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Got the clear! One death, but I can accept that since it was against the Stage 4 boss. All in all it was a very smooth run, things went pretty much as planned. Some fumbling with weapon changes here and there but luckily nothing fatal. Even managed to skip most of the refights against bosses before the final boss. I think those doors are semi-random, sometimes going through the same door gets me to the same place as last time, sometimes not. Ah well, I think I’m done with the game.
Didn’t even realize it before I started thinking about what I’ve been playing lately, but I’ve been focusing on, semi-seriously, several run ‘n guns.
Contra (Arcade)
Bought it on XBLA when it was on sale because it’s Contra and I’m stupid like that. The fact that I already had the game in a technically better form for PS2 in Hamster’s Oretachi Geasen Zoku Sono 16-release just accentuates my twisted loveaffair with Contra.
How did Konami ever think that a game scrolling mostly horizontally but using a vertically-oriented monitor was a good idea? It’s such a clumsy game compared to the NES port. And a bit shorter at ~10 minutes and maybe even a bit easier. Already 1CCed it a few times on PS2, might as well try for a no-miss. Basic Contra-strategy applies: Get spreadshot and don’t lose it. Oddly random at times, sometimes you get certain power-ups (like the invulnerability one), sometimes you don’t.
Neo Contra
Already have the S-rank clear. But I had to restart a stage or two for it, and like in Shattered Soldier the game doesn’t care whether restarts were used or not. I do care, so it doesn’t count. Unlike in SS, you can actually die or miss an enemy and still get an S-rank clear. While in SS the requirement for S-rank was 100% in Neo it’s 98%. And each death just penalizes you for %1. So it’s possible to die twice in a stage and still get the best possible grade.
I’m aiming for a 100% S-rank clear. With no retries, obviously. I’ve already got 100% in each individual stage in practice. Doing it all in a single run is made more difficult annoying by some stupid design decisions. Sometimes the camera angle just gets in the way and you get hit by something you didn’t think was a threat. To balance this there’s the invulnerability-granting spin move. But really, the designers should’ve seen that if they need to include such a thing, something more fundamental is wrong with the game.
That said, there are only few troublesome spots left. There’s the Lucia boss battle during which the camera is at 30-40 degree angle behind you. Easy to get accidentally hit there. And then there’s Stage 6′s boss’ second attack pattern, where he throws his sword around and it’s pretty tricky to dodge. The last boss is easier, all his attacks either have safespots or are pretty clearly telegraphed.
Cyber-Lip
The pre-Metal Slug Neo Geo run ‘n gun. It’s rough around the edges but has a nice charm to it. I like being able to select the weapon to use at any time. And most of them even get used at some point.
Like some parts of arcade Contra, it’s just so random. Like the stage 3 boss (which reminds me of Stage 5′s boss in Shattered Soldier, actually) which sometimes just decides to ram up at you, and unless you’re in a position where he can’t hit you before he starts the attack, you will get hit. Even after checking my replay footage I’ve been unable to find any hints that tell the attack is coming. Best bet is to just kill the boss as fast as possible (and he can’t be hurt by the most powerful weapon, weird bug?) and hope for the best.
Between certain stages you have to decide whether to go up or down an elevator. Which choice is the correct one is random each game. Getting it wrong puts into you a small ministage (three different ones, picked at random) before you can proceed to the actual stage. Not very hard, just odd ‘n random.
Stage 5 boss is the hardest boss by far. Rock-spewing alien ballsacks at top, alien head at right which also spawns lil’ facehuggers. Destroying the leftmost ballsack makes the battle far easier, problem is doing it. Probably going to lose a life or two here.
The last boss is a total pushover. Not once when I’ve practiced the game by creditfeeding have I died to him. A small unknown factor is the room before him, where there are several doors which you can go through. Most doors lead to fighting the previous bosses, one or two to an ammo room and one to the last boss. I actually think these aren’t randomized, which would make the whole thing quite simple. And silly. Gotta doublecheck that.
I don’t think I’ll aim for a no-miss in this one but a 1CC should be within reach.
And lastly, I went and picked up Sin & Punishment 2 for the Wii. Seems pretty fun but I need to play it more. Very chaotic at times. I think it’s too long to bother with a proper arcade-style one-sitting playthrough but score attacking individual stages might be fun. Scoring seems to be governed by the multiplyer which increases as you destroy enemies and lowers when you get hit yourself. Simple enough, probably some tricks in there with the melee attack and deflecting enemy shots back at them.
The other day I played OOA for an hour and a half straight trying to beat nZero’s time for Goal B and only managed to marginally improve my own record. With one run in Time Attack lasting about four and a half minutes, that’s a whole lotta gaming where you need to stay focused at all times. So I was feeling a bit annoyed with the game, or more appropriately, my lack of progress.
