#and also was because the mechanics of this game are inconsistent so it felt unfair

[synthaphone]

my shiny fails:

shiny Bibarel in Diamond, 2007: first shiny ever, i was like 11 and SUPER excited. unfortunately in was in the safari zone and ended up running away

shiny Charmeleon in Emerald, 2008: i'm counting this as a fail even though it was uncatchable- i was at a Quiznos playing the Battle Factory and one of my opponents rolled a shiny charmeleon as a rental. i did end up swapping for it after beating them and using it for the rest of my factory run, but like. nothing you can do there, RIP

shiny Sunkern in GO, 2018 or something idk: it busted out and ran away. rip

shiny Spheal in Legends Arceus, 2022 probably: rolled away... so sad.........

shiny Dragonite in Lets Go Pikachu, 2023: another 'couldn't catch it before it ran away'

shiny Houndstone in Scarlet, yesterday: I saved in front of it so i thought I was safe- it burst out of 3 moon balls and I decided I didn't want to lose that many of such a rare resource on one pokemon. so i reset and all of the spawns refreshed 🙃

[nhaneh]

So I kind of want to expand a bit on what I mean when I say that I think AC6 is lesser for its obsession with difficulty, and I'm going to use one of its endings for it, specifically the one that comes first in the mission list.

See, the ending is rather tragic - they all are, honestly. I don't know about the other games, but Armored Core 6 is pretty forthright about how even in victory war brings mostly just grief and loss. Still, it's a rather poignant final battle due to who you fight and why.

Or, at least, it would be if the enemy wasn't such a cheating bastard.

The first time I went into that fight, I felt really sympathetic towards my opponent and my feelings resonated with the tragedy of our conflict. By the twentieth or so time I hit Retry Mission, those feelings were all long gone and replaced with frustration and desire for murder. The well-voiced lines of dialogue once tinged with betrayal and regret had come to sound only hollow and insincere.

People talk about how the point is the elation that follows from eventual success, but I don't feel that - my headspace just lingers in the frustration that's built up during the encounter and until that has time to abate my emotions are largely just a lot of residual spite with nowhere to go, which doesn't really leave a whole room for sympathy towards whatever the following cutscenes wete trying to go on about. In the end, it made the emotional message of the game feel more one of how cheaters prosper while those who try to persevere despite being bound by rules that their opposition can freely ignore earn only misery and spite. Which, while uncomfortably real, is perhaps not the message they were going for.

This is in stark contrast to the boss of the second ending, which was actually the ending I went for first, where you fight an enemy AC - a powerful one to be sure, but still a battle where you and your enemy are both on more or less equal terms, and while it was a challenging battle, it never felt that same kind of unfair where my opponent relied on cheating or otherwise ignoring game mechanics in order to artificially inflate its difficulty.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I find the second ending my favourite one in the game - it certainly has plenty of its own tragedy and loss, and is perhaps the one I'm the most ideologically close to, but ultimately it was also the only one that wasn't marred by the game demanding to make me hate it before it would let me see it.

Now, of course, I'm well aware that not every game is for every person, and while AC6 has a lot of aesthetic and narrative aspects that are very much my thing, the difficulty level definitely goes well outside my comfort zone in places*. At the same time though, I can't help but think that if you're intentionally designing a game to make encounters frustratingly difficult, you might also want to recognize the ways frustration will alter someone's perception, rather than just assuming they will immediately be right back on board with your narrative and not instead busy themselves with picking it apart out of spite.

(*I say places because quite honestly the difficulty curve is kind of like a drunken mayfly flitting about all over the place with neither rhyme nor reason. The game isn't so much consistently hard as it is mostly average difficulty that randomly out of nowhere hits you with a brick wall. It's almost comical how inconsistent it is about it)

[robotsprinkles]

okay so having just s-ranked the FoR ending/closure satellite mission I think I have slightly more of a leg to stand on with my criticisms now (not going to be referring to the boss by name because spoilers or whatever)

doing the mission the amount of times I did made some of the issues I was having stand out a lot more (since I kept dying because of them)

(readmore because long.)

