This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PS4 version of Gitaroo Man via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.
Gitaroo Man is a different style of rhythm game to Bit.Trip Presents... Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, that i previously checked out for Cloud Monday. Runner 2 lets you finish the level as long as you cross the finish line. but with Gitaroo Man, it's more of a "traditional" rhythm game where you finish when you beat set conditions. In this game that means beating an enemy.
I found Gitaroo Man to be a lot harder than expected. one of the disadvantages of the game is that there is nothing else to do but replay levels you have completed. but because it's soo tough to get the timing right, i could only replay the tutorial and first boss.
the timing of button presses in Gitaroo Man is very tight. i'd go so far as to say that it's tighter than in #Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line, a game i've lived streamed on this site. there is no easy mode to increase it, there's no calibration mode in the options to help with the timing. Gitaroo Man feels old in how bare bones it is.
If it was easier and that i could make progress and see more of the characters and story, it wouldn't be much of an issue. but streaming it from the cloud, in this part at least but we'll see in Part 2 for sure, seems to be introducing additional delay/lag in the controls which means i can't rely on when the the prompts are on target. i have to judge it slightly earlier. Gitaroo Man is one of the very few games where i've not only noticed the lag in the controls from playing the game in the cloud but couldn't compensate for it. if the game had a practice mode where i could do levels over and over i feel like i could get close.
But there's another downside that did hit Runner 2 and that's the odd stuttering. every now and then, the game would stutter and i'd completely loose any rhythm i had. you can see at the end that i had a great internet connection, but of course i'm unable to check for bandwidth.
