Not Hard
It didn't seem to me to be hard at all. It was actually the default keys. Once I gotten use to those, and once I changed them to custom, I completed the game (Twice!) Still fun though. But it needs to be more pixelated to be considered "old skool".
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Hi there,
being a long time lurker on Newgrounds, I signed up to leave a review for this!
First off, I really liked this game and played through it in Intermediate mode after a lots of tries (mostly spent on the boss).
Because I did not choose "beginner", I had to play through the platforming part again three times or so after the boss ate all my lives, because there was only a green checkpoint before the boss.
Actually I felt that this was a bit over the top, because you _will_ die some times if you meet the boss the first time. However with the understanding that the "beginner" mode is not an "easy" mode but a mode for first-time players of this game, and the fact that in that mode the green checkpoint before the boss essentially becomes a purple one, I can live with that. It was just that I selected the wrong mode.
Maybe you should really have written on the mode selection window "It is recommended for first time players to use beginner mode". Or instead name them "Default", "Advanced" and "Expert" or something like that to make people understand that choosing the first mode is not something to be ashamed of.
I initially thought so.
I thought "I am not that bad a player, so I'll be able to cope with the intermediate mode", rather than "I am playing this game for the first time, so I am essentially a beginner".
Then there was another part that was bugging me: in my opinion the first phase of the boss was just too long. You have to be perfect at the pattern of the first phase anyway to beat the boss, if you don't know what you're doing you'll be grilled before you can land 5 hits (speaking from my experience in intermediate mode). Once you know exactly when you have to jump where so he doesn't hit you in phase 1, it doesn't matter anymore how long the phase is. It's no extra challenge to make it longer.
BUT then, surprise surprise, comes another phase with entirely new attacks. Of course you again need some time to understand the pattern(s) and practice until you can reliably do the jumps. And there, the length of phase one comes into play.
Summing it up, making phase one that long does not add any extra challenge (to phase one itself), but is annoying for practicing phase two because it just takes too much time doing a repeating task you have already mastered.
And (unless you've lowered the boss'es life bar) that's the same on beginner mode.
So that were my only two complaints about this game. I don't criticize the difficulty, because this is intended. But there's a thin line between difficulty and annoyance, and the two points I criticized imo add much to annoyance without adding much difficulty.
Please don't think that I hate this game because my review sounds negative, I only think it's worth more pointing out the (few) negative things, than just compliment on all the other things (graphics, music, gameplay) that were great.
So I hope you take this as constructive criticism for things you can improve in the next episodes of this game, which I am very much looking forward to! :)
Thank you for the review!
I've taken these things into consideration. I won't change this episode right now (I might do when I release episode 2 though), but in episode 2, I've made it so that the difficulty modes are explained better as being based on amount of practice with this specific game rather than games in general, and also so that the boss is MUCH easier because if you die, you just respawn in the room (with the boss's HP unrestored) until all your lives are gone.
Reviews that do point out what needs changing are the most appreciated, of course; I've just been reading through all the reviews on this game to check what I need to do better in episode 2 (which I'm working on now), and ones like this are the ones that actually help me to improve.
So, uh, appreciation, yes!
wellll
im not sure if its my computer but the buttons dont always seem to work which results with me falling into spikes alot so i didnt get far... which made me sad cause i was looking forwards to playing it =(
That seems to either be a computer or browser issue. If you're using IE, try using a browser that isn't so atrociously awful and you might notice improvement. If that doesn't work or you're already using a better browser, then maybe your computer is old or something...
Eh...
It looked and sounded like a great SNES game, but it didn't play like one. I wouldn't say it was hard, just had some weird level design and controls. I didn't feel like I wanted to try again after I died.
Deserves to get smoother
I don't really know what to think of this game. They are things i really like: the humour in the texts, the graphics, the intergalactical atmospher, the music... But on the other hand, the animation and the gameplay are stopping me from fully enjoying Raider. His gestures, moves, jumps... It's not smooth enough, and it all gets easily boring. Well, to me.
It's really cool, but it deserves a bit more of identity in the animations.
They're as smooth as the games this is meant to resemble, like Megaman, etc. Animations were only ever a few frames on the NES.