#the BLAST tool is fun you can just put random shit in there and sometimes you'll get an animal you didnt know existed | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

delfts-purple · 3 years

Text

Saints Row Reboot Thoughts

So originally I had a massive ass post of my SR5 wish list sitting in my drafts but since that's now useless, gonna do this. For some context I have been playing since 06, when I was way to young and I fucking hated 4. Now lets go!

My Wants and not wants:

Reboot after SR2 or SRTT. No hate, SRTT was alright but it may be easier and better to reboot from SR2. I seriously do not want you to redo 1 and 2. They are very good games that can stand the test of time and deserve their place. I may be more pissed if you retcon 1 and 2 than I was at 4. Like I guess I could live with a remaster if it was a graphical and control scheme overhaul only. I do hear you young fans, we did have clunky controls back then but they were normal so I don't get put off by it.

It looks to be the case we are going back to the roots and my god are we overdue.

Lets talk clothing. Basically the entire clothing system from SR2, that is what I want pray for. It was peak customization that I have not had another game match.

BIG PHAT GOLD CHAINS PLEZ. I know its probably not fashionable anymore but hot damn it looks so good.

Body slider/Gender slider (idk what to call it) from SR2. Not only is it great for our Trans homies. It was just a great, nah, amazing tool. Really before its time.

Please, make it so I don't have to be a body builder. Like skinny Bosses need more love. My boy Ty was always skinny till 3 and 4 forced him to be bulky. Skinny boys need love tooo!!!!

Honestly like a hybrid of the character builder from 2 and 3 would work. The color, make up and feature diversity of SR3. Paired with the fine tuning of SR2. Its just like chefs kiss.

Custom walking styles, I always loved that my and my friends boss not walk alike.

Two tone hair again maybe? I just think its neat.

Honestly just all the fucking activities from SR2 and SR1. I loved them all, well except Heli assault but people liked that to so let them have it.

Tagging, please, I love tagging.

GOLD/PLATNUIM WEPON UNLOCKS! So gangster like hot damn.

BOOZE AND DRUGS! Like I have had 100s of hours of fun fucking about with that. Like if we had the variety of SR1 in booze and drugs, I would die and got to heaven.

I mean if you can find a way to not make romancing a bastardization I guess you can keep it.

JUST DON'T! Don't bastardize that charaters.

Can we maybe have back some of that grit? Like SR2 was a prefect balance of grit and humour. SRTT felt like I was a toddler been mollycoddled by shallow humour. Not enough grit and felt like it was wrote by a 10th grader tbh.

Make the Boss... them again. Like non of this 'he hu puckish rouge' shit. I don't play a gang game to be a fucking hero. I know, shock, horror. I play it to be a sociopathic bastard. I got 100 fucking games where I am the good guy, sometimes ya boi needs a break. A evil, going to hell for this, I do question my mental status when I laugh at this, break.

Mission and cut scene replay. One of the reason SR1 and 2 save files can rack up into the 1000s of hours for me is this feature. If I want to play one mission, I don't have to replay the whole game. I can give in to whims. I do not have a word for it in English but it is maximum happiness with fun.

More cut scenes. Like there felt like there was less of them in 3 and 4.

Idle animations. My Boss just been like 'yep, Delfts gone, time to go fishing or drinking or smoking' was just great.

Look Gat was never some weird immortal, unbeatable guy until you made him that way in 4 onwards. He was the kinda hot headed, asshole, who got him self into trouble over it, guy who we adored. Bring my boi back.

A photo mode. I mean I got very, very good at cropping screenshots and clipping my camera of walls but, my Boss deserves better! He his my handsome little killer and people need to know that.

MKUltra elevator nightmare shopping/wardrobe/garage screens, you know the ones, fucking scrap them. Go back to how it was in 1 and 2. I do not need to be subjected to CIA brutality while playing SR. I got enough of that thanks.

Keep the phone menu, that shit was tight. Real immersed me and I love seeing the Bosses phone. I mean I have bought and made replicas of them ffs.

Make hazel eyes behave like the did in the remaster. Like damn. Just. I have a whole post on this shit thats how good it was.

I know you guys are good for it but keep them fun af cheats. I spent to long as a massive af beating up super small people as it rained corpses. Oh and the gravity was gone.

