Sister engagement
Yes, I Believe In God by Rebecca St. James
Hi all. Pretty quiet month here. The typical family gathering happened for Mother's Day, of course. Oh, and my older sister got engaged a few days ago, I guess that's kinda important. ;)
This month in Forgotten Gates I worked on another type of puzzle room: the bombchu maze. Starting out I was actually experimenting with tile passability, and it turns out to work differently than I'd thought. I expected you could make one-way tiles, but instead the arrows indicate that a tile can be entered OR exited through the side pointed to, as if there's a thin wall on any edges with no arrow pointing to them. After figuring this out, I determined that this can be used to form pipe-like maze structures using less space than would be needed when you just use entire tiles for walls. So I came up with the idea of having a maze that can be changed by flipping switches to guide something through to a goal -- and what Zelda item springs to mind for such a task other than the motorized explosive, bombchus?
Nothing happened in RP-land this month. I had a Ninja Burger RPG scenario ready the last couple weeks for my game group, but we didn't have enough players present to justify using it.
SUPERHOT: Mind Control Delete:
I got this for free because I owned the original SUPERHOT when Mind Control Delete was released, but apparently that was a limited-time bonus. They sell them separately now, and there's even a bundle deal for getting both of them.
Anyway, Mind Control Delete is an arcade-style expansion to the SUPERHOT gameplay formula. There isn't much in the way of story, and for what there is you're expected to already be familiar with the first game. Each stage you're sent into a random assortment from a bank of locations, and you have to kill a number of red dudes (I never perceived a pattern to exactly how many, seemed like about 8 but it varied) to move on to the next location. Unlike in the original you can take multiple hits, but not very many (2 by default), and it has to last you through the stage. Every few fights you're allowed to choose between 2 randomly selected boosts, like increasing your movement speed, doing more damage with thrown objects, starting each fight with a random gun, healing any damage you've taken so far, etc. As you progress further into the stages, they also start throwing in new mechanics, like spiky enemies that explode shrapnel everywhere when they die, enemies made primarily of stone with only a limb, torso, or head vulnerable, and mines that shoot shrapnel if you get too close (or something hits them, which can be useful). It's very formulaic.
About the only other thing worth mentioning is that they eventually throw in the possibility of an invincible boss enemy that chases you around until you finish a particular fight. When I first unloaded a shotgun into one of these and learned it didn't even flinch, I thought, 'Great, now I have to deal with Evil Otto. Xl' It actually doesn't show up very often though, and it seems to be random -- on one stage that I had to retry a bunch of times it didn't appear at all on my winning run, which doubtless helped.
Bottom line? It's MORE of the same, get it if you really liked the first one and want some variations and a whole lot of challenges to chew through.
Click to viewHi all. Pretty quiet month here. The typical family gathering happened for Mother's Day, of course. Oh, and my older sister got engaged a few days ago, I guess that's kinda important. ;)
This month in Forgotten Gates I worked on another type of puzzle room: the bombchu maze. Starting out I was actually experimenting with tile passability, and it turns out to work differently than I'd thought. I expected you could make one-way tiles, but instead the arrows indicate that a tile can be entered OR exited through the side pointed to, as if there's a thin wall on any edges with no arrow pointing to them. After figuring this out, I determined that this can be used to form pipe-like maze structures using less space than would be needed when you just use entire tiles for walls. So I came up with the idea of having a maze that can be changed by flipping switches to guide something through to a goal -- and what Zelda item springs to mind for such a task other than the motorized explosive, bombchus?
Nothing happened in RP-land this month. I had a Ninja Burger RPG scenario ready the last couple weeks for my game group, but we didn't have enough players present to justify using it.
SUPERHOT: Mind Control Delete:
I got this for free because I owned the original SUPERHOT when Mind Control Delete was released, but apparently that was a limited-time bonus. They sell them separately now, and there's even a bundle deal for getting both of them.
Anyway, Mind Control Delete is an arcade-style expansion to the SUPERHOT gameplay formula. There isn't much in the way of story, and for what there is you're expected to already be familiar with the first game. Each stage you're sent into a random assortment from a bank of locations, and you have to kill a number of red dudes (I never perceived a pattern to exactly how many, seemed like about 8 but it varied) to move on to the next location. Unlike in the original you can take multiple hits, but not very many (2 by default), and it has to last you through the stage. Every few fights you're allowed to choose between 2 randomly selected boosts, like increasing your movement speed, doing more damage with thrown objects, starting each fight with a random gun, healing any damage you've taken so far, etc. As you progress further into the stages, they also start throwing in new mechanics, like spiky enemies that explode shrapnel everywhere when they die, enemies made primarily of stone with only a limb, torso, or head vulnerable, and mines that shoot shrapnel if you get too close (or something hits them, which can be useful). It's very formulaic.
About the only other thing worth mentioning is that they eventually throw in the possibility of an invincible boss enemy that chases you around until you finish a particular fight. When I first unloaded a shotgun into one of these and learned it didn't even flinch, I thought, 'Great, now I have to deal with Evil Otto. Xl' It actually doesn't show up very often though, and it seems to be random -- on one stage that I had to retry a bunch of times it didn't appear at all on my winning run, which doubtless helped.
Bottom line? It's MORE of the same, get it if you really liked the first one and want some variations and a whole lot of challenges to chew through.