Grid Legends

 

I've been playing Grid Legends off and on since I got a Playstation Plus subscription in 2022. I enjoyed the game, but for whatever reason it was always the first game I dropped when I was crunched for gaming time or when a new game came along that I wanted to play. I finally dedicated time to play through the game on the Portal, and though I didn't finish the game per se, I played through all of the rounds that I was easily able to unlock. I've definitely dedicated enough time to this game for it to have its own post, and my thoughts are below.

The first thing to say about Grid Legends is that it looks fantastic. I don't typically spend a lot of time discussing graphics on modern games because in the era of 4K visuals with high refresh rates, and with the current generation of gaming hardware, most games look amazing. Grid Legends looks particularly good, however. It most definitely is an arcade racer, featuring 20+ cars on the track simultaneously with very close racing. Cars take damage, have mechanical failures with David Hobbs-style kablamos, and even flip and roll at times. All of this with over-the-top laser light shows and fireworks going on in the background. The frame rate remains smooth and the crashes are spectacular. Some of the best damage visuals I've seen. I remember a race I did recently at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, where it was lightly snowing. Seeing snow on a racetrack is rare, and seeing how it looked on this game was fantastic. 

Going back to the arcade racing style of the game, I think this is both a strength and weakness of the game. On the positive side, there are a lot of fun racing categories and secondarily fun cars to drive on this game. One of the more memorable races was a semi truck race on the IMS oval, in the dark, and in the rain. Are you kidding?!? The super trucks were a lot of fun to drive too. In addition to semis and trucks, there are GT cars, prototype cars, open wheel cars, etc. There's plenty of fun and oftentimes unique racing categories to keep the gameplay fresh. I generally enjoyed the arcade style of racing. At times I thought the controls were a bit less responsive than they should be, and the AI drivers can be particularly aggressive. Otherwise, the gameplay was fun.

The track selection is decent. The real track selection was great. I thought a lot of the fictional tracks were mediocre, but racing through the streets of downtown Chicago with the elevated train above was super cool. Overall, this game was a lot of fun and a nice break from the more serious racing games that I typically play. There was plenty of racing leagues and tracks to keep me entertained for a long time. The controls and aggressive AI drivers were a bit of a negative at times, but otherwise it was a fun game to play.

Art of Rally

 

Art of Rally is a game for me that came out of nowhere. It was released on Playstation Plus, and I was interested in the game partially because of it being a racing game, but mostly because of the art and animation. I don't follow rally racing, and rally racing on games isn't my cup of tea. Some of the races on Gran Turismo are rally races, which I do for completion sake, but otherwise I don't have a lot of interest in the racing genre. But the visuals of this game were so appealing that I had to check it out. I'm glad that I did.

The game looks exactly like what is seen in the picture above. It features cartoon-like and somewhat boxy graphics, but overall I think the game looks fantastic. In the era of ray tracing and 4K video with high refresh rates, it is somewhat refreshing to take a step back and appreciate the uniqueness of simpler graphics. The visual style is honestly what made the game initially appealing to me. 

Art of Rally focuses on the golden era of rally racing, and does so over multiple rally locations and stages. Each location has its unique look and feel, and as you advance the cars available change and become more powerful. The block-like people even run into the course, as seen below and as made famous in Group B rally races. The game is somewhat difficult. It features an above 3rd person camera, and the controls can be a bit tricky and frustrating at times. But if you stick with it (sometimes going slower is faster) and continue to grind away, you'll find that you will have success as the AI drivers also make mistakes. I found myself winning several rally events without winning a single stage, as a consistent 3rd place finish was often enough to win the entire event. 

This game has been the surprise game of the year for me thus far in 2026. It first released in 2020, and was first available on the PS5 in 2021 and I had never heard of it until it came out on Playstation Plus. This is surprising given my like of racing and racing games, and given this game was well reviewed. It took me just under 20 hours to complete all of the events in career mode, and I think is a game well worth checking out if you are a racing fan.

Nintendo Switch 2

 

I purchased a Switch 2. It wasn't a matter of if, but when. The interesting thing is that when details of the Switch 2 were first revealed, there wasn't anything coming out with it that I thought was exciting enough to immediately purchase one. That hasn't changed. To this day, the 20+ year old The Wind Waker and The Minish Cap are still the most exciting games on the system to play that I didn't otherwise have access to. Both games are in the Legend of Zelda series, and I haven't played either one previously. Because of this situation, I balked at immediately purchasing a Switch 2. Plus, the last games I played on the Switch were Echoes of Wisdom and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, both around a year ago.  However, after getting the Portal, with its bigger screen, the Switch was really starting to feel long in the tooth. Plus, my kids still play games on the Switch on a weekly basis. What triggered me to make the purchase now was reading about a major update coming to the Switch 2 for Animal Crossing, a game my kids play regularly. I thought that if I'm going to upgrade to it eventually, I might as well do it now so that everyone can benefit from the upgrade instead of arbitrarily waiting. 

The larger screen is a much welcomed upgrade, though the ergonomics of the Switch 2 aren't any better than the original Switch. The Playstation Dualsense and the Portal that it's designed after remain top of the market in terms of comfort in my opinion. The OS looks the same and I haven't been able to tell much of a difference in graphics, though all the games I've played on it are Switch 1 games. The load times are noticeably faster, however.

There are several game ports available on the Switch 2, and the reviews I've read state that most of these ports are much better than the ports on the first Switch, which was severely underpowered for most of the port games. If there were games that I absolutely wanted to play in handheld mode or on the go, these games would be intriguing for me. As it stands, most of these games I've either already played or have access to on the Playstation or through Playstation Plus, so this hasn't been a huge selling point for me thus far. But it is nice to have the option, at least until Sony has its own dedicated handheld device. I'm interested in Nintendo hardware almost entirely because of their exclusive games. I'll almost always lean towards the Playstation for non-Nintendo games. For me, this upgrade wasn't a necessity at the current moment, but eventually Nintendo will come out with a Zelda game or a Mario game for the Switch 2 that I won't want to pass up. Because of this, I decided to just go ahead and upgrade so that I can enjoy other perks in the meantime, even if the biggest perk for me thus far is the ability to play two 20+ year old games. 

