2018-03-13 15:48:01

My trick usually involves stepping all the way back, let stuff follow me and take them one by one. I don't lose my life often, and I don't mind walking half stage just to get to healing spring. Saves my angle's breath that way.

Why do ghost hunters have to hunt ghosts? Well, there's a fear of being ghosted out there. They may need therapy as well as their ghost hunting kit.

2018-03-13 15:58:59

One thing that makes absolutely no sense to me is that you start with a bow but no arrows for it. Why would someone grab a bow when leaving their house but not a quiver of arrows?

But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!

2018-03-13 16:18:45

@Mata, yep, I've noticed the game runs on the double dragon principle, that is the fewer enemies on screen the better, so scroll as slowly as possible big_smile.

@Bryan, since this is a world where horror films exist, but people are riding around on horses and medical aid is less than available, I can only assume this is some post apocalyptic world where wood is in very short supply, possibly due  most of the earth's trees dying of radiation poisoning, so Patric has a bow, but has to hoard arrows.

The castle however seems devoid of furniture, so we can only assume the various nasties converted wooden furnishings into arrows to better cope with the vampire girl should she ever escape her dungeon.

it is also for the reason of this radioacdtive wasteland that you randomly get pools of water that restore all patric's health, indeed I wonder if Patric is actually a mutant and all the people in the castle are really the  diseased remnants of the real human population of the worldd that patric as a mutant actually sees as horrible monsters.

This is why the white coted doctors scare patric so badly since if they can inject him with radio subpressent he will die, likelwise why anti radiactive drugs are delivered by small drones, or by guards carrying spray guns. Fortunately, Patric finds lots of radioactive things to eat on his slaughter fest through the castle, ---- that is the lab I should say, especially after he kills the head nurse who is really tired of her job hence why she's complaining about time so much, even though she's still not willing to let Patric leave so he must kill her.

See, it all makes sense! big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-03-14 17:17:41

LOL ok.

But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!

2018-03-16 18:15:35

This game is just OK to me. The bosses are needlessly hard, and some of the enemies and obstacles are needlessly hard, but I think that's the way games are in VG Storm. The final boss is impossible to beat.

2018-03-17 00:32:56

Not impossible, just very, very hard. Perhaps needlessly hard, I will agree.

But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!

2018-03-17 02:58:04

My findings on this game are fairly consistent with a lot of what's been put forward before. I won't waste time regarding other games, or Aaron's dev strategy, or anything else.

1. I felt like the difficulty ramped up stupidly fast. Ghosts being a one-shot kill I'm generally okay with, but the Gray Lady herself being a one-shot kill? That...was difficult. It's doable, but for a boss early in the game, I think it's a bit much. Devil Spiders being able to stun-lock you, and zombies being able to plague you when you might very well not have gotten an item to cure it. This is on easy, btw.
2. Enemies and mobile hazards like rocks appearing from literally nowhere, and often not properly tracking positioning. I heard this on a playthrough I listened to with headphones; sometimes a guy would make a jump and a rock which hadn't been there before would suddenly fall out of nowhere and hit him. You can't predict that. And sometimes a rock which he'd jumped past, and was clearly on one side or the other, would still hit him. Ditto the bombs; I've seen a bomb dropped, then remain centered even though the character was running hard in one direction, which is just weird. Panning isn't quite working as advertised, and in a game like this, that's crucial.
3. I personally wasn't impressed with the game's depth, voice-acting or premise. And given the walkthrough I listened to, I decided to keep my roughly forty Canadian dollars in my pocket.

These things combine, for me at least, to make this a game not worth buying. SuperLiam may have been too easy, but The Gate is far too random and inaccurate for my taste.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2018-03-17 03:16:01

I personally never find Hades hard to beat at all, unless I play on hard or something since he usually takes like forever to beat and has tank hp, lol. I just wanna see someone do it on nightmare.

Why do ghost hunters have to hunt ghosts? Well, there's a fear of being ghosted out there. They may need therapy as well as their ghost hunting kit.

