Destructor-8 Posted October 17, 2021 Share Posted October 17, 2021 (edited) 30 minutes ago, Don_carlito94 said: Respect for going this route. Some of the hotlaps are significantly harder without TCS. For example -> “Demon on Wheels” I personally consider as one of the harder hotlaps in the base game without TCS. Imola is a complex circuit, but with a high TCS setting you can turn this very hard hotlap into a medium difficulty hotlap because with TCS on high, you can drive over the high curbs without consequences 9/10 times as opposed to having TCS off where it requires much more precise angle of entry and throttle control - this example is just to give you a picture of the contrast. I personally never tried any of the skips and tricks for some of the hotlaps but from my observation you save quite some time with some of them, so if you don’t use any of those, you will also need to push it a notch. Examples - GRA Challenge, with skip= save around half a sec. Nordschleife hotlaps, with wall bounce and Karussell trick = save around 2 secs or maybe a little more if executed right. It will still be a tough experience regardless of these tricks. I look forward to see you write about this game once you get back to it Yeah that's what I'll be doing when I go back to it as I'm more used to playing that way now so will be trying to do the rest that way too. I did put in a few laps on each of the harder ones after I did one to see how far I was off after getting much better & that was the only one that I wasn't close to doing without a setup so it will probably take quite awhile to do even with a setup for it. I wasn't as far off as I expected on most of the other ones though after a few laps so that was a nice surprise but I'll definitely put up everything I do when I go back to it. I'll see what I can do. Edited October 17, 2021 by Destructor-8 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Eqill5 Posted October 19, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted October 19, 2021 So it appears @ExistentialSolid can in fact not be destroyed ? I think this just shows, no matter how new to a certain genre or game type you might be, that if you put in the work and really want it, anything can be within reach. Congrats!! 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Vergil Posted October 19, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted October 19, 2021 I assume its only Crypt left now 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ExistentialSolid Posted October 23, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 23, 2021 (edited) On 10/19/2021 at 5:29 AM, Eqill5 said: So it appears @ExistentialSolid can in fact not be destroyed I think this just shows, no matter how new to a certain genre or game type you might be, that if you put in the work and really want it, anything can be within reach. Congrats!! If I could grab a megaphone and shout anything from the PSNP rooftops, it would be exactly what you've just written. We're often tempted to say things like, "I could never do X" or "Y will always be too hard for me." Maybe we're intimidated or afraid or just don't have much confidence in ourselves, but, when people actually put these baseless assumptions to the test, more often than not they'll surprise themselves. Dare to push back against the limits of what you believe you're capable of. Thanks!! On 10/19/2021 at 5:32 AM, Vergil said: I assume its only Crypt left now Maybe someday... If we're talking long term projects for 2022, I've been thinking about playing Tetris Effect, DJMax Respect, or Ultra Street Fighter IV, but we'll have to see what happens! On 10/17/2021 at 5:28 PM, Don_carlito94 said: Congrats on this accomplishment! I’m glad I could help a little bit ? It’s been fun following your progress and I look forward to read more about the other games like SMBF. Since you know how to drive manual gear in a racing game now, perhaps you might consider choosing that option when you approach your next sim/simcade such as Dirt Rally 2.0 or the upcoming GT7? You can see that you have far more control over the car with manual over automatic from all those hours in Assetto Corsa - and admit it, it is a little more fun with manual in a racing sim ? Thank you! You were way more helpful than you give yourself credit for. ? I wouldn't have had the guts to attempt this game at all without your input (never mind all the tips, setup links, and reference videos). Absolutely, I can't just let this new skill rot! I'll be driving manual whenever I'm given the option, assuming I'm able to go faster than I otherwise would on automatic. It's fun in the sense that it's far more involved and mastery is all the more satisfying, but it also requires a lot more focus than I'm used to giving racing games. Before games like AC, I typically played racing games for some chill/mindless entertainment while I'm zoned into a stream or some YouTube videos. When I'm driving manual I have to focus, unmute the TV, and listen for gear shift cues. ? On 10/16/2021 at 7:24 PM, Destructor-8 said: Congrats on getting through & finishing this game! It's been absolutely amazing watching you get through this & your videos will be of use to many in the future I'm sure. This is an extremely impressive game to do & one that requires an absolutely huge amount of effort to complete. I'm sure @Don_carlito94 has been very helpful throughout this game especially as there's not much out there to go on. I will definitely be using your videos when I get back to this game & hopefully I can get there too one day as well. It's also been very encouraging with what you & @Don_carlito94 have said recently too. I look forward to what is next for you & will definitely be keeping up with it! Thanks, I really appreciate the support! ? I have no doubt you'll get it done sooner or later! Edited October 24, 2021 by ExistentialSolid 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ExistentialSolid Posted October 24, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 24, 2021 (edited) Super Meat Boy Forever and the Return to Form - Update #4 It's been awhile since we last found ourselves in the unforgiving world of Meat Boy and I'm sure some of you might be new since I last spoke about the game. ? To help get everyone up to speed, I'll be briefly recapping my story with SMBF as we transition into the final stretch of the game. For those that want the full story, I'll be linking each of my previous SMBF updates below! Update #1 - April 22ndUpdate #1.9 - April 27thUpdate #2 - May 1stUpdate #3 - May 20thThread Revival - Sept. 14th A Quick Recap... Back in April, I was in the middle of playing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, the most recent poll winner in my "Please Destroy Me Challenge" thread. I was getting frustrated over the quality of my updates and had begun losing interest in the project as a whole. In a last ditch effort to recapture some of my waning interest, I tossed the game aside and began Super Meat Boy Forever instead. The game promised a challenge and I was eager to get destroyed instead of slogging through the same few floors of Rebirth again and again. Much like the original Super Meat Boy, the SMBF trophy list featured several "deathless runs," runs in which the player would need to complete a set of ridiculously difficult levels without dying. I knew from my experience with the original that these deathless runs could be mind-numbingly brutal and require many hours of practice to achieve. In starting SMBF, I was eager to see how these deathless runs stacked up to the original and began attempting them right away. Unlike the original SMB, SMBF is an auto-runner that features randomly generated levels that are assembled from thousands of possible "chunks" (pre-made sections of a level). The difficulty of these "chunks" tends to be all over the place which meant that the challenge of each of these deathless runs could vary dramatically. With the potential for such wide variation, I was skeptical whether or not the challenge could really live up to the original. While SMBF delivered on the challenge I was hoping for at first (in fact, it took me around 15 hours to achieve a deathless run in the first of the more challenging "dark" worlds), I soon realized that the game's difficulty reaches its peak fairly early and that all of the remaining deathless runs would cluster around the same level of difficulty. I started to lose interest upon this realization and, in conjunction with the dissatisfaction I was experiencing over quality concerns with my updates, I eventually stopped playing SMBF in May. Between April and May, I had finished the first seven of these deathless runs and, in late July/early August, when I briefly revisited the game, I finished two more for a total of nine. Below are links to each run:~ Deathless Runs ~Oak Boy - April 18thStraight Jacket Girl - April 19th Vaccine Boy - April 20thResearch Girl - April 20thDilation Boy - April 23rd Teak Girl - April 29th Psychopharmacology Boy - May 18thLock Jaw Girl - July 28thPage Fault - August 1st There are two deathless runs that need to be completed before I platinum the game (well, technically I have a pacifier grind to do afterwards, but there will not be much challenge associated with that objective): Development Boy and Heat Death Girl. The Present Now that we're mostly caught up, I'm going to present my most recent deathless run: Heat Death Girl! I skipped ahead a little. I had heard hearsay that the fifth and final Dark World might be the hardest of the lot, so I decided to get it over with first! It took me about 13-15 hours to complete which is on the higher end of how long I was expecting it to last, but I justified my difficulties with the fact that I hadn't played in months and that I had no reference material to work with. ? There's still the fourth dark world's deathless run to wrap up before I start the grind to the platinum, but I'm not convinced the challenge is going to be much different from what I've already faced. Something I've never really talked about in my SMBF updates is what my process is for tackling each of these deathless runs so I've decided to provide a quick rundown of my order of operations for anyone that might be curious on how I approach these sorts of things.Order of Operations: 1. Play through level 1 and get a general understanding of how the level works. 2. Speedrun the level to beat the Par Time (must be beaten once to later earn the S rank). 3. Practice the level until I'm able to complete it without any deaths (earning the S rank). 4. Get 3-5 additional deathless clears to help commit the level to memory. 5. Play through each of the 5 remaining levels while repeating steps 1-4. Once all 6 levels have been cleared without any deaths for the first time, we will start practicing to complete them in sequence. 6. Play through levels 1-6 again and arrange the levels from easiest to hardest. 7. Practice the 3 easiest levels in this arrangement until you can beat them in sequence without dying. 8. Practice the 3 hardest levels in this arrangement until you can beat them in sequence without dying. 9. Attempt to complete the full arrangement in order of difficulty without dying. What's Next? I'm going to be taking a short break from SMBF to wrap up Badland. This game has been in the works since January independent of any updates and it's finally nearing it's end. Once Badland is finished, I'll complete the last SMBF deathless run, finish the pacifier grind to earn the platinum, and provide my final SMBF update in 1-2 weeks!I plan to talk about why I believe the game's difficulty will face obsolescence in the near future, why it does not necessarily live up to the original SMB in terms of challenge, and why the game is not worth your time or money. I might rant a little bit. ? Thanks for checking in and I'll see you all soon! ? Edited October 24, 2021 by ExistentialSolid 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJ_Radio Posted October 24, 2021 Share Posted October 24, 2021 I’m going to glance past Super Meat Boy Forever for a moment and say thank you for playing Woah Dave. Not the best of challenging indies (Even Curse n Chaos has more going for it) but it’s surprisingly addicting. Took me a long time to nail a 1000 coin run. Greenzsaber has an excellent video guide on how to do it but it still takes practice. Should be no problem for you, considering your skills and commitment. We’re about the same progress wise in Shovel Knight. I’m planning to return to that pretty soon. This is probably my favorite thread in the entire forums. Always a joy to read about your struggles and your progress. More of us should inspire to make threads like this. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExistentialSolid Posted October 28, 2021 Author Share Posted October 28, 2021 (edited) On 10/24/2021 at 6:39 PM, AJ_Radio said: I’m going to glance past Super Meat Boy Forever for a moment and say thank you for playing Woah Dave. Not the best of challenging indies (Even Curse n Chaos has more going for it) but it’s surprisingly addicting. Took me a long time to nail a 1000 coin run. Greenzsaber has an excellent video guide on how to do it but it still takes practice. Should be no problem for you, considering your skills and commitment. We’re about the same progress wise in Shovel Knight. I’m planning to return to that pretty soon. This is probably my favorite thread in the entire forums. Always a joy to read about your struggles and your progress. More of us should inspire to make threads like this. It's no trouble! Besides the fact that you recommended it, @S_y_n_e_IR_g_Y posted a 10€ charity incentive for the next player to finish Woah Dave in the Ultra Rare Cleanup event, so I thought it would be fun to try to get it finished before the end of the year since I enjoy addicting arcade-inspired games anyway. I haven't had the time to make a serious effort at the 1000 coin run just yet, but I did get a feel for the game and knocked out all of the miscellaneous trophies in the time that I had. I'll hopefully have the time to finish it up sometime before December! I keep forgetting to get back to Shovel Knight. I meant to return to it when the "King of Cards" campaign released, but it dropped just a few days before I launched this thread and I haven't thought much about it since. ? After all the damage SMBF has done to my appreciation of platformers, Shovel Knight would be just what I need to remind myself why I love the genre in the first place. Trying to process how this thread could be one of anyone's "favorites" is something I'm never going to be able to do, but hearing it will always cheer me up. ? Thank you! Edited October 31, 2021 by ExistentialSolid 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Dubz Posted October 29, 2021 Share Posted October 29, 2021 Bravo man, looks like you are breezing through and currently on easy street for the pacifier cleanup!! I find it very interesting to see the different chunks you have with your runs too. We had quite a few of the same, but there were definitely a few you had I've never seen. I'll be curious to know if you went for pacifiers in NG+ in the Dark Worlds too, I said screw that after struggling with 1 or 2 of them for well over an hour and just stuck to the Light Worlds after that. It required 5 playthroughs total, but I honestly felt like I'd still be trying to get them at this point, almost a week later if I had kept going for the dark worlds too! I'll be very curious to hear your overall take on it once you are through. Honestly for me, this felt 100x harder than SMB, so I find it intriguing that you think it's easier! I dunno if it's just my 37 year old waning reflexes or what ? Just to give you an idea, it took me ~12k deaths on SMB versus ~20k deaths on SMBF. It also took me almost twice as long, 1 month 1 week or so for SMB vs. 2 months 2 days for SMBF... With me playing the latter almost exclusively. It could be possible I just got a harder set of seeds, but then again given the ridiculously hard games you have completed yourself, I am really not all that surprised to see you breezing through this one too! Well played Ex, looking forward to your full review next week ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ExistentialSolid Posted November 3, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 3, 2021 (edited) Super Meat Boy Forever and Why You Should Skip It - Update #5 Since earning the SMBF platinum, I feel as though I've been given carte blanche to say whatever I want about the game without worrying about my arguments being undermined over the fact that I hadn't finished everything the game had to offer. For me, this platinum is not an achievement, but a permission slip; it is not an opportunity for self-aggrandizing, but an obligation to those of you that follow this thread. This update is meant to house one of the only rants I'll ever post to the forums and is going to be structured much like a Q&A, except, unlike any sensible Q&A, I will be asking myself all of the important questions and use them as a springboard for my lunacy. So... let's begin! Is SMBF harder to platinum than Super Meat Boy? Not necessarily. In its final state, SMBF should be significantly easier to platinum than the original Super Meat Boy. It may sound ridiculous to use phrases like "will be" or "final state" to describe the condition of SMBF's difficulty because it implies that the difficulty will fluctuate over time. However, with time, the game's difficulty should face a dramatic reduction. Let me explain. Unlike the original Super Meat Boy, SMBF features randomly generated levels that are assembled from thousands of possible "chunks." The selection and arrangement of these chunks is dependent on the 8-character "seed" that the game uses as a guide to stitch each level together. Because some chunks are much easier than others, the difficulty of the game is going to heavily depend on which seed you use. Since you are allowed to use any seed you want without voiding any of the deathless run trophies, Super Meat Boy Forever's platinum will only be as difficult as the game's easiest possible seed. When the easiest chunks are stitched together, you will get a totally different experience than you would playing the game on a randomly generated seed like myself, and most of the earliest players, have done. Here's the problem: as far as I know, the easiest possible seed is not known. Even if it were known, difficulty, being a subjective metric, would vary from player to player. So the "easiest possible seed" for me might be totally different from the "easiest possible seed" for you. For now, I'm going to set this hypothetical seed aside as we will talk about it more below.What was SMBF's difficulty like on a random seed? On a randomly generated seed, the difficulty seemed to be loosely arranged in two distinct clusters that I'm going to call "Light" and "Dark" as they each correspond to their respective world types in the game. In the Light difficulty cluster, each of the 5 deathless runs were moderately challenging. The amount of practice I needed to get them done ranged from 2-4 hours (including the initial solving process) with limited variation. There was a slight linear increase in difficulty (i.e. light world 1 was easier than 2, 3, and so on), but this may have been coincidental. Now the Dark difficulty cluster featured far more challenging levels that subsequently required far more practice. Anywhere from 7-20 hours (including the initial solving process) could be spent on each of the 6 deathless runs, but difficulty progression was not noticeably linear. If you could finish one of these deathless runs, chances are you could finish them all. Notice that the range of practice time increased dramatically between the light and dark difficulty clusters (from 2-4 hours to 7-20 hours). While the seed you play on may not matter much for any of the light worlds, it can considerably affect the amount of time you spend in their dark counterparts. The variation that you notice between the practice time estimates I've provided has everything to do with the seed that the player is playing on and the difficulty of the associated chunks that the seed is using to assemble each level. An easy seed for Dark World X might take a player 7 hours to complete the accompanying deathless run while a hard seed for Dark World X might take that same player 20 hours. What about the "update?" I got carried away and probably should have covered this first. Last Thursday, I finished the last of SMBF's deathless runs: Development Boy (9-10 hours of practice). Once the last traces of SMBF's challenge were swept away, I set to work collecting 90 pacifiers to pop the last of the game's trophies. Pacifiers, which function in much the same way as "bandages" did in the original SMB, unlock extra characters and serve as collectibles within the game's randomly generated stages. Unlike SMB, there are an infinite number of pacifiers since you can repeatedly play NG+ to generate and collect more. I had 30 by the end of my first playthrough and collected 10-15 more per NG+ while sticking to the light worlds since the pacifiers, and the levels that contain them, are much simpler to solve. I spent two days collecting pacifiers off and on before the platinum finally popped and my journey came to an end. I didn't feel much of anything.What does "practice" consist of? When I talk about "practice," I'm referring to two things: the amount of time it takes to learn each level well enough to complete it without any deaths and the amount of time it takes to successfully chain each level together in a single deathless run. The most frustrating part of the experience is often the initial learning process and it isn't unusual for the time spent in the learning process to last longer than the time spent trying to chain together a successful deathless run. At it's core SMBF is a puzzle game and some of these chunks can be incredibly confusing to parse out. Here's one of the most frustrating examples I've come across in my time with the game (featured in 0xDEADBEEF). I spent nearly half an hour racking my brain in this section; it may look simple once it's "solved," but solving it in the first place can be a painful process. On average, I found that about 40% of my practice time (typically 3-6 hours) was spent trying to figure out how to complete these levels deathless.Is there a way to cut down on the amount of practice? Yes. There are several ways. Let's talk about skips. There are two types: intended skips and unintended skips. An intended skip is a skip that the developers deliberately baked into a level. While many of these skips are obvious, having thousands of potential chunks to sift through will mean that most players (including myself) will only find a fraction of what's really there. Here's an example. Unintended skips are skips so egregious that they were most likely overlooked during development. These skips were not put into the game deliberately and may be a result of sloppy level design/testing. Here's an example. Finding levels that have skips (both intended and unintended) will go a long way towards finding the hypothetical "easiest possible seed" that I discussed earlier. Another, more accessible, way to cut down on practice is to use reference videos. When I played on a random seed and had to spend hours figuring out how to complete each level deathless, that was dozens of hours wasted that I could have saved by watching another player figure them out for me. If you use a fixed seed that another player played on and follow their routing through each level, you are guaranteed to save more time than you would trying to puzzle these levels out for yourself. Finally, there's seed selection. If you can find an "easy" seed filled with skips and covered extensively with helpful reference videos, the amount of practice you will need to get these deathless runs done and dusted will drop dramatically. Did you enjoy SMBF? No, I would be lying if I said I did. I would have been more than happy to leave this game to rot had it not been highlighted on my thread or developed this reputation as potentially being "more difficult than SMB." There are so many problems with this game that I could easily stretch