My State of Mobile Gaming: Part 11 - Further Emphasis On Streaming (Part 2)

It's as if Sony read my mind when they expanded streaming on the Playstation Portal. I just recently said that until Playstation makes a portable device that can play games on the device itself, streaming was likely the best way to play games on the Portal given the reliability issues of remote play on the PS5. In the somewhat recent past, Sony introduced streaming for select games on the PS5. Where this gets a bit odd is that there were two groups of game libraries for streaming. One group of games was on Playstation Plus, a library of around 400+ games. The second group was from your own personal library, where select games have the option to stream. For the Playstation Plus streaming library, the only use I found for this was if there was a game you wanted to try before committing to downloading the full game on your console. Otherwise, there was no real advantage to streaming the game unless you wanted to play it quickly or save hard drive space. This changed when you could stream the games on the Portal, however. Now you had access to Sony's large streaming library on the Portal, which is a huge advantage given the aforementioned reliability issues with remote play. 

Having the ability to stream games from your own personal library was a bit difficult to understand. Your always going to get better performance running the game on the Playstation itself vs on the cloud, so why this would be a needed option was a bit confusing. That is, until Sony expanded the streaming capability of the Portal to include games from your own personal library. This is a huge upgrade, as obviously having the ability to stream the games from your library that you are wanting to play is better than being limited to an arbitrary library on Playstation Plus. This also expands the number of games available to stream to over 2,000+ games I've read. It's not perfect, as 4 out of the 5 games I'm playing right now don't offer streaming. I'm sure this will expand as time progresses, however. Last night I was able to play Forza: Horizon 5 for over an hour on my Portal via stream without a single disruption. Previously, I would have never tried to play a game like this on the Portal with remote play. Overall, I'd like to see Sony make a dedicated portable device that integrates with the PS6. I hope those rumors are true. In the meantime, the expansion of features and ways to play games on the the current Portal have been encouraging. 

My State of Mobile Gaming: Part 10 - Further Emphasis On Streaming

It's difficult to believe that we are entering the last part of the Playstation 5 lifecycle. Yet here we are, nearly 5 years after the PS5's launch, and rumors about the PS6 are beginning to take shape. The PS6 is anticipated to launch in 2027, and one of the more intriguing rumors is that it will have dedicated portable hardware to play games on the go. With the success of the Switch, and the recent reveal of Microsoft's Xbox handheld device called the Asus Rog Xbox Ally X, it seems as if portable is the way things are going for consoles. I've never owned an Xbox, so while a device such as the Rog Xbox Ally X picques my interest, it isn't something I'm going to buy. Much like how I wrestled with the idea of getting a Steam Deck, I'm in no way involved with Xbox or PC gaming, so getting such a device wouldn't make sense. However, I like where gaming consoles are going. As streaming becomes more of an option, the idea of playing your games on multiple devices away from the console itself is intriguing. While I don't see the console disappearing entirely, at least not during the next cycle of consoles, this concept of accessing content away from the console itself has tons of advantages. The fact that portable devices are getting powerful enough that they can run mainstream games is impressive. Which brings me to my current state of gaming on the Playstation Portal.

I was an early adopter to the Playstation Portal, having purchased one almost as soon as they became available. I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the device, though it's mostly been love. My biggest beef with the device is that using Remote Play is finicky at best. I've done everything in my power and with my knowledge to optimize my network for Remote Play, and the damn thing still disconnects frequently. The thing is, it was working quite well for probably close to a year. For whatever reason, however, for the past 2-3 months it has had difficulty maintaining a consistent connection. This is frustrating for obvious reasons, but the biggest frustration is that it isn't exactly clear why it has connection issues in the first place. Researching solutions on the internet is useless, so I'm stuck in frequent disconnect limbo. Being an early adopter, I accept the fact that this device and technology isn't ready for the masses, so I'm excited to see devices like the Rog Xbox Ally X and the Steam Deck being produced, although from what I've read the Rog device may also not quite be ready for the masses.

About a year ago, Sony enabled streaming on the Portal, completely bypassing the need to have a Playstation. In the past year, the streaming library has expanded a lot. My experience with streaming has been very positive. While not perfect, streaming provides a much more consistent experience than using Remote Play from the PS5. My connection with Remote Play has become so finicky that I'm starting to factor in whether or not I can stream the game on the Portal into my decision on which games to play. I've had the chance to stream games on the Portal and play them later on the console, and cloud saving between the devices worked perfectly. I did this a bit with The Witcher 3. 

I'm interested in hearing more about the capabilities of Sony's portable device for the PS6 (if the rumors are true). I imagine that it will involve a combination of streaming from the library in addition to local installation for games. I already have opinions about what this could look like and the pros/cons of this approach, which I will save until a later date. In the meantime, I'll continue to play my Portal, but will likely lean a bit more towards games that I can stream over playing Remote Play.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

 

Add Prince of Persia to the list of famous video game franchises that I played for the first time in the past year.  I initially played The Lost Crown on the Switch as a demo and enjoyed it enough that I thought it would be a good game to play on the Portal if I ever got access to the game via Playstation Plus. I lost access to the demo on the Switch and kind of forgot about the game, to be honest. It eventually did come to Playstation Plus, however, and I quickly picked it up and started playing it on the weekends on the Portal.

This game is described as a metroidvania game, meaning as you progress through the game and gain new abilities, you can advance and reach areas that previously could be seen but not reached. I've never heard of this term until I was doing research on this game. It is a combination of the words Metroid and Castlevania. I never played much of the Castlevania games, but I did play a bit of Super Metroid on the Super Nintendo, and this is classic Nintendo game design that I've always enjoyed. The game is a platformer at heart, but unlike Mario games where you always go left to right and the stages are broken up into individual sections, in The Lost Crown you sometimes have to go left, down, or up in order to advance, not just left to right, and the entire game takes up one massive stage/map. The platforming is the best part of the game, and as you advance and acquire new skills, the platforming becomes progressively more difficult. Some sections of the game require you to perfectly time and land 10-15 jumps in a row, in very quick succession, without any rest or stopping points in the middle. Weekend gaming on the Portal almost always includes weekend adult beverages as well, and as this game progressed it actually became quite difficult. At one point I died probably 10 times in a row trying to cross a certain section, and the game actually asked if I wanted to turn on a feature that would allow me to portal through difficult platforming sections. Given the circumstances, I decided to turn on this feature, even though it felt a bit like cheating. This is possibly the most challenging game I've played since Tunic.

