Double Punctuation posted:

There's Glyde from Undertale, who's pretty cool. It's a shame he's so well hidden; you're probably more likely to get Alphys ordering a pizza than you are to find him, even if you're trying.

Vicas posted:

This LP got me to remember the DLC exists and I'd never played it and holy ball this owns

Simply Simon posted:

It's me, I'm the guy who hates the changing wind screen. My biggest problem is three-fold:
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.

Kaubocks posted:

Simply Simon posted:

I have been criticized in the past that I present my opinion as fact and try to drown out other people's opinion, which I don't actually want to do, so I made specifically sure that I sprinkled in a lot of "in my opinion" and "I think" in this post. Was that still not enough? Honest question. I like writing a lot of words at once, that's just how I write, it's not meant to be a tactic or anything. Of course it's fine to think differently.

I keep forgetting Animal Antics because I might have beaten that level, like, once and never bothered again and that was very late in my many times playing DKC2. I always run out of steam at the end. That is indeed a terrible wind level. Gusty Glade however I always really liked because while the triggers are not the best in the world, they are placed in a way that if you just keep going, you will always be helped by the wind, keeping up the flow I love so much. It gives the level a unique speed because of that and it's one of my favourites because of that.

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!