But then there was some talk about the game and the different cars in it in the irc channel. It reminded me that I’ve never actually driven all the available cars. When I started with the game I just looked at the leaderboards, saw the F40 was a pretty popular choice and went with that. So I figured giving the other cars a test drive might be a good way to refreshen the game. That was an excellent decision. After mere few runs I already improved my Goal B record a bit and with multiple cars to boot (still not enough to top nZero, though). There are very subtle differences in how the cars behave, though they all have the same top speed. Meaning the differences are in acceleration, turning speed, drifting control, and so forth.
In all honesty, in most cases I couldn’t tell what was different compared to the F40. But in two cars’ cases I could: The Dino 246 GTS recovers from a drift very quickly. This of course allows it to start building up speed again faster and lessens the chance of fishtailing. But this can also work against the driver, since it’s easier to accidentally end a drift when you’re supposed to do a counter direction drift. Dino is also narrower than most other cars, which I felt made it harder to grip through corners as effectively.
The other car is the Testarossa. Compared to the F40 it turns very slightly faster. This means easier time gripping through some corners and thanks to Testarossa I even managed to improve my time in Sunny Beach, for the first time in quite a while. I can’t tell if the car’s acceleration is any slower than the F40′s or if it has any other “flaws”. But because I’m so used to the F40′s turning speed I occasionally find myself turning too fast into a counter direction drift (in the last S-curve in National Park, for example) and lose some speed due to hitting the rougher terrain.
In any case, today I was running Goal B again and managed to beat nZero’s time not once, but twice with the Testarossa. And it took me only 30 minutes or so. The latter time beating his by a whooping quarter of a second. I also improved my course times here and there. Speaking of, in order to better see my progress through the game I created a spreadsheet with all my best course times, calculated my theoretical best route times from those (and display my actual best route times as well) and compare it to the #1 time on the leaderboards. The resulting chart can be viewed here.
From that it’s easy to see that I’m doing my best on Goals B and C (for which I’m currently in leaderboard positions #18 and #15 respectively) and worst on Goal E. I was however glad to see the differences between my theoretical and actual times aren’t that terrible (aside from Goal E) after all. I thought I was way more inconsistent. I think I’ll work on my Goal C times next, as I’m already doing pretty good there. Would be nice to break into the Top 10 leaderboards for one route.
I must’ve played Outrun Online Arcade for ~20 hours now and I’m still not quite sure how to optimally shift gears and bring the car up to speed at the start. I did manage to get a 0’57”xxx time on the first stage once, so I must’ve done it pretty well at least once…such a shame I’m not sure what it was and I wasn’t recording at the time. This might be my utter and complete lack of knowledge on anything relating to real cars and how they work shining through here. RPM, whazzat?
It also took me waaaay longer than I care to admit to notice that my gear shift drifting was pretty suboptimal. I used to do it with two clearly seperate button presses, now it’s one smooth, fluid motion as my thumb slides from the Shift Down button to the Shift Up button in a fraction of a second. That simple correction to my technique was enough to shave off quite a bit of time. Now if I could just figure out when to use brake drifting…currently I just always gear shift drift.
My times are improving constantly, which is nice. Seems there’s always something I can either not mess up in or figure out how to do faster. I managed to place as #15 in Goal C and even got a respectable time for Goal D. Milky Way, the final stage of that route, is my least favourite stage in the game. It’s so easy to hit a wall there thanks to the very narrow road. The second corner is the most annoying, it’s a long curve you need to drift and it ends with a sharp corner to the other direction. And because it’s a night level I find it a bit difficult to see where that corner starts, making timing the counter-drift all that more difficult. Luckily my best time on that stage is recorded, I’ll need to study the footage and see if I can find some visual cues on when to do it.
And lastly, I got a confidence boost in multiplayer. I raced one-on-one (catch-up off, collisions on) against someone very close to my own skill level. We did three full runs (he quit during the fourth) and I won two of them. The one I lost was by 0.15 or so seconds. Later when I checked his rankings in Time Attack I found him to be in Top 15 for some routes. Nice.
…well, in the 10′s, I suppose.
I’ve been playing a lot of Outrun Online Arcade on XBLA for the last couple of weeks. Haven’t really played an arcade racer since Burnout 2 (still the best Burnout as far as I’m concerned) so it’s a nice change of pace. OOA now also holds the honor of being my first ever driving game where I’ve tried and gotten used to using manual transmission.
When I started playing I thought I’d spend most of my time on Heart Attack mode, but it turns out I’m having a blast playing Time Attack and multiplayer. The two work together rather nicely as I can try out new things in Time Attack and then apply them in multiplayer and I also sometimes get new ideas from other players.