The second best part of the game is the boss battles. They are challenging, but force you to rely on the multiple tools and skills that you gain throughout the game. The battles make you think about which tool to use, and oftentimes you have to think quite fast in order to pull off the move and not get hit. This type of battle is much more challenging and engaging than a traditional hack-n-slash style of fight. The graphics are really good as well. I feel like almost all games these days look fantastic, but the 2.5D style utilized in this game was great to look at, especially the backgrounds. The only small concern that I have about the game is that the story was a bit confusing and honestly not all that relevant to the gameplay experience. It involves saving the prince by manipulating time and traveling back prior...you know what, never mind. The cutscenes that explain the story are few and far between, and the gameplay in between the cutscenes is so good that you tend to skip over the plot description in order to get back to the game itself. Otherwise, this game was quite enjoyable and I'll look forward to playing other games in the series when the chance arises. 

Nintendo Switch 2 Announcement

 

Prior to the Playstation 5 being released, the Nintendo Switch was my favorite gaming console since the Playstation 2. With that being said, I had been looking forward to the release of the Switch 2 for a few years. The original Switch wasn't exactly a powerhouse when it was released, and now that it is several years old, it was really starting to show its age. Plus, with the release of the PS5, I had mostly moved on from playing the Switch with the exception of a first party Nintendo release here and there.

I owned the NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64. After the 64, however, for whatever reason I only purchased every other Nintendo console. I intended to break this trend with the Switch 2, and I probably will pick up the new Nintendo console, but likely not as soon as it is released. The Switch 2 was revealed a couple of weeks ago, and I'll be honest I have mixed emotions about it. It has the expected graphics upgrade with 4K output while docked (which may necessitate a new TV that can support 4K). It drops to 1080p when in handhold mode, and has an LCD screen as opposed to an OLED screen. Some people complained about this, but the Playstation Portal (as well as the Steam Deck) has an LCD screen running at 1080p and it looks fantastic. Additionally, the screen size has increased to 8 inches, which is also the same size as the Portal's screen. While the compact nature of the original Switch was nice, after playing the Portal for a year a larger screen is absolutely the better way to play games while in handhold mode.

I am interested in Nintendo consoles 100% because of the first party software. I have very little use for playing 3rd party software on Nintendo consoles because historically a lot of those titles perform poorly on Nintendo consoles, and since I'm deeply involved in the Playstation ecosystem with Playstation Plus I tend to use the Playstation to play most 3rd party games. There was talk of some major game makers bringing ports of their games to the Switch 2, and I think if the Switch 2 was my only console that would make me excited. With the PS5 sitting in my basement, however, that news doesn't do much for my excitement. With that being said, the moment a major Nintendo game comes out on the Switch 2, especially if it is a Zelda game, my interest will spike. The major first party game being released for the Switch 2, however, is a Mario Kart game. There is no question that Mario Kart is far and away the best game in that racing genre. Despite numerous copycat games, no other game has been able to recreate the Mario Kart experience. For whatever reason, however, I just don't get that into Mario Kart. It tends to be basically the same game over and over again, and I doubt that the experience with this new game is much different than the experience I've had with Mario Kart 8 on the Switch 1 (that game itself is a recycled game from the Wii U). 

The most exciting announcement for me when the Switch 2 was revealed was the fact that you could play GameCube games with the online expansion pass. The GameCube was one of the Nintendo systems that I never owned, so having access to its library would be a bonus. Specifically, The Wind Waker was announced as one of the original games and it is a Zelda game that I've never played, so I'm highly interested in this opportunity. Additionally, Twilight Princess, which is one of my favorite Zelda games, was released on the GameCube, so if this were to come available I'd be interested in replaying this game as well. Despite my enthusiasm for being able to play the GameCube for the first time, it's going to take more than access to a 20+ year old gaming system to get me excited enough to purchase a Switch 2.

The other announcement that I was interested in with the Switch 2 was the Joy-Con's ability to be used as a mouse. Time will tell if this is a feature that I actually use, but there are certain games (for me it's city builders) where having a mouse just works better than using a controller. This is a feature that could persuade me to play certain 3rd party games on the Switch 2 instead of the Playstation.

All of this kind of left me feeling "meh" about the Switch 2. It has the expected (and necessary) upgrades in terms of improvements in graphics output and larger screen, but the initial wave of game announcements left me underwhelmed. I'm sure I'll pick one up eventually, but I need something in addition to a mouse and the ability to play a two decade old game system to entice me to make this purchase.

Dredge

 

Dredge is a game that was completely off my radar. I only became aware of the game after its collaboration with Dave the Diver, one of my favorite games of 2024. Since I liked Dave so much I decided to give Dredge a try, and I liked it quite a bit (though not as much as Dave).

In Dredge, you're a fisherman who somewhat confusingly ends up in a town located in an archipelago. You're looking for work, but soon realize that something isn't quite right with the town and its people. Everyone seems a bit sad and the town's folk frequently allude to an accident that happened but are not very forthcoming with information. You run into a person only known as the collector, and he asks you to retrieve various artifacts scattered throughout the archipelago by dredging them from the sea. In the process of doing so, you continue to run into various characters who have been affected by the mysterious accident and need your help. Of course, you have to fish as well to make money and upgrade your boat.

By the end of the game you learn that you are the collector, and you are responsible for the terrible situation that the town and archipelago finds itself in. Essentially, prior to the game you dredged up an item that contained a powerful book, and opening the book unleashed a monster that haunts the town. In the process, your wife dies. The collector is a figment of your imagination, who is collecting items from the wrecked boat to try to resurrect his wife using the power of the book. The game has two endings. In the first ending, the collector resurrects his wife, but at the expense of the town, as the monster sets the town ablaze. In the second ending, the collector sacrifices himself to the sea, joining his wife and saving the town in the process.

I wouldn't classify this as a horror game, per se, but the entire game is quite eerie and a bit unsettling. You know something is wrong and that possibly something really bad could happen at any point, but it isn't until the end that the full plot is revealed. I would classify it as a thriller, similar to a Stephen King novel. The music is fantastic with a soundtrack of dreary piano music with plenty of flat notes. It accompanies the scene well and it catchy enough that I've listened to it separate from the game on a few occasions. 

