"They're more like giant cherries..."
Sep. 4th, 2008 09:08 pmSo I've started playing I Wanna Be The Guy.
To overview, for those not familiar: The point of this game is to be utterly, utterly unfair. Everything kills you in one hit (aside from those rare things that instead merely push you to your death). Ridiculous zero-tolerance platforming segments are the least of your worries. Trial and error gameplay is pretty common. And yet somehow the game is still fun, largely because of how ridiculous it is. It constantly finds new ways to surprise you (by which I mean kill you).
And in fact though it's probably more unfair, it doesn't seem to actually be as hard as some other utterly unfair games I've seen, because there are savepoints. The difficulties are Hard (the default), Very Hard (fewer savepoints), Impossible (no savepoints, so, yeah, effectively impossible), and Medium (additional savepoints, which are labeled WUSS, and The Kid gets a bow in his hair; what I'm playing on). Yes, "medium" is the easiest.
Also the game pastiches lots of other platformers and old video games.
Anyway. My own observations and thoughts:
The level design is actually pretty good - well, sort of. For an ordinary game, the level design is horrible. Trial and error gameplay, extremely annoying enemies... but this is not supposed to be an ordinary game. And what it's trying to do, it does very well. Things are ridiculously hard, but doable - everything's very precise, everything has a purpose (well, almost everything); you can see every screen was carefully designed. Ordinarily trial-and-error gameplay is the tool of a lazy designer, but here it's not lazy at all. It's, well, malicious, but in a hilarious way that allow it to not be unfun.
I am wondering about this statement that the first boss is Mike Tyson. So far I've found 3 paths through the game, of which I'm exploring 2; in each case the first boss I fought was not Mike Tyson. I've fought Mecha-Birdo first, I've fought Kraidgief first. Where's Mike Tyson?
I actually only beat Kraidgief due to a bug, but since I intend to actually beat the whole game at some point, I'll presumably have to fight him fairly on my other save.
On the whole I'm currently rather confused about the paths through the game, but I suppose I'll figure that out once I've gotten far enough.
Also I don't understand - on the save screen it looks like there's only room to display 4 bosses, but apparently there are 6 units? I thought each boss guarded 1 unit? Well, same comment...
I've found 3 of the 6 hidden items, namely numbers 1, 2, and 4, though I found 2 first - this is totaled up among all my saves, since apparently the game only counts which hidden items have been gotten among all 3 saves (probably even if the game is erased).
Also due to my crappy hard drive, occasionally the game crashes when trying to load something. (Though, still, why does it crash? Can't it just, you know, take longer to load, like other programs?) As a result my play times and death counts are enormously undercounted.
-Harry
To overview, for those not familiar: The point of this game is to be utterly, utterly unfair. Everything kills you in one hit (aside from those rare things that instead merely push you to your death). Ridiculous zero-tolerance platforming segments are the least of your worries. Trial and error gameplay is pretty common. And yet somehow the game is still fun, largely because of how ridiculous it is. It constantly finds new ways to surprise you (by which I mean kill you).
And in fact though it's probably more unfair, it doesn't seem to actually be as hard as some other utterly unfair games I've seen, because there are savepoints. The difficulties are Hard (the default), Very Hard (fewer savepoints), Impossible (no savepoints, so, yeah, effectively impossible), and Medium (additional savepoints, which are labeled WUSS, and The Kid gets a bow in his hair; what I'm playing on). Yes, "medium" is the easiest.
Also the game pastiches lots of other platformers and old video games.
Anyway. My own observations and thoughts:
The level design is actually pretty good - well, sort of. For an ordinary game, the level design is horrible. Trial and error gameplay, extremely annoying enemies... but this is not supposed to be an ordinary game. And what it's trying to do, it does very well. Things are ridiculously hard, but doable - everything's very precise, everything has a purpose (well, almost everything); you can see every screen was carefully designed. Ordinarily trial-and-error gameplay is the tool of a lazy designer, but here it's not lazy at all. It's, well, malicious, but in a hilarious way that allow it to not be unfun.
I am wondering about this statement that the first boss is Mike Tyson. So far I've found 3 paths through the game, of which I'm exploring 2; in each case the first boss I fought was not Mike Tyson. I've fought Mecha-Birdo first, I've fought Kraidgief first. Where's Mike Tyson?
I actually only beat Kraidgief due to a bug, but since I intend to actually beat the whole game at some point, I'll presumably have to fight him fairly on my other save.
On the whole I'm currently rather confused about the paths through the game, but I suppose I'll figure that out once I've gotten far enough.
Also I don't understand - on the save screen it looks like there's only room to display 4 bosses, but apparently there are 6 units? I thought each boss guarded 1 unit? Well, same comment...
I've found 3 of the 6 hidden items, namely numbers 1, 2, and 4, though I found 2 first - this is totaled up among all my saves, since apparently the game only counts which hidden items have been gotten among all 3 saves (probably even if the game is erased).
Also due to my crappy hard drive, occasionally the game crashes when trying to load something. (Though, still, why does it crash? Can't it just, you know, take longer to load, like other programs?) As a result my play times and death counts are enormously undercounted.
-Harry