Don't have dual wielding as a fucking upgrade. My Boss just dual wields, let him, like you did in 2.

Weapon skins, like in SR4, that was alright. I wouldn't mind that one.

Keep the Bosses back story vague still. I haven't wrote and perfected his back story over the last decade or more so you can piss on it.

Jackets and hoodie, stop the putting my hair in a ponytail. Last time I put on a fucking track jacket I didn't have to tie my hair back, It didn't happen in 2 so why 3 and 4?

Respect and Missions. Can we either have a return to the old style respect system to make people play the side missions or just not make people play them by force. I fucking hate Heli assault and all that flying shit, so been forced to do it made me want rip my hair out. Like if they are there people will play the ones they want, I do not want to be made to do it by the main story. THX

Bring back the day/night cycle. I could play for much longer when it wasn't so monotone. Also it made me think about what I was doing when. Like I wouldn't got to the night club at 10am.

Bring back Nightclubs. Tyde want's to party and so does Delfts.

Stop making the character hollow 2D’s of their former selves.

A varied city, like Stilwater. Seriously, feels like a real city and I have lived or worked in over 6 in my life so I know. Steelport felt like what some Vatnik Babushka (Boomer Grandma) in rural Siberia would describe the city, dull and unrealistic.

Have the gangs act like actual gangs. You know, go around doing crime and harassing NPCs like they did in 1 and 2.

NPCs, make them like you did in SR2. They acted like real people, did the most random and weird shit. Felt real. They also all look different or their was such a wide variety in base models I didn’t notice repetition. SRTT and SRIV they were like 5 NPCs. I had occasions where there was 10 of the same model and I was like, two or three is okay but fucking 10?

Make them drive the way they did in 1 and 2 too. I have drove in a city for a long time and that shit was so real. People are dumb sometimes.

Bring back Freckle Bitches!!!!!!

If I think of anything else I will add it but feel free to add your own and disagree with me. I kinda want to here how all you others be feeling about this. I feel fear and happy. Also can you tell I blasted this out at like 4am.

#Saints Row #Saints Row V #Saints Row 5 #Saints Row Reboot #SR #SRV #SR5 #SR Reboot

9 notes · View notes

sandalaris · 4 years

Note

1, 9, 10, 17, 19, 22 for the WIP ask :)

1. What made you write your WIP?

Depends on the WIP. The last two that I’ve posted on, All the Little Pieces and A Lesson in Navigation, were written for very different reasons.

All the Little Pieces came about because my brain just sort of starting making connections between different shows I watch (like both Castle and Elementary have similarly looking police precincts and they both use consultants, Michonne would have totally been able to out stare Castiel, I bet Emily got to meet Sterling at least once while at Interpol, etc) and I’d been hankering to write a zombie AU so I tossed like six fandoms into the Walking Dead world and went to town.

All the Little Pieces started out as a one-shot that wouldn’t stop growing. It was supposed to just be a conversation between Kate and Sonja where Sonja makes assumptions about Kate and Seth’s relationship and that’d be that. But by the time I got to the end of what ended up being the first chapter, I just wanted to keep going. Now I’m nearly 20 chapters in and am not done yet.

9. Who is your favourite character to write?

Oo, that’s a tough one… and as such the answer ended up being really long…

I’m working on two Community fics (one that’s technically done but needs a shit ton of editing/rewriting, and one that is not done, but what I’ve written needs no changing), and Britta and Troy became my surprise “characters that make a scene better.” I’ve not done either of their POVs (yet) but throwing either of them into a scene, even if it’s just so another character has someone to talk too/bounce off of, has made those scenes just a little more fun to write. Annie also makes the list purely because the few times now that I’ve written from her POV I find I really like writing her interactions with those around her. She’s been the perfect tool to pull things from characters I wasn’t expecting to get from them.

In other fandoms, I’m loving writing Kate’s (from Castle) point of view, as well as Gibbs’s from NCIS. They are both not doing well mentally with the whole zombie apocalypse thing but are able to handle themselves physically in such a way that others just don’t see how they are utterly unraveling inside, barely holding it together for the people they love but are due to snap at any moment. In FDtD Kisa is a blast to write from, although I think I prefer writing from Kate’s point of view in general. Kisa is fun to write from and I think I’m going to have to do a fic focused on her at one point because there’s just so much there, but Kate’s a bit more insightful when it comes to those around her and I enjoy a good insight from an outsider’s perspective.