2018-03-17 15:13:13

Just as a btw, you can beat the Renfield zombie boss on hard, but you need 5 angel's breaths and about 17 arrow pouches to do it. Luckily you do have enough lives that you can conserve your angel's breaths, but the manual doesn't say this anywhere, so you could easily find yourself short. Still, there's no real point in playing on higher difficulties, as it only gets worse from there. And Renfield is only about halfway through the game. There's a really crazy corridor later on that spawns ghosts about every 5 seconds, and you can't even kill them that fast because it takes two hits of your sword t kill them and there are spiders and sludge waves coming at you from the other way as well as winds that often blow you right on to the ghosts or into the pits, making the task even worse.

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2018-03-17 16:31:51

@Jayde, thumbs up for being able to give a negative opinion about the game in a rational fashion without breaking out the flame throwers or speculation, this is exactly the sort of opinion I wanted about the game.

On difficulty, one thing I will note is that The Gate seems to have been built with something of a 1980's arcade pricniple in mind. Back in those days your games had! to be hard and addictive, and as someone who has spent hours playing the mega man series, not to mention games like Ghouls n ghosts I appreciate difficulty if that difficulty is fairly distributed.

My worry in the case of the gate is a lot of mechanics seemed to verge into the unfair, that is mechanics which artificially disadvantage the player.

the grey lady I didn't mind as I saw her as a tough difficulty test, but those devil spiders  literally take away half of your health through stunlock, and disease causing enemies that require items to get around seemed a little beyond for me, asdid the relative attack range until you get the sword.

I think though on reflection I shal buy the gate, though whether i end up giving up in discust we'll see :d.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-03-17 23:04:11

Dark, best of luck.

I don't mind tight, semi-difficult platforming if it's consistent. The thing about the games you cite is that they were almost surgically precise. It's how people could speedrun them and stuff. It's not really luck-based. With The Gate, there's a lot of luck. Enemies don't appear in precisely the same places and whatnot, and sounds don't pan properly, as I've said. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to jump a projectile or sludge wave, based on its speed and trajectory, only to get hit when it came down even with the sound clearly not centered. Paladin of the Sky had a similar issue with those stupid banging boards in the first tower in the Heaven area. Admittedly, Manamon did better here.

So yeah. For me, not worth it, not even close. You may feel differently.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2018-03-18 16:07:35

I didn't noticed panning issues myself in the gate Jayde, though I did notice you needed to be very precise in terms of running under those rocks because your movement speed is comparatively slow relative to the games' scrolling and the movement of enemies, especially as compared to something like superliam, where even though obstacles like the lasers weren't any slower than the rocks in the gate, you moved relatively faster.

One thing I  did admire in the gate was how much easier even a small amount of  practice made the game. My first go through the grey lady was near impossible and I only got her after many tries, this time when I downloded the demo I defeated her on my third attempt on easy, ditto with those devil spiders.

while I do still tend to think things like stunlock devil spiders, instant kill ghosts and the obsurdly short attack range with your knife are somewhat unfair, I probably will give the game a try regardless.

Btw, I still need to finish paladin, and manamon come to that, with paladin I lost my first save at one stage which is a shame as I was on the heaven towers, while  I tend to get mildly put off by the grind grind grind even when using your walkthru, that and the fact that the multiplayer you need to complete the manepedia or even just evolve your manamon is so bloody broken you need to be a tech genius to get it to work.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-03-18 22:56:12

Just want to put one thing to bed, actually. If you've got a fairly good team - admittedly not the easiest thing to put together - you don't need hours upon hours of endless grinding. You'll need a little here and there, but I can finish a manamon playthrough in something like 14 hours if I'm going for speed.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2018-03-19 01:36:40

I think you did better the second time you played the demo because you were already familiar with it. Seems obvious I know but your familiarity with the game seems to be the only thing that has changed. I agree that the cheap deaths are just annoying and the short range makes it so easy to die!

