The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the PS4 version of Arcade Spirits from Fiction Factory Games. this is the disc version of the game, published by PQube.
This is Part 5 of my Arcade Spirits story and it went in a direction i wasn't expecting. we went to the beach, one which we had been to as a kid. but it all felt out of the blue and sudden. i wasn't satisfied with the link between Part 4 to Part 5 or why not only staff but some regulars joined us. the game was also VERY keen for us to have a romantic option by the end of our day there. there was a distinct lack of artwork during this part and the day's story didn't make too much sense. for example, twice during this part we get to hang out with 2 of the 3 groups. time wise, it feels like we spend a long time with each group, and yet when we join them they've only just started their activity instead of us joining them an hour into what they're doing. For me, this has been the weakest part of the story so far.
You can check out the previous parts of this playthrough:
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
In Part 2 i was able to check out the ghost part of the story and multiplayer. Like the first part, the story is quite long and really slows down the pace before we're taken into the multiplayer tutorial, which itself is quite good. It was just as fast to find a multiplayer game this time, too. But what i hadn't realized about Part 1 was that the multiplayer started out with bots but as we played real players took over.
The same happened in Part 2. when i spawned in to be the ghost character, i took over from a bot and that game was almost over. Unlike Part 1, however, it was only ever me and 1 other player. as i'm new at this, it still felt like a challenge as a ghost and Ghostbuster so i didn't mind. i did see the Ai seemingly doing nothing at times, but overall it seemed quite successful.
We also learnt more about things to find whilst we played. for both Ghostbuster and Ghost teams, there are things to find in the level that give out awards. as a Ghost, i found a page from Tobin's book and as a Ghostbuster i found a newspaper clipping.
So even tho the online community may not be as robust as it once was, i was still able to play satisfying games that provided me XP to level myself up, unlock customisation options, and level up my equipment. i didn't find all the collectables on each stage i played on either. Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition has been smartly designed to still be fun and still give players things to do, to unlock, and be able to progress the story even if the community maybe smaller than it once was.
So streaming this from the Cloud has been fine. what issues there have been were noticeable but rarely got in the way of anything. with Macro Blocking, i was still able to tell what was what. there was no lag in the controls as the game isn't a twitch shooter. the weapons take a shot time to charge, which hides any lag if there was any from it being streamed from the Cloud. It is frustrating that i don't know what the penalties are for a disconnection and i don't know when it saves, but because of the type of multiplayer game it is i'm going to say that Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition is a good game to stream from the Cloud. it's not the best, but if HDD space is getting tight then it'd still be a fun experience with it being streamed from the Cloud to you.
For this week's Mobile Friday i tried The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show, from developers Rusty Lake, on my iPhone 14 Pro.
The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show is a free game released to celebrate the developers 10th anniversary. I'm not typically good at these puzzle solving games, check out my attempt at playing Lemon House: Room Escape, https://youtu.be/HcGGKkGw_qY, for a recent example. But i wanted to give this one a go because i liked the art and i wondered if the magic theme would suit me better.
I found that the focus being on what is on the screen in front of you helped, as well as taking some time to try stuff and to look at the smaller details. so i managed to get through the first 5 acts fairly quickly. i stopped as i didn't want to spoil the whole game, but i did wonder how to get the achievements. i went back to try and earn some, thinking that perhaps it was speed related but i instead found the game to be a little buggy the faster you tried to play it.
The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show maybe a short experience, but it's a great one. i'd recommend it to a lot of gamers and suggest people take it at their own pace. it might make the current top 5 free to play mobile games of the year!
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Labyrinth of the Demon King from developer Jacob R. Hudepohl and publisher Top Hat Studios.
Scary games, horror games, psychological games, they're all genres that i don't play because i don't like them. but i was intrigued by the icon and thought i'd give Labyrinth of the Demon King a go. the fact that i couldn't finish the demo doesn't meant that it's a bad game so if what you saw looked interesting i would recommend that you check it out for yourselves.
It's aiming for a PlayStation 1 era look and it gets there but it feels less "janky" than similar PS1 games do so during the video i remarked that it's probably more accurate to call it a "PS1 Pro" style game. at times it felt like this look and the type of game Labyrinth of the Demon King is combined into something that felt old, whilst other times it really worked. from a demo perspective, it's a shame that it's never made clear if save files carry over, and a little disappointing that there was no link to buy/preorder the game from the PSN store.
Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have.
I was right, Part 17 was the final part in my playthrough. as i guessed, we had two more bosses to fight again before we battled the final boss. Garland was the most difficult boss character to fight in the game. i didn't know that he could heal himself and it was demoralising when he did it, effectively going back to full health. more than once i came close to loosing my team. in the end, Sara ended up being my only character to not die during this playthrough.
After the credits i checked out some of the extras. it's clear that there are plenty more enemies left to find in the game. the concept art was nice but because of the PSP screen resolution zooming in on it wasn't that nice. what i did enjoy was the music player. i played a little of all the tracks in the game and i was surprised to see some tracks from other Final Fantasy games, too!
The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the PS4 version of Arcade Spirits from Fiction Factory Games. this is the disc version of the game, published by PQube.
This is Part 4 of my Arcade Spirits story and it's the culmination of the previous 2 parts, it's Francine’s Arcade Funplex Event. not only was it difficult for the main character of the story, but the choices we had to make were also difficult and by the chart shown at the end of the video, i don't think i made the best choices.
You can check out the previous parts of this playthrough:
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
I chose this game for a particular reason, i wanted to see how well an online multiplayer focused game would work being streamed to me. normally, it would be a console talking to online servers, and those servers talking back. but with Cloud Streaming, it's my PS4 to the Cloud Server, the Cloud Server to the multiplayer server, back to the Cloud Server, and then back to my PS4. This series has shown that playing games from the Cloud is mostly fine but i wondered if this extra link in the chain would bring noticeable lag in a game mode that typically needs fast reactions.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition is either smartly designed, lucky, or a bit of both because how the weapons work in this game is slower than typical first person online shooters. it reminded me of how on PS3, the Killzone games were slower because of input lag but the game was built around this idea of slower responses because of the weight of everything. because Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition has this build up in the proton pack before it fires, it completely hides any and all lag that could come from being streamed to me.
As i haven't played other online shooters for Cloud Monday, i don't know how the others manage it, but as i've only tried Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition i have to be critical over the lack of information. I couldn't see the game auto saving so i have no idea if saves are limited to the completion of online matches or more than that. there's also no way for me to manually save. even going back to the main menu wasn't clear if anything was saving. If our connection to PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming service degrades, we're only given a 20 second warning before disconnection. With Part 1, i don't know if i can force a save by looking for a match, from having a conversation, or anything. But with an online game there's an extra concern. if i'm in a match and i get the 20 second warning and then i'm disconnected, what happens? am i given a timeout penalty for not finishing the game? i feel like Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition could use the home menu at the start of the game to give Cloud Streaming players information on when the saves are and penalties for not finishing a game, like Press L3 and a text box comes up and details it all.
So after Part 1, there's good and bad when playing Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition in the Cloud. one positive must be that i found matches quickly and even in my first games i was able to contribute even if a little.