10. Do you have an outline? Do you stick to it?

*loud hysterical laughter*

Not in the slightest. Planning kills my drive to write. Even in school I’d scowl at the teacher’s demands that we create and turn in an outline for a paper. I’d go backwards, write the paper and then set up an outline for it afterwards so I wouldn’t lose points.

I do often have somewhat of a vague idea of the direction I am heading with some random part of a fic, but it’s broad and vague and totally flexible.

17. Post the last line you wrote in your WIP.

I’m gonna go one step further because I know you’re a Community fan and give you the last line I wrote and the last one I wrote on a Community fic.

1. Last line(s) from a Community fic I’m working on:

“Jeeze, grouchy,” she grumbles, looking at him with that gaze of hers that seems to see through his bullshit exactly when he doesn’t want her to. “No need to get all defensive, I was agreeing with you for once.”

“Right, yeah,” he says with as much casualness as he can muster, because he suddenly, violently doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. Doesn’t want to swap Kissing Annie stories with someone else when… he just doesn’t want to. That’s all there is to it. End of discussion. No justification required.

2. Last line from the next chapter in A Lesson in Navigation:

“That was just practice,” Scott protests, sudden and a little desperate, pulling Kate’s attention to the here and now. She can’t save the girl, can’t go back and undo what Scott did, but she can face her brother now. Can help turn him from the path he’s been placed on.

19. Do you know how your story ends before you start writing?

Somewhat…? Not really….? Certainly not when I start writing, but I sometimes develop a vague “they’ll end up roughly here” at some point while writing. I’m a sucker for a happy ending so that’s a given, but as for the actual ending? I guess I do jump around in my writing a bit, write scenes out of order, and it’s not uncommon for me to write pieces of the resolution before getting to the end, but they are rarely (if ever) significant to the actual plot and are fully subject to change/rewrites/being tossed out.

22. How many projects do you usually have going at once?

…More than I should.

But in my weak defense, most of those are pieces of a fics that I know I’ll never write fully but that I like lines/bits from and will probably end up incorporating into different fics. Or will get posted in my Get Used to Disappointment “fic,” which is a collection of incomplete fic fragments that I have no plans on going back and actually completing.

In my slightly stronger defense, I typically only work on 2 to 3 at a time. Other fics get put on the backburner, random lines/bits of editing happening sporadically, while the bulk of my attention stays locked on a few specific fics until they reach completion… or something else snags my attention so thoroughly that it manages to shove one of them onto the bakburner instead and takes its place.

*takes a deep breath, opens my incomplete fics folder, counts the fics* Hey, it’s not as bad as I thought. I currently have 27 fics started but not finished… oh wait, I forgot that two of those hold the fragments of fics that I’m not sure I’m ever going to finish but am not sure I’m not going to either, and are possibly fated for the Get Used to Disappointment “fic” on Ao3…… I’m going to stick with the number 27. I like it, we’ll go with that one.

#asked and answered #ask me questions!#fic writing!

1 note · View note

scummy-writes · 6 years

Text

This blog is only going to be used to post personal fic updates from a much more controlled environment, AO3, and nothing else.

This post has been set to queue post two more times for timezones and then no more after that.

Explanation under the readmore:

This is to the shock of absolutely no one, but I can’t do this anymore.

A lot of you guys have stuck here with me from the beginning, and, unfortunately, got to learn about personal stuff I never intended to share. Some of that came around in discussions, of some events that happened, or back towards the beginning of the year that severely impacted me and still does to this day.

Back before I made this blog, a few months before I had started playing MM. I loved it, thought it was great for an otome, and fell in love with all of the characters. Like a lot of people, I ran into the game when I wasn’t doing too well. Things at home were horrible, I had no job, I had recently gotten out of something life altering and was still struggling with myself. This game helped me out, sparked my creative flow again (I think the last time I had published something that wasn't for a friend was a good four years ago), and inspired me to write and share what I had written.

Then, when my stories got an incredibly large amount of hits, and I saw HC blogs circling around, I made one. This one.