Of course, there's plenty of fishing to be done, and in order to catch the needed fish you have to upgrade your boat, similar to a skills tree on an RPG. I will say, in general I kind of gloss over skills trees in games. However, this one was more appealing to me because upgrading your boat makes more sense to me than adding random stamina points to a person. It felt a bit like Gran Turismo. 

Dredge clocks in at right around 10 hours, which is perfect for a side game to casually play on the weekends. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The eerie plot and soundtrack, the comic book-like graphics, the gameplay, etc. were all a lot of fun. I'm happy for the collaboration with Dave. Otherwise, this game would've likely remained off my radar.

NBA 2K25 (& Caitlin Clark)

I almost didn't write a separate post about NBA 2K25 (from here on referred to as 2K25). I follow the Pacers but am a bit fair weather, and I don't really follow the NBA otherwise. Plus, I've already written a recent post about NBA 2K24 and honestly there isn't much difference between the two games. However, there is a feature on both games that I didn't explore on 2K24 which I absolutely love on 2K25 which is called MyNBA Eras. I wanted an opportunity to discuss this feature. Additionally, I have thought about writing a separate post on Caitlin Clark on a few occasions but never did so for various reasons. Caitlin is in 2K25, and I wanted to discuss her and women's basketball in general. So with that preface, let's get into 2K25 and MyNBA Eras.

MyNBA Eras essentially allows you to play a season or franchise as an NBA team in different eras of the game. This is so cool because it plays heavily on nostalgia. Growing up, I remember the NBA on NBC and the rivalries between the Pacers and Knicks vividly. I remember watching Michael Jordan and how dominant he was. This period of time was the height of my NBA fandom, and I feel more attached to those teams and players than I do the current ones. So to be able to play with the Pacers from the 1990s and battle against Patrick Ewing and John Starks of the Knicks is so fun. In addition to having the players, teams, and logos from the era, the game recreates the NBA on NBC theme, complete with the music and appearance of playing the game in low definition on a cathode ray tube TV. The result is instant nostalgic fun.

Caitlin Clark has become the biggest athlete on the planet. That is news by itself, and the fact that she has landed professionally in Indianapolis is huge. We are fortunate to have her playing here on our home team. What makes her such a big story isn't just how good she is at basketball, however. She is a generational athlete who is bigger than the sport she plays. I watched her final two seasons at Iowa, and last year watched every Fever game that I could, and we even went to one game and have tickets to go to another game this season. Prior to Caitlin, I honestly can't remember ever watching a women's basketball game. The numbers don't lie, and they say that I'm not the only one paying attention. Attendance and viewership records were set last season for the WNBA, Caitlin's rookie season. The last athlete that I can remember that had this kind of impact, in terms of drawing real attention to a sport that I didn't previously care about, was Tiger Woods and golf. 

Caitlin is fantastic, but moving onto 2K25, since I now pay attention to the WNBA and Caitlin is in 2K25, I also started a franchise with the Fever. I have no nostalgic attachment to older Fever teams, so being able to play a franchise with them with the modern presentation of the game is a great contrast to playing with the Pacers from the 1990s. I was previously playing 2K24 on Playstation Plus, but unfortunately its tenure on the service was brief. Honestly, I probably would have picked up 2K25 regardless so that I could get Caitlin on the Fever. I was able to pick up 2K25 on a black Friday sale for like $45, which turned out to be a steal.

My State of Mobile Gaming in 2024: Part 9 - Streaming

 

I started 2024 debating between buying a Playstation Portal or a Steam Deck. I decided on the Portal since my gaming is deeply rooted in the Playstation ecosystem, and am happy with the decision understanding that the Portal is a bit of a niche device. I say that it is a niche device because of its inability to play games natively on the device. Its reliance on a solid network connection and a PS5 console is a major limitation in terms of portability. The device was designed to be played at home, and since I was already heavily involved with Playstation and Playstation Plus, the aforementioned limitations didn't bother me much. All of this has been well documented in the first 8 parts of this series, so I don't want to dwell on it too much more here. What I do want to discuss, however, is how my 2024 ended in terms of portable gaming and what I foresee happening in the future with mobile gaming. 

A few weeks ago Sony came out with an update for the Portal allowing it to stream games. This was a feature that I wanted from the beginning and I think is big news for the future of gaming. The idea of streaming games has been around for a decade or more, but not until the recent past has it become reliable enough to push to the masses. Certain games on Playstation Plus can be streamed from the PS5, and I've done this a few times and it seems to work well. Since the Portal updated I've had the opportunity to stream a few games on it and it worked well also. The benefit for me is that it allows for the opportunity to quickly play games without waiting for the download and without taking up precious hard drive space on your console.

If you take this concept a bit further, however, major ideas start to emerge. The biggest idea is the question of the relevance of the console. When you stream games on the Portal, it completely bypasses my PS5 and connects directly to Sony's servers. I haven't had a chance to test this theory, but I suspect that streaming the games on the Portal will perform better than playing them from the PS5, simply because their network is likely more robust. More to come on that theory, but bypassing the PS5 also opens the opportunity to play games on your computer, tablet, or smart TV. Imagine downloading a Playstation app on your smart TV and connecting your Dual Sense controller to play. To some extent this is already possible, but again, it requires owning a PS5 and this completely bypasses that requirement. 

Currently, the streaming library for the Portal is a bit limited. It doesn't even include all of the games that you can stream from Playstation Plus. I suspect (or hope) this will change in the future. The streaming technology seems stable enough to use currently, but does need to be tweaked and improved so that it includes all of the features that games have when you play them from your console. This should happen as the technology advances. As it stands currently, if I have the option to play a game from my PS5 vs stream the game, I still prefer to play it locally on my PS5. I think that still allows for the best experience. I find the most value in streaming on games that I really want to just trial or to quickly play a game that I'm not too serious about. However, I think this update for the Portal shows that Sony is serious about streaming games. I expect the technology to continue to advance and am interested to see how the Portal, streaming, and portable gaming advances in 2025. There are rumors that Sony is looking into developing a dedicated portable system (a la the PS Vita) and we still have not heard official news about the Switch successor but I expect news soon and I expect that it will be portable as well. It should be fun times in 2025 for portable gaming. 