2018-03-19 12:15:22

@Ronand, that was precisely my point, though some of the Gate's difficulty is artificial, ie due to factors you can't do anything about, this is not true of all! the gate's difficulty, EG while one hit kill from those devil spiders and short range on the sword seems a bit harsh, I did notice that ghosts and the grey lady were easier to handle with experience and knolidge of the distances involved, which is precisely why I'm thinking about getting the game, though I'll likely have to wait until after the start of April for boring financial reasons.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-03-19 16:21:12

My biggest problem with the gate is that it has nothing inovative in it. Nothing which VG storm can advertise as hey buy this game because it does this unlike other sidescrollers. Battle zone is free and does even more than the gate if we exclude voice acting, which is not what will make me pay for a game. Not to even start with BK3, which is now completely in English and again is a free game. The gate is a nice game which you might play once in a while when you are bored, but I do not think it is worth paying for, unless you want to support the developer and know what you are paying  for which is completely fine.

2018-03-19 17:28:49

It feels pretty innovative to me, but I never played Super Liam. $30 worth of innovative, not so much, but it's pretty distinct from Battle Zone, BK2/3, Q9, and AAC, FWICT.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-03-20 00:41:00 (edited by Hrvoje 2018-03-20 00:44:30)

Ive completed The Gate twice, once when I was doing my own playthrough and the second time when I was recording playthrough for our local group for audio gaming.
What to say? I didn't have much problem with the gray lady, in fact I've managed to beat her in 30 seconds. Don't believe me? Well then listen to this recording: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8kg1r92pkk8ad … 9.mp3?dl=1
Of course, it took some training, but I got it. I don't know, may be I'm hyperactive or something, may be I have a nice-trained concentration because I'm doing stuff such as programming and audio work, but now gray lady is a piece of cake for me.
However, I had serious problems with beating final boss even on easy, which is to be expected anyway especially when we take the fact that already a first bos is an insta-killer. If I didn't have 30 extra lives before the final fight, I would probably never beat him. The thing that I was never able to avoid are those damn wind gusts that he's throwing at me.
What I hate the most is a falling rock placed immediately onto the square next to the one where the hole in the floor is located. I can't remember on which level it was.
For me, this game is not boring, but it also doesn't have any replayability, only more difficulties, however in The Gate even easy difficulty is hard enough.
Although I've purchased all of Aaron's games, I agree that Manamon is his best title ever made so far. In Paladin, I like the story and the bosses. AAC is also good, but I was unable to complete the game after Windows folder, because I was just too lazy to replay entire level from the beginning. Those delete rays are really getting on my nervs big_smile.
And if we talk about sidescrollers, at least for me, nothing beats BK3 in terms of replayability and content. The only two boring levels in BK3 are Stages 15 and 16 except bosses, because you just go BoomBoomBoomBoom all the time until you destroy all this enemy crap, but everything else in this game is just great!

2018-03-21 02:54:59

Hi Dark. I bought the Gate a few days after its release, and I enjoyed it enough to pay for it. I made a lot of posts/rants in the original Gate thread, but let me summarize.
First on difficulty because that's what you asked about. I personally didn't find the game's difficulty to be excessive on easy after getting the sword. I think the Grey Lady should be scaled back a little, though I like the idea of her being a teaching tool. I was always too scared of her to compare her to other enemies. Problem is, the Grey Lady is so fast and powerful that the strategies she encourages really only seem to make sense after you've spent some time with the enemies you meet after defeating her. A lot of the game is indeed cheaply difficult, but I have the patience to be okay with that. I know a lot of people don't.
Speaking of difficult, I can almost hear Aaron saying this through most of the game. "let's do this here, because I know it'll frustrate you or at the very least elicit some kind of amusing knee-jerk reaction." It certainly borders on unfair in my opinion, but not so unfair as to be comically impossible. I never found luck to be a significant factor. Though I've had unlucky moments that killed me, I found them to be rare. I've come to find some sadistic enjoyment in those challenges. You get a fair number of that stuff like that throughout the game, in addition to very strategically-placed enemies and traps which make those sections hellish. But nothing that's terribly impossible. Admittedly it's been ages since i've played, so maybe I'll want to take back some of my relaxed judgment on the difficulty after I've played it. Lol
In any case, I think those parts of the game help define its tone in a strange way. If you want realism, this game isn't it, and those cheap spawns, the subpar voice acting etc. just drive that home. That's my opinion anyway.

