Stories on Tuesday - Visual Novel: I.B. - Part 2 - Chapter 2

The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the iOS version of Visual Novel: I.B. from Entabridge. 

This is Part 2 and it covers the game's second chapter.

You can check out Part 1 for the prelude and first chapter.

https://youtu.be/yclMfGCp1Uo

Cloud Monday - Sand Land - Part 2 - I'd Recommend Streaming It From The Cloud

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing Sand Land on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4. My laptop crashed whilst recording this video so my audio is from my backup, from my Mini Disc MZ-RH10 player.

Part 1, https://youtu.be/rKMnNyzb70s, went very well. it was a near perfect streaming experience that allowed us to focus on the game itself. the streaming experience in this part wasn't as great, but it was solid enough for me to come to the conclusion that Sand Land is a great game to stream from the cloud.

we learned that we get access to manual saves very early in the game. in this part we found where the auto saves are listed and that we get useful information like the time of the auto save. this means, when we get the 20 second warning before disconnection it is easy to manually save. a concern i had specific to this game was the sand, dust, and particles on screen. some streaming services, including YouTube, struggle with this and it can result in a degraded video being streamed to us. across both parts, i felt that the video we got never changed.

Visually, Sand Land looks fantastic on my PS4 and with how big the characters are on screen, when we had a little stream tearing it never really got in the way of us seeing what was on the screen. whilst we didn't have it in either of these parts, i would suspect that Macro Blocking would also not be much of an issue because of how big the art is and how it isn't reliant on fine details.

We're early into the game, How long to Beat says Sand Land is about a 20 hour game, so there could be issues later into the game. but there was nothing in these two parts that has got me concerned. if you're interested in Sand Land, streaming it from the Cloud is a great way to experience the game and i'd recommend doing so.

Mobile Friday - Just One Shot: Idle RPG - Translation And Ui Errors Detract From A Good Looking Game

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Just One Shot: Idle RPG from developers Highbrow, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

From the iOS App Store page, i had one idea about how this game would play and i was wrong. the name implied that we only had one bullet to complete a task. turns out, One Bullet refers to an in-game mechanic where we charge up a power bar by defeating enemies with one bullet. This also means that my hopes for an interesting story also didn't come to fruition. i don't think this game has a story, it just starts.

It is possible there is a story and i hadn't unlocked it. by the end of this video, there were many aspects of the game i had yet to unlock. i like this approach. instead of bombarding the player with menus and icons, the game slowly introduces them as we get stronger and complete quests. this meant that i never felt overwhelmed and i understood how each thing we unlocked worked with the existing game mechanics. 

This does not mean i think the game does a great job at explaining everything. there is a tutorial and after the initial stuff it reappears when we unlock something new. it's just that i don't think it's quite successful at the teaching part. you'll see that i wasn't totally sure how the spell book system worked other than it made me more powerful. i guess with Just One Shot: Idle RPG's simple mechanics, it's mostly easy to work out that most things make us stronger or help to make our equipment stronger.

The tutorial wasn't the only thing that was a little disappointing about playing Just One Shot: Idle RPG. it's from South Korean developers and unfortunately they haven't finished translating the game into English. it's mostly playable, but very noticeable when Korean characters appear. i was also disappointed with how poorly the UI has been implemented. the Dynamic Island hasn't been taken into account so there are times when names are not seen on my screen because they're under the Dynamic Island. at the bottom of the screen, the bar also blocks names. the iPhone 14 Pro also has rounded corners  which meant i was often missing a letter or number from the stuff placed in the corners.

Just One Shot: Idle RPG is a good game. the art is great, the music was nice and not noticeably repetitive, and the mechanics are well tied into each other. i mostly played this game one handed which would make this a decent game to play whilst commuting. but the issues are numerous and noticeable. personally, until this game gets fixed it wouldn't appear on my top 5 games of the year. but it's fine to play as it is.

Version 1.3 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Merge World Alchemist On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Merge World Alchemist from AlignmentSharp.

The Merge mechanic used in this game is something i've seen more in mobile games than those on consoles, so i was interested to see if they were going to do more with it. unfortunately, i'd argue that perhaps the developers have done less than what other companies do.

Many mobile games will use the beginning to not only do the tutorial but to let the player finish something, so the players begin the game knowing what to do and having already done something. here with Merge World Alchemist, the pace was soo slow and there was no sense of accomplishment. the game felt old in comparison to many other merge games i've played. 

The core merging mechanic is fine, it's just that everything built around it does nothing to enhance it. there's a story, but the translation is sometimes poor and it's generally just poorly written. the music is loud and repetitive. there's a quest mechanic, there are people we can hire to loot for us, but they both are poorly introduced and feel in complete. And there are things critical to gameplay that's just not told to us, the main and most frustrating one being how stamina works in the game. 

Merge World Alchemist is cheap on the UK eShop and the game feels like it. for fans of the genre it offers nothing new and very little that's interesting. it'd probably be useful as filler on a long car ride, but apart from that it's hard to recommend the full game.

Backlog Conquering - Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition On PS4 - Part 4

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 4 wasn't as story heavy as Part 3, this time the focus was more on getting to places. along the way, the platforming levelled up and got a bit more tricky. we were having to use more and more of our abilities in combination with each other. at the end of this part, i did get stuck for several minutes on a difficult platforming section and once i completed it i saved and ended the part. but there were a couple of sections earlier where i decided against trying over and over and just moved back onto the main path.

You can watch other parts:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/y20ZZ5IllmY

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/OxoUuZ8dYno

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/aSABHs1VrF4

Stories on Tuesday - Visual Novel: I.B. - Part 1 - Chapter 1

The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the iOS version of Visual Novel: I.B. from Entabridge. 

This is Part 1 and it covers the game's intro, which the game itself doesn't label, and the first chapter.

Cloud Monday - Sand Land - Part 1 - Video Isn't Effected By Sand, Quick To Get Access To Saves

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Sand Land on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

I checked out the DEMO for Sand Land, https://youtu.be/Vb6Z6DHvTJ4, back in March 2024 so i knew what to expect from the game. the difference here is that back then, the demo was installed on my PS4 and this time it's being streamed from the cloud to my PS4. What i'm focusing with Cloud Monday is how the game's save system works and whether or not all the sand dust in the air makes the drops the quality of the video i'm watching, much like how YouTube struggles with fireworks and confetti. 

This was one of the clearest streams to my PS4 i've had in a long time. if there were any issues, they didn't last more than a second. the game looked great throughout and the stream didn't seem to have any issues with the sand and dust. i didn't notice any drop in bitrate or resolution whilst playing this part of Sand Land.

The game makes it clear what the auto save symbol is and i did clearly see it during gameplay. but, i was never able to see the actual auto save file. so, at the end of this video, my guess is that it auto saved after the fight but i'm not too sure and would have to check my video. Thankfully, i got access to the manual saves in less than 10 minutes. getting to the save option and saving also seemed quick. on PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service, we're only given a 20 second warning before we're disconnected. unless we're in a cutscene, which we can skip, getting to the save menu and saving should be fine.

It's only been 1 hour, but i've enjoyed my time with the game. the characters are fun, the world has an interesting story, and it looks great on my base PS4. i'm looking forward to the next part and maybe i'll keep playing it in my own time.