Really been enjoying this one on the PS4 lately. Was on the fence for a long time and finally bit the bullet. Was well worth it. Kinda pissed I still get worked over right before the lab.

Love the way the knife is really strong, but has a slow recoil. I'm not great with it, but I could see people getting gud.

Fantastic game, but it takes a while to get used to how to play it well, since a lot of elements feel super unfair early on. It's mostly about mastering the dash - when to do it, and more importantly when not to.

I practiced a bunch on MegaDrive, and eventually beat the game on Neo Geo (which is a near identical version, but with voices, more graphical effects, and one new enemy type on the final stage):

9 hours ago, Sumez said:

Fantastic game, but it takes a while to get used to how to play it well, since a lot of elements feel super unfair early on. It's mostly about mastering the dash - when to do it, and more importantly when not to.

I got the sense that the dash and the melee attack were both key to managing the difficulty, but as I say in the podcast episode I never quite managed to get over that hump. Maybe with another 5-10 hours I could have gotten there. 

Very nice 1cc btw, I am in awe.

15 hours ago, dvertov said:

Maybe with another 5-10 hours I could have gotten there. 

I'm not gonna lie, it actually took me several days to get there. At first I really missed the "dual stick" style controls that the modern ports have, but once the "shock troopers" style controls finally clicked, it really felt the most appropriate to me!

On 8/13/2022 at 3:17 AM, Sumez said:

I'm not gonna lie, it actually took me several days to get there. At first I really missed the "dual stick" style controls that the modern ports have, but once the "shock troopers" style controls finally clicked, it really felt the most appropriate to me!

That's impressive - especially considering the way things drop from the ceiling and pop out of the walls. 

2 hours ago, Californication said:

That's impressive - especially considering the way things drop from the ceiling and pop out of the walls. 

The things that come out of the walls always come out the same locations - when you enter a room, you need to immediately orient yourself and find the best couple of places to stand in order to maintain the incoming wave.

The more annoying sorts of enemies are the plant-like monsters that pop out from the ground. You can avoid them if you have insane reaction skills, but often it comes down more to dumb luck - they should have had a few more frames before being able to damage you honestly, but I think wil practice you learn when to expect them. Though the game has situations where you simply can't avoid taking a hit, which is undefendable, I think those are a lot more rare than they seem at first - and you have enough hitpoints that once you learn how to skillfully avoid damage everywhere else, you have more than enough buffer for those couple of extra hits.

I think also the game's first two stages are some of the worst designed in the game (and the first boss is way more of a blocker than anything else in the entire game). The two outdoor stages as well as the final two ones have a very different feel to them compared to the remaining three, due to both the nature of the enemies, and how they spawn. They are incredibly enjoyable, and where the game really shines IMO.