(also preemptive "I'm not saying the game is trash I just have some criticisms of certain things and otherwise the game is fantastic" so people don't think I'm being one of those people in steam discussions complaining about the bosses being unfair and boring and bad or stagger being a garbage mechanic or complaining about enemies input reading because they dodged into the enemy's attack after the attack was already going and died or whatever)

I really think the input buffer window for switching weapons from the weapon bay after a melee attack and for charging attacks after switching from the weapon bay should be made a bit longer. it's really annoying dying or taking massive damage or missing out on all your damage after staggering a boss because you started charging the pile bunker or laser lance too early and the input didn't register so you just stand there like an idiot while the boss either recovers or eats half your health in the time it takes you to realise

(yes I could just wait for the animations to finish and know for certain that the weapon's ready to charge but that risks missing the attack window in some cases)

I've read this next one might be a bug from when you attack too soon after staggering a boss and the ai's input reading response overrides the stagger animation/freeze, so maybe it'll get fixed, but it kinda sucks when you stagger a boss and immediately go to do your big damage attack and the boss recovers instantly the moment you start pressing or releasing the button even though they really shouldn't be able to (because if you wait like 100ms or something then the boss doesn't dodge it and stays staggered the attack does hit but if you wait just a few frames too long the boss recovers in the time it takes the attack to charge)

the pile bunker feels wildly inconsistent in certain situations. sometimes it feels like it just decides to miss if you're a bit too far even when in other situations it does hit at that same distance. which means if I'm trying to use it against a boss that likes to dance around a lot (e.g. ibis or the FoR final boss) and I stagger them when they're a bit away from me and I assault boost and charge the bunker, if I charge it a bit too early I'll just whiff and waste the entire/majority of the damage phase. (I probably wouldn't mind as much if the normal attack didn't boost you towards the enemy. also yeah something something skill issue I need to just learn the appropriate measure of the attack. but it does feel kinda dumb that the charged attack doesn't charge you at the enemy when the normal attack does)

assault armour feels similarly harsh in how close you need to be for it to stagger bosses but I don't mind that quite as much. it's still frustrating when I miss the stagger but it feels less like an issue of consistency and more of personal skill/timing/positioning. I think the pile bunker's harshness for measure annoys me because it feels like your ac should be able to just lunge or boost at the enemy when they do the charged attack like they do with the normal/light attack or the laser lance

(also I pretty much never use pulse or assault armour because I keep forgetting I have them and don't normally need them (so far I've only felt like they were necessary against ibis and the FoR boss. and with the FoR boss that's only with my pile bunker+laser lance build because it's nowhere near as tanky or consistent in damage as my other builds))

the laser lance sometimes does a weird thing where the charged attack hits the enemy with the first thrust but either doesn't catch/drag them along with it or catch you on the enemy during it so you just fly past them and the second attack doesn't hit them at all and you end up in a stupid spot (often floating in the air). it's annoying on the FoR boss fight but it feels especially stupid when it happens during the sea spider what with how big the thing is.

also I still don't get why the button prompts in the assembly menu and whatnot don't let you click on them to do what the key it represents does but if you click the wrong thing in the pause menu during a mission (say, restart mission instead of restart from checkpoint), you can't press escape to close the "are you sure" popup.

none of this is to say the game's bad or anything — it's still probably one of my favourite games I've ever played — but these issues do make the game more frustrating than I think it needs to be, and not in a way I think adds much value

I am still going to finish ng+ and do ng++ and get everything in the game though

also here's the build I used for the FoR boss (I should probably have swapped the laser lance for a pulse blade or something but oh well)

[hilltopsunset]

Parkour Janitors: Dustforce Review

For the past few years, I’ve been listening to a variety of video game music mixes on YouTube when focusing on work or other creative endeavors. Some time last year, I had my usual jams on when suddenly I heard a tune that I REALLY liked, but had no idea what it was from. When I glanced at the screen and saw the charming artwork of janitors posted up, lookin’ about ready to drop a hot new album, the first thought I had was, “…how the heck does this awesome music tie into these goofy janitor folk?”