this post to double it's current length whining about every last grievance, but I'll try to keep it brief.Minor Issues: - When returning from a level to the main menu, directional buttons will often lock preventing you from moving left or right in the menus. - Sound can often stutter to produce irritating sound effect loops (I eventually played the game on mute). - Movement can get wonky around ledges and you will occasionally run in an impossible direction upon landing (often resulting in death). Major Issues: - With thousands of possible chunks, generic level design is inevitable. There are no memorable levels in SMBF and little reason to dig through the thousands of other possible chunks to find them. - Softlocks are frequent and are typically a symptom of poor level design. Here's an example. - Certain chunks have solutions that are obfuscated through baffling design decisions. In the section below, I demonstrate across two passes that a seemingly pointless jump is required to force the purple orb (that is currently off screen at the time of the jump) to move to a position that makes the upcoming section possible. Sections like this are not uncommon in SMBF and are again indicative of sloppy design.Could you talk more about this "hypothetical seed" you mentioned earlier? Earlier, I mentioned an "easiest possible seed" along with some of the difficulties that would arise in trying to pinpoint such a seed. I failed to mention that "seed" does not necessarily need to be singular. In fact, using multiple seeds for the deathless runs may be the most realistic road to an easy SMBF platinum. Using a random seed, I found the hardest worlds to require a wide range of practice. For the sake of transparency, I'm going to list my times with each of the hardest deathless runs below: Dark World 1 - 15 hours (hard) Dark World 2 - 7 hours (easy) Dark World 3 - 12 hours (medium/hard) Dark World 4 - 9 hours (medium) Dark World 5 - 15 hours (hard) 0XDEADBEEF - 10 hours (medium) Looking only at these times, the random seed I've used may be a good option for Dark World 2 and an acceptable option for Dark World 4, but it appears to be a poor option for dark worlds 1 and 5. Other players that reported shorter play times for some of the dark worlds that I struggled with would be promising options for "easy" seeds for those respective worlds.Final thoughts? While Impossible Boy (the most difficult challenge from SMB) took me 15-20 hours to complete with multiple reference videos to guide me back in 2019, the hardest dark world in SMBF took me about 15 hours without any sort of reference video and with a poor/random seed selection. With an easier seed(s), the possibility for skips, and reference videos to guide my routing, the most difficult dark worlds in SMBF would have taken me (and the vast majority of other players) considerably less time to complete deathless. Because this game is still in it's infancy when it comes to tricks/speedrun tech/skips/seed selection/etc., we may not have these luxuries for awhile. Time will tell how SMBF ages in terms of difficulty, but I fully expect it to face a serious declawing once the dust has settled. The fact that SMB is still a brutally challenging game 11 years after it released despite being meticulously dissected by thousands of players is a testament to how wonderfully well-designed each level is. If SMBF did anything for me, it reminded me that the original SMB is one of the greatest platformers ever made. Give SMBF 11 years and see if there's anything other than dust left over...Please do yourself a favor and skip Super Meat Boy Forever. Thank you.What's Next? Phew, rants can be exhausting, huh? I wonder if my rambling was even more incoherent than SMBF. ? Thanks for sitting through all that and please don't take anything that I've said too seriously (this was all in good fun). ? I'm going to be taking a little time off to recuperate and work on the Assetto Corsa mini-guide I keep putting off before diving back into The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Before we get back to business, I would actually like to introduce my upcoming plans for the thread in the next update! I hope you're ready! Thank you for reading and I'll see you all in 1-2 weeks! ? Edited November 11, 2021 by ExistentialSolid 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destructor-8 Posted November 3, 2021 Share Posted November 3, 2021 1 hour ago, ExistentialSolid said: SMBF vs. SMB? While Impossible Boy (from SMB) took me 15-20 hours to complete with multiple reference videos to guide me back in 2019, the hardest dark world in SMBF took me about 15 hours without any sort of reference video and with a poor/random seed selection. With an easier seed(s), the possibility for skips, and reference videos to guide my routing, there is no reason that the most difficult dark worlds in SMBF should have taken me more than 6-8 hours to complete deathless. Because this game is still in it's infancy when it comes to tricks/speedrun tech/skips/etc, we may not have these luxuries for some time. The fact that SMB is still a brutally challenging game 11 years after it released despite being meticulously dissected by thousands of players is a testament to how wonderfully well-designed each level is. If SMBF did anything for me, it reminded me that the original SMB is one of the greatest platformers ever made. Give SMBF 11 years and see if there's anything other than dust left over...What's Next? Thanks for sitting through all that and please don't take anything that I've said too seriously (this was all in good fun). I'm going to be taking a little time off to recuperate and work on the Assetto Corsa mini-guide I keep putting off before diving back into The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Before we get back to business, I would actually like to introduce my upcoming plans for the thread in the next update! I hope you're ready! Nice review! It's great seeing quite a few of you guys all finishing this recently & knowing what the game is like. I've watched quite a few videos of this game & it looks tough so nice going on that! It must be nice to be able to come back & finish it off. I would like to know how you & anyone else would compare all the platformers such as Cloudberry Kingdom, VVVVVV, Splasher along with SMB itself as these are the ones that I recognise & look out for a lot. I've seen videos of Cloudberry Kingdom & that one looks ridiculous to finish lol. I know VVVVVV also has very few achievers but I don't really know anything about that one. I do know that Splasher has very few achievers as well & requires very long runs so that one is another tough one. I have wanted to go for one of the good platformers eventually so I got SMB the other day. I assume that one is the best to have a go at since many say it's such a good game plus there's lots of videos that will be very helpful. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Don_carlito94 Posted November 4, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted November 4, 2021 Congrats on the SMBF plat, although I’m sorry to hear about your horrible experience with the game. The good thing is that your review is very detailed and I appreciate it, since I was planning on getting the game at some point in the later future. I’ll have to think about it.. I do however have Splasher in my backlog so that is a platformer I’m looking forward to play once I’m done with my racing games-spree ? Again great job in finishing SMBF, I know it’s not the game you were hoping for but atleast you’ve nailed another hard ass game ? 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Joe Dubz Posted November 4, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted November 4, 2021 Wow Ex, another absolutely brilliant review you made here! Seriously tho, I feel like your writing is more substantial than a vast majority of the "professional" video game sites I have read in recent times... Just saying! Anyway, there is no arguing with all the very valid points you make here, IMO. I'm sorry to hear tho it didn't sound like you enjoyed it as much as I did! It definitely tried really hard to be as good as SMB, but fell sadly short. You have such a good point tho about over time it becoming easier once others seek out the easy seeds... You know there have to be a few out there that are significantly easier than the rest! Or at the very least, using a combination of different ones for the deathless runs as you mentioned. By the way, hot damn what I would've given to find those shortcuts like you did ? I'm kind of curious to where you rate both SMB and SMBF on the 1-10 difficulty scale? For me, SMB 9/10 but SMBF 10/10... I seriously debated for hours what to set my guide at... The guide for SMB on this site was given 10/10, but as I mentioned this one to me def felt harder! So I opted to make it 10/10 as well; it honestly still feels like the hardest game I've finished to date! At any rate, fantastic job here and as always, looking forward to your next adventure ? 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcesius Posted November 4, 2021 Share Posted November 4, 2021 (edited) Hey Ex, first of all... Fantastic write-up! I agree with @Joe Dubz, you really have a unique and interesting way of presenting your thoughts on a game You've mentioned multiple times that you sometimes stare at a blank page before knowing what to write, but I think the effort that you put into your updates really shows You wrote in the end to not take what you write too seriously... But I still want to disagree with you on a couple of points That being said, I atually agree with many of your points, including that SMBF is the inferior game and not anywhere close to beeing as good as the original, but there is one of your major points that I want to talk about, if I may... I hope you don't mind some opposition Quote Is SMBF harder to platinum than Super Meat Boy? Not necessarily. In its final state, SMBF should be significantly easier to platinum than the original Super Meat Boy. It may sound ridiculous to use phrases like "will be" or "final state" to describe the condition of SMBF's difficulty because it implies that the difficulty will fluctuate over time. However, with time, the game's difficulty should face a dramatic reduction. [...] With an easier seed(s), the possibility for skips, and reference videos to guide my routing, the most difficult dark worlds in SMBF would have taken me (and the vast majority of other players) considerably less time to complete deathless. Because this game is still in it's infancy when it comes to tricks/speedrun tech/skips/seed selection/etc., we may not have these luxuries for awhile. Time will tell how SMBF ages in terms of difficulty, but I fully expect it to face a serious declawing once the dust has settled. I don't think that will be the case... The reason being, that there are only two groups of players (that I can think of) that would care about this game being as easy as possible: Trophy / Achievement Hunters, and Speedrunners. Now, for the first group... Most people going for this platinum are a special kind of sub-group within the community. People like yourself, that enjoy a good challenge, that don't mind spending 20 hours practicing a single world over and over. Players that enjoy hitting their heads against a wall over and over again, players that like finding their own way through the levels. Personally, I am finding most of my enjoyment with the game (which, there I agree with you, is less than I was hoping) from finding my way through my own levels that probably no one else will play. But also, I don't see this game generating as much attention as the first one did. For one, as you point out, it's the weaker game, McMillen didn't develop it, and it's an auto-runner. Thus, I don't think that there will be any collective effort from the community towards finding an "easy" seed. The players that I trust most when it comes to finding an easy seed, are speedrunners. Those guys are crazy, and will do whatever it takes to break a game. HOWEVER... not a single speedrunner listed on speedrun.com plays on a playstation