demo, but maybe wait and see with the reviews if the combat is fixed, or at the very least modified.
The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the PS4 version of Star Trek: Resurgence, from Dramatic Labs.
In this video i play through Act 2's "The Scientific Method", "Suspicions", "Containment Protocol", "Symbols and Legends", and i die during the 9th part "Lost and Found". Don't worry, i will continue from the 9th part in next week's Part 4.
This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PSP version of Daxter on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
Daxter originally came out on PlayStation Portable back in 2006 and it's a game i have played and finished. but it's been such a long time, i was excited to play it again. I've been looking at the new PS1, PS2, and PSP games that have been added to PS4 and PS5 via emulation, trying to find one that still holds up and isn't a novelty or a nostalgia recommendation. Daxter maybe the first one of these games that i've played that i would recommend as a game that still holds up.
Daxter is smartly designed for the PSP. it's level's aren't too sprawling that they take ages to complete. there's a decent amount of platforming and things to do, but it can take 15-25 minutes to complete it. this may sound like that there'd be a lot of loss progress if there's a disconnection from the cloud streaming service. Daxter also has a great check point system and auto save system which helps alleviate those worries. The service does give us a 20 second warning first and Daxter seems to let us save anywhere in the game and it saves quickly.
These features are similar to what the emulated games can do. via the Options button you can chose to save or load at any point in the game. what the emulation software adds is the ability to rewind. but this isn't as big of deal as in other games because the game checkpoint frequently and is very fast to put us back in to the game.
Other benefits are that the game looks great. it was already a great looking PSP game, but it still holds up well in 1080p on PS4. our character, Daxter, is quite big on screen, as is other characters and things like text boxes and enemies, which mean if there are issues with stream tearing or macro blocking it's still fairly easy to work out what's happening and continue playing like nothing's wrong.
Today's gameplay was a little rough with my connection. i imagine it was a bandwidth issue more than anything. i would say that the camera does take a little getting used to. the emulation software has done a great job of mapping the controls to the right analogue stick and i found them responsive. but maybe they're a bit too responsive for the game itself. it was made with different controls in mind and sometimes i found myself fighting the game. this meant that there were moments where i failed to land a jump as i couldn't work out the 3D space well. But with the rewind feature, i wasn't too concerned. it's just a little frustrating quirk of the game.