I made it to share stories, ideas, and small headcanons- To share positivity, and maybe a bit of fictional angst. For a couple of months, things were going well. A got such sweet followers, I had great support- But then I brought back a fic people had wanted, originally taken down due to me unable to plan a decent plot, and harassment began.

And, well, a lot of you have been around for that whole debacle.

Then. Just more issues started coming up. Instead of this blog being fun, being something I was so glad that it was making people happy, things just went downhill. Constant negative messages/comments, constant drama- I just shrugged it off for the most part, but then I realized that most of this drama, most of what is starting to wear me down, is just because I didn’t write a character how one person wanted me to.

Just because I apparently wrote a character ooc, for two fics, apparently warranted harassment spanning over months– Like literally absolutely fucking months. Do you know when it started for me? March. February for others. But hey, everyone’s seen this, right? God knows I’ve reblogged it countless times hoping the fucking hateful anons would stop coming in. Except They. Kept Coming. Over and Over Again. I even took a fucking hiatus and stopped writing the fic this person couldn’t stop obsessively hate-reading only to immediately get shit on again.

I’ve had my mental Illness, PTSD, and overly traumatic and sexually abusive events in my life degraded, along with many of my friends and now victims of this who did absolutely nothing wrong, while friends and I were being told we weren’t ‘thinking of the abuse victims’ when being confronted about liking a FICTIONAL CHARACTER, Jumin, who was being deemed abusive by this ‘anon’ . My illnesses and abuse history that I had mentioned before and even directly to this person’s messages.

I’ve had the harassment that my friends and I have went through be deemed to be nothing because “Well this user always likes my posts”, “This user sends me a nice message sometimes”, while those same people ignored the posts of the user even completely opening up and admitting to what the fuck they’ve done.

You connect all this with some personal issues of mine- The issues surrounding my mother’s attempt, the strain with my family, and my own personal mental health namely- and, well. It’s hard to view this blog positively anymore.

I’m just not happy anymore. Namely, my current emotions are probably connected to another depressive episode, but even before today- It’s just been hard.

I made this blog to have fun- Because people enjoyed my stories, enjoyed my headcanons- And now due to all this drama and harrassment I just feel disgusting.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, honestly. I never made this blog to be constantly harassed because some dipshit couldn’t ignore my fanfic, couldn’t block my blog and ignore me, couldn’t just move the absolute fuck on with their life instead of spending nearly a whole year attempting to stalk me, attempting to harass me for every little asinine thing. Of course this had a strain on my writing- I after the haitus I just could barely put out HC’s anymore. I kept saving drafts, getting stressed to fuck and back because I didn’t know if a typo was going to cause me to be blasted with insults to my writing and life, I didn’t know if I expressed Zen having insecurities was going to send another flood of anons like I had received many times before. You think all the messages in the Call Out are bad? All the ones that weren’t in it and I didn’t link in this post? What about all the ones you all didn’t see because I deleted them before I even let myself think about them, because I had no energy just to put up bullshit because all I ever, ever, fucking did was write a Fictional Fucking Character a little fucking different from canon.

And that’s not all- There’s a support group in a discord server my friend set up because I’m not the only person this dipshit has gone after. There’s at least ten god damned people that we know of getting this same treatment- and there’s probably so so so SO many more that are probably feeling the same emotions I did. And FUCK, friends of us are even feeling drained because it’s absolutely sickening that we’re being harassed for liking a genuine love interest in a fucking mobile otome game. In a VIDEO GAME.

You know what I did? I went back into fucking therapy because of all this, because my major depression and anxiety kicked into full gear because I was sharing my writing, something that I made, something that meant so much to me because for once I wasn’t being mocked or laughed at when I wanted to be creative. The harassment got to me so fucking badly I had to go to therapy again.

I’m so blown away by how all this shit I’m dealing with is because someone just couldn’t ignore my blog/ao3 stories. That they think harassment is excusable because I won’t write or stop writing what they want me to.

So now, characters I used to help me cope with a very serious issue of mine, just make me feel empty. My coping mechanisms are failing, and running this blog isn’t becoming worth it anymore, not if I’m even going to be bitched at for trying to show lesser known artists to some newcomer in the fandom.

So. I don’t know. That’s why I hardly post anymore. I feel disgusting and empty, for a game that I used as a coping mechanism. Instead of it making me happy, all this drama and this god damned person just makes me regret even writing in the first place.

