Huntdown - "His blood type spells AK47"

[Benny]

5 hours ago, Talvalin said:

How far have you got so far? I've just done the third boss of the first area and argh that took an absolute age because I kept misjudging his movements. Fail.

 

I did finally manage to get 100% on Hard, after far too many attempts at the Shogun. Annoyingly enough, the majority of my deaths occurred before the boss fight because I was rushing, but damn that felt good by the end. I'm going to try 100% on Badass, but right now I'm just focusing on trying to beat each boss!

 

I've beaten the first boss of the Misconducts area so far. I'm currently stuck on a train bit. This difficulty essentially changes the game into a puzzle, as you start to realise why each section has very specific enemy activation and weapon placement.

 

Have put at least 20 hours into the game now and still love it. The music is permanently stuck in my head.

[Talvalin]

Oh my god, Suki the Sniper was a total pain in the arse. Is it me or do the homing rockets move faster on Badass difficulty? The number of times I was dealing with Suki very smoothly before taking a rocket up the arse were too many to count. I eventually managed to get to the point where I could finish her off before she could fire a second rocket but that was a lot of deaths in a short space of time.

 

I'm up to Sonny Rooster now on the third area and then it's the truck boss guy, and then I'll be on the No. 1 Suspects. I love this game.

[Down by Law]

The whole Suki level is the only one I hate replaying. The enemy placement is sadistic, those jetpack guys are pain in the ass. 

[Benny]

Wow, it doesn't tell you anywhere but you only get five tries to beat the last boss of the Misconducts level on Badass mode, otherwise it's back to the start for you. Brutal.

[Talvalin]

1 hour ago, Benny said:

Wow, it doesn't tell you anywhere but you only get five tries to beat the last boss of the Misconducts level on Badass mode, otherwise it's back to the start for you. Brutal.

 

Really? I'm sure that I died more than five times during that fight without that happening. What platform are you playing on?

[Benny]

5 hours ago, Talvalin said:

 

Really? I'm sure that I died more than five times during that fight without that happening. What platform are you playing on?

 

Switch. Unless they've stealth updated the game to make it harder? It's not been the case with any of the other bosses so far.

[Talvalin]

I'm on a Xbox One X. Evidently, we're playing slightly different versions, but which one is the most up to date is a mildly worrying prospect.

 

After dying numerous times during the level, I managed to beat Sonny Rooster without dying which felt good considering how much trouble he gave me on Hard. The Overseer gave me a lot more trouble but eventually succumbed so now it's just the truck boss and then I'm on to the fourth and final area.

[Benny]

It didn't happen when I attempted him a second time, so I think I probably found a bug! Either that or I just got a whole lot better, as I beat him.

 

Anyway, the unavoidable flying pricks on Badass can fuck off. I think that might be the only enemy that feels a bit unfair at this difficulty.

[Talvalin]

After a while you learn their placements and trigger points and just take them out quickly. Their kamikaze death plunge is annoying as hell but you cannot get hit if you're above them after their jetpack catches fire (although there's only a handful of places where you can actually do that so eh).

 

I've finished off the Heatseekers so no more flying bastards, at least until I try to do no-death runs.

[Talvalin]

And just the Shogun to go and I've completed it on Badass. 70+ deaths on each of the previous three stages though.

 

The first checkpoint on the Grandmaster Yudai stage is a proper fucking gauntlet, especially when you factor in trying to get the stash.

 

[Down by Law]

Finally beat the Shogun stage on hard without dying. Probably took me longer to do that stage than the rest of the game put together. 

 

Had a go on badass mode, fuck that lol. I really don't like modes that completely change how you have to play the game. It's like uncharted 4 on crushing- all the fun stuff like rope swing takedowns , melee punch ups, context sensitive moves that make the game enjoyable are thrown to the side in favour of a completely tedious stop n pop shooter. The game punishes you with death if you try and do anything else. 

 

Huntdown to me is about sliding on your knees with a sword chopping people up, running headlong into a gang of enemies to take out the stash runner at all costs , not inching along trying to trigger the next enemy so it becomes manageable , no thanks. 

 

Hotline Miami 2's hard mode is the only one I really liked. It took me about 60 hours to beat it but the fundamentals of the game never change, it's positioning and fastest finger first. You can't do anything on hard you couldn't do on normal, it's just the odds were much more overwhelming. 

 

 

[Benny]

I disagree. You can absolutely still do those things on Badass mode, you just have to be incredibly precise, and to know which moments require aggression. It does become more of a puzzle though, but I love that it makes you think about encounters differently. That to me is what increased difficulty should do: make you look at a game and its mechanics differently.

[Talvalin]

I was going to say something similar.

 

I finished the game on Bad Ass on Saturday (the Shogun fight itself only took a few attempts and even getting to him was reasonably fine since I knew what I was doing after managing a no-death run on Hard) and I'm now attempting to complete each stage without dying. 

 

I was doing the opening section to the Bad Boy Boy incredibly cautiously at first, then realised that I could do it a lot faster by triggering the mob to appear, kicking a guy into a barrel and then shooting it which would take out three of his buddies in the ensuing explosion, jumping up and then shooting the next guys to appear and then finally dropping down to stun the final enemy before filling her face with lead.

 

Which is a long-winded way of saying what Benny said. Yes, there are some parts that you have to do cautiously because there's no way of triggering certain mobs without taking damage (working out how to get the guys running away with the stashes can be a pain in the arse, but even then the game is often nice and gives you weapons/explosives to help you out if you die in the attempt and lose all your good weapons), but there are parts where you can go wild, and managing those without dying feels awesome.

 

It's not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but none of it is impossible.

