I played this and tried to see how long I could last against the police and I got to 70 before I died. I don't know if there's an ending for getting a certain amount of police kills because no matter how many I got the game would not end until I kicked the bucket.
Sleepkirby6472
Recent community posts
I'll be honest it's ben SO long since we got a new haunted PS1 demo disc but as we all know: Patience is a virtue. So I spent most of my time playing the older demo discs (Except Madvent 4. It wouldn't let me play that one for some reason.) and played some retro horror games while I waited. And when a new demo disc finally dropped I was super excited to play it.
Also be weary of spoilers for the demo. Seriously this demo has plenty of content so if you don't want the demo spoiled I recommend playing it first before you read this.
First impressions and it forces me into a intro cutscene which I cannot skip. (Must be important?) Which is weird because Haunted PS1's Museum and Spectral Mall did not have one aside from a small in-game opening when you boot up Spectral Mall with a fresh save file. But there's one thing this game has something over the others: A fully fledged story!
In the opening you play as a kid and follow after Skully down a pier. It has some nice story bits with the two and then once you get there it transitions into an FMV cutscene under the PS1's capabilities. In it the kid and Skully make it to the party where it houses several characters from past demo discs including Bitey! But not Gifty. I guess she abandoned him after Madvent 4 but I can't say for sure since I couldn't play that one.
They set up a ritual to summon a new demo disc and... One of the steps makes me uncomfortable as they literally plan on having the blood of the child be part of the process. Thankfully they don't follow through with it as the ritual goes through anyway with a younger version of Skully but it still leaves a poor taste in my mouth.
The new kid wreaks havoc which stops when the kid shoots it. But unfortunately he is too slow since Skully was shot and now has to lie down. Probably him dying who knows?
But after that we are brought to the main menu which is pretty clever since it's environment IS the menu with the remote being the options, The painting being the credits, The VHS set letting you re-watch cutscenes and the TV housing the game library. While it is better than how the very first demo disc handled it, I still think it is beat by the museum from the 2021 demo disc and spectral mall. (Most of the Madvents are excluded since it wouldn't be fair to include them.)
But as it implies the gimmick is it's flip capability with one side housing the horror games and the other housing the... dream games? I know you wanted something fresh but this is Haunted PS1! If you want to have something other than horror for a PS1 jam have it be it's own line-up of demos called Dreamy PS1 or something! Don't just shove them into a Haunted PS1 Demo Disc! But regardless it's a cool idea to have half of the games separated and you even get an animation for clicking on the PS1. That being said I am going to start with the horror games since that's the main appeal of Haunted PS1.
The Haunted side of games are surprisingly good with only 2 games I couldn't play due to Norton being a jerk and 1 that was out of place feeling more at home on the NES than a PS1. The horror was also balanced really well with it having enough horror so I don't fall asleep to it from boredom but also not going overboard so sleeping is not an issue at night. Though I think Juice took it a bit too far. As it made me feel uncomfortable. But not in a scary way but in a way which had me saying "What the actual hell is wrong with you?!"
One nice thing is that it lets you toggle if the game is cleared or not so even if you can't play the game you can still make progress. Would have ben handy for the chained demos but hey I'm still happy that even if you can't play all the demos you can still make progress.
The menu for horror is honestly a step up from the 2020 demo disc as it feels more like a horror menu. It shows 3D blood particles which re-present the games though they don't have PS1 styled covers anymore which kind of sucks but they do have an eye showing the demo in action before you trigger the sub-menu. Though the jazz music just doesn't cut it for me. Feels less fitting than the 2020 demo disc honestly.
SPOILER WARNING!!!
After beating some of the horror demos a mid-game cutscene plays where the kid gets a Metal Gear styled call from someone who sounds like Solid Snake. As it turns out he's ben mutated into the area and the PS1 horror mascot Haunty is the only way to revert it. It succeeds and after he's freed he tells the kid to keep playing the demos in hopes of freeing everyone. The kid follows suit and it's back to the main menu.
After all of the horror demos have ben beaten the PS1 glows again and the kid reverts another demon back to normal in the frozen kitchen (You think Bitey would have ben there instead of it but whatever) and he's reverted back to normal. After that it's back to more demos!
SPOILERS STOP FOR NOW
The dream side is where everything takes a turn into the "What?" valley. While it is nice that Skully's youger self is getting some recognition, it's still odd that games about dreams are in a haunted PS1 collection.
The menu itself feels wrong because of the balloon showing you the demos which has no logic whatsoever over a cityscape with trains representing the games with a relaxing OST. If anyone wanted to know what the horror was about, I'd start with the horror side of the disc first.
The games themselves are good to mediocre with the same amount I couldn't play as the horror side but they feel out-of-place in a demo like this. It feels like there are actual horror games mired in the dreams that shouldn't be here. Though during the dream portion the demo disc crashed on me when I tried to load a game I couldn't play. Never with the horror-side.
SPOILER WARNING!!!
After 3 demos on the dream side it's time to revert the demonic chicken back to the cool chicken that was in the intro who is chasing some dude. It feels like part of the dream side we don't even get to play and once he's saved and the chicken is normal it's off to more demos.
After 9 demos in the dream side Bitey and Soyna are next in the only unique cutscene in the game and also the most out-of-place because it feels more like a NES RPG game. Bitey actually wears something unique this time which carries over into her normal form while Soyna is reverted from her monster form and then it's off to the last 3 demos.
MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!!!
After finishing all the demos in both sides the younger skully returns to heal the real Skully back to full and after apologizing to the younger skully, he waves farwell and returns to the 2021 demo disc game he came from which confuses everyone. And all of that for a bonus game that's just a walking simulator. Not. Worth. It.