So no more hc posts. My writing has declined, we all know it, god knows it won’t stop being pointed out to me, and I shot myself in the foot doing character limits. My Hc posts went from getting so many sweet comments to one once in a blue moon, the majority of the comments I receive on here about my HC’s are just a constant stream of hatred, and I just cannot fucking do this.

I just wanted to have fun.

you guys can find me on my twitter (@Mm_Scummy) and my AO3 (Scummy). I’m not posting anything else to this blog unless it’s fic updates, and even that I’m debating on. I’m just keeping this blog up to keep what writings I did enjoy up, and just because I can’t bring myself to delete anything where I did get support.

If this post makes you angry, or makes you upset that it’s came done to this:

SUPPORT CONTENT CREATORS. Don’t sit around and let them be harassed!! I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing it felt when I would get a message from a random follower just seeing if I was okay. Just saying that they hoped I felt better, or just sending heart emojis. Every little bit of support means so, so, SO much to content creators after they’ve been outright harassed or taken advantage of, because it shows that you care.

REBLOG THESE POSTS:

- THIS one because the word needs to be spread that content creators do not owe you anything.

- And THIS one because the user that keeps harassing me and so many people, so many that we may never know who all they have harassed, uses the Anonymous tool on every single platform they can to hurt people, and she is NOT above making new accounts to continue her harassment over and over again. Because god knows we have blocked her account and have never, ever, fucking unblocked it and she STILL didn’t get the most obvious hint that what she is doing is absolutely, undeniably fucking disgusting and in no way excusable.

111 notes · View notes

operationrainfall · 5 years

Text

Title The Bug Butcher Developer Awfully Nice Studios Publisher 2Awesome Studio Release Date November 8th, 2018 (Switch) Genre Action, SHMUP Platform PC, Switch Age Rating E for Everyone – Blood, Fantasy Violence, Crude Humor Official Website

Though I am a fan of classically styled video games, I mostly gave The Bug Butcher a shot cause I was previously familiar with 2Awesome Studio. They developed the entertaining Dimension Drive, and though it had its flaws, I thought it was an admirable first attempt for a small team. When I saw they were shifting their focus to help publish games, I had to investigate. Which brings us to today’s review. Though published by 2Awesome Studio, The Bug Butcher was developed by Awfully Nice Studios, a two-man studio with experience making games for a company you might have heard of called Blizzard Entertainment. Now they’re set on making games for themselves, and decided to start with a comical and energetic side scrolling SHMUP. Was this a successful inaugural attempt, or does it get squashed under the weight of cosmic vermin?

The concept of The Bug Butcher is old school simple. A space station is crawling with massive bugs who are keen on devouring the scientists working inside. Thus the scientists hire our hero, Harry the exterminator. He’s a gun-toting killing machine, and the only hope the terrified scientists have. That’s pretty much all there is for plot. There’s no sub plots or revelations whatsoever. But considering the genre, I’m pretty much fine with that. The Bug Butcher is a SHMUP inspired by Super Buster Bros. I had forgotten that game entirely, but the similarities are readily apparent. Both games involve a character that can only fire upwards facing off against hordes of bouncing death. In this game though, you aren’t just facing nasty bubbles, but horrible grotesque insectoid monstrosities. And they can do a lot more than just bounce on your head.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The way gameplay works is that Harry has to make his way through a series of 30 stages in Arcade mode, blasting everything in sight to a gooey stain. You fire with the A button, dash with B and activate power-ups with Y. The catch is that each level is timed. The idea is that the scientists are so desperate to kill the invading bugs they are planning on gassing everything in the facility to death. If you don’t beat each stage in the allotted amount of time, usually two and a half minutes, you’ll be gassed along with them. Since a dead Harry is no good for anybody, it’s your job to work fast and fight strategically. Thankfully, you have a lot of tools at your disposal.

