Cloud Monday - Battlefield 2042 - Part 1 - Unwelcoming For New Players, No Online Matches Found

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Battlefield 2042 on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

It turned out i knew nothing of this game. i thought it was a traditional Battlefield game in that it would have a single player mode and a multiplayer mode. but from this video it looks like there's only online mulitplayer.

Apart from a cool opening cinematic, the rest of my experience with Battlefield 2042 wasn't great. there was no tutorial, it placed us into a game mode that resembled some sort of Dynasty Warriors Muso game. but with no context, i set of walking to the objective not understanding how large the map was. there was no tutorial on the controls. there were tiny icons with controls on them but when selected they had even tinnier text. 

What was frustrating about this first mission we did was how un prepared for it i was. if i new there were going to be tanks, i wouldn't have picked a class that can't deal with them. i never found a weapon to deal with tanks either. it was weird that the game made us choose a class without really telling us what the class does or even how suited it would be for the map we're forced to play. it's an immediate example, and one that's repeated over and over in this video, of the game simply not giving us the information we need.

I have tried on 3 separate occasions 3 different Call of Duty games, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 https://youtu.be/-F5LygJiO2U, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War https://youtu.be/Iudl4sz5Kd8, and Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile https://youtu.be/4PhpBH6yceQ, and all 3 games have the same problem with poor UI and a poor user experience. i don't know why Battlefield 2042 has copied this. what's weird is that there are great accessibility options presented to us before the game starts and then we're presented with some copy of the Call of Duty messy home screen and interface. it really made me think that the game isn't designed for new players, rather they set out to poach Call of Duty players by offering them a familiar experience. 

Once i worked out that this was a multiplayer only game i set about to trying it. i picked a mode and after some waiting the game would connect me to a match. But it didn't. It says "Game Searching" so i understand what that means. then it changed to "Game Starting" but what happened next was not what i expected. instead of joining a game or lobby, it actually created a lobby for me and we have to wait for people to join. in this video, no one ever did. i don't know what region the servers are connecting to as that was never revealed to me. all i can say from this first video, or two, is that no one is playing Battlefield 2042 online. even with cross platform play enabled.

The stream held up fine and i noticed no issues with the video or audio. but this PS4 version was suffering from long load times, pop-in, and the image quality didn't feel 1080p, rather it felt a little soft and under textured. 

Mobile Friday - Can't Work Today - Ads Get In The Way Of A Fun Hammock Gaming Experience

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Can't Work Today from developers ponos corporation, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

The screenshots and video for this game on the App Store looked ridiculous in a fun way. i was really curious and genuinely wanted to try it for myself. so that's why this week's game is Can't Work Today.

There is no tutorial at the start of the game. it wasn't entirely obvious how to even start the game. it doesn't come across as particularly welcoming even tho it's premise is so whimsical. as you'll see in the video, i did stumble upon the solution, we touch our speech bubble to start it and use the arrows to move our hammock.

Once things get started, Can't Work Today is a lot of fun. it doesn't tell us a lot and there's no list of things it suggests we do. as there's no tutorial we didn't know what happens for a lot of things. throwing our character up gives us points and money. for some reason there's cake that gives us points. there are things trying to wake us up which we need to avoid. thankfully we're given 10 snoozes. so when an alarm hits us, the snooze keeps us asleep. but, as you'll see in the video, if our character falls out of the hammock they wake up and it's game over.

The biggest frustration with Can't Work Today are the adverts. even tho it told us there would be some, it never said when they would appear. so it immediately took me out of the experience when the first one appeared. the adverts feel like a lazy addition to the game and could've been implemented in a smarter way.

There's no doubt that the core gameplay in Can't Work Today is fun. but very little that's been built around it works to add to the fun. it's needlessly obtuse, adverts appear and take us out of the experience, and it doesn't tell us to spend the money we earn even tho we could get costumes and hammocks that have positive modifiers which could make the next runs go better. 

Version 1.0.1 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Day of the Shell On PS4

For this week's #Demo Play Thursday i played the #PlayStation4 version of Day of the Shell from Duper Games.

I didn't know about this game before trying this demo. i thought the icon art was cool and that was the main reason i chose to try it out. But i'm glad i did. whilst it was a tough time and i didn't complete the demo, overall i'd say it was a good demo.

I liked the personal message at the start from the developers. the message also gave some hints as to what was in the demo and what extra stuff could be in the final version. a trailer or a message to check out the latest trailer would've been a nice addition. 

the game starts with a good tutorial. it uses videos/gifs to show us what we need to do. i found the explanations to be quite clear as well. but i found that it ended too quickly. i discovered i could move the camera by accident, it's something that the game should've told me about itself. i found that the game keeps too many secrets in general. when there's such a good tutorial at the start and then a helpful goddess and priest, it seems out of character for them to not reveal more about the world.

the story we got told to us didn't quite work with the retrying element of this games' roguelite elements. for example, it's clearly mentioned that one of the gods is sinking the island we're on. but we come back to that island and nothing is said as to why the island is back. nothing is said if we're travelling back in time and doing a loop. so the game tells us one thing, shows us it, and then shows it's been undone without any reason why.

the core gameplay is solid and how it ties in cover is smart. the music and graphics they use are also great. it's just the tutorial and story aren't as cohesive. the tutorial stands out because it starts strong and just stops, for example. but i would say Day of the Shell is worth checking out. for roguelite players they may find it easier than i did and would be able to complete the demo.

Backlog Conquering - Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition On PS4 - Part 5

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 5 saw a level up from the enemies. we were introduced to new enemies that can teleport to avoid us. we also had a boss fight in this part that proved tricky. the platforming was also tricky as we gained the ability to run up vertical walls. thankfully the challenge was obvious, just tricky to pull off.

You can watch other parts:

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

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

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

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/RkrZPlBT1f4

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.