Sadly, it seems the multiplayer community isn’t that strong. Most of my races I’ve won with a large margin, to the point of often DNFing (after the first person crosses the finishline, the remaining players have 10 seconds to get to the goal before the game ends or they just get a “Did Not Finish”) the other players. Luckily I found players in #shmups who also play it and they have given me my most heated races, few of which I’ve uploaded to my Youtube account. I also managed to catch a race with someone who’s in at least Top 15 for all goals in Time Attack, that was pretty…enlightening.
Time Attack is a different beast in the sense that there are some very good times up there and with my current skills, lines and techniques there’s no way for me get even within a second or two on them. So a lot of stuff still to learn. A more immediate goal is to beat nZero’s times, we have a bit of back-and-forth on who’s got the best times going on there. He’s got more of them at the moment. Gotta get to work.
I went through a period of Stupid where I was utterly unable to no-miss R-Type’s first loop again. I’d either die at the Stage 5 boss or one of the trickier parts in Stage 6 over and over again. The only reason I wanted to do it again on the Dimensions port was so I could play it on Infinite mode and join the ~100 or so people on the Leaderboards who no-missed it. I thought it’s a bit like getting 300 in bowling. Anyway, that’s done now. And on the plus side, I learned a crapton more about Stage 6 while I kept practicing so I’d say it was worth it. Now, afterwards, I’m a bit amazed I even managed to no-miss the game as I did, I could’ve done it so much easier.
While practicing I also noticed there are plenty of small differences between the Dimensions and the R-Types version of the game. The latter is a bit faster and harder (the back-cannons in Stage 3′s ship being more eager to fire, for example) so I guess I’ll need to clear that version of the game as well. But since I’ve done most of my practicing on the R-Types version anyway it shouldn’t be a problem.
And though there’s still a small desire to 2-ALL the game, I’ve also started playing R-Type II. Damn that’s an awesome game. The stage designs and bosses are much more complex and devious. I’ve made it to the Stage 4 boss on a credit, but I still need to practice Stage 3 boss before I’m really comfortable with him. I beat him most of the time but it always feel a bit too much like luck. Took a peek at Stages 5 and 6…fifth stage feels hard, but the boss is probably the easiest of both games. Sixth stage is pretty hectic with a fairly high bulletcount for an R-Type game. I’d say the game is definitely harder than the original. Yet in sgronblo’s opinion the first game is easier. Wonder if my opinion will change once I get more into it.
R-Type II I’ll be playing on the R-Types version. The differences between the Dimensions version and R-Types version are much more pronounced here – while in the first game they’re noticable if you look for them, here they whack you in the face with a hammer right from the get-go. The enemy dispensers seem to spew less enemies in the Dimensions version, which also has some enemies missing (like one of the medium-sized crafts that jump out from the water after entering the base in Stage 1, few enemies creeping up from behind right before the boss and in Stage 2, bosses seem to take a bit less damage…) compared to the R-Types version. Also, while the first game’s graphics (especially the backgrounds) are a bit bare and the improved graphics in Dimensions were pretty nice, they don’t seem to work in II as well – the game already had more detailed graphics to begin with and they’re still nice to look today. So that’s even less reason to use the Dimensions version when I have R-Types to play it on.
(The title of this post…how come Irem never did a typing game like Typing of the Dead? It’s already in the name! I should make mockups of it for the heck of it.)
Got the no-miss clear of R-Type’s first loop. I’m pleased. And I beat Kiken’s score by almost 100k, that’s a nice bonus.
Second loop’s a bit tricky. The first two stages aren’t that bad (though in this run I messed up in 2nd stage boss) but Stage 3 is already pretty brutal. The big cannon/thruster at the end of the Big Ship takes much, MUCH more hits, the turrets at the front of the ship regenerate quite fast…it’s a whole new ballgame from there on. I’m actually a bit tempted to work on the second loop – the game’s so short that even if I played through both loops it would still take less time than a full run of Contra: Shattered Soldier. But if I do decide to go at it, I’d be doing it with R-Types for PS1 rather than the Dimensions port I played here. Nothing wrong with Dimensions, but in the end I’m just a bit more comfortable with the original – especially since Dimensions doesn’t have customizable controls.
But then, I also want to work on R-Type 2 and about 30 other games. I have a list of gaming feats I want to accomplish, and now I can mark off one of them.
Video at http://www.ghegs.com/movies/Ghegs_R-Type1XBLA_1stloop_nomiss.mp4
Inspired by sgronblo I’ve finally found the groove to work on R-Type, which is something I’ve wanted to do since I finished Delta and I’ve had a clear of the game on my list of gaming goals to achieve for a while. I was actually making some nice progress on Last Resort before this, but then I got sidetracked into Borderlands for ~40 hours. No doubt I’ll be returning to Last Resort though, I made it to Stage 4 (out of 5) on a credit and after checking out Stage 5 with creditfeeding it looked pretty damn crazy awesome fun. And hard.
