New niece! :D
Galaxies by Owl City
Hi all. Things are settled back into the usual rhythm of life for the most part. My sister gave birth to another daughter recently, which is of course a big deal. ^.^ I went and met her last Sunday, a couple weeks after the birth. It also doubled as my sister's birthday celebration. She asked for a Blu-Ray player, which we (myself, my brother, and surprisingly my parents) took as an excuse to get her a PlayStation 3 with a few games and extra controllers. We had plenty of fun setting up and testing the system, playing a bit of Little Big Planet and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Unfortunately the kiddies of the house were sick at the time, and my brother and I apparently caught what they had because we both woke up with sore throats this morning. X) Ah well, such is life.
This month's progress has been mostly bug fixes and filling in little details in the combat plugin. The biggest occurrence was that I happened across a peculiar bug, not in my own plugin, but in DynRPG itself, or maybe RM2K3. A certain data value indicating what type of action a battler just took was being changed if an actor used a skill that targets themself and uses up more than half of their remaining MP. It took me quite a while to narrow down what was going on, and when I did I had to update the DynBattleChoices plugin to work around this quirk.
Not much to report MU-wise. I did have a few social scenes on NMR, which might be considered decent character development. I also wrote a cutscene for a What-If challenge about a character becoming a Kage. In this case, it was Shemri taking up the mantle in mid-battle, not because she was the best qualified, but because SOMEBODY had to for the Suna forces to remain unified and the hat fell near her. c.c The TF forum scene is still inching along as well. The group has reached the cave where the dodongos nest and carefully ventured inside while most of the dodongos are out hunting.
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse:
This is actually the third installment in the Shantae series. I picked it up two Christmases ago at the same time I got the original Shantae because they were both on sale in the Nintendo eShop. As you may recall from my review of the original, it was pretty terrible, mainly due to clunky controls, but also because of general poor design.
Well, it seems WayForward has learned a lot over the years, because Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is much better. The controls are far smoother, most importantly in terms of your basic attack -- it comes out almost instantly and doesn't leave you stuck in place for more than a split-second. The general design is better too; you don't run into enemies with unavoidable attacks anymore, the dungeons are less samey and easier to navigate (especially since there's an auto-map on the secondary screen), and the puzzles are less opaque. It's still not mind-blowingly good, but it's a solid Metroidvania-style adventure worthy of being on a Nintendo console.
...Mechanically speaking, anyway. There's still a good bit of cheesecake fanservice in it, more even than the original, in fact. Nearly every female character has cartoonishly idealistic proportions and wears skimpy clothing, and with the graphical improvement since the GBC days, you see it in a lot more detail. There's even a dungeon in which Shantae and several NPCs are each mistaken for a lost princess by a kooky cult and dressed in a manner similar to Princess Leia's slave outfit in Return of the Jedi (lampshaded by Shantae complaining that she looks like a space princess).
Bottom line? Okay as a game, rather base as an artistic piece. I don't really recommend it.
1001 Spikes:
I got this one as a gift this Christmas, on Steam. It's billed as an old-school tough-as-nails platformer with an 8-bit aesthetic, about an Indiana Jones-esque temple raider. The temple of course features myriad deadly traps to discourage intruders, most commonly the eponymous spikes.
Now, I don't mind tough so much. I've conquered and enjoyed similarly masocore titles like Super Meat Boy and N+. What I do mind is fake difficulty, and 1001 Spikes features that as a big part of what makes it tough. Specifically, it follows the "Denial of information critical to progress" subcategory. There are traps in the game that give no indication of their presence, mainly places where spikes will pop out shortly after the player sets foot on them, but also such things as platforms which fall and snow which may or may not crumble. There are some indicators to give small warning in the earlier stages, like the dangerous blocks having a different appearance than more common ones or a skeleton sitting unobtrusively in the background, but ultimately anything could be dangerous and you won't know for sure until you get there. You end up developing a certain "what-if" sense to watch out for situations that look like the designer is trying to get you, and there's technically just enough time to react to a trap on a basic level, but your reaction will very often make you fall prey to another hazard. So in the end you have to explore each stage's traps by trial and error, dieing over and over.
Speaking of dieing, an interesting note is that unlike many modern masocore games, 1001 Spikes has limited lives. But then, they start you off with 1001 lives, so it's almost immaterial. X) In the first half of the game each stage has a golden skull as an optional collectible, and it gives you a 1-up, so if you can manage to reach it before dieing you essentially get a free retry of the stage (and 1 added to your stockpile going forward if you actually finish the stage after getting it, for what little that matters). They also give you large chunks of extra lives at each 5-stage milestone. I actually had more lives than I started with when I finished the game, although I did dip below the 1001 mark at a couple of points.
There are also a few "arcade modes" available, which are generally easier than the main quest. They're also multiplayer, although I haven't had occasion to try them with any friends yet. The downside is, you don't get saved progress on them, so you have to go through the whole thing at one shot.
Bottom line? Vaguely satisfying in the end, in a "Gyaaaah, take THAT, you cheating game!" kind of way, but really I'd recommend most folk give this one a pass.