console. Most are playing on PC, with a couple of exceptions playing on Switch.... This is relevant because... A PC seed does not result in the same levels when used on playstation! Thus, even if an easy seed is found for PC, it's useless for us. Quote Once the last traces of SMBF's challenge were swept away, I set to work collecting 90 pacifiers to pop the last of the game's trophies. Pacifiers, which function in much the same way as "bandages" did in the original SMB, unlock extra characters and serve as collectibles within the game's randomly generated stages. Unlike SMB, there are an infinite number of pacifiers since you can repeatedly play NG+ to generate and collect more. I had 30 by the end of my first playthrough and collected 10-15 more per NG+ while sticking to the light worlds since the pacifiers, and the levels that contain them, are much simpler to solve. Sorry to be pedantic here, but there are not infinite number of pacifiers since there are only 7200 possible chunks and only a select few can have a pacifier Quote Using a random seed, I found the hardest worlds to require a wide range of practice. For the sake of transparency, I'm going to list my times with each of the hardest deathless runs below: Dark World 1 - 15 hours (hard) Dark World 2 - 7 hours (easy) Dark World 3 - 12 hours (medium/hard) Dark World 4 - 9 hours (medium) Dark World 5 - 15 hours (hard) 0XDEADBEEF - 10 hours (medium) [...] While Impossible Boy (the most difficult challenge from SMB) took me 15-20 hours to complete with multiple reference videos to guide me back in 2019, the hardest dark world in SMBF took me about 15 hours without any sort of reference video and with a poor/random seed selection. [...] Another, more accessible, way to cut down on practice is to use reference videos. When I played on a random seed and had to spend hours figuring out how to complete each level deathless, that was dozens of hours wasted that I could have saved by watching another player figure them out for me. If you use a fixed seed that another player played on and follow their routing through each level, you are guaranteed to save more time than you would trying to puzzle these levels out for yourself. Alright, so... I personally also needed about 15 hours for Impossible Boy, and 5 hours for Girl and Zombie Boy... I guess it was similar for you. Here, we have 6 runs that take roughly as much practice as Impossible Boy, so to me, that does not go together with the statement that SMBF is not the harder game ? I have not yet started the dark worlds, so I cannot give my own opinion, but at least the numbers point towards SMBF being the harder game. As for videos. I mean, as you say SMB has been out for 11 years and there are plenty of videos about Impossible Boy... and people still don't find the game "easy" by any means ? In your case, you said you spent 40% of your time figuring out how to beat the levels. Let's say that using videos, you could cut your overall time down by 20% (you still need to properly execute what you see in the vids)... That's still a lot of practice required for each run! Quote Minor Issues: - When returning from a level to the main menu, directional buttons will often lock preventing you from moving left or right in the menus. - Sound can often stutter producing irritating sound effect loops (I eventually played the game on mute). - Movement can get wonky around ledges and you will occasionally run in an impossible direction upon landing (often resulting in death). Major Issues: - With thousands of possible chunks, generic level design is inevitable. There are no memorable levels in SMBF and little reason to dig through the thousands of other possible chunks to find them. - Softlocks are frequent and are typically a symptom of poor level design. - Certain chunks have solutions that are obfuscated through baffling design decisions. In the section below, I demonstrate across two passes that a seemingly pointless jump is required to force the purple orb (that is currently off screen at the time of the jump) to move to a position that makes the upcoming section possible. Sections like this are not uncommon in SMBF and are again indicative of sloppy design. While I can't say that I have experienced any of the minor issues you mentioned (although I found the sound during cutscenes to be horrendously distorted), it's the major issues that are the important ones... And with those I agree. It's a real shame, but levels not being memorable is one of the biggest issues I have with the game. I enjoy solving the puzzles (i.e. figuring out how to beat a level), but once the solution is found, what's left is a chain of random chunks that don't really stand out or, what is worse, are too complicated and confusing to leave a good impression. That is, without a doubt, the biggest problem I have with this game . I haven't experienced any softlocks yet, but I have experienced situations with no solution due to a miss-timed jump and the left side of the screen leading to death. I hope you don't mind my opposing opinions ? I don't want to defend SMBF as I agree with many of your negative points. I just wanted to start a discussion about some of the issues mentioned ? Looking forward to your next update! Edited November 4, 2021 by Arcesius 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ExistentialSolid Posted November 4, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 4, 2021 (edited) On 11/3/2021 at 7:48 PM, Destructor-8 said: Nice review! It's great seeing quite a few of you guys all finishing this recently & knowing what the game is like. I've watched quite a few videos of this game & it looks tough so nice going on that! It must be nice to be able to come back & finish it off. I would like to know how you & anyone else would compare all the platformers such as Cloudberry Kingdom, VVVVVV, Splasher along with SMB itself as these are the ones that I recognise & look out for a lot. I've seen videos of Cloudberry Kingdom & that one looks ridiculous to finish lol. I know VVVVVV also has very few achievers but I don't really know anything about that one. I do know that Splasher has very few achievers as well & requires very long runs so that one is another tough one. I have wanted to go for one of the good platformers eventually so I got SMB the other day. I assume that one is the best to have a go at since many say it's such a good game plus there's lots of videos that will be very helpful. Thanks, I appreciate it! ? There are still plenty of other tough PSN platformers out there I haven't played (Leo's Fortune, Dustforce, and Giana Sisters to name a few), but, of the ones you've mentioned, I'd compare them in terms of difficulty as follows: Cloudberry Kingdom > Splasher > VVVVVV > SMB > SMBF (on a hypothetical easy seed) SMB is definitely the best one to go for; it has a relatively smooth difficulty curve, fantastic level design, and will make your heart race when you're on the verge of getting the platinum! There's good reason this game has stuck around for over a decade and I think you'll enjoy it once you get around to it. ? Plus, it'll definitely help you build your confidence if you attempt any of the other games you've listed afterwards. On 11/3/2021 at 8:18 PM, Don_carlito94 said: Congrats on the SMBF plat, although I’m sorry to hear about your horrible experience with the game. The good thing is that your review is very detailed and I appreciate it, since I was planning on getting the game at some point in the later future. I’ll have to think about it.. I do however have Splasher in my backlog so that is a platformer I’m looking forward to play once I’m done with my racing games-spree Again great job in finishing SMBF, I know it’s not the game you were hoping for but atleast you’ve nailed another hard ass game Thanks! I hope when you're in the checkout on the PSN store with SMBF at some point in the future, part of my rant will echo in your mind before you go, "eh, how bad could it be" and buy it anyway. Splasher at least is a gem and should make for a great transition from your racing spree considering its emphasis on strict time trials and speedrunning feats! You'll have to let me know what you think of it when you inevitably destroy it. I've going to have to take it easy on the hard ass games sometime soon or I'll get burned out again ?. Next year, I'm going to try to find a better balance between all the try-hard stuff and the other games that are just there for a good time. On 11/3/2021 at 9:29 PM, Joe Dubz said: Wow Ex, another absolutely brilliant review you made here! Seriously tho, I feel like your writing is more substantial than a vast majority of the "professional" video game sites I have read in recent times... Just saying! Anyway, there is no arguing with all the very valid points you make here, IMO. I'm sorry to hear tho it didn't sound like you enjoyed it as much as I did! It definitely tried really hard to be as good as SMB, but fell sadly short. You have such a good point tho about over time it becoming easier once others seek out the easy seeds... You know there have to be a few out there that are significantly easier than the rest! Or at the very least, using a combination of different ones for the deathless runs as you mentioned. By the way, hot damn what I would've given to find those shortcuts like you did I'm kind of curious to where you rate both SMB and SMBF on the 1-10 difficulty scale? For me, SMB 9/10 but SMBF 10/10... I seriously debated for hours what to set my guide at... The guide for SMB on this site was given 10/10, but as I mentioned this one to me def felt harder! So I opted to make it 10/10 as well; it honestly still feels like the hardest game I've finished to date! At any rate, fantastic job here and as always, looking forward to your next adventure Thanks, that's really kind of you to say, but I would need an entire army of editors to make anything I've written digestible in any sort of professional setting. ? There's good reason they're doing what they do and I'm over here muttering bitterly about a game I didn't enjoy in the forums. Hopefully some lunatic out there will find the easy seeds one day. Whether those seeds literally need to be found or whether they can be calculated through some clever deciphering of the seed's chunk selection logic, I'm optimistic that it will happen one day. ? I think if I had to rate SMB and SMBF on the 1-10 difficulty scale, I would have to distinguish between two versions of SMBF: SMBF on a random seed and SMBF on the hypothetical easiest seed that I mentioned in my rant. Personally, SMB has, and always will be, the 10/10 benchmark for me. Impossible Boy still remains to this day one of the hardest individual tasks I've ever completed in a game. With [SMBF/random seed], I still feel reluctant to give it a 10, because there were no deathless runs that, in my opinion, exceeded the difficulty of Impossible Boy, (that said, there were many that were still really difficult) but I would not necessarily argue over a 10/10 placement considering my own play time. It's definitely in 9 or 10 territory. [SMBF/hypothetical easiest seed] however, I would firmly place in 9/10 territory as I feel that none of the deathless runs would even come close to Impossible Boy. On 11/4/2021 at 9:18 AM, Arcesius said: Hey Ex, first of all... Fantastic write-up! I agree with @Joe Dubz, you really have a unique and interesting way of presenting your thoughts on a game You've mentioned multiple times that you sometimes stare at a blank page before knowing what to write, but I think the effort that you put into your updates really shows You wrote in the end to not take what you write too seriously... But I still want to disagree with you on a couple of points That being said, I atually agree with many of your points, including that SMBF is the inferior game and not anywhere close to beeing as good as the original, but there is one of your major points that I want to talk about, if I may... I hope you don't mind some opposition Thanks, I'm glad to hear you liked it! ? I was actually really hoping that at least one person would disagree with some of my points so