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First impression

(Played on PS4 Pro)

I’ve been looking forward to play Ghost Giant for couple years now. I’m always interested games that are storydriven and adding VR perspective always helps. I used to play lots of VR games, but one aspect that literally prevents me from having long gaming session is the hot weather we have now. PSVR literally becomes a little sauna to your face and using over-the-ear headphones just joins to the sweat party. It’s very unpleasant and game that uses both Move controllers was like having a little exercise, as well. If I eliminate all the hotness my first impression of the Ghost Giant was positive. It seemed like most of the aspects of fully realized VR experience was there.

Story

Everything starts little mysteriously as I kinda ‘became alive’ and appeared to a little boy named Louis. He was down and crying and freaked out after seeing a giant ghost floating above him. We soon became friends and I saw his personal life that seemed to be too overwhelming to a little kid; his mother was badly depressed and couldn’t do anything to keep up the houshold, Louis had to do everything, even the job the mother had of growing sunflowers on a field. Everything seemed a mess at the beginning and I was interested to see how to overcome all these obstacles as Louis was hiding all his troubles from everyone.

The plot developes nicely and I can see many things in it that hit close to me. I could understand all of it and I felt sad after seeing things that literally have happened to me. Louis have to meet many troubles, friends, townspeople and puzzles along the way to have, possibly, the most teaching story.

Gameplay & Controls

Before the game started I had to do few adjustments to get the best experience of the gameplay. Instructions showed me that the game can be played standing or sitting down, but not to be walked around. I chose the sitting option, but I didn’t move the PS Camera from above my TV to below, as it suggested. The reason to this was that I didn’t want to disturb the setting I had with my PSVR and by moving the camera position I would’ve need to calibrate EVERYTHING again; controls, headset and camera. I promised to do it if the game wouldn’t work at all or not as intented.

The gameplay is very simple in Ghost Giant as there is no need to move at all, only to move your ghost hands to pick up things and move stuff around. It became little bit awkward to sit in one tiny spot and try to reach out things and finding out the playing area stops or the camera can’t read my Move controls’ position. The hardest part was throwing stuff to certain spots, especially to the places up and afar. This could’ve been fixed by changing the camera to below the TV, but the game worked otherwise just fine.

Controls were simple and everything felt more of an interactive story. To help Louis I had to pick up things for him or move surroundings. There were lot of collectibles lying around and hidden behind the scenery. Ghost Giant wasn’t complex, but some of the things seemed difficult to do because the small playing area, tight spots and sometimes even simply reaching was problematic.

Graphics

A VR game I would like to play is everything Ghost Giant looked artistically, but the player being normal size and could move around like any other character. The surrounding looked nice and everything was semi-realistic. All the characters looked like real animal-ish, but everything around was made from sraps, pieces of planks, cardboards and paper with riveted, nailed, glued together, and some objects hanging ‘from the ceiling’ by a wire. Everything seemed as I was sitting middle of a diorama. Even if it made everything easier, that all the movable structure were signed with bronze handle, but I still tried to touch everything as I wanted to find all the secrets. Ghost Giant looked cute graphically, but I think everything was little bit too tiny for the PSVR, since the image quality of the headset isn’t completely sharp so many things appeared blurry.

Sound

This whole piece was completely voice acted which added even more depth to the story. I could easily see this being extremely boring without it. All the actors and characters were like from an animation movie, even the quality. I even noticed some little effects that added more realism to all the audio depending the playable area. I always notice the tiniest details in video games because I—for some weird reason—always take first notice to the surroundings, details, structure, texture… all of it. I always want to see how something was made and how the scenery was built, even with the sound.

Difficulty

Playing this once I almost got all the collectibles, just missing few. I had little difficulties with focusing of doing something and that was because of the hot weather and the uncomfortable feeling, which isn’t PSVR or the game’s fault. Some of the issues with the reaching or grabbing objects could’ve possibly been fixed with changing the position of the camera, but I noticed when I tried new game with standing, the gameplay was mostly the same. Ghost Giant wasn’t difficult, but it was sometimes frustrating, but this seems to be due the nature of PSVR system itself, as it doesn’t seem to be very accurate on any game.

Last impression

Ghost Giant is one of the must-play games if you own PSVR system and Move controllers. Everything was in place, minus the little hiccups with the controls. The storytelling with VR is simply magical and the way this is put together is nearly flawless. I always love games from the studio Zoink! I have made few reviews of their other games in the past Fe, Flipping Death and Stick it to The Man! and they all got good numbers from me. So does Ghost Giant.

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RELEASE DATE: Apr 16, 2019
GENRE: Adventure/Puzzle/Unique
PUBLISHER:  Zoink Games
DEVELOPER:  Zoink Games
PLATFORMS: PlayStation 4

 

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