When you see those skull symbols, it means bugs are coming

Your main weapon is a machine gun with unlimited ammo. It does the least amount of damage, but it does a respectable job of keeping things away from you. As you progress through the stages, you’ll gradually unlock other tools to aid you. First are the various weapons that you can find in crates. These have limited ammo but do significantly more damage, as well as having unique effects. The laser beam will cut through enemies like butter, while the Gatling gun is a more powerful but unstable version of your standard gun. A personal favorite of mine was the lightning gun, which would blast any group of enemies that was too close together. Besides your weapons, you can also utilize a handful of power-ups. You fill up your meter by killing enough foes, and once it’s full, you’ll unleash one of three power-ups at random. The most basic is Boot Juice, which speeds Harry up and makes him invincible for a few seconds; a personal favorite is the Freeze Grenade, which temporarily freezes all foes on screen, leaving them vulnerable; and finally, the Homing Missiles, which will blast everything in a close radius. All of the power-ups can give you some much-needed breathing room, especially since the bug hordes will do their very best to overwhelm you.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

There’s a lot of creepy bugs in the game, but the standard variety is a pink critter that bounces on the floor slowly. That might not sound too scary, but the larger ones will separate into smaller varieties as you kill them, meaning one can quickly turn into a swarm. Some of the more unique varieties are the slow-moving yet devastating fireflies, which shoot laser beams from their butts, and a purple eggplant monstrosity that crawls on the floor and tries to jump on your head, instantly killing you. There are also ones I classify as mini-boss monsters, such as a hovering blue bug that spits purple blobs when you damage him, or a nasty one that vomits lava and spits lava blisters. You have a health meter, and can normally withstand four hits before Harry croaks, but you can get overwhelmed pretty quickly. Thankfully, as you cull the bugs you’ll get health drops, as well as temporary gun enhancements, such as increased firing speed and double damage. You can keep track of how long these last by looking at the helpful meters that appear on screen, and the same goes for power-ups and weapons. You’ll never be in the dark, which is very good strategically.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Also worth keeping in mind is that later stages introduce unique features to help and hinder you. The most important and prevalent are the vertical shields. They can’t be penetrated by you or the pests, though you can turn them off manually by running up to and standing on their buttons. While that may sound useful, it can be tricky too. For example, if you let a foe get sequestered out of reach, you may not be able to reach it before your combo meter dissipates (more on that later). Another trick is that the shield walls have a tendency to turn themselves off unexpectedly. That’s not a glitch, it’s a feature to keep things fresh. The other significant mechanic that’s introduced is a smashing piston introduced in a very late stage, which can kill bugs and Harry alike. Finally, you’ll encounter elevator stages which have no weapon crates, and these are much more challenging, since you have to rely solely on your machine gun and power-ups. Put together, all of these features do a good job of keeping the gameplay from getting too stale.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Though I didn’t notice until I beat Arcade mode, you can use the money you acquire from killing bugs to upgrade your weapons and power-ups. This improves the power of your weapons as well as how long your power-ups last. You can also use coins to unlock boosts you can equip for Harry’s stats, such as increasing how long the combo meter lasts. The latter is what determines your score. Basically, the longer you go killing monsters without getting hit or taking too long, the more the combo meter goes up. It’s not required for anything other than showing off, but it is a good incentive to replay stages. The game also keeps track of how you do through online leaderboards. My only complaint with them is that sometimes they load, and sometimes they don’t. More than once I’ve gotten to the end of a stage, only to have no score shown for my trouble. It only seemed to happen when I paused to take a break mid-stage, though.

The upgrade screen is a bit clunky, but invaluable for making Harry more powerful.

Besides Arcade mode, there is also Panic mode. This can be done single player or co-op. Though I didn’t try the local co-op, Panic mode is pretty fun solo. It’s basically survival mode. To offset the short timer, you can collect clocks to add a few more seconds to your time as you play. You can also use your money to upgrade your loadout at any time during Panic mode, whereas you can only do it from the start screen in Arcade mode. The waves are random and get progressively more difficult. Generally I would die about six waves in, though sometimes the random enemy spawning would make that shorter. Another new thing about Panic mode is there’s a unique enemy that looks like a slot machine with wings. By blasting the shit out of it, you’ll get a whole heap of coins, which are vital to surviving more and more waves.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Visually speaking, The Bug Butcher is delightful. It reminded me a lot of Alien Hominid, but in the very best way. There’s a lot of humor and cartoon mayhem in the game, despite the colorful candy coating. The bugs do a good job of threading the needle between being adorable and hideous as they bounce and splatter. Harry himself is well animated, though I do wish we got to see his face behind that visor at least once, just to see a bit more personality. Musically, the energy of the game is very techno. There’s a great beat to the game, and the sound effects are also terrific. My favorites are the sound of the scientist screaming in terror when they’re captured by the tentacles of the spider monsters, as well as the screech those creatures make when you squash them.

