Zero Punctuation: Black Knight Sword & Hotline Miami

[Carnagath]

Alright, I shouldn't have written that you can *always* react to the randomness, that was a mistake. Some ships suffer more because of randomness than others. The Stealth Cruiser, for example, is very fun to play with but very susceptible to bad luck. If the first enemy you encounter has two attack drones you might just as well restart. Or if you can't find or purchase a decent extra weapon by the time the average enemy gets triple shield layers, all you can do is pray your FTL drive charges quickly enough. Nonetheless, I find that the randomness of the game only makes it more interesting. I rarely have the feeling that the game doesn't give me a fair chance, and when I do, it's usually quite early in the game (and almost invariably in the form of not finding decent weaponry or drones anywhere) so it's not a disaster if I have to restart. I like the idea that I have to adapt to what the game throws at me. You can start the game with an idea of how you want to play, but often it'll turn out very differently and I like that. If you're going for an ion weapons + drones approach, but you happen to find 2 Mantis early on and get to a store that has a crew teleporter, you can (and probably should) completely turn around your strategy.

You don't have to ignore all random encounters (you will probably end up with too few resources to win the game if you do that), but would advise caution with them. I used to just try them all and it resulted in failure. Then I learned to estimate which ones are worth the risk and which aren't. I NEVER risk crew, for example. Giant alien spiders? No thanks. Encounters where the only risk is suffering hull damage are usually worth it, imo (though in my experience the haywire defense system encounter has a very low success chance if you don't have a blue option).

The ship that probably suffers the least from bad luck is, I believe, the Type A Engi Cruiser "The Torus" (of the ships that I've unlocked, I don't have the Rock, Mantis, Slug or Unidentified Cruisers). It starts out with a drone system, which means extra versatility because random early drone finds can immediately be useful. But most importantly, its starting weapon, the Ion Blast Mk II, is magnificent. It's not the best weapon in the early game, but it remains very useful throughout the entire game: it can take out a max level shield completely by itself (if you survive long enough, of course), meaning that you're never extremely hard-pressed to get extra weaponry. The only weapon that grants even more certainty of dealing damage is the Artillery Beam (because a Defense Drone Mk II can shoot down ion blasts). The downside is that you can't tell your drone what to attack, so your inability to completely suppress the enemy weapons system with one or two volleys (a strategy the Stealth Cruiser excels at) probably means you'll eat the occasional rocket in the early game (if you don't find any defense drones).

I agree with most of your points. Those are, however, exactly the reasons why I said that many things about this game need to be either completely reworked or seriously toned down, in order for it to become better.

I know that a game like FTL cannot be completely scripted and "balanced", since its major selling point is replayability and a certain amount of RNG goes well with that. But there are areas in the game where the devs just got lazy. Example: Here is one thing that I really love about the game: If the fleet catches up with you in the first couple of sectors, where your ship will most likely be completely unupgraded, what do you have? A fist-clenching battle ahead of you. I'd say that 3 out of 4 times that this has happened to me, I died. The enemy hit too many vital sectors too early on and I was unable to come back. A few times however, I managed to get away, and a few other times I even managed to DESTROY the enemy ship, and escape with a sliver of health and a seriously battered ship.

This is something that adds to the game. Having encounters where you can't react, and where the risk is never worth it, does not. It is just lazy, frustrating bullshit. Whenever an encounter "fails" due to RNG, they could have had something like that happen, where you at least have a chance to ATTEMPT to do something about it. Instead, they have a text window, which basically says "O hai friend, welcome to Planet X, we would like to inform you that half your shit is dead. Click OK to go fuck yourself." If only they worked on that a bit, toning down the bullshit, the game would be pretty much perfect for its genre.

 

[Baneat]

but what I really meant with my previous post is that IWBTG, Super Meat Boy and Hotline Miami are all games that have an overall difficulty level that varies between "teeth grinding", to "sadistic", while at the same time not punishing you too much for your screw-ups.


But let me tell you, more than one time in Hotline Miami I got blasted to pieces by a guy with a shotgun that I couldn't see myself, who had spotted me through a pane of glass from 900 yards away the moment I entered the room..
[/quote]

There's even an article on the escapist which serves to distinguish SMB from games that punish you unfairly. And by unfairly I mean shit like getting killed through a pane of glass 900 yards away. That's false difficulty. SMB's difficulty is high but it is always entirely fair. IWBTG's difficulty is high and not-false but it is unfair.

3 different things grouped together by the fact that they're difficult (But not the same difficult!)

 

[jacobthe604]

I loved his review as always and was wondering if there was a way to email him directly.

 

[JackGruff]

Black Knight Sword sounds like a bad 2D rip-off of Dark Souls.

 

[Operations]

The poetry part of this video had my flashing back to the beatnik bit of Grim Fandango.

 

[Hyperactiveman]

What the shit Yahtzee? You were incredibly funny during the Hotline Miami review... Sorry about the confusing criticism but I was used to just tuning into your vids and getting minor smurks here and there at the various comments. You actually made me laugh out loud like when I did when I watched your old vids.

TLDR: This review, I like it... ANOTHER!

 

[shadowtear]

Black Knight Sword sounds like a bad 2D rip-off of Dark Souls.

The only thing Black Knight Sword and Dark Souls share is the presence of a dark theme (hardly what I'd call a rip-off) and the fact that the name happens to be the name of a weapon in DS.

Black Knight Sword would have been firmly in my top top 30 if it wasn't for the awful check point system. I found the theme an astonishment, one of the most creative I've seen in a while.

 

[FallenMessiah88]

I've always wanted to try a Suda 51 game, but something tells me I shouldn't start with Black Knight Sword.

Yes, Hotline Miami is indeed quite fun. I tried it at a friends house and I actually got a bit sick from all the synth music, the bright colours and the crazy effects/filters. It was awesome.

 

[Danceofmasks]

"Black Knight Sword" sounds more like a porno than a videogame with an accurate title.