Tunic

 

I have a love/hate relationship with this game. Its resemblance to Zelda games, specifically 2019's re-release of Link's Awakening is an obvious attention-grabber for me. The gameplay is quite similar to Zelda games. You start in an overworld filled with enemies. Much like BOTW, you start with a stick as a weapon. You quickly find a sword, however, and as you progress through the game you pick up other items that are helpful for your journey - a shield, a hookshot-like device, the ability to teleport short distances, etc. Acquiring these items allows you to access previously blocked areas of the map. All of this is very much like old school Zelda games and was a nice return to classic gameplay as BOTW and TOTK have deviated from this a bit.

The newer Zelda games do a good job of explaining the story. The older ones, however, are a bit more mysterious. I still remember A Link to the Past and how it started you off in Link's house with almost no explanation on what to do. Tunic gives no explanation on what you are supposed to do. In fact, even after finishing the game I wasn't sure I understood what just happened. I read a few plot summaries and I think I got it now, but the game is very vague. In fact, there is essentially no written words in the game, and there are no spoken words at all. The signs in the game are written in a made up language and thus cannot be read. The only real communication or explanation that you get comes in the form of a digital instruction manual. The pages are scattered throughout the overworld, which you are able to collect as you progress through the game. Even the instruction manual provides just vague explanations. In general I'm OK with the game being vague, as putting together the pieces of the plot puzzle can be fun. However, it can make it a bit challenging to know what to do next or where to go next. I found myself watching strategy videos a lot as a progressed through the game. 

I'll do just a quick plug for the music and graphics in the game. The overworld has a very simplistic look. As mentioned above, it is very reminiscent of 2019's remake of Link's Awakening, though Tunic is a bit less vibrant. Overall it has a fine look but nothing to write home about. However, some of the stages, especially later in the game, are quite stunning. The Quarry and Monastery are two locations that come to mind that are fantastic looking. The game has a bit of a depressing feel to it, honestly, and the music fits this theme quite well. Although none of it is overly memorable, I remember thinking on several occasions while playing that it sounded appropriate and fit the scene quite well. I think the music that stands out the most for me is the song that plays in the background as you face the game's final boss, the Heir. This could be because I had to fight the Heir about 40 times before I beat her, however. Which leads me to the part of the game that contributed to the hate part of the love/hate relationship.

Tunic is really hard. I don't mind a challenge or hard game, but at times Tunic was frustratingly hard. I've already mentioned that there wasn't always clear instructions on what to do or where to go next. This in itself can be frustrating. But what pushed my frustration over the edge was how dying was handled. When you die, you spawn at your last save point and your life/potions and magic are restored. This is fine and mostly standard across other games. However, any special items you used, such as bombs or bottled magic, does not restock. This puts you in a real bind when fighting bosses. If you use your special items and fail, it can be very tough to beat the boss, as your supplies no longer exist. I found myself needing to try several times to beat the bosses, so many times that on a handful of occasions I contemplated quitting the game. 

I hate comparing Tunic to the Legend of Zelda as much as I did because it truly does stand alone as its own individual game. The comparisons are inevitable, however, as the similarities between the two games are great, right down to the appearance of the main character. Overall I enjoyed the game and would recommend it. It is frustrating, however, that the game can be so unforgiving that I thought about quitting. I think Tunic could have been challenging but a bit more forgiving when you die. At least give us our special items back when we respawn!

Playstation Pulse Elite Headphones

 

Last year when I was deciding which headphones to purchase, the debate I was having with myself was if I should get a good pair of gaming headphones to use for both gaming and TV/Movies, or if I should get a pair of non-gaming headphones and sacrifice the ability to use them when playing games.  I decided to get a pair of non-gaming headphones from Sony and couldn't be happier with them. Most gaming headphones require a dongle to be connected to a console for them to work, and so I wasn't sure how well they'd connect to a device using just Bluetooth. They also tend to be a bit bulkier because of the microphone. I primarily was wanting to use the headphones to watch TV shoes that Sarah would find distracting, so in the end the decision wasn't too difficult. I don't use headphones when I play games often, and when I do the DualSense controller makes it convenient to use an old-fashioned mini plug to connect a cheaper pair of headphones to the Playstation. However, since I've had the Playstation Portal the few times I've played GTA Online I've played on the Portal. You can connect older headphones via mini plug to the Portal, but I decided that it was time to upgrade to wireless headphones. 

I'm glad that I decided to get non-gaming headphones in 2023 instead of gaming headphones. It turns out that you cannot connect traditional gaming headphones to the Portal. It doesn't even have bluetooth. Instead, it uses a proprietary headphone technology called Playstation Link. Guess which headphones utilize Playstation Link technology? You guessed it, Sony's Playstation headphones. And as far as I know they are the only ones to utilize the tech. This ended up working out fine for me because Sony's Playstation headphones got pretty good ratings and are reasonably priced at $149, so I didn't mind buying them over another brand. However, had I bought the gaming headphones first in 2023 I would have been screwed because I was not looking at Sony gaming headphones at the time and the Playstation Link tech didn't exist then. 

Most gaming headphones require a dongle connected to the console to use them, and I think it has to do with providing sound without lag and that isn't compressed which apparently Bluetooth cannot do. I will say I use Bluetooth headphones all the time to watch TV shows and I never notice lag or issues with Bluetooth technology. With that being said, I suspect this is why the Portal doesn't support Bluetooth but does support PS Link. Interestingly, the Portal doesn't require a dongle but if you use the headphones on the PS5 itself it does require a dongle. I suspect this is because the Portal has the Link receiver built-in, whereas the PS5 does not.

Regardless, moving on from the technology and to the headphones themselves, I like them. I think for the price they are really good. They don't have noise cancelling tech, but honestly if you have a game going they do a pretty good job of isolating other noise in the room. The mic works good enough, I think. My friends say I sound clear online. The sound from the headphones is pretty good as well. They are not attractive, however. I find the giant ear cups on the tiny frame to be a bit much, but do appreciate the clean design overall.

As for the PS Link tech, it seems to work well enough. It consistently connects to the Portal as soon as I turn on the headphones. Periodically the sound becomes choppy, which I've never experienced with Bluetooth. I suspect this is because it is receiving sound from the Portal which is receiving sound from the Playstation, so it is being transmitted twice. I haven't used the headphones with the PS5 directly so I cannot confirm this, but generally it isn't a major issue as it is intermittent. 

