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COSTUME QUEST 2:
Sony's Flash Sale of indie games started Friday (ending Monday, January 26) and I bought Costume Quest 2 for $3 on the PS4. It's actually a pretty enjoyable game, even though I felt it was too short. I beat the game after only about seven hours, but I'm sure now that I know what I'm doing/where to go next, that you can probably finish the game in four hours, or less, if you do a speed run.
For $3, I couldn't complain that much, but I felt bad for fans who paid full price ($14.99) for the game. I think digital download games (especially short games) should be under $5. The tradeoff for digital convenience, is that you lose the ability to share your game, or re-sell your used game, or actually owning a physical disc. Yet digital goods are still just as expensive (sometime even costing much more) than their physical counterparts.*
If you're interested, you play as kids on Halloween eve. Depending on your costume, when you fight monsters, you gain the costume's special abilities. For example, wearing the Wizard costume will grant you electrical spell.
Most of the costumes are useful and made sense for the game, however some of the later costumes didn't make much sense (for example, the hotdog costume that you gain near the end). Maybe they could have restricted the game to just five or six costumes? If you're like me, you tend to only use the same three costumes anyway - unless I'm forced to use other costumes.
Just for the record, my three go-to costumes are the Werewolf (causes bleeding damage), the Wizard (damages all enemies), and the Clown (heal all special ability). Since the game was so short, the later costumes that were introduced, like the Ghost and the Robot, were severely underused/ignored in my game. Also, the Candy Corn costume is absolutely useless (it cannot attack). I wondered why they would include a powerless costume, but I can only speculate they built it in as a joke.
In my first game, I was playing it wrong. I didn't use the cards (didn't even know I can change the cards) and I didn't look at my quest guide either (to know what to do next). I wish I knew about some of these things, but you can obviously finish the game without using all of the games' features and functions.
Despite my criticisms and complaints, as I previously mentioned, the game was enjoyable. If they decide to make a third game, I'll be interested... but probably not at full retail price.
Costume Quest 2 came out on the PS4 on Halloween, October 31, 2014, via Double Fine Productions/Midnight City.
* I feel the same way about comic books... if you're going to charge me $3.99, then I want the paper, the ink, and sweet smell of newsprint paper.
For $3, I couldn't complain that much, but I felt bad for fans who paid full price ($14.99) for the game. I think digital download games (especially short games) should be under $5. The tradeoff for digital convenience, is that you lose the ability to share your game, or re-sell your used game, or actually owning a physical disc. Yet digital goods are still just as expensive (sometime even costing much more) than their physical counterparts.*
If you're interested, you play as kids on Halloween eve. Depending on your costume, when you fight monsters, you gain the costume's special abilities. For example, wearing the Wizard costume will grant you electrical spell.
Most of the costumes are useful and made sense for the game, however some of the later costumes didn't make much sense (for example, the hotdog costume that you gain near the end). Maybe they could have restricted the game to just five or six costumes? If you're like me, you tend to only use the same three costumes anyway - unless I'm forced to use other costumes.
Just for the record, my three go-to costumes are the Werewolf (causes bleeding damage), the Wizard (damages all enemies), and the Clown (heal all special ability). Since the game was so short, the later costumes that were introduced, like the Ghost and the Robot, were severely underused/ignored in my game. Also, the Candy Corn costume is absolutely useless (it cannot attack). I wondered why they would include a powerless costume, but I can only speculate they built it in as a joke.
In my first game, I was playing it wrong. I didn't use the cards (didn't even know I can change the cards) and I didn't look at my quest guide either (to know what to do next). I wish I knew about some of these things, but you can obviously finish the game without using all of the games' features and functions.
Despite my criticisms and complaints, as I previously mentioned, the game was enjoyable. If they decide to make a third game, I'll be interested... but probably not at full retail price.
Costume Quest 2 came out on the PS4 on Halloween, October 31, 2014, via Double Fine Productions/Midnight City.
* I feel the same way about comic books... if you're going to charge me $3.99, then I want the paper, the ink, and sweet smell of newsprint paper.
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PERPLEXED:
Plex is the worst software I've ever used. They recently announced Plex for the PS4, which made me so happy to be able to stream my media to the PS4 (because, as of this writing, PS4 does not play local media files). The other option is PlayOn, which I have not installed or tested out because it costs $40 (one time fee) and I'm pretty sure there is no demo version.
