Super House of Dead Ninjas

I felt we could use a thread on this cool online game from Adult Swim Games. It's a fun, arcadey, hack and slash ninja platformer with a bunch of levels (randomly generated), cool weapons and upgrades, and scores of ninjas to kill. It's a real improvement on the first House of Dead Ninjas.

It also turns out that the game has a Steam release, with more levels, more weapons, and a level editor. (and more ninjas to kill, obviously)

I think I'm geting fairly good at it. I love using the upgraded katana to get into Rage mode really fast, and I might start using The Token Gun after I get some ammo increases.

I got the steam release, more because I wanted to support something as awesome as this than I was actually interested in the extra features.

It's tried-and-true action platforming. My only real dislike is the use of a gun powerup. Ninjas don't use guns.

But it's the Token Gun. Every game with throwing knives and shurikens and axes needs one gun powerup of dubious usfeulness.

Now, my preferred projectile (that I've unlocked) is the Shurkien+. Kills fat ninjas in one shot. I also love the Katana+ and the remote-detonating bombs.

It's all about the whip, which has the excellent moniker of the Taming Whip Of Many Nuns. Plenty of range without sacrificing speed. Banzai!

For range I use the Axe because axes are cool.

I'd use the molotov, but that would make me exactly like Simon Belmont instead of a lot like Simon Belmont so I grab the much safer remove bomb instead.

I always hd issues with the whip. It seems like it has a sweet-spot, rather than being capable of hitting from point-blank out. Or maybe I just had problems aiming.

I will say that I really don't like the Kusarigama.

No idea how to beat the One-Armed Ninja. It seems he plain is immune to damage except for very short intervals, and even then can only be melee'd.

Use the whip, Luke. and then watch out for what happens after

edited 14th Mar '13 8:27:52 PM by ShirowShirow

Even then, I don't think it actually hurts him unless he's charging up.

Nah, but the range lets you hit him from a good enough distance away which lets you evade his attack easier.

I can't remember if he has a tell or not for his three attacks. The slash, at least, has less range then it looks like it has.

edited 14th Mar '13 8:43:13 PM by ShirowShirow

Well, the tell for his larger attacks is the white flash of temporary vulnerability.

...man, he's just such a leap in difficulty from Spite, Rage, and Torment.

The One-Armed Ninja is really annoying. It seems like you need a very specific weapon against him in order to be really effective. That and I really rely on shurikens on every other enemy in the game.

I've come to rely on melee more when I found out just how much more Rage melee accumulates compared to ranged shots. Chaining invincibility? Yes please.

I'm doing melee when I'm in rage, because my main worry about it is being killed.

I love going into Rage, so I try to use melee to get there.

Okay, so I beat the One-Armed Ninja... once (the spining piledrive move works wonders), and then I was up against the final boss (?) with 2 lives left. I didn't make it very far.

If I beat him in Normal mode, does that not unlock the fourth area?

Holy severed testicles of infertile death, what an awesome romp. I'm officially in love with this game .

As far as bosses go, I think the One-Armed Ninja is far less annoying than Doom. Only thing that me is that Abarghus causes slowdown.

The slowdown is a homage to oldschool games. You can actually turn it off in the options.

Ah, good. I like the slowdown effects in rage mode, but when fighting the boss, it's rather distracting.

Speaking of Abarghus, how do you avoid the move where he smashes a glob of stuff into the floor, which can later be stood on to avoid the acid flood?

He doesn't appear to track my position with it, as I initially thought. He seems to smash a random area chosen from some predetermined number of possible locations to smash. However, I haven't found any way to tell beforehand which spot he's going to smash. Standing on a previous glob doesn't work, because I once saw him smash the same spot twice in a row. Is there a way to figure that out, or a location that he will never smash, or is it all a matter of luck?

And yeah, the One-Armed Ninja (I'm assuming he's the protagonist of the original House of Dead Ninjas?) is easier once you know just what he can do. Also, if you can manage to get him with a spinning-blade piledriver. That deals much damage.

Oh, and I bought the Steam version. More levels and weapons are always nice, and I tired of the game losing my save data every time I had need to clear my recent browser history.

edited 16th Mar '13 7:06:42 PM by Enlong

So, I defeated Abarghus... and now I need to beat him again and make the other choice to unlock the final level. I knew it was coming, but I really wanted to make the other choice.

Still don't know how to dodge his slam attack.

I. Hate. Monkeys.

Abarghus is a piece of cake. Just do a super jump as soon as you expect him to strike. In general, super jump makes life a lot easier for you, when you use it properly.

Yeah, I made it to the Realm of Abarghus just before my denouncement of monkeys.

In other news, I managed to get my hands on the Light Saber Blazer! Woo!

This thing is pretty awesome. It has the same range as the basic katana, but is better in every way. The damage it does is ridiculous. It takes out two-hit enemies in one shot, not just the ones that can be beheaded, and it takes out those big fat acid-spitting guys from the Realm of Abarghus in one shot as well. It only takes two basic swings to kill a Bahamut, though its damage is still standard against bosses. But the best part? It vaporizes enemy corpses, right? That's not just a cosmetic thing. By vaporizing enemies, it neutralizes the threat of enemies whose corpses become a problem. Those spikey guys fail to leave behind a spike trap. Those mushrooms? No more spores. And I don't know if it works on red skeletons, but I'll give it a shot.

I'm losing out on the Whip's range, but I think it might be totally worth it.

Oh, and I picked up the Dynamite. The fact that it can break walls, not just bombable walls, is pretty cool, but I wonder how useful that really is, compared to the Boomathon's remote-detonator ability.

Personally, I find the best combination is the Early Morning Star (Killing Disgust in the Transdimensional Leak, is a pain, but the weapon hits front, below and just behind you and has the range of the whip, the only drawback is it's hard to aim at the chickens and the horde of flies and it's not nearly as fast as the whip, but better than the chain blade), the upgraded boomerang (if you're standing far enough away from a boss and you can get them right where the boomerang turns around, it'll hit multiple times, also never runs out of ammo), and the dynamite (allows you to skip pretty mostly any one of the maze or trap rooms by blasting through the floor).

I heard someone mention Doom being a pain. Funny thing about him. If you jump up just below the spikes and hold jump and towards the wall to stay in one spot, he can't ever touch you and you'll be out of the way of the flaming Fu Dogs and can hit him with your range weapon whenever he lands. Disgust is also a pain, but so long as you watch where his snot bubbles land and get out of the way, you can hit him your range attack when he sneezes at you.

Also, whenever you clear the 3 bosses of the Transdimentional Leak, you get put back to the beginning of it again, but there is twice as many enemies, meaning Rage mode is easier to keep enabled and you rack up points like crazy.

You can also get on the outside of the level by using Dynamite on a certain floor that has multiple scorpions crawling on the bottom of the floor and a 180 degree swinging chain above them. I would use that to try to do the "Avoid Death for 20 seconds" unlockable, but be warned, you will eventually reach a boss, and mine didn't trigger when I ran past it, and ended up having the screen whip back to it and stay there, although I did continue further down the tower, I just couldn't see anything but the boss room.

edited 20th Mar '13 10:19:38 PM by A-roo

I haven' reached Disgust yet; still havin' problems with EX Doom.

So, I hear that the Domain of Abarghus has no bosses and no end. I guess it really is hell.