My State of Mobile Gaming in 2024: Part 8 - Tweaking My Network

 

I've had the Portal for 6 months and in that time I've been able to tweak my home network and make improvements so that it reliably works well nearly every time I play it. The biggest change I made initially was that I connected my PS5 to my network via ethernet. This makes a big difference in performance, but that change alone didn't result in a consistent experience. Using ethernet reduces latency and thus makes the games more responsive, but I still got internet connection warnings and quality drops periodically. A few additional changes that I was able to make over the past few months collectively helped a lot, in addition to switching to an ethernet connection.

The first thing that I did was increase my bandwidth. I was getting 100 Mbps down from my fiber optic, and I increased it to 500 Mbps. It subsequently has been increased again to 750 Mbps by my ISP.

The second thing I did was moved the location of one of my mesh routers. I have 3 connection points, and originally I had one on each level of my house. I noticed that the Portal was consistently connecting to the router upstairs, despite there being one on the same level just 20 feet away. I'm mostly just running Alexa devices upstairs, and thus don't really need a strong connection there, so I moved it down to the main level and placed it in my entertainment center in the living room, which is where I sit to play the Portal. 

The last thing I did was change some network settings. I identified the Portal on my network and switched it to always be a 5G connection, which is what Sony recommends. The other setting change I did was to have the routers download firmware updates automatically and to have scheduled reboots. What is the first thing you do when network performance is down? You reboot your routers, which nearly always fixes the problem. I now have my routers scheduled to reboot automatically every Friday morning at 3:00 am. 

I made all of these changes around the same time, so it is difficult to say for sure which one is helping the most. I suspect moving the router down to the living room so that the Portal can connect to it just a few feet away instead of connecting to it on a whole different level helped the most. Having additional bandwidth never hurts either. I suppose in the end it really doesn't matter which one helped the most. The bottom line is that after making these few and relatively easy changes, the Portal went from working well about 90% of the time to working well nearly 100% of the time.

Modern Sports Games

 

For as long as I can remember, sports video games have tried their best to recreate what it is like to watch sports on TV. Throughout the years games have had various levels of success at accomplishing this style of presentation. When I was younger sports games were some of my favorite video games to play. This lasted through the PS2 era. I remember playing Madden '11 on the PS3, but not much else, and by the time I started playing the PS4 sports games took a back seat to other types of games. However, in the PS5 era with Playstation Plus, I have had access to many sports games that I've been able to play and they are fantastic. Instead of discussing them individually, I thought it would be better to discuss my experience with them collectively. My impressions and experiences with the games are similar and thus my thoughts on one game generally cross over to the other games.

The sports games I've been able to play the most are NBA 2K24 and FC24, so my thoughts are mostly based on those two games. I have played a bit of MLB The Show '23 and Top Spin 2K25 and am planning on playing NHL 24 soon, but for the time being my thoughts in this post are about NBA 2K24 and FC24.

My biggest take away from playing these games is that they have absolutely nailed the television viewing experience. NBA 2K has a halftime show, on-court interviews, arenas that look different and have team-specific features, and on and on. In fact, the television experience is so good that it is almost a detriment to the game. I found myself frequently needing to skip past cutscenes and it felt like all of the extra scenes made the games a bit cumbersome to play through. You can't play through a game quickly because of all of the scenes. I looked for a way to turn this off and sadly didn't find that feature. It's an amazing presentation but is almost too good. 

FC24 is more subtle and doesn't feature the halftime show or cutscenes during period brakes or timeouts. This may be a feature of how soccer is played, however, as there are not nearly as many brakes in soccer matches as there are in basketball games. The announcing in both games is good, but in FC24 the announcing is especially good. When taking a free kick close to the goal, the announcer states that the kick is coming from "a spot of absolute menace" which is a fantastic line. The reporter Alex is a bit annoying, though, and I couldn't find a way to mute her. If a scoring opportunity happens when she is speaking, however, the announcers will cut her off to announce the game and allow her to continue once the scoring chance ends, which is pretty cool. 

Another trend that appears across the games is the complexity of the controls. No longer is there just a button to take a shot or pass the ball. Instead, there are multiple buttons depending on what type of shot or pass you want to take. For instance, there is a button for a lob shot and another button for a power shot. Admittedly, for someone who is new to modern sports games, this can be a bit intimidating at first. I found myself looking up the controls on a few occasions for both games. Once you get used to the more complicated controls, however, it makes the game that much better because it gives you quite a bit more control over the action.

I've been playing sports games on the PS5 over the past few months and overall have found them quite enjoyable. The one negative that also trends across most of the games is the complexity of the game menu system. No longer are there options for a season or exhibition game. You can play a season or individual game, but they are available in submenus that do not have obvious labels. I think a lot of this is to cater to online gaming and also the breadth of play modes that the games have these days, such as manager modes and individual player modes, not to mention online gaming. Regardless, I found it to be a bit confusing. Embarrassingly, I had to Google how to start a season for both games. Overall this is a minor complaint, and I've enjoyed getting back into the sports game scene. At the end of the last hockey season, I had some interest in getting back into hockey. I'm planning on spending some time playing NHL '24 next, which I'm looking forward to as it should be a good transition into watching hockey for this upcoming season.

Dave the Diver

 

I'm a sucker for games with 16-bit graphics, so I was intrigued by this game the first time I saw a screenshot. Then I started seeing favorable reviews and my interest grew. I first played a demo on the Switch, which I enjoyed. However, I was a little afraid the game was going to only focus on catching fish for the restaurant. I knew the game was 30+ hours long, and didn't know if I would last that long simply catching fish. Once the game became available on Playstation Plus, however, I was able to progress beyond the prologue available on the Switch demo and experience the entire game. This game took me 30 hours to complete (longer than Final Fantasy VII Remake), and I was actually a bit sad to see it end. There were surprises around every corner, and the game became much more than just catching fish. Dave is my favorite independent game that I've played, and one of my favorite games overall that I've played in the PS5 era. It is entertaining and quite fun and well worth the $20.