Click to viewHi all. Things are settled back into the usual rhythm of life for the most part. My sister gave birth to another daughter recently, which is of course a big deal. ^.^ I went and met her last Sunday, a couple weeks after the birth. It also doubled as my sister's birthday celebration. She asked for a Blu-Ray player, which we (myself, my brother, and surprisingly my parents) took as an excuse to get her a PlayStation 3 with a few games and extra controllers. We had plenty of fun setting up and testing the system, playing a bit of Little Big Planet and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Unfortunately the kiddies of the house were sick at the time, and my brother and I apparently caught what they had because we both woke up with sore throats this morning. X) Ah well, such is life.
This month's progress has been mostly bug fixes and filling in little details in the combat plugin. The biggest occurrence was that I happened across a peculiar bug, not in my own plugin, but in DynRPG itself, or maybe RM2K3. A certain data value indicating what type of action a battler just took was being changed if an actor used a skill that targets themself and uses up more than half of their remaining MP. It took me quite a while to narrow down what was going on, and when I did I had to update the DynBattleChoices plugin to work around this quirk.
Not much to report MU-wise. I did have a few social scenes on NMR, which might be considered decent character development. I also wrote a cutscene for a What-If challenge about a character becoming a Kage. In this case, it was Shemri taking up the mantle in mid-battle, not because she was the best qualified, but because SOMEBODY had to for the Suna forces to remain unified and the hat fell near her. c.c The TF forum scene is still inching along as well. The group has reached the cave where the dodongos nest and carefully ventured inside while most of the dodongos are out hunting.
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse:
This is actually the third installment in the Shantae series. I picked it up two Christmases ago at the same time I got the original Shantae because they were both on sale in the Nintendo eShop. As you may recall from my review of the original, it was pretty terrible, mainly due to clunky controls, but also because of general poor design.
Well, it seems WayForward has learned a lot over the years, because Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is much better. The controls are far smoother, most importantly in terms of your basic attack -- it comes out almost instantly and doesn't leave you stuck in place for more than a split-second. The general design is better too; you don't run into enemies with unavoidable attacks anymore, the dungeons are less samey and easier to navigate (especially since there's an auto-map on the secondary screen), and the puzzles are less opaque. It's still not mind-blowingly good, but it's a solid Metroidvania-style adventure worthy of being on a Nintendo console.
...Mechanically speaking, anyway. There's still a good bit of cheesecake fanservice in it, more even than the original, in fact. Nearly every female character has cartoonishly idealistic proportions and wears skimpy clothing, and with the graphical improvement since the GBC days, you see it in a lot more detail. There's even a dungeon in which Shantae and several NPCs are each mistaken for a lost princess by a kooky cult and dressed in a manner similar to Princess Leia's slave outfit in Return of the Jedi (lampshaded by Shantae complaining that she looks like a space princess).
Bottom line? Okay as a game, rather base as an artistic piece. I don't really recommend it.
1001 Spikes:
I got this one as a gift this Christmas, on Steam. It's billed as an old-school tough-as-nails platformer with an 8-bit aesthetic, about an Indiana Jones-esque temple raider. The temple of course features myriad deadly traps to discourage intruders, most commonly the eponymous spikes.
Now, I don't mind tough so much. I've conquered and enjoyed similarly masocore titles like Super Meat Boy and N+. What I do mind is fake difficulty, and 1001 Spikes features that as a big part of what makes it tough. Specifically, it follows the "Denial of information critical to progress" subcategory. There are traps in the game that give no indication of their presence, mainly places where spikes will pop out shortly after the player sets foot on them, but also such things as platforms which fall and snow which may or may not crumble. There are some indicators to give small warning in the earlier stages, like the dangerous blocks having a different appearance than more common ones or a skeleton sitting unobtrusively in the background, but ultimately anything could be dangerous and you won't know for sure until you get there. You end up developing a certain "what-if" sense to watch out for situations that look like the designer is trying to get you, and there's technically just enough time to react to a trap on a basic level, but your reaction will very often make you fall prey to another hazard. So in the end you have to explore each stage's traps by trial and error, dieing over and over.
Speaking of dieing, an interesting note is that unlike many modern masocore games, 1001 Spikes has limited lives. But then, they start you off with 1001 lives, so it's almost immaterial. X) In the first half of the game each stage has a golden skull as an optional collectible, and it gives you a 1-up, so if you can manage to reach it before dieing you essentially get a free retry of the stage (and 1 added to your stockpile going forward if you actually finish the stage after getting it, for what little that matters). They also give you large chunks of extra lives at each 5-stage milestone. I actually had more lives than I started with when I finished the game, although I did dip below the 1001 mark at a couple of points.
There are also a few "arcade modes" available, which are generally easier than the main quest. They're also multiplayer, although I haven't had occasion to try them with any friends yet. The downside is, you don't get saved progress on them, so you have to go through the whole thing at one shot.
Bottom line? Vaguely satisfying in the end, in a "Gyaaaah, take THAT, you cheating game!" kind of way, but really I'd recommend most folk give this one a pass.