that an honest conversation about SMBF's difficulty could be had! So please don't worry about disagreeing with anything I say; I always welcome some opposition. ? On 11/4/2021 at 9:18 AM, Arcesius said: I don't think that will be the case... The reason being, that there are only two groups of players (that I can think of) that would care about this game being as easy as possible: Trophy / Achievement Hunters, and Speedrunners. Now, for the first group... Most people going for this platinum are a special kind of sub-group within the community. People like yourself, that enjoy a good challenge, that don't mind spending 20 hours practicing a single world over and over. Players that enjoy hitting their heads against a wall over and over again, players that like finding their own way through the levels. Personally, I am finding most of my enjoyment with the game (which, there I agree with you, is less than I was hoping) from finding my way through my own levels that probably no one else will play. But also, I don't see this game generating as much attention as the first one did. For one, as you point out, it's the weaker game, McMillen didn't develop it, and it's an auto-runner. Thus, I don't think that there will be any collective effort from the community towards finding an "easy" seed. The players that I trust most when it comes to finding an easy seed, are speedrunners. Those guys are crazy, and will do whatever it takes to break a game. HOWEVER... not a single speedrunner listed on speedrun.com plays on a playstation console. Most are playing on PC, with a couple of exceptions playing on Switch.... This is relevant because... A PC seed does not result in the same levels when used on playstation! Thus, even if an easy seed is found for PC, it's useless for us. I agree; I don't see this game generating anywhere near as much attention as the first one did either. Any potential for a collective effort from the community to find this hypothetical "easiest" seed probably died in the first few months of the game's release. It's old news at this point and it will probably take a dedicated effort from a small pool of lunatics to really tear this game apart. Personally, I'm optimistic that a single person can decipher the game's seed logic and calculate the easiest possible seed. It may not require any sort of community effort at all. Apparently, Tommy Refenes mentioned that chunks have a developer assigned difficulty rating from 1-7 except in the case of NG in which the difficulty ranges from 1-4 (you can check here for more details if you haven't seen it already Easier S ranks for unlocks (Golden God)). If these difficulty values correspond in any way to the characters that you can manually input into a seed, then maybe it will be a matter of simply figuring out how to generate seeds in which the difficulty values of all/most chunks are as close to 1 as possible. Admittedly, I know nothing about the logic behind how SMBF seeds operate so I don't want to make any assumptions. I honestly had no idea that seeds on PC generated different levels than on PS ? but that's definitely going to be a setback since the PC version is more popular. On 11/4/2021 at 9:18 AM, Arcesius said: Sorry to be pedantic here, but there are a finite number of pacifiers since there are only 7200 possible chunks and only a select few can have a pacifier Haha, well, while there are a finite number of pacifier spawn points, the actual number of pacifiers you can collect should be infinite because you can collect pacifiers from repeated NG+ chunks (several of the 90 pacifiers I collected were repeats). There shouldn't be anything stopping you from collecting 10,000 pacifiers (far more than the number of possible chunks that contain pacifiers) if you were crazy enough to do so. ? Maybe I've misunderstood? On 11/4/2021 at 9:18 AM, Arcesius said: Alright, so... I personally also needed about 15 hours for Impossible Boy, and 5 hours for Girl and Zombie Boy... I guess it was similar for you. Here, we have 6 runs that take roughly as much practice as Impossible Boy, so to me, that does not go together with the statement that SMBF is not the harder game I have not yet started the dark worlds, so I cannot give my own opinion, but at least the numbers point towards SMBF being the harder game. As for videos. I mean, as you say SMB has been out for 11 years and there are plenty of videos about Impossible Boy... and people still don't find the game "easy" by any means In your case, you said you spent 40% of your time figuring out how to beat the levels. Let's say that using videos, you could cut your overall time down by 20% (you still need to properly execute what you see in the vids)... That's still a lot of practice required for each run! Hmm... I'm not sure if I follow when you say that we have "6 runs" that take roughly as much practice as Impossible Boy. ? Based on my times, and, if we're being charitable, only 3 of these runs really came close to the time invested in Impossible Boy (Dark Worlds 1, 3, and 5). I should probably have included in my rant that, even on a totally random seed, there were no deathless runs that, in my opinion, exceeded the difficulty of Impossible Boy. The time invested in some of these runs came close, but much of that extra time I spent could be attributed to the fact that I had no reference videos to learn the routing or knowledge on potential skips/easy strategies. You might disagree, but I think Impossible Boy, without a reference video, would have required a minimum of 25-30 hours to earn (I'm no where near clever enough to have figured out some of the tactics I used on my own). That said, all of this is somewhat besides the point. Unless I've said it somewhere else and have forgotten, I don't explicitly argue that SMBF on a random seed is necessarily easier than SMB. ? As you point out, my times suggest that SMBF could contend for a "more difficult" label. I will argue, however, that SMBF on this hypothetical "easiest seed" would absolutely be easier than SMB. In my hypothetical "easiest seed" case, the dark world time investments would theoretically look something like this: Dark World 1 - (4-7 hours) Dark World 2 - (4-7 hours) Dark World 3 - (4-7 hours) Dark World 4 - (4-7 hours) Dark World 5 - (4-7 hours) 0xDEADBEEF - (4-7 hours) (*The length is estimated based on how long my easiest Dark World run took to complete) While only tangentially related, I generally subscribe to the idea that a game's "peak difficulty" should be the biggest factor in determining overall difficulty. Since SMB's Impossible Boy was significantly harder than any of SMBF's dark worlds (even on a random seed), I'm inclined to believe it's the more difficult game to platinum. On 11/4/2021 at 9:18 AM, Arcesius said: While I can't say that I have experienced any of the minor issues you mentioned (although I found the sound during cutscenes to be horrendously distorted), it's the major issues that are the important ones... And with those I agree. It's a real shame, but levels not being memorable is one of the biggest issues I have with the game. I enjoy solving the puzzles (i.e. figuring out how to beat a level), but once the solution is found, what's left is a chain of random chunks that don't really stand out or, what is worse, are too complicated and confusing to leave a good impression. That is, without a doubt, the biggest problem I have with this game . I haven't experienced any softlocks yet, but I have experienced situations with no solution due to a miss-timed jump and the left side of the screen leading to death. I hope you don't mind my opposing opinions I don't want to defend SMBF as I agree with many of your negative points. I just wanted to start a discussion about some of the issues mentioned Looking forward to your next update! It is a real shame. I wanted to enjoy SMBF (the whole reason I ditched BOI was to see if it would be any fun), but my enjoyment fell into the gutter pretty quickly and started freefalling as soon as I started grinding out the dark worlds. There's honestly still so much I haven't complained about ? - I still think the diving speed is waaayyyy too fast to the point that it makes reaction almost impossible without memorization - I also didn't mention it in my rant, but I think the final boss is one of the worst final bosses I've ever fought in a video game (I needed a YouTube video as a reference... twice) Either way, I'm always glad to hear opposing opinions and I hope this encourages more discussion! I'll have to start deliberately coming up with inflammatory remarks and headlines to provoke responses or this thread will just be the story of a lunatic trapped in his bubble of positive affirmation. Edited November 11, 2021 by ExistentialSolid 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Joe Dubz Posted November 5, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted November 5, 2021 (edited) I'm happy to see a genuine discussion between you both, @Arcesius & @ExistentialSolid! I think you both make some very valid points here ? I'm glad to see that you generally agree about the difficulty, at least for a random seed's sake... It literally almost kept me up at night deciding to give it a 10, but after discussing with you both and a few others who nabbed the plat, I think the 10/10 is apt. Definitely for the average gamer anyway! Most ppl use Crypt of the Necrodancer as the ultimate 10/10 barometer, but I feel like that's comparing apples to oranges in regards to a platformer or autorunner like SMB or SMBF... Again it's unfortunate to hear you didn't enjoy your time with it as much as I did. Despite it being excruciatingly difficult for me at times, as well as not quite living up to the original in many ways, I really did have a ton of fun with this game! To each their own I suppose! I still really enjoyed your review and look forward to the next big challenge you take on ? Edited November 5, 2021 by Joe Dubz 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eqill5 Posted November 13, 2021 Share Posted November 13, 2021 I’m late to the SMBF discussion, but I’d like to just ask a couple more questions, if you don’t mind me bringing it back up after you’d probably (hoped to) have forgotten about it by now... I noticed you compared it with SMB regularly in your final update, and rightly so, it is Meat Boy after all. But say you didn’t compare the two at all, treat them as their own completely individual games for a moment. Super Meat Boy, and the newly released Randomly Generated Level Autorunner Platformer (good name right?) ? From the perspective that it is nothing to do with SMB, so forgetting that the levels aren’t as memorable as, the difficulty in your case, even on a random seed wasn’t as hard as, and because you didn’t list any positives that I could see, I’m curious: Did you have any good or enjoyable moments from your time with the game? Completely fair if not, and a shame really after the hype surrounding the game. Was the auto running fun from a gameplay perspective? The closest I’ve come to auto running is Badland and that’s only because the screen is chasing you ? I’m wondering if it helps or restricts the flow of the game overall. We have randomly generated levels, with varying difficulties and new mechanics. The levels are considerably long and quite complex to work out. Is the game a good challenge? Drawing the two games back together now, I think what you said about easier seeds being found over time (as great as this would be) might not be as likely to happen. In my opinion this is because SMB has established itself in the community as one of those really hard and popular platinum trophies that you see crop up in various discussions, and many people to this day are still going for it (myself included!), despite it being out for many years. As cynical as it might sound but I don’t see SMBF ever being as popular or sought after, to a point that we’ll ever have the easy seeds narrowed down. Has @ExistentialSolid made me think this might not be the best platformer I’ll ever play? Yes Am I still going to play it? Yes Appreciate the honest thoughts on the game regardless if they’re positive or negative. I’d rather know if something is good or bad, not just easy or hard. Keep up the good work man! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ExistentialSolid Posted November 14, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 14, 2021 (edited) On 11/13/2021 at 5:14 PM, Eqill5 said: I’m late to the SMBF discussion, but I’d like to just ask a couple more questions, if you don’t mind me bringing it back up after you’d probably (hoped to) have forgotten about it by now... I noticed you compared it with SMB regularly in your final update, and rightly so, it is Meat Boy after all. But say you didn’t compare the two at all, treat them as their own completely individual games for a moment. Super Meat Boy, and the newly released Randomly Generated Level Autorunner Platformer (good name right?) From the perspective that it is nothing to do with SMB, so forgetting that the levels aren’t as memorable as, the difficulty in your case, even on a random seed wasn’t as hard as, and because you didn’t list any positives that I could see, I’m curious: I don't mind at all! ? I'm happy to keep the discussion going although I should probably preface my answers to your questions by emphasizing that my post was never meant to be a fair, or honest, assessment of Super Meat Boy Forever. ? It's a mess of a "rant" that was basically just a way for me to express my overwhelmingly negative feelings towards the game. While this doesn't excuse the fact that I've treated SMBF unfairly, or explain why I constantly compare the game to its predecessor, my words were never meant to be disguised as any sort of legitimate criticism of the game. I focused on the negative for a quick cathartic thrill. On 11/13/2021 at 5:14 PM, Eqill5 said: Did you have any good or enjoyable moments from your time with the game? Completely fair if not, and a shame really after the hype surrounding the game. Yup! Some of the Warp Zones, which felt like loving homages to NES/SNES classics, were honestly pretty fun to play. The Mega Man, F-Zero, and Punch-Out tributes were especially well done and I enjoyed their inclusion. As for the main game, I can't say that I had much fun at any point in the process. The levels never strayed far from their generic, randomly-generated roots and the bosses were frustrating exercises in trial-and-error. The shift to an auto-runner transformed Super Meat Boy into a puzzle game, but I was never in the "right" mood to solve puzzles. Each world was like pulling teeth for me as I learned a new set of gimmicks and practiced for hours to come up with consistent/safe routing. Were I an actual reviewer, I would have tried to pass this game along to someone that could give it a fair shake. ? On 11/13/2021 at 5:14 PM, Eqill5 said: Was the auto running fun from a gameplay perspective? The closest I’ve come to auto running is Badland and that’s only because the screen is chasing you I’m wondering if it helps or restricts the flow of the game overall. For me, no. I can accept that some players might enjoy the change of pace, but it just wasn't for me. Auto-running restricts the flow of the game in a general sense by preventing the player from turning around when they want to. It can turn what would be an incredibly basic section in any ordinary platformer into a convoluted mess when locked into the auto-runner format. You will usually need an opposing surface to get Meat Boy moving in another direction and it quickly becomes a headache trying to undo decades of platforming instinct. On 11/13/2021 at 5:14 PM, Eqill5 said: We have randomly generated levels, with varying difficulties and new mechanics. The levels are considerably long and quite complex to work out. Is the game a good challenge? It depends on how you want to define a "good challenge." I argue in my rant that the level design is generic at the best of times and broken at worst. Wrestling with weak level design is never going to be a sign of a "good" challenge in my book regardless of level length, complexity, or mechanics. If you want something hard, there is plenty to chew on but the taste will be bitter and you'll feel hollow after you've consumed it. On 11/13/2021 at 5:14 PM, Eqill5 said: Drawing the two games back together now, I think what you said about easier seeds being found over time (as great as this would be) might not be as likely to happen. In my opinion this is because SMB has established itself in the community as one of those really hard and popular platinum trophies that you see crop up in various discussions, and many people to this day are still going for it (myself included!), despite it being out for many years. As cynical as it might sound but I don’t see SMBF ever being as popular or sought after, to a point that we’ll ever have the easy seeds narrowed down. Part of me hopes that it never happens. I want to see this game quietly fade into obscurity (ideally, without any sort of UR status to discourage thrill-seekers - getting close at 4.44%). When people mention SMBF in passing, I want the discussion to go something like this: "Wait... SMB has a sequel?" "Yeah, but I heard it was pretty bad." "Oh... never mind then." If I could have my way, I would want this game buried like some cursed artifact in a movie. ? That said, I don't think SMBF really needs popularity to be dissected. I think a small group of enthusiasts (or even a single person that can decipher the game's chunk selection logic), is enough to break this game down eventually. We just need to wait. On 11/13/2021 at 5:14 PM, Eqill5 said: Appreciate the honest thoughts on the game regardless if they’re positive or negative. I’d rather know if something is good or bad, not just easy or hard. Keep up the good work man! I appreciate the honest questions! ? I think the reason I harped so heavily on the game's "difficulty" during my rant is because I felt like I had wasted my time when all was said and done. The bottom line is that I experienced a randomly generated challenge that could have been significantly easier or significantly harder. This fact detracted from the significance of my achievement and diluted any sense of accomplishment. I felt empty and angry and funneled these emotions into my rant to deal with them. Edited November 16, 2021 by ExistentialSolid 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destructor-8 Posted November 14, 2021 Share Posted November 14, 2021 (edited) On 04/11/2021 at 9:38 PM, ExistentialSolid said: Thanks, I appreciate it! There are still plenty of other tough PSN platformers out there I haven't played (Leo's Fortune, Dustforce, and Giana Sisters to name a few), but, of the ones you've mentioned, I'd compare them in terms of difficulty as follows: Cloudberry Kingdom > Splasher > VVVVVV > SMB > SMBF (on a hypothetical easy seed) SMB is definitely the best one to go for; it has a relatively smooth difficulty curve, fantastic level design, and will make your heart race when you're on the verge of getting the platinum! There's good reason this game has stuck around for over a decade and I think you'll enjoy it once you get around to it. Plus, it'll definitely help you build your confidence if you attempt any of the other games you've listed afterwards. Nice! I'm glad you go into a lot of detail in your posts & it's especially helpful as I only know parts of what these games are about. It's really interesting knowing how everyone found each one. I mentioned the platformers that I've heard to be the toughest to do. I guessed that you would have put it something like that going by what you've said. I haven't done any platformers really so I'm glad I'm going with the one that many have said is the best one. I'll try to do what I can when I get to it! Edited November 14, 2021 by Destructor-8 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ExistentialSolid Posted November 28, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 28, 2021 (edited) The Pitch ? "Please Destroy Us" Challenge [Community Event] Hey everyone! ? Over the past year, you've all patiently supported a masochistic nut case that had nothing better to do with his time than aimlessly leap from brutal game to brutal game in a never-ending effort to get "destroyed." Time has flown and amazing people have come and gone since starting this ridiculous endeavor. While I've had a blast talking with you all and trying to discover the lengths I'm willing to go for some digital bragging rights, I've always felt like something was missing... As the months rolled by and routine started to set in, the process began to lose meaning. Accomplishments felt less impactful, my words felt more hollow, and my motivation to continue began to freefall. I didn't want to just fizzle out and fade into the background over this perceived lack of meaning. So... in an effort to liven things up, I started to wonder what would happen if we brought the community aboard for the ride and turned this whole "getting destroyed" thing into a community-driven effort from start to finish! ? Here's how it would work. We take the "Please Destroy Me" checklist concept and transform it into a full-blown event. Much like the checklist, the event would be organized into three phases: the nomination phase, the polling phase, and the "Destroy Us" phase. During the nomination phase, participants would get to nominate a single challenging game that they would like to see the community play. There would be no length, genre, or difficulty restrictions on the games that could be nominated. All a participant needs to do is state the name of the game they would like to nominate and briefly make a case for why they believe the game is difficult. Either myself, or whoever is hosting the event, will approve the nominated game provided it meets these two criteria and add it to the nomination list. During the polling phase, participants would vote on whichever games they would collectively like to see/play from the list of nominees using the same two-stage voting process that I've used in my own thread. Stage 1 of the polling process involves participants voting for as many of the games on the nomination list as they have an interest in (the goal of this stage is to gauge the general level of interest in each game); the top 3 games that receive the most votes would move on to stage 2. During stage 2 of the polling process, participants would cast a single vote for whichever game, of the top 3, they have the most interest in playing. The winner of stage 2 would become the community's selection for the event and headline the next phase of the process. Finally, during the "Destroy Us" phase, all participants would have a set amount of time (I'm thinking 2-3 months) to play through the winning game and provide their own updates along the way. Whether these updates are as short as haikus or as long as essays, each participant is encouraged to document their struggles and engage with the community as they collectively work towards the game's completion. Basically, it'll be like a "book club" but for challenging games. Anyone can join in at any time and can simply stop providing updates if they wish to drop out. Everyone that successfully finishes the community-nominated game will be celebrated on the front page of the thread in a "Can't Destroy Me" list. Once the time allotted has ended, we would begin the process again by cycling back to the nomination phase. Participation in the event would be a great way for players to build their confidence in writing/public presentation, step outside of their gaming comfort zones, and make connections with others. Your Input ? Before this has any chance of becoming an actual event, I'd really like to get your input. No matter how much or how little you've engaged with this thread, I value your feedback and would love to hear from as many of you as possible! ((PMs are okay too if you're not comfortable posting!)) 1. Is this an event you would be interested in joining? 2. Are there any changes you would make to the event format I've described above? 3. Any worries? Problems? Concerns? 4. Would anyone have an interest in hosting/co-hosting the event? 