Honestly I think this demo disc is sandwitched between the 2021 museum demo disc and the Spectral Mall demo disc. It can't top Spectral because it had that fully explorable attribute to it while this demo doesn't.
To be honest the idea of the game is fine and all and it plays really well but there's only 1 stage and 4 cars. Once you 100% completed it there's little to no reason to re-play it. Not like it matters anyway because the timer is pointless. The ONLY thing it gatekeeps is the mission where you have to finish the track without running out of time. Other than that the timer does not hamper you at all so you can just screw around and complete the other missions.
A glitch occured while I was playing the game. After the 1st minigame 2 players tied for the loss and the game didn't know how to handle it. This caused a glitch where no one would say anything effectively soft locking the game.
Update: I managed to beat the game but honestly I didn't enjoy my time. The last minigame just felt too much for me even if the audience was just cardboard cutouts and with only 3 questions part of the fun in high scores is lost completely. Not to mention the online leaderboards just seem rigged since it doesn't explain how to get on the leaderboards so even if you get the maximum possible score it's not good enough. I honestly wish there was some sort of offline leaderboard so you could keep track of your own scores.
As creepy as this game is, hopping is useless due to the lack of powersliding or drift-boosting and the interstate section is not very clear as to where you're supposed to go if you end up driving the wrong way. Not to mention the timer means nothing since it does not get displayed upon beating the game and when your tires get blown out it doesn't stop meaning if you end up speed running this game it can feel like a slog.
I'll be honest the game being an remake of Turbo Outrun sounds good but way the game handles the upgrades feels more like I'm playing an arcade version of Gran Turismo than Outrun. And since parts can break at a moments notice combined with how you have a limited amount of them plus a meter on the left side of the screen which I find completely useless means it can get overwhelming for some people and since the more realistic upgrade system is forced into the original mode there's no way to turn it off.
I'm also not a fan of the engine noises because MY GOD the default settings are too loud to even hear the music. You basically have to turn the engine noises down manually just to hear anything which is just ridiculous.
Also I just wanna mention something: Why are we not allowed to adjust the car's color? Like seriously other cars on the road can have different paintjobs (Like how the Ferrari F40 can be seen white when driven by NPCS) so why can't we?
I'll be honest this game does have interesting ideas and it even uses minigames from Bishi Bashi of all games but honestly?
Graphics wise the game has quite the charm. It looks like something you would find in a children's coloring book but the cast is kind of disappointing. Though one positive I can give the cast is that modding them is possible. So if you want to have characters from different series you can definitely stand out. (Assuming you know what you are doing)
Presentation wise it is really clean and the boards from other games is a pretty cool idea even if some of the boards do suck. (Luigi's engine room is a great offender in my opinion)
The sound department does contain music and sound effects from other games but it tends to glitch out. However it does let you adjust the SFX and music manually so if you want to quiet down the music but keep the SFX the same volume you can do just that.
Gameplay wise the game lets you adjust plenty of things before the game starts way more than any normal Mario Party game but one thing I would have liked to see is the option to have 2nd and 3rd place still recive a small amount of coins. That was a pity feature of Mario Party that still made it feel like you have a chance and it would have benefited with the game's bad AI. The AI is sometimes utter garbage and sometimes it is just brutal. I had a situation in the cherry minigame during a 2v2 where both my teammate and the other team were utter garbage and would not throw the cherry far enough towards me making it the most annoying moment I had to put up with and most of the time the AI were just out for me and would not stop until I was dead. And keep in mind I was playing with the AI set to normal. Not to mention if you play on teams on the board there is literally nothing stopping your partner from screwing you over. Having a option to turn off friendly fire would have ben appreciated because my partner kept being a massive jerk to me even though we were both on the same side.
The board can easily drive anyone up the wall and I know some people love that but I personally hate it. And before people yell at me saying "It'S a MaRiO pArTy ThInG bEcAuSe It'S a BoArD gAmE!" It's not just the dice blocks! The computer players can just screw you over at the worst possible moments! Even if you set the Luck based minigames off the game will just throw RNG right into your face with the AI!
The minigames are easily the best part of the game but sadly you can only play tournament mode with the minigames which I find stupid. The one part of the game that I like has little to no replay value? That's just ridiculous.
So in all honesty it may be better than the Mario Party series as a whole but when the Mario Party series is so bad it isn't worth playing unless you wanna kill friendships it is not saying much. Honestly? I find the game bad.
It's not a awful game don't get me wrong it does have it's good elements like large amount of customization for the board, fun mini-games and clever ideas for the settings but it suffers HEAVILY from the main mode still being a chore to play, the AI being coded very poorly especially in the team modes, little to no minigame replay value and a mediocre roster.
I apparently managed to soft-lock the game. When I got the headphones I used them in the ice room and I couldn't move at all and the menu would not open. The only way out of this was to X out of the game.
Update: Another issue I am having with the game is that the event for drinking 5 times at the pub in the city can randomly freeze the cutscene softlocking the game forcing me to reset the game.
Update 2: Another cutscene can softlock my game. This time it's the event on the boat.
I found 2 bugs at 2:09 in the video.
The first is near the bunny's house. There is a spot behind the house where it seems like you can walk past no issue but there is a random invisible wall stopping you. Why not just have a fence there so it shows that you can't go that way?
And the 2nd bug involves the river. I seen ways to make the scooter glitch out by riding it near the lake so I did it myself on-foot and hey! I can walk on water! But the space is really tight and I can't get out. Resulting in me softlocking the game. And when I tried to reload my file (Which takes longer than it should since the quit option boots you back to your computer) it respawned me in the same spot forcing me to start a new file and start all over.
This basically states that the river can hard-brick your save file if you're not careful.