There’s a lot I enjoyed about The Bug Butcher, but I do need to mention some issues I ran into playing portably on Switch during Panic mode. I will preface this by saying I talked with the publishers about them, and they confirmed they are planning on fixing any and all problems as soon as they can. That said, the following are worth noting. While in Panic mode, I would occasionally be holding down the fire button and my gun would be unresponsive. That’s problematic, to say the least. Another problem was when I would be prevented from moving somewhere by invisible barriers other than the shield walls. Lastly, I would find that items on the periphery of the screen randomly couldn’t be picked up, despite me being right nearby. All those should be fixed, but outside of them I have few issues, other than the game occasionally slowing down when things get particularly busy.

I just want to see my score…

Overall, I feel The Bug Butcher is a success. Fans of classic games are sure to enjoy it, as are those who love vying for the top spots on leaderboards. For $7.99, you get a respectable amount of game here. I probably spent a couple hours playing through Arcade mode, and easily that long playing around with Panic mode. It’s not a huge game, but it also didn’t feel too short. Most of the replay value is found in trying for better scores to earn stars and additional coins in stages. Really, the only thing I wanted from the game that I didn’t get was a bestiary showcasing details about the creepy bugs, as well as a couple actual boss fights. But that’s just cause I’m an old school gamer, and I always want epic boss fights. If you want a fun and challenging game with old school charm, I would highly recommend The Bug Butcher. 2Awesome Studio has published a great game, and I’m eager to see what else Awfully Nice Studios has brewing next for the future.

Damn skippy.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: The Bug Butcher Title The Bug Butcher

#2Awesome Studio #Awfully Nice Studios #nintendo switch #oprainfall #PC #Review #The Bug Butcher

0 notes

danielshae · 6 years

Text

Chrono Trigger on Steam: Dang-o

Well It’s Not Exactly Pretty

By DANiEL SHAE

No driving thesis here, just some thoughts and observations of the port.

Like many of you, I’m a lifelong fan of this game. I still have my SNES (actually, I have four of them), and my original CT cart with a “got all the characters to ** and defeated Pink NU Spekkio” file on it. Even went so far as to get a NU tattooed on me. Because I am a sucker for this game.

As you’re probably aware, toward the beginning of 2018 SE granted us a “surprise release” of Chrono Trigger. Like so many others, I bought it immediately. Then? The backlash. Tremendous backlash. Mostly for the weirdly smoothed graphics that appeared to most like a “bad mobile port”. So, somewhat responsibly, six months later SE pushed an update attempting to appease the mobs of enraged fans by allowing the game to be viewed with graphics “similar to the original pixel art”. That description is straight from the in-game menu.

The release of the update was surrounding by a flood of articles purporting that “SE put the original graphics back in Chrono Trigger and now it looks WAY BETTER...” (I’m paraphrasing here). And to a degree, sure, it is certainly better than it was. But dang-o. Guys, this game is still pretty mangled. For a game whose original was so thoughtful, beautiful, and meticulous, this feels sloppy AF. And I know that some people likely worked their asses off, because I too work in the game industry and I understand how it goes. This isn’t just any game, though; it’s Chrono Trigger. I would think that, regarding a game which was completed 23 years ago and is considered by millions to be a masterpiece, people would be a thousand times more careful touching it now than even the original team who created it back then. That’s certainly the case with nearly any other art you’d find in a museum. But that’s not the case here. Square Enix has the resources to do it right, but this port is unfinished.

First 15 minutes of gameplay, I encountered some triggered events which caused me to become stuck inside another sprite and I had to reboot the game to continue (the specific one I remember is returning the girl’s lost kitty at the fair). Thank God for the “bookmark/resume” feature, which is actually a pretty cool addition to the game. Anyway, I’m now 20 hours in (Death Peak after a lot of grinding), and I’m glad to say that pattern has thankfully not persisted.

But there are other issues. Some minor. Some kinda hideous.