5. Are there already similar events on the forums?Rehearsal (The Next Poll) ? To help fine-tune the event logistics, I was thinking we could give the event a practice run on this thread if you all are open to the idea! From now until December 19th, I would be happy to accept any final additions, or changes, to the nomination list before the next poll begins. I'll also be putting a hold on my own updates while I try to finish up (or at least make some progress on) The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.The next poll will begin on December 19th with the winning game to be started on January 5th! You all are invited to post your own updates on the winning game if you have any interest in joining in! Depending on how things go, the event will officially be posted, independent of this thread, between the months of February and April. Thank you for reading! Edited December 1, 2021 by ExistentialSolid 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 53 minutes ago, ExistentialSolid said: The Pitch "Please Destroy Us" Challenge [Community Event] Hey everyone! Over the past year, you've watched a masochistic weirdo aimlessly leaping from brutal game to brutal game in an effort to get "destroyed." Time has flown and amazing people have come and gone since starting this ridiculous journey. While I've had a blast talking with you all and trying to discover the lengths I'm willing to go for some digital bragging rights, I've always felt like something was missing... As the months rolled by and routine started to set in, the process began to lose meaning. Accomplishments felt less impactful, my words felt more hollow, and my motivation to continue began to freefall. I don't want to just fizzle out and fade into the background over this perceived lack of meaning. So... in an effort to liven things up, I started to wonder what would happen if we brought the community aboard for the ride and turn this whole "getting destroyed" thing into a community-driven effort from start to finish! Here's how it would work. We take the "Please Destroy Me" checklist concept and transform it into a full-blown event. Much like the checklist, the event would be organized into three phases: the nomination phase, the polling phase, and the "Destroy Us" phase. During the nomination phase, participants would get to nominate a single challenging game that they would like to see the community play. There would be no length, genre, or difficulty restrictions on the games that could be nominated. All a participant needs to do is state the name of the game they would like to nominate and briefly make a case for why they believe the game is difficult. Either myself, or whoever is hosting the event, will approve the nominated game provided it meets these two criteria and add it to the nomination list. During the polling phase, participants would vote on whichever games they would collectively like to see/play from the list of nominees using the same two-stage voting process that I've used in my own thread. Stage 1 of the polling process involves participants voting for as many of the games on the nomination list as they have an interest in (the goal of this stage is to gauge the general level of interest in each game); the top 3 games that receive the most votes would move on to stage 2. During stage 2 of the polling process, participants would cast a single vote for whichever game, of the top 3, they have the most interest in playing. The winner of stage 2 would become the community's selection for the event and headline the next phase of the process. Finally, during the "Destroy Us" phase, all participants would have a set amount of time (I'm thinking 2-3 months) to play through the winning game and provide their own updates along the way. Whether these updates are as short as haikus or as long as essays, each participant is encouraged to document their struggles and engage with the community as they collectively work towards the game's completion. Basically, it'll be like a "book club" but for challenging games. Anyone can join in at any time and can simply stop providing updates if they wish to drop out. Everyone that successfully finishes the community-nominated game will be celebrated on the front page of the thread in a "Can't Destroy Me" list. Once the time allotted has ended, we would begin the process again by cycling back to the nomination phase. Participation in the event would be a great way for players to build their confidence in writing/public presentation, step outside of their gaming comfort zones, and make connections with others. It takes the best ideas of my thread and broadens their appeal to a wider audience. Your Input Before this has any chance of becoming an actual event, I'd really like to get your input. No matter how much or how little interaction you've had with this thread, I value your feedback and would love to hear from as many of you as possible! ((PMs are okay too if you're not comfortable posting!)) 1. Is this an event you would be interested in joining? 2. Are there any changes you would make to the event format I've described above? 3. Any worries? Problems? Concerns? 4. Would anyone have an interest in hosting/co-hosting the event? 5. Are there already similar events on the forums?Rehearsal (The Next Poll) To help fine-tune the event logistics, I was thinking we could give the event a practice run on this thread if you all are open to the idea! From now until December 19th, I would be happy to accept any final additions, or changes, to the nomination list before the next poll begins. I'll also be putting a hold on my own updates while I try to finish up (or at least make some progress on) The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.The next poll will begin on December 19th with the winning game to be started on January 5th! You all are invited to post your own updates on the winning game if you have any interest in joining in! Depending on how things go, the event will officially be posted, independent of this thread, between the months of February and April. Thank you for reading! Although I didn't actively participate in your thread, I followed/read a lot of the discussions and updates, and I think turning this into a community event would be very interesting. there are a lot of extremely difficult game hunters around here, and that sense of community would make gaming a lot more fun, and reading multiple people debating aspects of the same game would be great. I wouldn't participate due to lack of organization in my own personal life/gaming life lol, my rhythm of playing stuff is totally random and without any kind of discipline, but I support your idea. and congratulations for getting here, your achievements were great! there are many checklists in this forum section, but yours is perhaps the boldest one. and I don't know how you can plan to play all this and still make detailed reviews haha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBloodmoney Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 5 hours ago, ExistentialSolid said: The Pitch "Please Destroy Us" Challenge [Community Event] I think expanding the thread out to a community event sounds like a cool idea! The only thing I might consider (and this is purely based on anecdotal evidence, so take it as just one douche-bag’s musings ?) - but I have kinda noticed that the community events that are generally the most successful and widely participated in, do tend to be the ones where there is a certain level of personal autonomy left in the selection of games to play within their rules. There may be an issue here with this proposed set of rules - that it becomes off-putting or exclusionary by being overtly prescriptive? Because a single game is selected at any one time, that means anyone who doesn’t fancy that game (or has it done already) is left out for a long period of time (2-3 months), potentially losing them in perpetuity? It may be worth considering having multiple games on the go at once - or even a pool of ‘approved’ games, with participants choosing one to do at the start of each ‘round’ - that gives people some choice remaining in their selection… I know that, personally, I got kinda put off joining events where the game to be played is set, and there is no choice at all, by a bad experience once… though I may be in the minority there, I don know Just a thought, anyways - I’m not on the skill level for this kinda event regardless, (and lack the discipline required! ?) - but it sounds like it could be a fun one for those with the chops for it! Good luck ? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Dubz Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 What a novel idea, Ex! I would most definitely participate in this ? I do kind of echo @DrBloodmoney's sentiment about maybe having a few games at a time tho? Just so if participants had already completed the game on deck, they wouldn't be locked out til the next round. Or maybe just some other way for them to sub something else in, or something to that effect. As far as co-hosting, I would certainly consider doing so if you needed a hand in that regard! I'm pretty active on the forums here, on pretty much daily or at the very least every other day. Just let me know if that's the route you wanna go, if not don't even sweat it ? Looking forward to participating either way, bring on the challenge ?? 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trumpet_Boi_208 Posted November 29, 2021 Share Posted November 29, 2021 I think the main reason why you feel that your accomplishments have less impact is because although your recent achievements are quite admirable, they are a result of a grueling grind, as opposed to a brutal yet rewarding test of your skill and perseverance. Take Ikaruga, for instance. That was a game that made you question if you were even capable of earning it. It would only be through dozens of hours of sweat, tears, and failed attempts before you finally emerged on top. It was a brutally hard, but well-crafted challenge that pushed you to your limits. Then, there's SMBF, which simply required you to learn a set of randomly selected chunks that may or may not be difficult. (Tl;Dr: You need a properly made challenge that will push you beyond what you think is possible for you to give your achievements more personal impact.) Whenever I think about your loss of motivation for this challenge, I constantly think about pacing in video games. Why, you may ask? Well, I remember watching this video from Game Maker's Toolkit, where the narrator said that having the game at max intensity for too long may lead to desensitization from the action. I think this idea also carries over to trophy hunting. If you're constantly challenging ultra hard platinums, then you begin to lose that sense of challenge and accomplishment, and just find yourself going through the motions. Combine that with the repeating bitter taste of failure, and your motivation is going to drop dramatically. I finally grew the guts to start grinding Splasher, and it is just as difficult as I had anticipated. In fact, I could argue that it is harder than Tetris Effect in some areas, with the latter only requiring quick, precise movements for only around 3-5 minutes at most, where Splasher requires 40-70 minutes of consistently skillful play while keeping your cool the whole time. Your videos were quite a valuable resource to have, since it helped me establish solid routing for each level, and I was able to set some decent times on some of them as a result. Thanks for listening to my rambling! I hope it at least makes some sense! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExistentialSolid Posted December 1, 2021 Author Share Posted December 1, 2021 On 11/28/2021 at 4:33 AM, DrBloodmoney said: I think expanding the thread out to a community event sounds like a cool idea! The only thing I might consider (and this is purely based on anecdotal evidence, so take it as just one douche-bag’s musings ) - but I have kinda noticed that the community events that are generally the most successful and widely participated in, do tend to be the ones where there is a certain level of personal autonomy left in the selection of games to play within their rules. There may be an issue here with this proposed set of rules - that it becomes off-putting or exclusionary by being overtly prescriptive? Because a single game is selected at any one time, that means anyone who doesn’t fancy that game (or has it done already) is left out for a long period of time (2-3 months), potentially losing them in perpetuity? It may be worth considering having multiple games on the go at once - or even a pool of ‘approved’ games, with participants choosing one to do at the start of each ‘round’ - that gives people some choice remaining in their selection… I know that, personally, I got kinda put off joining events where the game to be played is set, and there is no choice at all, by a bad experience once… though I may be in the minority there, I don know Just a thought, anyways - I’m not on the skill level for this kinda event regardless, (and lack the discipline required! ) - but it sounds like it could be a fun one for those with the chops for it! Good luck Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback! ? Denying the participants a level of autonomy, barring the polls, will absolutely be off-putting for some. Under the current rule set, I'm sure there would be plenty of players that lose interest and leave when their preferred game loses the poll. I would need to be ready to trade event success/popularity for my narrow vision of what I want to see out of the event were I to commit to these rules. Allowing multiple games at once, while ideal for greater accessibility, might fragment the audience. Supposing we were to allow three games instead of one, we might see sub-communities form around each game. All of the updates about game X, while interesting to the players that are also playing X, might be ignored by players focused on games Y or Z (depending on the complexity of the game, these updates might not even make sense at all to players focused on other games). Likewise, updates about games Y or Z might generate little interest among the players not playing Y or Z. By funneling the entire player pool into one arena, there's more cohesion in the community and in the updates they provide. Everyone would have to surmount the same challenge one way or another and every update would be relatable to every other participant. Success, I feel, would be more likely in this cohesive environment where everyone else has your back and has to deal with the same nightmares. All that said, I rarely participate in events on PSNP (or anywhere else) so my ideas may be based more firmly in fantasy than reality. ? Something that's made me sad about your feedback, however, was your comment about "not being on the skill level" or having the discipline to stick with a game that might be selected for the event. If you're thinking these sorts of things as someone that is very obviously skilled and disciplined, then I can't imagine what other players are thinking. I wonder if the event would be less intimidating to participants if the host of the event were more of an unproven everyman. More than anything, I want to make an event that will push "ordinary" gamers out of their comfort zones. I want them to prove to themselves that they have what it takes to complete these difficult games too. On 11/28/2021 at 0:11 AM, kevao97 said: Although I didn't actively participate in your thread, I followed/read a lot of the discussions and updates, and I think turning this into a community event would be very interesting. there are a lot of extremely difficult game hunters around here, and that sense of community would make gaming a lot more fun, and reading multiple people debating aspects of the same game would be great. I wouldn't participate due to lack of organization in my own personal life/gaming life lol, my rhythm of playing stuff is totally random and without any kind of discipline, but I support your idea. and congratulations for getting here, your achievements were great! there are many checklists in this forum section, but yours is perhaps the boldest one. and I don't know how you can plan to play all this and still make detailed reviews haha That's kind of you to say, thank you! There are so many players out there that don't believe they have the potential to get some of these difficult games finished, so I wanted to find a way to force players to put their false assumptions to the test. Having a small community there to encourage and motivate you to push your way through a challenge might be exactly what some of us need to prove to ourselves that we're capable of success. I don't know if I ever would have tried half of the games I've played this year if it wasn't for the confidence that the community helped give me. I want others to experience the same sort of encouraging environment without all the stress of managing a checklist. The time limit on how long participants can post about the winning game (if I keep these event rules) is something I'll have to give thought to. I want something long enough to accommodate the sporadic rhythm of players like you without losing the attention of people that will push through immediately. On 11/28/2021 at 6:58 PM, Joe Dubz said: What a novel idea, Ex! I would most definitely participate in this I do kind of echo @DrBloodmoney's sentiment about maybe having a few games at a time tho? Just so if participants had already completed the game on deck, they wouldn't be locked out til the next round. Or maybe just some other way for them to sub something else in, or something to that effect. As far as co-hosting, I would certainly consider doing so if you needed a hand in that regard! I'm pretty active on the forums here, on pretty much daily or at the very least every other day. Just let me know if that's the route you wanna go, if not don't even sweat it Looking forward to participating either way, bring on the challenge I'm glad to hear it! ? When it comes to having multiple games, I'm just not sure where to draw the line between accessibility and cohesiveness. Having more than one game will divide the community into subsets, but sticking with one game will push others away entirely. I'm sure it would be fine to allow players that have already completed the assigned game (or players that have decided not to play) to offer encouragement or advice to other players, but I know that's only a partial solution. I wonder if my idea would be more successful as some sort of hybrid "community checklist?" Either way, I'm happy to see you have an interest in hosting and I'll definitely consider you for the role if I go that route! On 11/29/2021 at 10:16 AM, Trumpet_Boi_208 said: I think the main reason why you feel that your accomplishments have less impact is because although your recent achievements are quite admirable, they are a result of a grueling grind, as opposed to a brutal yet rewarding test of your skill and perseverance. Take Ikaruga, for instance. That was a game that made you question if you were even capable of earning it. It would only be through dozens of hours of sweat, tears, and failed attempts before you finally emerged on top. It was a brutally hard, but well-crafted challenge that pushed you to your limits. Then, there's SMBF, which simply required you to learn a set of randomly selected chunks that may or may not be difficult. (Tl;Dr: You need a properly made challenge that will push you beyond what you think is possible for you to give your achievements more personal impact.) You have a point, but it can be tough to tell the difference between a "grueling grind" and a "rewarding test of skill/perseverance." Depending on how you frame the process, you could argue that any difficult game is just a grueling grind when you break it down. Ikaruga, Splasher, Assetto Corsa—no matter the game or the genre, they all require you to grind to build up the muscle memory to succeed. In a more subjective sense, Assetto Corsa sort of skirted the line between the two. I felt immense satisfaction when I earned my first hotlap gold medal because I felt as though I were genuinely improving my racing skills, but, as soon the floodgates were opened and I earned medal after medal, taking the platinum started to feel like an inevitability as long as I kept grinding. Whether we find the process to be "rewarding" is always going to be up for interpretation. I actually started Assetto Corsa because I felt certain that it was "beyond" my current skill set. If you placed a toddler in a Formula One car and said, "go out and win the World Championship", you don't expect the toddler to come back with the cup in his hands. ? I know that earning the platinum in Assetto Corsa isn't comparable, but I felt like that toddler in that I was certain I stood no chance at success. I've proven to myself so many times that anything I think is out of reach is actually perfectly achievable with patience, determination, and the right mindset. Where should I go looking for something that is "beyond what I think is possible" if I've stopped believing that anything is out of reach? On 11/29/2021 at 10:16 AM, Trumpet_Boi_208 said: Whenever I think about your loss of motivation for this challenge, I constantly think about pacing in video games. Why, you may ask? Well, I remember watching this video from Game Maker's Toolkit, where the narrator said that having the game at max intensity for too long may lead to desensitization from the action. I think this idea also carries over to trophy hunting. If you're constantly challenging ultra hard platinums, then you begin to lose that sense of challenge and accomplishment, and just find yourself going through the motions. Combine that with the repeating bitter taste of failure, and your motivation is going to drop dramatically. Desensitization may be one of the biggest culprits behind my missing motivation. I don't feel much at all anymore and I don't know where to look to find the same high that I used to. I guess I'm one of those junkies that's been on the hard stuff for so long, they stop feeling anything. ? The logical thing to do is to take a break, which is why I'm trying to push the community into the spotlight by starting up an event. Something that would give me satisfaction is seeing others prove to themselves that they can do anything (or, at least, prove that they're much more capable than they believed they were). I'd get a much greater thrill out of that than finding another hard game to pick apart. On 11/29/2021 at 10:16 AM, Trumpet_Boi_208 said: I finally grew the guts to start grinding Splasher, and it is just as difficult as I had anticipated. In fact, I could argue that it is harder than Tetris Effect in some areas, with the latter only requiring quick, precise movements for only around 3-5 minutes at most, where Splasher requires 40-70 minutes of consistently skillful play while keeping your cool the whole time. Your videos were quite a valuable resource to have, since it helped me establish solid routing for each level, and I was able to set some decent times on some of them as a result. Thanks for listening to my rambling! I hope it at least makes some sense! I think you're the first player to actually use my Splasher videos. ? I'm happy to hear that they helped you though (it makes the whole process worthwhile). Keeping your cool can be tough, but if you get a strong start, you can build up a time buffer that can go a long way in calming your nerves towards the end. Good luck! I'm sure I'll see you in the 100% club soon enough! You didn't ramble at all and I was glad to read through your post. ? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
da-Noob123 Posted December 1, 2021 Share Posted December 1, 2021 I like the idea of the community getting more involved, some of the best parts of this thread are your discussions with other members going through a given game. There are a couple games, Catherine comes to mind, I would be interested in tackling with a group but not many. Most of these games are outside of my wheelhouse but it's enjoyable reading your progress through them. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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