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I wasn't gonna say anything  .Except that I also totally did not get the Alchemy Coin. I thought it wasn't even a weapon, rather something you toss and then chase after to try and hit back and the more often you can play this little minigame, the more money you collect??? I have no idea how that got into my head. As a "floor wave" weapon, it's actually apparently really awesome!
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Oct 19, 2016 22:40
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:14 |
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It makes me happy that I could have been an inspiration  . Especially for a great LP like this!The idea to use subweapons during stages and not boss fight was basically born from Crasical's complaints, but also from playing the games myself and noticing that people seemed to have a vastly different approach. I came to Mega Man very late and wanted to at least try them in chronological order, so at first I was in the mindset of "this is very old and probably very janky, so I should try to make this easy on myself". As platforming in Mega Man is in 99% of cases a complete non-issue (seeing as he has no momentum and no complex movement mechanics), the enemies were the bigger problem, so I tried to find ways to consistently eliminate ones that gave me the biggest headaches. Though I think my biggest aha moment came when I realized that Hyper Bomb is, in fact, quite good at eliminating the fifty billion Suzies in Cut Man's stage that are only there to slow you down and tire your trigger finger. Positioning the awkward bomb correctly to speed up my going through the stage like three times was when I really had fun with Mega Man 1 the first time, and that stayed with me. Also, I have picked up this weird (?) habit of trying to figure out how games were meant to be played. I think that's more of a modern phenomenom, because current titles often are made with a very specific idea for how the player will move, react etc. in mind, but I do think that truly good games of old also did this. Maybe this came from how much I played Super Mario 64 - it's obvious that the designers thought very hard about how to place every single jumping challenge so that you could juuust reach it with a backflip, or only with a sideflip, or maybe even have harmless, not game-breaking shortcuts if you can triple jump, or design the level in a way that you have no good way to get the run-up for a triple jump. Things like that fascinate me, and I really like being rewarded for thinking like the designer - to get back to Mega Man, in MM4 the mummies in Pharaoh Man's stage die in a single Dive Missile, which is not the weakness of Pharaoh Man, but someone had to program that in specifically and make it so that you can just walk through the stage shooting missiles, never stopping, if you did the stages in this certain order. That is cool and such a great thing to find. And back to Shovel Knight: I always enjoyed seeing how stage design subtly shifts right after the secret passage to a subweapon. After you get the Anchor, suddenly there are people on ladders above you, enemies unreachable in the ceiling. After you get the Horn, multiple homing flying enemies accost you (that is obvious as a tutorial), but after that, you get a higher density of smaller enemies, annoying fliers, casters just a bit out of reach which are very difficult to melee...it's great. Of course, the weapons are all optional so you can't have too many "hey dipshit why don't you just shoot upwards for this challenge ugh" moments like MM's Wily Stages could afford to have, but I think there is a deep-seated desire on the designers' part for you to toy around with them regardless, and that's why they made the treasure stages where the weapons are not optional. And which point you towards "hey maybe you want to get this weapon". Such a good game.
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Oct 20, 2016 07:35
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Kaubocks posted:I'm glad I'm not on a Thursday update schedule-- I have no idea how I'd stack up against the Logan trailer, Red Dead Redemption 2 teaser, and Nintendo Switch reveal! 1) I hate waiting around and getting a feel for the situation 2) It's at the tail-end of a bunch of other technical screens that you just cannot go through quickly 3) Every tiny mistake is instant death This caused me no end of frustration. Not because it is objectively hard to understand what you have to do; that is not the point. It is psychologically hard to restrain yourself, keep going through the same motions over and over again to reach the screen of death, play it safe, wait, don't gently caress up the execution, all with the threat of going through all of the other poo poo, with the other instant death pits and the most annoying enemies in the game if you slip up just a bit. Absolutely voted worst screen in Shovel Knight. Also, we had already two great wind screens which is something that hasn't been pulled off since Donkey Kong Country 2 (which pulled off a lot of things brilliantly): first you got wind that only helps you by pushing you forward, making long jumps possible and never asks of you poo poo like "now do a normal-length jump onto a tiny platform, hyuck" or fight minibosses between pits while its blowing or such romhack nonsense. Then you got wind that does push against you, but the combination with the auto-scroller means that it's not the wind that ultimately controls you speed, so it's not that bad, and they were again smart enough not to put in too difficult platforming or a slew of homing enemies or whatever else into it. That's great! That's brilliant! That's where they should have stopped! Seeing as how long some of the single screens take anyway because Propeller Knight's stage is very much a puzzle platformer-type deal, much more so than other stages even though they all have puzzly elements, I think the stage feels by far the longest to play through. Especially if you are doing it fresh and are cautious around the many pits. In my opinion, nothing would have been lost by simply excising those last two screens - they don't even build on existing gimmicks (like the DKC2 level with the wind first from behind, then in front, then switching did), it's practically an entirely new one. For each screen. gently caress those screens. Also, instant death in bossfight is almost never fun. I think Polar Knight is just veering on the "ok" side of things because he's so big that you can use his body as a pogo-platform to avoid the spikes, but Propeller doesn't have this luxury, happens to be one of the fastest bosses period and can mimic the wonderful ability of the green rear end in a top hat fuckers to actively pull you into the pit. Not fun either, especially after the nightmare of his stage. I loathe replaying this.
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Oct 21, 2016 17:56
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Looper posted:I understand and largely appreciate your philosophy on level design, but it's not the only philosophy. quote:And I also don't think that screen is bad at all, but it's funny you bring up DKC2 because Gusty Glade and Animal Antics ask far more of the player in a far less forgiving manner (some of the wind triggers in GG are real finicky) Windy Well is also quite nice because the wind often prevents you from falling down, an issue many vertical levels have, so it's both a core level design element and progress tool and a safety net. Again, you can bypass the triggers by just falling in the wrong places which doesn't make it perfect, but it's better than nothing!
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Oct 22, 2016 09:33
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I am 100% for you doing Plague Knight stuff. I think his gameplay is so radically different that the videos really wouldn't be boring, and you can always bring guests - in fact, if commentary is truly holding you back the most, that might just fix that issue completely! (I do volunteer) I'm mostly also saying this because you got me to pick this up again - I only played half of Plague Knight's campaign - and while I still suck at playing him oh God the story is just adorable. I just tried to dance for Mona and you need to show this off and all the rest too.
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Nov 10, 2016 00:04
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:14 |
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Kaubocks posted:a wise man once said Shovel Knight is the best classic Mega Man game ever made could have been me EDIT: except for the "wise" part
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Dec 6, 2016 00:50
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