That’s how I learned about the existence of Dustforce.

This happened right around the time I was also preparing to begin my streaming career, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to jump into a new game. Right away I was drawn in by the clean visuals and the art style, the core mechanics of parkour-hopping off and up walls, the concept of cleaning rather than killing, and the melodious, ambient tunes gracing my eardrums. When I first conquered the tutorial levels, I felt well-equipped to handle whatever was ahead of me…and boy was I wrong.

In retrospect, I really feel like the tutorials ill-prepare players for the complex combo-driven controls needed to perform many of the game’s more nuanced, hidden mechanics, which are necessary when attempting to achieve an SS score for the more difficult levels.

Speaking of the SS score, I did appreciate the unique scoring system; each level contains a series of severe slaloms, pillars, tricky jumps, and loopty-loops players must navigate—as well as perilous pits, spikes, and attackers one must avoid—on their way to the finish line. There are two factors the game considers when calculating your rating at the end of a course, and neither has anything to do with how quickly you get through the level…technically. Instead, your score is based on two factors: 1. how much of the garbage you clean from the level, and 2. whether or not you were able to maintain your “combo” the entire time—combo is built by cleaning trash, and lost if you fall into a pit, touch spikes, take a hit, or dawdle too long between garbage cleanings. So while you do want to move efficiently through the level, and plan out your path to ensure you have enough time to get to the next heap of debris before the combo is lost, you could theoretically take 20 minutes or 2 minutes to finish a course and get an SS both times. There are 5 possible scores for both junk cleaned and combo maintained: D, C, B, A, or S, where D is a very poor performance and S is a perfect demonstration. Since there are two scores calculated at the end of each course, a perfect run is typically referred to simply as an SS.

One of the first aspects of Dustforce that struck me as surprising was that there is no story involved at all. The dramatic introduction shown when opening the game, pitting janitors against junkies, really had me under the impression that some tomfoolery was afoot and the bad guys were making a mess of things, and it was up to the Dustforce to stop them. This, however, did not appear to be the case—or if it was, it was never explained, described, or demonstrated in any way throughout the entirety of the game. In fact, not one of those “bad guy” characters appears a single time. There are occasionally “trash monsters” that you need to give a good bopping to in order to rid them of their leaf-coat or gunk-shell to pacify them, but the specific characters shown in the opening never make an appearance. Which kinda made me sad, to be honest. It would have been neat to see SOME sort of story, even if only told visually.

When it comes to the playable characters, though, you have four options: Dust Guy, Dust Girl, Dust Kid, and Dustworth. When I first started playing, I assumed the differences between the character were strictly aesthetic, because there is no indication anywhere that they are any different at all. This is deceit—they are VASTLY different in how they play. Without getting into the details, basically: Dust Guy and Dust Girl are similar (the “neutral” characters); Dust Kid has shorter jumps and has a shorter reach with her double-duster swipes, but can air-jump twice instead of just a single time; Dustworth jumps RIDICULOUSLY high and has the longest reach with his vacuum blast, but doesn’t move as quickly as the others. In the early parts of the game, I favored Dust Kid when I learned she could air-jump twice, and she was my comfort-character for most of the game. But when I started getting serious about SSing all the courses, I readjusted to the mop-wielding Dust Girl, because I liked her aesthetic more, and I liked the feel of her movement and developed a strong intuitive sense of it after a while.

The game’s progression works pretty well. When you first start the game, you start in a sort of hub world full of mostly locked doors, and to open them you must complete other levels to obtain the necessary keys: better score means more keys. There are 4 tiers demonstrated by the color of the lock: there’s open, Bronze, Silver, and then Gold, and each tier holds greater challenges than the previous one. The jumps in difficulty were usually tough but fair, with a few exceptions where some silver doors felt like gold ones. I could feel myself getting better at the game as I played, which was great. More often than I not, I felt like failures were my own fault rather than the game being unfair, and that I just needed to improve my skills rather than overcome a design flaw. After some time spent playing the more difficult courses and practicing the mechanics, it was super gratifying going back to older levels and easily SSing them.