Let's start with a little background about the story. Dave is a retired diver who is recruited by businessman Cobra to catch fish for a sushi restaurant with chef Bancho. During the day you dive into the ocean to catch fish, and during the night you help at Bancho's restaurant by serving guests. Hence this is why I though the entire game was going to be about catching fish. It quickly becomes apparent that unusual activity is occurring in the Blue Hole where Dave is diving, however. While catching fish is always a part of the agenda, the majority of the plot shifts to discovering what is occurring in the Blue Hole. Along the way you meet a ton of side characters, from Dr. Bacon who is researching the Blue Hole, to a photographer who asks Dave for pictures of unique fish. You even discover a secret village of sea people that is being destroyed by the activities in the Blue Hole. As I said above, there are surprises around every corner and you never really know who you're going to meet.

The format of diving during the day and serving at the restaurant at night remains throughout the game, and Dave contains a robust restaurant simulator. In the beginning you serve food and drinks, as well as clean up after guests. As the game progresses, you are able to hire staff to help out Dave. Additionally, you gain the ability to create a fish farm to breed fish so you don't have to spend all your time capturing them, as well as a farm to grow vegetables to make more unique dishes. The restaurant portion of the game alone is in-depth enough to be its own game. 

As the game progresses, your restaurant business grows and you discover the secrets of the Blue Hole, eventually rescuing the sea people from the monster that is causing the earthquakes that is disrupting their civilization. In addition to the intriguing story and memorable characters, the soundtrack is fantastic. I'm listening to it as I type this post! Also, I don't remember a game where I enjoyed the cutscenes as much as this game. With the exception of a few tedious gameplay moments, this game overall is just amazing. I'm a little sad to have finished it and be moving on. However, my kids are still playing it so I can enjoy the game vicariously through them.

My State of Mobile Gaming in 2024: Part 7 - The Portal Away From Home

Given the amount of tweaking I've had to do on my home network to get the Portal to run smoothly (see here and more to come on this in Part 8), I did not have high expectations for playing the Portal away from home. Over the past few months, I've had a handful of opportunities to play it while on the road, and I must say I've been pleasantly surprised by how well it has worked. However, there is one big exception to this, a problem I've run into more than once while trying to play away from home.

The Portal worked well at my dad's house, as well as a rental cabin in the middle of nowhere in southern Illinois. My dad has quick internet at his house, similar in speed to the internet I have at home, so I expected it to work there. I didn't test the internet speed in Illinois, but presumably it was not too quick given the remote location of the cabin. It worked pretty well there. I had infrequent quality and frame rate drops due to low internet connection warnings, but they were brief and resolved without losing connection to the PS5, and thus didn't interfere with gaming. 

While playing on individual networks away from home has worked well, the one location where I've ran into trouble is hotels. The reason is captive internet. Most hotel networks require a login through a web browser, and the Portal does not have a web browser. This is a major oversight, in my opinion, and hopefully it is something Sony can fix through a software update. There are a couple of ways to get around this issue. One is through a concept called MAC spoofing, a process that is complicated and likely beyond anyone's capability unless they are highly educated in the nuances of networks. The other way around it is to create your own hotspot. This is a simple process on the iPhone. I've tried it twice and didn't have much luck either time, unfortunately. In Cincinnati, I couldn't even get the Portal to connect to my hotspot. While in Texas, I was able to get the Portal to connect but experiences very poor performance with multiple disconnections from the PS5.

To be fair, I knew about the lack of web browser and thus the difficulty with connecting the Portal to captive networks prior to buying the device. If I traveled a lot and was planning on using the Portal specifically for travel, I might have not purchased it because of this and instead purchased a Steam Deck. However, I primarily use the Portal at home, and about half the time when traveling stay in rentals not hotels, so I was willing to sacrifice consistent hotel connections with the Portal. Interestingly, one of the hotels we stayed at in Texas had a conference network that didn't require a password. I was able to join that network without any trouble and played the Portal just fine, without any disconnections or network performance issues. 

In summary, I've been pleasantly surprised by how well the Portal works away from home. I've had no or minimal trouble on individual networks, some of which were not overly robust. I think my success in these situations points to the importance of having a good network setup for the PS5 itself. My hotel experience with the Portal has not been positive, however. The lack of a way to connect to captive networks is a major oversight by Sony, one that I would assume is big enough to make people contemplate not buying the device. Hopefully Sony can fix this through a future update.

Addendum (6/20/24): It's as if Sony was reading my mind. Within a week of publishing this post, Sony announced than an update for the Portal was being released which includes functionality to support connecting to public Wi-Fi! I can't wait to try this out, so more to come in the future after I have a chance to give it a try. 

NHL '94 Rewind

To borrow a quote from Billy Madison, NHL '94 for the Sega Genesis is the greatest video game of all time. OK, that may not be entirely true, but I do think it is one of the best sports games ever made. I distinctly remember dominating this game on the Genesis (as well as the slightly upgraded NHL '95 on the PC). Everything about this game is just great - the sounds, the visuals (I said I was a sucker for 8 & 16-bit graphics), the gameplay - all of it is just perfect. Even just hearing the menu music is enough to incite nostalgia. When you take the ice and hear the organ music, or the unique grunts of the players, it takes me back to 1994 and playing the game on the Genesis on our old CRT TV. 

I had read about NHL '94 mode for NHL '22, where you could play the modern game in the style of NHL '94. I almost bought NHL '22 because of this, but decided against it. I had no idea you could buy NHL '94 Rewind as a standalone product. Once I discovered this a few weeks ago I immediately paid the $10 for the game.

I'm happy to report that Rewind faithfully recreates NHL '94, or at least my memories of the game. Everything is there - the menu music, the organ, the grunts, and the gameplay. It is a near-perfect of an all-time sports classic. I only have two minor complaints. The first is that I wish you could play an entire season with a team, not just a playoff. However, if I remember correctly, that feature also did not exist in the original game. My other complaint is that I wish you could use the rosters from the original game. When I first played Rewind, I was disappointed that the Red Wings had their current players (from 2022) and not Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov. I was really hoping to dominate on Rewind like I did on the original with the Red Wings. Other than these two complaints, Rewind is great and well worth the $10.

My State of Mobile Gaming in 2024: Part 6 - Rollerdrome

 

I've been interested in Playstation Remote Play since the beginning when it launched on the PS4. Initially, however, I struggled to find a great use case for it. In 2023, I got the idea to use the service to play games on the weekends that I might not necessarily take the time to play otherwise (i.e. putz-style games). The release of the Portal solved a major issue that I had with Remote Play, and that is the inconvenience of playing games on the iPad. While it it neat that you can do this, you can't exactly curl up on the couch with the iPad in one hand and the DualSense controller in the other to play games. Despite this issue being solved, I still wasn't sure about how much I would use the Portal. It turns out that I have had no trouble keeping an agenda for the portable device.