One thing you probably fear by now because it's been said over and over in this thread is that the final boss of the Gate is freaking brutal. On easy I can do it sort of composed, but not enough to make me want to play it again. Ah well, the game is super long, so at least I have time both in-game and in my head to prepare. On easy especially, if you stock up on everything, avoid death as much as absolutely possible, and treat your items like a glass of water in the desert, you'll have plenty when you arrive at Hades. Just try not to die too much during the battle because when you die, much of his health is restored and so you'll probably waste a lot of arrows.
I did beat Hades on medium once, but only just, and that was after almost throwing my tower off the roof of my house in frustration. I consider myself average, or maybe even a little better than average at these sorts of games, but I tend to get overwhelmed easily in heavy situations so my performance suffers. Frankly I'm surprised I could beat medium!
Harder difficulties imho are cheap. I admit I haven't even dared try hard. I really don't have the desire to put myself through that. From limited experience I have with higher difficulties, all that changes is enemies hit harder and require more hits to kill. They may be a little faster too or be different in other ways but I've never allowed myself to find out. I think honestly the decision on whether to buy the game comes at least partly down to expectations. I grew up with the likes of Super Liam which at the time was a huge novelty not only for 11-year-old me, but a lot of gamers at the time. But unlike a lot of people, my expectations didn't really move on too much. Yeah I think Super Liam is easy and one of these days I swear I will do a no-hit run (excluding the spaceship level since I think that one would be impossible). But on the other hand I still think it was a cool game for its time, and hasn't aged too badly. I don't expect every side-scroller I play to be miles ahead of it; that's just not my nature. I am willing to sit back and get a feel for a game and try to enjoy it on its turf. I sometimes wonder if the advertised horror, the professional voice acting etc. was meant as some sort of cheesy joke. After all IIRC the game was released around Halloween, so the way I see it, it could've been meant either way, or possibly even a combination of the two. I do believe the decision to market it that way wasn't a good one, and the price certainly didn't do it favors either.
Speaking of price, I don't think the game is worth the asking price no matter how you spin it. But I don't think it's bad enough not to pay for. I can think of things adding up to even $50 that I would've traded for this game because at least this game works.
I believe Philip, and probably Aaron too, invest a lot of time and resources into these games out of pocket. Royalty free SFX libraries and music are expensive, at least from what I've seen. Building BGT and Elias probably was no small matter either and perhaps a lot of money was spent on preparing those tools too. Also the money we pay them is used for life expenses, at least it was when Philip started doing this. I remember him saying that he was interested in trying to make a living of game creation which ultimately didn't pan out. So far as I know, Philip and Aaron are not taking their sounds from games or from the Internet or random free sound packs they've found. And so far as I know they are not a production company with access to funding or outside resources or staff that can be of assistance. I could be very wrong about my info here. I'm only speculating.
Before I hear shouts that none of this is an excuse to raise a game's asking price or to claim the game is this big thing that it isn't... I agree with you. All I am trying to say is that given my very limited experience with life and the world, I think they did a lot, definitely more than I think I could ever do if I had to take on those tasks, and while the game isn't what it probably should be considering the marketing and price and all that, it's still cool in my opinion. I wish they had done a lot differently. I wish they were more active in the community. But whatever. They are people just like you and me and they have their reasons for doing and feeling what they do just like you and I. I prefer to remain neutral on such impossible issues to avoid trouble and drama, which rarely leads anywhere good.
If you do decide to purchase the game Dark, I might start dusting the lint off so if you need tips I can try to help.

