Topic: Push Square Game Club Spooktacular: Resident Evil 4

Can I still play this game?

@Octane I don't see why not. Unless you're asking if you can still claim it from PS Plus - because that one's a no unfortunately, it was a February game.

@Octane Yeah, I haven’t even started it either! I really didn’t expect everyone to beat it in a couple of days so we really need a game for the rest of the month 😂

@nessisonett Good to know lol. Looks like it's only a couple of hours. I should be able to finish it in a couple of days then.

@nessisonett @Octane If it means anything, I'm hunting for collectibles and watching/helping my nephew complete a parallel playthrough, so I'm technically still playing it as well. Although my PS+ expires in five days, so I'll be done playing next week one way or the other.

@R1spam I noticed that (re: frustration with hitting stuff on the walls). I had particular issues with some of the lightbulb segments. The thing is that some designs aren't conducive to activate particular objects well. If you want an amazing lightbulb activator, I recommend the butterflies, though: they fly around and activate bulbs far beyond the reach of your cursor.

With the genie moments, I think you're supposed to create one scene with different designs, but I find that creating art often obscures the hazy image of what the genie wants, so I remove it and just add the next element. So, you know, I get the Genie Moment, but what's supposed to be rainbows, flowers, and trees just ends up being trees.

Oh, and, can I say, I HATE all the unnecessary grass that is automatically created in these designs. I HAVE a grass design to use, so why auto-fill three-fourths of a wall and make it hard to see what else I'm supposed to paint?

Still, I'll say this: it's my favorite Epic Mickey game to date!

I've started playing the game, not sure what to make of it just yet. On the surface it looks like the sort of game I like, it has a progression that makes sense and looks achievable. I've read most of your comments on it but have been skimming the more recent posts as we head into spoiler territory!

I think I'll echo that the performance on base PS4 is a bit off. The frame rate is noticeable which is a shame. I wonder if they used a stop motion animation style for the cut scenes to explain away the frame rate during gameplay but I suspect it was probably coincidence.

The motion controls are weird. I think they work fine and are very responsive but two handed painting just feels really off to me. I had to use one hand to paint which means it's harder to work out where the cursor should be pointing. Unfortunately this is one of those times where a joy con or a Wii remote would be a much better fit for the on screen action. I've switched to analog input for now but I'll probably give the motion control a go again tomorrow. Hmm, I wonder now if you can connect two joy con to the magic S pro adapter and if it supports motion controls 🤔. I'll look into it!

I've moved on from some of those "moments" because I don't have the correct pages to draw them. I've more or less finished the the fish warehouse area now so I may go back and see if I can do the ones I've missed so far. Flicking through the maps in options shows me the lighthouse, the fish ware house, a place in town and the powerplant. Are these the only 4 areas in the game? I don't mind if they are, it would actually motivate me to plough through them a bit quicker than I am.

I played the first chapter of Concrete Genie and so far I have absolutely no idea what to make of it. Part of me feels that it’s not quite creative enough? Perhaps when you have all the pages then you can be more imaginative but for now, I can’t exactly paint anything other than some flowers. The motion controls are alright but I’m not a fan of the slight delay as if you’re placing brush on paper. I paint quite a bit irl and trying to apply experience to this game isn’t quite working out the way I expected. At least the game definitely feels like something different anyway!

@ralphdibny You'll encounter a lot of the genie moments before having the tools to complete them. I just took screenshots on my map of their locations and went on my way, and am now cleaning them up in the post-game.

Performance didn't really bother me early on (to be honest, it didn't bother me at all, since I'm very tolerant of unstable framerates that don't interfere with gameplay), but it becomes pretty noticeable later on in more demanding cutscenes.

I do love that art-style, though. I kinda hope they stick with it for whatever their next project is. And while it's not an amazing game, Concrete Genie is such an improvement over whatever the hell Entwined was supposed to be. If their next game is similarly improved over this, it'll be a real treat.

@Ralizah ah fair enough cheers for the heads up! I'll wait until the endgame to go back for them then!