I do use the Portal to play putz-style games such as Unpacking. These are games that I am interested in but do not want to necessarily spend my main gaming time playing. They are perfect for playing while sitting on the couch with a (sports) game on in the background. However, I've been able to expand my agenda quite a bit beyond this. Because of Playstation Plus, games are continually being added to the service. While some of these games I definitely want to play, there are a lot of games that I am interested in checking out but not sure if I want to dedicate my main playing time to them until I do a trial first. The Portal has been perfect for this situation, as I am able to fire up the device and try out these games while on the couch with Sarah. It turns out that there are a lot of games that meet this criteria, and in the 2 months that I've owned the Portal, I have not run out of games to play. I featured Rollerdrome in this post, as it is just one example of a game that I played on the Portal that I likely would not have played otherwise. Rollerdrome is pretty awesome, and some of these games that I started out with on the Portal I've decided to continue to play on the big screen in the basement, such as Final Fantasy VII Remake. Some of these game demos come in the form of actual Playstation Plus Trials, while others are the full game that has become available on Playstation Plus. A few of these games I've had downloaded on my PS5 for over a year without playing. The Portal has been a great way for me to experience and play games that I'm interested in but not sure if I want to dedicate a large amount of time to play. 

Unpacking

 

I'm a bit of a sucker for games with 8 & 16-bit graphics. With that being said, once this game was released and received positive press, it was on my radar to check out. It eventually came out for Playstation Plus, and so at that point it was a no brainer to download and play. I initially played the first couple of stages before placing the game on pause. The game is perfect for tinkering around with on the weekends (more on this situation in a future post), and once I got the Portal I picked up the game again and was able to finish it.

The game follows the life of a female protagonist. Starting as a young girl, her family moves into a home and your job is to unpack her room. As she grows, she moves into different environments that you have to unpack, including an apartment, her boyfriend's apartment, back to her parents house, and then into her first family home. Every stage begins with a set of boxes that you click on to reveal the contents, and you place the items into their correct locations. That's it. It's a perfect game to use a 16-bit graphics style, and as mentioned above, it's a great game to putz around with. It did get a bit repetitive and tedious by the end, however. I think the game length is perfect, and if it were any longer I probably would've bailed on finishing the game. The hardest part is that some of the items are difficult to figure out what they are, and thus it's hard to know where they go. But otherwise it is an interesting game and worth the few hours it takes to finish.

My State of Mobile Gaming in 2024: Part 5 - The Playstation Portal

I've had the Playstation Portal for a couple of months and have had plenty of time to play games on the device and test it out. I like the device quite a lot and have found several use cases for owning one. With that being said, it isn't perfect and does have some limitations. Let's focus on the positives first.

The hardware is excellent. Not surprisingly, it feels like a larger DualSense controller in your hands. This is a good thing, because the DualSense is an excellent controller. It even features haptic feedback on the trigger buttons. It's a big advantage to be able to play Playstation games remotely using the same controller that you would use if you were playing on the main system. No other remote player could simulate this. The Switch feels clunky (albeit it is quite a bit smaller) in comparison as it is much less ergonomic. A couple of the buttons are in different places on the Portal compared to the DualSense, including the main Playstation button, and at times I've found myself searching for a button while using the DualSense where it is located on the Portal. This is a very minor issue. Also, a lot of games utilize the center touch pad on the DualSense, and the Portal doesn't have this button. Instead, you have to double tap on the screen to simulate the button. Again, this is very minor. Overall, the device itself is very nice.

Despite not having an OLED screen and not playing in 4K (a limitation of Remote Play), the games look really nice on the Portal. When the device is performing well (more on this below), playing games on the Portal feels and looks just like playing games on the Playstation. 

While the hardware looks and feels great, there are a couple of major software limitations that I have beef with. The first is the lack of bluetooth connectivity. It has a mini plug jack to connect headphones with a wire, but there is no way to wirelessly connect headphones unless you use Sony's new Playstation Pulse Elite headphones with proprietary Playstation Link connectivity. Gamers (or game makers) seem to be snobby about Bluetooth connections because of potential latency issues (I think), but it would have been nice to be able to connect my new Sony headphones to the Portal via Bluetooth. When I purchased those headphones last summer, I was debating between those headphones vs gaming headphones. I'm glad I didn't pick gaming headphones, because they would have been completely useless for the Portal. The good news is that the Pulse Elite headphones get pretty good ratings, and in the grand picture of headphones, aren't too expensive.

My other software beef with the Portal is that it does not have a browser, so there is no way to join a network that requires a browser, such as in a hotel. This is a major oversight in my opinion, so much so that if I traveled often I would have had to take this into consideration when picking the Portal over the Steam Deck. There are ways to get around this, such as using your phone as a hotspot as well as more sophisticated ways such as mac address spoofing. I've stayed in a hotel once since owning the Portal, and I did not have success using my iPhone as a hotspot (more to come on this in a later post).

I have to spend some time discussing the performance of the Portal. In my experience, it works really well 90% of the time, OK 5% of the time, and pretty poorly 5% of the time. The challenging and frustrating thing is that for the 10% of the time where it is working just OK or poorly, it is really challenging to figure out why. I have made additional tweaks to my network (more to come on this in a later post as well) which have helped, but I still have occasional periods of time where it isn't working well. This can include dropping out of HD, losing connection with the Playstation, frame rate drops and choppy video, as well as input latency. Typically when any of this happens, it is temporary and will fix itself. I knew that this scenario was possible when I bought the device, and I'm fine being an early adopter and dealing with it from time to time. However, I'm not sure this device is ready for the mainstream because of this.

All things considered, despite some of the aforementioned limitations, the Portal really is a great device. It has a lot of positive qualities, and I think if you are looking for a mobile device exclusively to play Playstation remotely, I'd recommend the Portal as it does a great job of simulating the Playstation experience. I'd give some caution to those who travel frequently, however. In my next post in this series, I'll discuss what types of games I play on the Portal and how it has opened up opportunities to experience new games that otherwise I maybe would not have played.