I learned after my playthrough that when the game was first released, the open-tier doors didn’t exist—it started with the bronze tier levels, but players were having such a tough time getting into the game, the devs ultimately developed more beginner-friendly courses to help ease players into the game a bit better. I definitely agree with this move—even some of the open doors were tough for me when I was first getting started. But I do think some of this could have been remedied by better explaining how the game works in the tutorials. I forgot to mention that they do not explicitly tell you even how the grading system works; I learned what a combo was only because of stream viewers who knew better than I.

I definitely ran into my fair share of issues when it came to the mechanics of the game; fortunately for me, I streamed the entire playthrough, so I was almost never on my own. I was blessed with several appearances by veteran Dustforce players stopping by and providing their expertise, helping me better understand how the game works and how to better utilize the controller to make my characters do the things I wanted them to do.

One of my biggest pain points was ceiling-sliding/running. This is a mechanic where, if you get enough speed, you’re supposed to be able to run along the ceiling for an impressive distance. For the longest time, I had so much trouble with this. I think it was partially because, in Dustforce, the “up” key on the directional pad is technically used more like a button key than it is a direction key—what I mean by this is that the up button acts as more of an “initiation” key that causes your character to essentially enter a new mode of movement—either running up a wall, or running along a ceiling—that sort of magnetized you to the nearest wall or ceiling. So while using “up” to run up a wall was fairly intuitive for me, because pressing it causes the character to move the direction I was pressing, I was having tremendous trouble going from “attach to ceiling with up button” to “run along the ceiling with left or right button” and often found myself just sticking to the ceiling and not going anywhere. It was very frustrating, and while I knew it was possible to do, I had no idea where to even start correcting the way I was pressing the buttons.

The community, by the way, was incredibly friendly and welcoming. I got the sense that Dustforce players LOVE seeing new people play the game, because everyone who likes Dustforce really loves Dustforce, and wants others to enjoy it and share their excitement for it. Big shoutout to Skyhawk, HolyKau, BrotherMojo, hgtw, and anyone else who stopped by and provided guidance when I was hitting a wall (literally). I really do not believe I could have gotten through without the help.

Once I did start getting comfortable with the game, I started feeling sometimes like I was playing a 2D fighting game rather than a platformer: it really requires very precise and specific button combinations in order to perform a lot of the movements in the game, which made me think of my early days of Killer Instinct for the SNES, trying to input the commands needed for an Ultra Combo. If you know, you know.

The more I got into the game, the more I noticed little things that started bothering me immensely as I encountered them more and more; one such thing is spikes and hitboxes. There were countless times when my character was visibly nowhere near a spike, but the game registered as being hit. Then there were other times when I was visibly going through spikes, and the game was perfectly happy to let me pass as though my body should not have been torn asunder. It was inconsistent, which, in a game that already demands such delicacy and precision, is not great. It was, in fact, infuriating at times.

Beginner players would benefit from more thorough explanations of the mechanics present in the game, which could be better explained during the tutorial: tell us how the characters differ, explain a little more about how momentum works, give a more detailed account of ceiling-running, provide a description of how the grading system and combos work, and help players out a bit more with understanding how to gain speed from a slope! One thing that helped me the most was seeing what’s possible by watching other players; I found that once I knew what I could and should be doing, it was much easier to have the patience in figuring out how to do it. Heck, maybe even have demos during the game’s tutorial where you see a ghost character do the thing, and then you have to do it. Most of the time, even knowing how to get past a particular section in a course is not enough, because you still have to perform. Having to figure out certain mechanics are even possible just presents an unnecessary hurdle for players when the game is difficult enough, even when you have that knowledge.