I won’t bore you with pixel uniformity (or the apparent lack thereof), but as you can see pictured above, there are some serious issues with mixed aesthetic. You may have to give it the ol’ “right click, view image” to better see what I’m talking about. Most of the assets are displayed in clearly defined “pixels”, but then there are bits like the Epoch, which appear more like, for my lack of real terminology, freaky blurred nonsense. Flying this bad boy around is a uh...well it’s a “trip”. I’m not one to easily embarrass, but between you and me I keep my head ducked and hope to God an NPC doesn’t walk out onto the world map to see my smeared-ass ride rippin’ across the sky to elevator jams. Also I tried switching between “Original” and “High resolution” graphics—Epoch appears to be the same in both. Maybe I’ve just unearthed a bug in my game, but then if so that’s still a problem.

There are lots of other graphical issues: Orphaned pixel noise that becomes painfully visible during effects like white screen flashes. Freaky solid black pixel chunks during the “cool parts” with the Ocean Palace and the Black Omen. The area around Giga Gaia’s face gets honorable mention for some extra weird shit going on when you slap him around (I was using Cube Toss/Iceberg Toss).

As they say: The list goes on.

I’m actually fine with how the battle menu and gauges look now, even if the gauges sometimes cover sprites a little crudely. I get it. Sacrifices must be made. However, the speech panels and game menu panels don’t look like they belong at all to the same game. They’re bizarrely clunky, a different resolution than the rest of the game assets, and frankly the texture on them looks as though somebody was just dicking around with the spray paint tool. Which might be fine if they were the same resolution as the other assets.

SIDE NOTES ON THE MENU: 1) “Settings” can be accessed from the title screen menu and from the in-game menu, and it offers completely different options depending on which you’re in. That’s what they call a UI/UX “no no”. 2) The behavior of the title menu is...weird. That’s as profound as I’m going to be on this bullet. 3) From the in-game menu, to find the “Quit” option, one first has to navigate to “Settings”.

How the hell is quitting a “game setting”?

The hit boxes, or colliders, or [whatever the hell they are] are unpolished as well. This version of the game feels much stickier in places than previous releases I’ve played (SNES, PS, DS). I’ve encountered several NPCs whose colliders are perhaps double their actual width/height, making it a real pain to traverse certain areas.

I can’t make up my mind about the anime cutscenes. I was super pumped at first when they added them to the PS release, but now I almost wish they were a separate thing from the gameplay. Watching those moments in anime, only to immediately see them again in the original 16 bits, ends up feeling a little disjointed. Plus, occasionally (specifically I’m thinking of Frog blowing open the cave to Magus’s keep), it causes the sound to break for a few moments when it comes back from the cutscene to the 16-bit animation. I dunno. Mixed feelings.

I’m still having a blast playing through it. It maintains maybe 85% of the original charm—and 85% of Chrono Trigger is still a hell of a party. I’m glad they added the DS content. I’m not overly pissed that they only opted to keep half of Woolsey’s localization (frog still charmingly speaks in Old English, just not when he’s having flashbacks to being a child/young adult for some reason) but modified parts of it to include some of the newer English dialects (featuring phrases like “nom nom nom”). OK. Cool I guess. We need the newer generations to “understand” our art.

OK, that’s more-or-less the end of my thoughts on this. It’s enjoyable, but extremely messy. I don’t recommend this version for first-timers to the game. If you can swing it, play the SNES cart. On a CRT. Play it with scanlines. Sweet, beautiful, hot, sexy scanlines. And if you can’t, get a DS copy.

Actually I’m not so obsessed with the “glory days” that I’d turn my nose up at a full-on remake of this game. Pls. I’d take a modern Chrono Trigger in a heartbeat.

EDIT: 49 hours. Beat the game. Multiple times. Got all 13 endings. The most noticeable of the graphical issues are: Epoch, beating Magus and warping to 65 Million BC, Ocean Palace appearing, Black Omen appearing, random buildings throughout the world maps, racing Johnny, scenes with the Gurus/Janus being warped away from Lavos, Black Omen after killing Mammon, and pretty much all of the endings. The Epoch and ending credits sequences are the worst. Still, tremendously fun—just not impressive looking compared to the product that was completed 23 years ago.

#chronotrigger #gamedev #videogames #16bit #snes #steam #port

0 notes