I'm a bit weird with frame rates, ever since trying PSVR I have been hyper aware of them and they can make me feel a bit sick in a similar way but not nearly as bad as the VR does. I wonder if it's partially just my PS4 showing its age though. I was playing Spyro 3 a few weeks ago and the frame rate just tanked during the later skateboarding levels. I only leave it in Rest mode when I'm not sure how the auto save works in a game but turning the PS4 off properly seems to return games to normal.

I like the art style too, it's not quite Pixar and not quite Tim Burton, it's somewhere in between. I want to say something like Coraline or Kubo but having looked up those two films, they are not that similar. I guess it reminds me a lot of Into the Spider-Verse in that it's a specific art style that comes across as stop motion because of the way it looks and the way it's animated.

But yeah, I quite enjoy games that kind of revel in the animation. Stuff like Knack and the Spyro remakes. I even booted up a game on game pass recently for a Microsoft reward called Max The Curse of the Brotherhood and the art and animation just clicked immediately so I'll try and make a point to return to that some time!

@nessisonett It’s interesting to get the perspective of someone who actually paints. I can see how it might be frustrating to have the limitations of using the controller and not having full access to freely paint what you want. Creatively, things will open up for you gradually so you’ll probably enjoy the options a lot more pretty soon.

@Th3solution It’s just little things that get me, like the Aurora being slightly too thick for the size of canvases, stars needing to be painted using death by a thousand brushstrokes and grass being pointless when flowers come with their own grass!

I managed to connect both my joy cons and a Wii remote and nunchuck to the PS4 and you can use the normal buttons and sticks but unfortunately neither support motion controls! I'll go back to trying the DS4 later!

It's probably not worth setting up the camera and trying one handed DS4 and a Move controller is it? I imagine the move controllers only work in the VR mode

Just started Chapter 5 and skating is awesome!

That is me finished! Fantastic little game, really enjoyed my time with it. Will defo continue playing and possibly go for the platinum.

I’m onto the Waterways now. Really really don’t know what to make of it. The bullies’ whole tragic backstory is one aspect I don’t care for at all as I’ve known plenty people from disadvantaged backgrounds who rise above it and plenty people from stable backgrounds who act like t**ts. It’s too coincidental for every single one of them to have some sort of sob story that justifies how they act.

@nessisonett My take on it is that its more like a kids TV show. You play as a kid who's paintings come to life, not in a realistic drama about modern day bullies. Sure there is a serious message in there as well, but you have to give it some suspension of disbelief too.

And that is the platinum done. Straight forward enough but I did use a guide for the last couple of collectables after going through the map after finishing the story.

I only used a guide to find one page myself (it was in a trash can that I was sure I already checked) - somehow I managed to do everything else myself. No shame if using guides for trophies though, IMO - I definitely did it in other games.

@RogerRoger Thanks! I only had about half a dozen or so of the pages and a couple of the moments left when I had finished the story, after scouring the mapmfor them I only had 3 pages left.

@JohnnyShoulder well done on beating the game! I also use guides to mop up collectibles on some games. Probably depends on the game though but if the collectibles are just there for the sake of it and not locked behind a puzzle or something, well you've seen the game already so why not?

If it is a puzzle collectible, I might use a map to find it but work out the puzzle on my own. I printed off a Korok Seed map for Breath of the Wild after I'd finished it and went around looking for them and crossing them off as I went. Quite hard to work out which ones I had already got though! It was fun doing it that way and I felt like it was in keeping with the spirit of the game, I felt like an adventurer going around and checking my physical map to orientate my self.

One of my favourite guides I have ever found is one for certain sections of The Talos Principle, the person who wrote it put so much care into it in order to not spoil the puzzles. It was like a series of vague clues behind spoiler tags so you could get maybe a clue of where to go, then a clue on what to focus on and so forth until the final spoiler tag would just outright solved the puzzle. It was very well done in my opinion.

I also use the contents page of guides to see where I am in game as I'm playing sometimes. I don't look at the guide itself but just having the contents page open can show me how far in I am and how much I have left which can motivate me to get through the longer or slower paced games.