But R-Type. Even though it’s a fairly short game, it’s still annoying to practice the later stages when the tactics change completely depending on if you’re properly powered up or recovering from death on a checkpoint. Solution, emulation. But the game doesn’t support savestates in mame, using them actually crashed my computer. Luckily, the R-Types collection for PS1 works far better in this and I’ve been using a PS1 emulator to practice the stages with savestates. Both R-Types and the Dimensions port have actual stage select modes, but since they just start you at the beginning of the stage without any power-ups whatsoever they’re a bit useless, especially since I’m aiming to no-miss the game. Scoring via checkpoint abuse in Stage 7 be damned.
And so, I’ve now cleared every stage individually and have started doing full runs. I’m actually going to clear the game on the Dimensions port, at least for starters. If I feel like taking on the second loop I can always just play my R-Types. The early stages are a no-brainer, though Stage 4 boss still sometimes catches me by surprise. Stage 5 is probably the easiest stage of all as long as the ship’s properly equipped. Stage 6 sort of feels harder than Stage 7…it’s not as hectic, but in many places you’re confined to very small spaces where it’s easy to accidentally manuever into a wall.
Stage 7 is the one I spent the most time practicing. I had already gotten good enough to clear the first six stages just from normal play but Stage 7 had eluded me and it was the biggest reason I felt the need to practice with savestates. Not a terribly hard stage as such, but many little things that can go wrong…like getting caught by a blast of steam from a wall, which ended my latest no-miss full run. sgronblo prefers Blue weapon there, but I’ve found Yellow to suit me best. And Yellow allows me to abuse a safespot right in front of the boss which I couldn’t get to work with Blue. Here’s hoping the Dimensions port doesn’t differ here. If it doesn’t, I should have the clear soon-ish.
I got the no-miss ALL S-rank clear in Contra: Shattered Soldier.
It’s been three weeks since my last journal entry, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been procrastinating with my gaming. After I got the S-rank clear with retries I’ve done a run of the game almost every day. I decided early on I wouldn’t succumb to the restart syndrome but would play all runs to their completion no matter where or how I died. I didn’t quite adhere to it completely, but enough that I got comfortable with the later stages. In fact, most of my deaths actually happened in Missions 2 or 3. Lots of little random things that can go wrong in those. I ended up re-learning the first four missions almost completely, so much have my tactics changed since I got the first S-rank clears on them.
The no-miss ALL S-rank clear run went pretty good. There are little flaws in it (fight against the first form of first boss in Mission 6 is fugly), but some cool stuff as well (EPIC battle against Lance). It’s really a testament to the game that even after so many runs I still learned new quirks; I had never before seen the Mission 4 boss do an extra across-the-screen-jump like it does here. It threw me off my game for a moment which is why the fight takes longer than usual.
According to my journal entries I started playing the game on October 18th so it took me about a month and a half to get this run. The in-game clock says my Total Battle Time is 16 hours, 25 minutes, but there’s some weirdness in the way the game saves that data plus it doesn’t count the time spent in Practice mode either, so I’d estimate the actual time it took me is around 24 hours.
Video of the run available at http://www.ghegs.com/movies/Ghegs_ContraSS_1LC_ALL_S-rank.mp4
Well, I did it. Cleared with game with an all S-rank. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite the Flawless Victory I had hoped as I had to retry Mission 5 twice. Good god those were the most embarassing deaths ever. First happened at the Alien Nutsack, the boss right after Lance, where I experienced a case of premature release and failed to produce a charge shot, which totally messed up my rhythm. The second happened only moments after restarting the mission when I was hit by a totally random mortar shot. I mean seriously, who gets hit by those?
And if that wasn’t enough, I had to retry Final Boss Battle. The one mission that I hadn’t failed in once since figuring it out. But I’m willing to chalk that up to nervousness.
Even though the game itself awarded me with all the rewards of an S-rank clear I don’t quite feel like I deserve the accomplishment. I did, after all, spend three credits doing it and the shmupper in me is yelling “Dude! You creditfed! That doesn’t count!” even though the game itself counts it as a legit S-rank clear and it’s not like it’s possible to creditfeed past a tricky spot when you have to start the mission from the beginning on a retry. I recognize that dying only three times during the whole game is most definitely not bad…just not as good as I want and hope to get.
And it would be nice to get a proper 1CC S-rank run of the game up to the Vault. Of course I recorded this run too.
Maybe I’ll work on the game a bit more. We’ll see.
Dan Haigh
Ghegs
[DRZ] OTL-TIW
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