Anyway, with Plex, the first problem I ran into was the indexing of my files - it was still indexing after 7 hours (I went to bed and woke up and remembered it was still indexing!) and I really couldn't play anything during the indexing process. Which is fine, I ran into a similar problem when iTunes first indexed my 1TB music folder. (As a music reviewer, I get a lot of music sent to me, so I guess I'm not the normal user).
After installing the Plex app on the PS4, I quickly realized that you needed a subscription to Plex Pass, which costs $39.99 a year. There was no demo option, and I just refuse to pay that much to test this feature. However, there is the PS4 web browser trick... which sort of worked. It is a terrible experience. Sometime files won't load, sometime it's insufficient system memory, and generally super slow on loading the film or tv shows... But the worst is that even though it's streaming locally, I believe the files are compressed so it doesn't look that great on screen.
The other problem is that the PS4 web browser is bad. Plex on the PS4 browser was buggy. For example, you cannot select alternate audio tracks or subtitles before (or during?) you play a file. Granted, this probably has more to do with the PS4 lame web browser and not to blame Plex... but it is a terrible way for me to experience Plex in this manner.
Then recently I discovered there were gigabytes of data in my recycle bin, filled with thousands and thousands of .bundle files. The Plex software was responsible for this, some users reported 80GB+ in their trash. Given the not-so-great media play back, stress on my computer, and massive amount of files sent to my trash bin.... I uninstalled the software and decided to stay away from Plex.
Based on my bad experiences, I wonder people love and swear by their Plex. Even if they offer it as free on PS4, I'm still going to avoid it. I just wish Sony would get their act together and support DLNA.
Instead, I've decided to look at XBMC once again (renamed now to Kodi - an awful name), so if you are interested in a similar option, I recommend checking out kodi.tv.
Sadly, as far as I know, there's no PS4 support ... but for less than a Plex Pass, you can pick up a Raspberry Pi to stream your media. You'll have to go into your settings and enable UPnP to share videos. I've been streaming movies to my iPad using a DLNA/UPnP client called 8 Player and it plays videos much faster than Plex (once again, I believe it was because Plex was transcoding the files).
Anyway, with Plex, the first problem I ran into was the indexing of my files - it was still indexing after 7 hours (I went to bed and woke up and remembered it was still indexing!) and I really couldn't play anything during the indexing process. Which is fine, I ran into a similar problem when iTunes first indexed my 1TB music folder. (As a music reviewer, I get a lot of music sent to me, so I guess I'm not the normal user).
After installing the Plex app on the PS4, I quickly realized that you needed a subscription to Plex Pass, which costs $39.99 a year. There was no demo option, and I just refuse to pay that much to test this feature. However, there is the PS4 web browser trick... which sort of worked. It is a terrible experience. Sometime files won't load, sometime it's insufficient system memory, and generally super slow on loading the film or tv shows... But the worst is that even though it's streaming locally, I believe the files are compressed so it doesn't look that great on screen.
The other problem is that the PS4 web browser is bad. Plex on the PS4 browser was buggy. For example, you cannot select alternate audio tracks or subtitles before (or during?) you play a file. Granted, this probably has more to do with the PS4 lame web browser and not to blame Plex... but it is a terrible way for me to experience Plex in this manner.
Then recently I discovered there were gigabytes of data in my recycle bin, filled with thousands and thousands of .bundle files. The Plex software was responsible for this, some users reported 80GB+ in their trash. Given the not-so-great media play back, stress on my computer, and massive amount of files sent to my trash bin.... I uninstalled the software and decided to stay away from Plex.
Based on my bad experiences, I wonder people love and swear by their Plex. Even if they offer it as free on PS4, I'm still going to avoid it. I just wish Sony would get their act together and support DLNA.
Instead, I've decided to look at XBMC once again (renamed now to Kodi - an awful name), so if you are interested in a similar option, I recommend checking out kodi.tv.
Sadly, as far as I know, there's no PS4 support ... but for less than a Plex Pass, you can pick up a Raspberry Pi to stream your media. You'll have to go into your settings and enable UPnP to share videos. I've been streaming movies to my iPad using a DLNA/UPnP client called 8 Player and it plays videos much faster than Plex (once again, I believe it was because Plex was transcoding the files).
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