But its shortcomings were nowhere near enough to give me an overall bad experience. I genuinely enjoyed my Dustforce playthrough. The art style, the music, the concept, and the execution were all masterfully done, and the community is wholesome and encouraging. It’s a challenging platformer with some brutal gauntlets that will test your gaming prowess and your patience, but only if you’re determined to SS each level. It’s entirely possible to just get through each course to see what the game has to offer, which I highly recommend doing if you have any appreciation for 2D platformers. That was my original plan—to just complete each level regardless of the score—but when I found out that the only way to access the final group of levels was to SS every course in the game…my plans changed. I did not SS the extra levels hidden behind the red doors, but I did complete them all, and I’m happy with that, even if they all have a D rating. I’m proud of SSing all the gold doors, and I even snagged myself a world record! I completed one course in under 1 second. No, that is not a joke.

I’ll end this review by saying: most of the music in this game slaps. Hard. That first song I heard set reasonable expectations for the rest of the OST. There were maybe 1 or 2 tracks I wasn’t super big on, but damn. If you don’t plan on playing the game any time soon, at least go listen to that music, because it’s great.

[biggaybunny]

(Almost) Everything Shadow of War Got Wrong:

A direct sequel is meant to refine, continue, and expand upon the gameplay of the previous title. It’s amazing that Shadow of War manages to be worse than the original in every single facet of gameplay.

Combat flow has been destroyed. While there are drawbacks to the flow-centric style of combat Shadow of Mordor used, it was at least a well executed combat mechanic. Combo-building felt exciting, and several game mechanics allowed the player to make risk/reward tradeoffs with their combo bonuses. Now, Talion still tries to flit about the battlefield, but the sheer number of enemy types that break combos (and how frequently they show up in a battle) means that combat becomes a much more stilted, dodge-oriented affair. Furthermore, the new “Might” system means combo building isn’t even rewarded, despite the fact the combat style is still trying to be flow-oriented.

Enemy prioritization is as bad as, if not worse than, Shadow of Mordor’s. Talion will turn around and prance across the battlefield to execute a random orc instead of the broken captain in front of him.

Movement remains awful, and controlling Talion feels like trying to guide a cat through an obstacle course with only verbal directions. Talion’s base speed is so goddamn slow (for no good reason) that the only way to move around is holding the run button, which of course is also the “parkour all over the place button”. Making it largely impossible to run any distance without Talion deciding to do his impression of a spider monkey on the nearby stack of crates. Extremely frustrating when it comes to chasing or escaping enemies, though it’s almost always at least some nuisance. Because elf-shot replenishments are always against terrain, running to desperately get a refill winds up with Talion climbing something pointless and winding up trapped. Which leads me to my next point...

Elf shot is now incredibly inconsistent, and thus unfair. I get it . End game in Shadow of Mordor, shadow strike was OP. I don’t think it was a problem, personally, but that’s beside the point. But this replenishment-only-via-pickups system is the worst. One, it once again ruins the pace of combat. Every once and a while you have to break off to go rub Talion’s face against a wall or roof or whatever to pick up more elf shot. Secondly, it means that the strategies viable to you vary on the arbitrary placement of these refills. Prolonged battles have an element of artificial difficulty added into them in that eventually you’re just not allowed to have any more arrows! Yes, gear (and I think maybe at least one upgrade) can give you SOME elf-shot refills, but these are impermanent bonuses.

Might is bad. Might means you can go kill a handful of nobody orcs, then have 2 executions (or elven light, or if you don’t know what you’re doing, combat drain) ready for the fight you actually care about. This isn’t rewarding good combat execution (the other kind), which has kind of always been the point in a game pretty much dedicated to endless boss/mini-boss battles. Also, might attacks can just get “eaten”, with your might draining and the attack not even happening (not getting interrupted, but failing to ever happen at all) which I’m going to chalk up to this game being buggier than SoM. Might clearly exists because combo-building isn’t possible with how much worse they’ve made combat. Finally, while I’m not asking them to reinvent everything from scratch, the fact that we got pretty much nothing new for uses of might/combos is pretty lame. Combat drain got massively de-powered via buffs to other abilities, like ground drain and shadow dominate, but they just left it in exactly as it was last game. Raising the dead in the very late game (end game?) is pretty neat, though they should’ve made it more consistent about actually... raising the corpses around you.

