Ghost Giant (PS4)

There are some things you just can’t do as a kid no matter how mature or independent that child may be. Sometimes it’s for as simple of a reason as being too small, other times it can be because you haven’t had the time to learn what you need to know about the world yet, but it can even be because society is going to treat you like a child no matter what you say. In Ghost Giant, a young boy named Louis feels all these pressures crushing down on him, brought to tears by his ineffectiveness… but luckily he’s not alone. From his tears rise the Ghost Giant, the player taking on that role to help Louis try to put his life back on track and finding that, with the comfort of that kind of support, Louis can be a capable, empathetic, and adorable kid.

 

While the game begins with Louis crying, Ghost Giant isn’t generally a downer of a game. There is definitely something serious going on in the background that needs addressing, Louis frequently having to lie to cover for his mother whose issues you won’t even know for quite a while. Louis is left to try and manage the farm himself initially, and most of your early work as the Ghost Giant is just to help him overcome the burden of labor the little guy is left with. Using the PSVR’s Move controllers you can quite easily pluck plants right out of the dirt, lift and move roadblocks, and even create bridges as the early tasks make way to the game’s more substantial puzzles found in the town of Sancourt. Styled as a french village but with humanoid animals as citizens, Sancourt is a quirky place to be sure. A bird reappears around town concocting strange plans to get his hands on anything shiny he spots, a lion struggles to find his dream job to the point his vegetable stand starts to rot, and a ghost hunter girl seems unconvinced there could be anything like a Ghost Giant and instead only settles for the most standard bedsheet ghosts as proof of spectral phenomena.

While helping Louis interact with the people with Sancourt, Ghost Giant can be quite a comedic and wholesome game. Louis is absolutely precious, turning to the player to tell cheesy jokes and thanking them when they help. Despite being a cat, he feels written realistically, playful but not precocious or simple-minded. In fact, while there are many delightful moments to be had with Louis about town, the game doesn’t forget the adventure began with him crying, the cracks starting to show as a more heart-wrenching reality lies beneath why a little boy has to go around town making apologies and completing chores that would be near impossible without his spectral helper. Ghost Giant pulls off sweet and sad moments, but while it builds excellently to its big finale, it also feels like some of its messaging about what the issue with the mother is isn’t put forth quite explicitly enough. It’s not so grim it can’t be covered in a game that might be played by young players and if anything, it might be edifying if it came out and said some of the things it implied strongly or at least better depicted how it’s addressed once it’s all out in the open. The narrative decision to brush over the potentially uncomfortable parts doesn’t diminish the story and many people will be able to figure things out without Ghost Giant laying everything out, but even just a few extra lines could have taken things from depiction to discussion. Perhaps such a frank discussion felt too much of a break from the more comforting world presented, but the ending does feel like it tries to wrap things up too quickly.

 

On your way through Sancourt though, there are plenty of puzzles to solve utilizing your size advantage over the town. The Ghost Giant is able to reach around and grab objects to move them about, and this isn’t always as simple as carrying one object to the spot it belongs. You won’t only be pulling back walls to peer into houses, your spectral hand letting you spin buildings around or shift their elevation. At times you may want to lean in to peer into houses for useful items, but after getting you acclimated with your size, the game does start concocting more involved interactions. One level for example has you needing to paint a picture, the player needing to find everyday items in the area that can produce paint for your massive brush. Another will almost turn things into a fishing game as you use a ramshackle magnet on a crane to try and plunder a junkyard for useful tools.

There are actions that are more about the physicality of the task while others are truly about figuring out how objects in a space can be used together to solve a problem, and another way Louis might endear himself to you is by being a somewhat layered hint system. Give him a little poke when he’s looking at a problem and he’ll start off giving you a simple hint, a few more prods and he’ll spell it out more clearly. Other characters nearby can sometimes start laying out hints on how to solve their problems as time passes, a bit too directly at times, but at the same time figuring out what can be interacted with in an area and hunting around for new tools can lead to those wonderful “a ha!” moments that make puzzle solving satisfying.

 

Ghost Giant does have some optional activities to complete in each space, although they can rub up against some issues with VR detection. There are points where you’re asked to blow to do things like spin a pinwheel or scare away birds, the PSVR microphone sometimes needing a little finagling to detect you doing so. There are often hidden basketball hoops in a level where you can try and sink a shot, but you can’t really do a normal basketball throw in VR so it might come down to experimenting with how it detects your granny shots. It might be because of my height but it could sometimes feel like the game put me too close or required me to adjust my arm movements to be more minute for interacting with the world, but there are no actions that require dexterous quick movement and it usually just took a few quick retries at a simple action to get them to work. Generally the obstacle to success is figuring out what to do rather than the performance of the right action. Novelty is often the main draw over difficulty admittedly, but the activities are creative enough to attach well to the heartfelt story of supporting Louis in his time of need.

THE VERDICT: The gentle hand of the Ghost Giant provides needed comfort and reshapes the world in this PSVR game, the endearing and delightful Louis the game’s heart while the body comes from messing around with the buildings of Sancourt to solve the puzzles in his path.  Nifty concepts buoy some simpler puzzles while others ask you to consider and search the area for more involved interactions, the player’s actions helping to progress a story that is adorable and silly and yet still able to balance the injection of some weightier subject matter fairly well. PSVR puzzles and the plot take turns fleshing out this little adventure, it hard to leave this whimsical world behind when everything is wrapped up a bit too quickly at the end.

 

And so, I give Ghost Giant for PlayStation 4…

A GOOD rating. Louis is definitely the deciding factor on bumping this game up above some of its simpler moments, especially with his voice actor Kimlinh Tran able to bring such authentic emotion to the moments that need it. Louis is your little pal as you go about town experimenting with how you can impact the world, not everything up for grabs but enough can be fiddled with to make the problem solving not too straightforward. It can be quite a cheery little adventure at times, but it usually has a good sense for when and how to dive into the more serious subjects that lead to Louis being in a tough spot. How deep to plunge into that discussion was likely a hard balance to decide on, but when even Louis isn’t given proper on-screen explanation of all that’s wrong it does feel like the game shies away from nailing down certain details that would help its narrative out. The general idea about Louis feeling helpless in this situation way out of his depth is handled excellently, but what exactly his mother is going through can still be inferred by those with a more mature understanding of what they’re seeing. The speedy wrap-up is probably the part that stings more since the game did decide to go with being subtle, but the moments of strong emotion are evocative while Ghost Giant can also get you smiling along during its moments of stress-free fun.  Perhaps if the detection was a bit better on certain movements then some puzzles could be more complicated, but the shift in activity design staves off any repetition as you keep uncovering new ways a Ghost Giant can impact the world.

 

Ghost Giant reminds me a fair bit of another PSVR game called Moss, except here its a cat instead of a mouse you’re helping out. Immersing you by rooting the VR player as a companion to an in-game character feels effective in both cases while Ghost Giant feels better at concocting unique actions for the player to perform, its story also more self-contained and trying to be more personal than Moss’s grand adventure cut short. VR play can sometimes feel like a toy box as it’s more about seeing what you’re interacting with than the substance of it, but puzzles are a fine fit for that direction and a meaningful narrative over top can help push things even further. Ghost Giant is certainly meant to be accessible to players of all ages so it’s more about nifty interactions than brain-benders, but add a cute and touching tale over top with a character you quickly learn to love and it ends up a game that’s much easier to say is a worthwhile play despite the common PSVR game trait of having a short play time.