[K]

I've just finished this on normal, and was generally very impressed indeed. The difficulty is very finely tuned, so that it ramps up all the way through the game without ever becoming too frustrating, or having any significant blockages to progress. The bosses are generally a simple matter of learning their patterns, but they have a nice way of suddenly introducing new elements that disrupt things just enough to throw you off balance. It feels hard all the way through, but when you go back to the first level, it's insanely easy.

 

The only things I would criticise are the front end - I don't like the idea of having to go back and select another save slot if you want to change difficulty, and having to start a level in order to change character. You should just be able to select difficulty and character when selecting a level, surely? The Duke Nukem character is a bit too Duke Nukem, and is nowhere near as good as the robot. The dialogue seems to be too low in the mix, and often gets drowned out by the sound effects and music.

 

All very minor stuff, really. What I really love about it is that it really nails the eighties / nineties stuff. The film and TV references are really well-pitched and not too obvious, and the little flourishes really feel like the kind of thing that I was dying to see in this sort of game at the time. Like, you can take cover in alleyways or behind boxes. Cars bounce on their shocks when you jump on the roof. You can shoot up doors, and leave bullet holes in walls. You can chain moves together and really showboat. You get little emergent bits of carnage, like when you kick someone back, shoot them in mid-air, and they land on an explosive barrel blowing themselves to smithereens. The music is like what Megadrive composers heard in their heads when Probe were laying down the soundtrack to Alien 3 or The Terminator.

 

Brilliant stuff. Worth it for £8, and almost certainly worth it at full price.

[Talvalin]

Badass progress continues. I've now managed to do each of the Hoodlum Dolls stages without dying, and the first stage of The Misconducts.

 

Apparently the game tracks totals deaths, and I've hit about 800 deaths so far (people who've managed to 100% the game on Badass hit somewhere around 2000+ deaths!)

[moosegrinder]

This is on sale again on Switch. Just over a tenner.

[Talvalin]

Badass progress: Finally managed to do Nadja Drago (I swear I died more on her level than all of the other Misconducts bosses put together) without dying, and even the first Heatseekers boss didn't take that long either. Skipping Suki because she was almost as hard as the Shogun, and working my way through the Heatseekers bosses.

 

I'm getting there, but the beautiful thing about the game is that an individual level isn't all that long and retrying is quick, so I can put it on, bang my head against a boss for 30-60 minutes and just put it down again without any problem. Such an amazing game.

[Benny]

So I double dip bought this on Steam just now because a) it's on sale, b) it has a new arcade mode with leader boards, c) that mode is still a few days away from being added to the Switch version, and d) it's the first game in a long time where I literally just want the developers to have more of my money.

[Benny]

Happy to report that Arcade Mode is an absolute blast. Remixed enemy placement, lots of goodies to collect for points, and rewards for creative mayhem. It's a completely new way to play which is just brilliant after the main game.

[Benny]

Also the new music for the Arcade level select screen is awesome.

 

Yes you better believe I will bump this topic when I feel like it.

[Fry Crayola]

Do you know when the update comes to the Switch version? This week, I presume?

[Talvalin]

Waiting for the Xbox update since this will give something to do whilst I attempt to do Bad Ass. Reading the AMA thread that the devs did a couple of weeks ago, one nutter has done 100% of the game on all difficulties with all three characters!

[Benny]

5 minutes ago, Talvalin said:

Waiting for the Xbox update since this will give something to do whilst I attempt to do Bad Ass. Reading the AMA thread that the devs did a couple of weeks ago, one nutter has done 100% of the game on all difficulties with all three characters!

 

I was going to do this with one character on each difficulty, but not all three...

 

To be honest the game is so enjoyable I can see it happening anyway.

[Talvalin]

As it turns out, I've stuck with Anna Conda the whole way through and it would be very weird to have to adjust to the different pistol and melee weapons each character has. Not saying I won't do it, but I want to finish Bad Ass with one character first before trying the other two!

[Benny]

Having played all of them I think jaw bloke seems like the best for bosses, as sometimes you only get a few hits in and the pistol is powerful. Plus he can catch the boomerang for a free throw as it kills things on the way back. Shorter range though.

[Talvalin]

After countless attempts, I finally managed to put down Marlo the Mutant on Badass without dying.

 

Spoiler

 

Seriously, that final fight gets harder the longer it goes on as a bunch of mines get scattered around at one point (which I found difficult to dodge for the longest time) then he starts throwing out dogs and additional enemies!

 

I did discover that if you do more damage when he's in the doorway of the helicopter, compared to when he's in the back getting a crate to throw at you. This amplified the risk/reward situation with grenades or the grenade launcher, since they have to be used standing right next to the helicopter but then the explosions obscure Marlo such that you can get flattened by a crate you didn't see coming.

Just four more stages to do without dying on Badass: Suki the Sniper (god I hate those homing fucking rockets), Grandmaster Yuudai, Cyra Rhodes and the Shogun!

[milko]

people on the fence about this (like me, because I'm shit at these games) can get it for £4.39 in the current Epic store sale on PC. Nice! Now to go and be shit at it.

[Benny]

❗

[Benny]

At that price literally everyone should get it right now.

[Talvalin]

Cyra Rhodes is finally down (I kept on clipping the fucking snake until I realised that the best place to wait out that sequence is the top left. I have no idea how I managed this on Badass first time around but eh).

 

Managed to get to most of the way to Grandmaster Yuudai without dying (that first checkpoint is one of the worst parts of the game, especially if you go for the second stash, but luckily I already have that so just need to get through the rest of the gauntlet), so he should be relatively straightforward. For Suki and the Shogun, I think I'm going to be quite some time before I can do both of those levels without dying. For the Shogun, I can get to him but that second phase remains a complete ball-ache on any difficulty.