Everything about the control system fucking sucks. Where do I get started. Okay, how about button-overloading / context sensitive actions. They don’t work. Hold RT + (B) to perform a ground drain! Unless, you know, Talion desides he doesn’t like the look of the downed enemy in front of him and tries to do a normal drain on an impervious enemy like an Olog-hai. Oh, or how about my favorite: The slide tackle & shoulder charge! Against high-tier captains, it can be very difficult to get a hit in once they’re arrow proof, frost immune, vigilant to stealth, vault breakers, have adapted to quick throw... but hey, I have the slide tackle! Or I would, if it ever, ever worked. Apparently there’s ANOTHER button prompt to AIM the slide tackle, because why would I want that to be the default behavior? Then there’s elf-shot techniques. They’re actively inconsistent about this. You can shadow strike to an enemy with or without an arrow knocked, but you can only talon strike without an arrow. You can only poison grog with no arrow too. Of course, since readying an arrow is on the same button as stealth (thanks context sensitive actions!) you can’t be in stealth while using a bow at all, because why would anyone want THAT?

The skill upgrade system is needlessly complicated and difficult to use. I get the idea behind having togglable upgrades. If the captain you’re going up against is enraged by poison, turn off the poison effect you have on elven light and turn on the freeze effect. Great. If only that didn’t involve scrolling through every upgrade trying to figure out what category it’s under and what weird symbol is meant to represent it. Constantly going into the menu to toggle different things also becomes a drag, especially when the correct thing to do is do it in the middle of a fight. Furthermore, there was no reason to have all skill upgrades be either/or. There’s no clear reason why I can’t have chain of shadows and shadow dominate (not saying I should be able to chain dominate, the skills work separately). It means that leveling up very quickly becomes underwhelming, verging on pointless, because all it’s doing is causing harder orc captains to spawn without your power increasing in tandem. Also, skill upgrades lie, as I discovered when I specifically turned off Worse Than Death and wound up making a captain deranged anyway.

Last chances are bad. I like the UI element better than SoM’s, I suppose, but still. Last chances are bad because you’re vulnerable before you have complete character control. It’s very easy to succeed a last chance and have it be pointless because you’ll get 1 second of movement before you’ve been shot & stabbed to death anyway. The mechanic isn’t serving its stated purpose.

Defending forts is stupid. I’ll give them that they’ve mostly got assaulting a fortress down. But as for defending a fortress: even if 5/6 attacking captains are dead, all your defending warchiefs are alive, your defenses are holding, not a single point has been captured... if you, the player, die, ohp, fortress lost. This is, frankly, utterly moronic. When you design a specific setpiece like fortress defense, you have to be thinking, “what is the player doing in this scenario”. Because the player is essentially an auto-win for the attacking side of the fort, the correct answer is hiding as far away from battle as possible. Does that sound like fun? Does that sound like what you wanted from fortress defense missions? No??? ME NEITHER. It’s a clear lack of foresight or any form of consideration about what the actual gameplay behind fortress defenses should be. Now, player death is also an auto-win for the defenders if you’re assaulting a fortress, but I consider that less problematic because the stakes are lower and “partial” victories are possible (by killing off warchiefs).

Wrath is underpowered. It’s just kind of... boring. It takes forever to charge, can be lost under conditions I *still* don’t understand, all for a few seconds of extra damage. I just don’t get it.

I’m not sure if I’ve covered everything, but it feels like I have. I’m really mad at this game because on paper, it’s the kind of game I’ve been waiting for for a long time. Getting to build up fortresses? Recruit and customize an army? Fight these sieges from the front line? Amazing! But I feel like I’m fighting the game more than I’m fighting anything in the game, and it’s incredibly disappointing.