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2018-03-21 03:35:50 (edited by CAE_Jones 2018-03-21 03:53:55)

It'd take at least 30 sells to come close to breaking even on the cheaper-developed VGStorm titles, given their prices, assuming I didn't misplace a 0 somewhere. In a bigger market, where 1000 sales could be relied upon, that'd be an excuse to put more resources into development, or reduce the price. In this market? We're hitting the same barrier as everything disability-related, which is, we cannot benefit from economy of scale, like, at all.
No, no, no, don't say good quality can be gotten for cheap. A mainstream game that can compete—ok, a low-budget-but-high-quality indie game that can compete at the top of its league—is still going to have a development pricetag in the low millions, barring some downright exceptional luck and dedication—the kind you find in emergency relief volunteers more than game developers, for what I hope are obvious reasons. Even if you are the master of networking and charm and finding the most hard-workingest people for cheap, the time that goes into that is going to cost money on travel, food, and whatever witchcraft you're using to amass such a team. For an audio game, we can cut out a lot of that, because we don't need graphics or super realistic physics engines (for some reason), or a marketing budget. So let's be kind and go for half the minimum big indie budget, then cut that down to a quarter because of all the parts we don't need.
That's still 250 times the cost of audio games on this tier. I didn't catch the total cost of AHC, but it's well over an order of magnitude greater.

Is it possible to get high quality games for cheap? Sure. It's also possible to fund the next summer blockbuster for less than a college education in the US, but in practice those are usually a thousand times more expensive, at least. So, while I agree that The Gate is overpriced, I can't fault Aaron for going with that price, given the economic reality of audio games.

[edit]And you should say, then, "what about Swamp and the Japanese games?" Puting aside that I really have no idea what the financial situation for Japanese developers is like, let's recall that Aprone focused on game design first and foremost, and it wasn't until castaways that people started volunteering commercial class resources to the cause—after people begged for a way to pay for it, I might add. The Aprone method is probably the ideal way to go for this sort of thing, but it's not as easy as it appears (I mean, has anyone else pulled it off?). By all means, more Aprones would be wonderful. Even though the community has always demanded more of the expensive stuff.[/edit]

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-03-22 19:04:36

Excellent points CAE.

But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!

2018-04-11 03:49:50

I just started replaying the gate, and the Spiders seem to be fixed. On Easy it stunned me for a while and attacked several times. I still lost almost half my health but it was definitely survivable. As for dealing with the early game statues on higher difficulties, they will start swinging before they get in range and they keep a rhythm, so you could learn to jump, get a few attacks in, and do it again.

2018-04-17 21:35:54

The Gate doesn't do much for me, but then again no 1d side scroller would after all these years. Take me back in a time machine to 2005 and present me with both the Gate and Super Liam, having never played either one, I would say that the gate is a better game.
My teen years consisted of playing Super Liam thousands of times through while longing for the ability to play Ocarina of Time and other video games, and constantly searching for people to help me with the stuff I really wanted to be able to play.
I played Super Liam, I played Q9 (before the acquisition), I played Battle Zone, I played AAC, and that was really enough for me. I don't have anything negative to say about the game specifically, it's just a tired genre for me. Same with 1D space invaders... I think I've played all of them and I can't imagine how a new one could possibly innovate enough to keep my interest (except for spacemon simply on account of it being a mini game within a much larger game).
All that said, I do think AAC is actually the best of the 1D side scrollers, and I could probably go back and play it every now and again. It really squeezes every last drop of remaining potential out of the genre with it's puzzles, simple RPG mechanics and the ability to do/redo stages in almost any order.
At the end of the day I'm an RPG guy at heart, so much so that other types of games really don't keep me interested for very long.

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PSA: sending unsolicited PMs or emails to people you don't know asking them to buy you stuff is disrespectful. You'll just be ignored, so don't waste your time.

2018-04-17 23:33:37

I fully agree with your post, in fact so much that I can say I completed AAC again today. This is exactly my point, that AAC was actually Aaron's first game, and as a free game it does much more for me than the gate. I might just occassionally replay the gate too, but it is comparatively shorter than AAC and actually no matter how much people complain, once you get the game's mechanics it is an extremely easy game with a pattern you repeat most of the time. AAC did not have so hard enemies either, but it had more than enemies like platforming and the stage builder which made it worth playing.