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.
Part 3 was interesting as it helped develop some of the villainous characters and their back story. We also got two new cool abilities, with the chicken especially being one i didn't suspect. we didn't take the story too far forward, but by learning about other characters and getting and trying out our new abilities i feel that Part 4 could be really interesting. There's a chance that we're going to be visiting places we've already been to before and my guess would be that the point is to use our new abilities to explore new places and complete more quests.
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 8 of my Arcade Spirits story and the final part, my story is now complete. stay after the credits for a bonus scene!
You can check out the previous parts of this playthrough:
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Humankind on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
I don't have too much experience with games of this genre in recent years. So a part of me went into this video expecting things to be slow but also hoping for a great tutorial. i found the tutorial to be disappointing throughout this video but thankfully it wasn't slow. Humankind not only plays at a decent speed it also is very quick in between turns. It's just that it doesn't give out information, and when it does it was often a turn behind or even getting in the way of what it was trying to show. thankfully for Humankind, the focus of this series is checking out how suitable a game is for being streamed from the cloud.
it was hugely surprising that the game never showed us or told us how the auto save system works. Soul Hackers 2, the previous game in this series, made it clear what the auto save was, when it worked, and proudly displayed it on screen when it did. With Humankind, i didn't discover that it was auto saving until i went hunting for the manual saves. thankfully, the manual saves were clearly labelled so it was easy to work out that the game is saving at every turn. that is fantastic news, as we the player are only ever given a 20 second warning before we're disconnected from the game. this means, if our turn is just starting we can wait out the countdown. if we're finishing or have finished our turn we can press square to end our turn and the game will auto save for us, and of course there are manual saves.
Whilst this aspect of the game was great, playing it was rougher than i would like. it didn't come across as very welcoming to new players to the genre. it also wasn't very accessible in some respects because i was unable to increase the size of anything. i don't sit close to my TV and it's not that big, so there were times when i couldn't work out what buttons it was showing via pictures.
Going into Part 2, what i will be interested in is if the time between turns grows larger and larger. at the moment, saving and ending turns seems very quick and under 20 seconds. but if it grows too large, maybe even the auto save won't be great.
For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Rally Arcade Classics.
In the PS1 and Game Boy Color era, when it came to rally games i was far more interested in the arcade style games. i remember playing V-Rally, tho i don't remember which ones, and enjoying the rally style but arcade feel. for me, i was really interested in Rally Arcade Classics as it wasn't clear from the eShop how arcadey or how realistic it would be.
When you start this demo you're greeted by a screen that details what's included in the demo. this is fantastic and something that is rarely seen. what they fail to mention is that online leaderboards for every race in this demo are also available! the only downside to the start of this demo is that it assumes you'll go to the options and check the control section. at no point does the game tutorialize the controls. this isn't a big issue in this game because of how short the races are and how quick the game is able to restart, but it feels like a bit of an oversight when so much else about this demo comes across as bespoke and having had time put into it.
There was one more thing that i thought the game was lacking whilst i was playing it and that was the ability to play against the ghosts of other players. as this was a demo, it could be that it's not in the demo. But this was a fully featured demo so i suspect this is the case in the full game. it's a shame as we can clearly see where we stand against other racers in the standings. but at least we have that and we're able to race against our own ghost in the attempt to better our times.
after playing this demo for Rally Arcade Classics i can say that this is the arcade rally game i've been looking out for. it has time limits that some more arcade style games have but the cars have a feel more akin to more serious rally games. you can't just "cheese it" and win, there has to be some element of skill. but because it's arcade style, there's some forgiveness about it and it's less serious. each of the 4 cars i raced in felt different, looked distinct, sounded different, and for me i enjoyed racing the Alpine more than the others.
If you're looking for an arcade style rally game similar to those released on the PS1 and PS2, but not so much those released in arcades, then Rally Arcade Classics from Net2K Games is well worth checking out. the graphics were fine with this Switch version but i wouldn't say great. however the nigh racing worked very well and for the most part the graphics around the car were good enough. the short tracks mean draw distance isn't important, but when it was when i was racing down Monaco hills i could see the other cars ahead on track further down. the only complaint i have with this part of the game is the main music. it repeated far too much. but, the music isn't a critical aspect of the game so turning it down to focus on our co-pilots advice would make sense anyway.
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.
after some initial stumbling as i tried to remember the controls, playing Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition was a lot of fun. it was nice to finish the area we were in, explore a new city, work through a whole new area with a water riding section, and finish exploring another new city. i didn't expect the final city to be so interesting, i only started exploring because i could so i was surprised to learn a new move that was really useful. i'm having a lot of fun so i will return with Part 3!
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 7 of my Arcade Spirits story and at no point was i able to predict what was going to happen. this was one of the better written chapters, it felt as chaotic as an actual launch but with the added pressure of a reviewer I, the player, felt pressure my self to try and have the best launch possible. but things started going wrong and before long things spiraled out of control to the point where our character nearly got a Game Over!
You can check out the previous parts of this playthrough:
This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing Soul Hackers 2 on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
It's a bold title but one i stand behind, i do recommend streaming Soul Hackers 2 from the Cloud to your PS4/PS5. it's not like a 10/10 rating as that initial wait for manual saves to unlock is far too long and there is soo much talking across both these parts that if we did get the countdown we'd be loosing out on story so we could save manually. But once it's unlocked, i was able to save even with an enemy rushing to attack me.
It's not just the manual save either. at the start of this part we got a basic breakdown as to what happened previously, when i played for Part 1. so a re-cap is very much welcomed. There's another bonus, one i only spoke about today for the first time in a video but for those who have caught the Live Streams it's something i've mentioned before. Unity typically runs poorly on these launch model PS4s so being able to stream the game was great as it enabled me to play the game at a better quality than if i had played it locally on my own PS4.
I went into the options early on this part and changed the camera sensitivity and it instantly made the camera movements much better. it was just a slight change and one i would recommend.
Soul Hackers becomes one of very few RPG's that i would recommend streaming from the cloud. if you are curious about this game, streaming it would be not only a safe way to try it out but a way to carry on playing it if you enjoy it. i'm playing it with a focus on story and for me i'm enjoying that balance but i can see how the combat and demon capturing/training mechanics would be more important and perhaps more interesting at higher difficulty levels.
