Iji

beat Tor on maximum charge just now. (Pacifist run) it was awesome. I even got completely obliterated at one point.

you know, I just like this game even more every time I play it. I think I've already replayed it more than any other game I've ever owned. and I keep discovering new stuff each time ( I discovered Annihilator Beta today). seriously how could one person make anything this cool

edited 27th Apr '09 6:07:21 AM by Pacific

Why the spoilers? Especially that second one... I only discovered Annihilator Beta wasn't always around on my third play-through. :/

Oh, and I was wrong about my progress - I've got two things left to do not one. (Sudden Death Sector X and Ultimortal Sector X)

just thought I'd play it safe with the spoilers. mostly because I've been hit by a spoiler before just because there's been one at the top.

EDIT: well, I think I've only got Nanomaster and Immortal left to do. and some of those other secrets that I believe aren't necessary- although I think they're definitely worth a look.

edited 27th Apr '09 6:58:10 AM by Pacific

Well I want to make sure I've done everything the game can possibly check so that I can Get the Null Driver. (spoiler regards unlocking something)

Unrelatedly (mostly), have you found Annie?

you mean the toy?

I guess there is something left that I haven't found yet. I wonder if I ever will.

No, don't tell me. I've already spoiled myself on too many of the posters and such.

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

I'd like to hear it, under spoiler tags. There's no way I would have found the posters or supercharges without a guide.

Ivy wants to know about Annie?

In the secret room in Sector 7, found by blowing up a wall at the top of a working elevator shaft, there's a toy on the filing cabinet. That is Annie. Annie the Annihilator.

It's an Easter Egg of sorts. But not the literal easter egg. That's somewhere else.

EDIT: I just beat Sudden Death Sector X. I'm not sure whether the start or the path up to Tor is harder. Tor himself is of course super easy.

edited 29th Apr '09 3:14:51 PM by Sabbo

Anybody have any tips on beating Asha(2) on Ultimortal? This is really bugging me because it's the last thing I need to do.

The start of Sudden Death Sector X is just a nightmare, since all you've got is the shotgun and up to 10 attack and both paths have a lot of enemies and no cover, and at least one flying turret (speaking of which: There should have been flying turrets outside the last sector, in my opinion, since turrets were the only justification for a pacifist having rockets and most were super-easy to kill). At least there's space to jump. The rest isn't bad by comparison, including the end. At least not if you build yourself a nuke and a velocithor... yeah, I think those two weapons are the solution to basically any challenge where they're allowed. On sudden death by that point in the game you'll never, ever run out of ammo for the velocithor. I certainly hope you didn't mean the very last part with the turrets, by the way; I'll assume you meant everything between the significant locked door and the turrets.

edit: As for Asha 2 on Ultimortal, I dunno what to say. It's a test of skill. There's no tricks you can abuse, no stats you can tweak, nothing you can be given advice on that you shouldn't have figured out on your own by now. You gotta memorize his attacks, shoot him and dodge.

edited 29th Apr '09 1:55:09 PM by Brickman

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

Yeah, by last bit I was referring to the stuff before the turrets. It's easier to kill yourself on those turrets than it is for them to kill you.

But my problem with the start was like this:

.

Top route: Flying turret, Annihilator, lots of smaller enemies.

Bottom route: A Splintergun turret, a flying turret, two beasts, and three little enemies. Oh, and one of them instant ability thingies, which can be good for auto-reflect, exploding shotgun, or invisibility, but everything else it can give is essentially useless. (like nanoforge. Why the hell would I want to get ammo when I get damaged when getting damaged means losing anyway... and ammo for my shotgun at that...)

edited 29th Apr '09 3:14:20 PM by Sabbo

Yeah, those powerups are inherently imbalanced. Some of them, like Nanoforge, are just junk. Of the ones that aren't junk most only provide a small boost (explosive shotgun... if you're using weapons you've got reliable explosives by any point in the game; invisibility doesn't really work much; nanospark is a fun ammo-saver but not any better than your normal weapons except at hitting through floors if you time your jumps), and only a couple are really useful and even then only situationally (reflect is great if you've got the right enemies by you, infinite ammo can be a nice excuse to clear some space if you have the nuke, auto-teching can be really useful if you're just trying to get past rather than kill your enemies, and need I explain the utility of a free revive?). You pretty much can't rely on them for anything, so I guess they kinda do what they should, but they're all just so underwhelming it feels wrong.

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

The only times I was able to get past that first bit were because of the invisibility and auto-revive ones. Those beasts are way too strong... seriously, how much armor do they have, 500?

I'm pretty sure if you max attack it takes either one or two attacks to kill anyone in sudden death; don't remember which. The trick is just to advance slowly and only aggro one enemy at a time. Yeah, this is probably the only place in the entire game where aggro dependent on distance from the enemy surfaces, but that's the trick. Still, you'll probably end up retrying until you get a good powerup; invisibility works, autoreflect helps, explosive shotgun may help, auto-revive obviously helps, otherwise you're on your own. If you're annoyed with randomness you could try the other path, but the annihilator ALSO takes luck because if he uses the splintergun you die (though it takes much less luck), and there's more enemies and less cover.

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

It took me ~5 shots for each beast to kill them. I'll go check now how much armor they have.

Huh. Same as the Berserker and Trooper. Don't know why it always took me so long to kill them then.

edited 29th Apr '09 8:02:33 PM by Sabbo

Everybody has 100 armor in Sudden Death mode. Dan says so in Sector 1.

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

Oh.

Then it's even more confusing on why it always took me five or so shots to beat the Beasts, but always one shot for everything else.

EDIT: Oh, wait. Turrets (both types) took multiple shots too.

edited 29th Apr '09 8:33:39 PM by Sabbo

You were probably afraid to get within the shotgun's effective range, since the beasts kill you if they touch you, always run and explode on death. You were probably just hanging on the very edge of the range you could hit at and only a fraction of the shells hit.

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

I tend to be around 3 boxes-distance away. If that made sense.

Just finished playing the game.

I think it's a very well-made game. My only complaint is with the art style, which didn't do much good for immersion (which is something I enjoy). And I guess the music style (heavy metal with some electronic influence/instruments) doesn't really mesh too well with this futuristic sci-fi super-sleek setting (as portrayed by the graphics).

But I enjoyed it. Took me over 5 hours to beat the game, and I started out killing lots of enemies but later kept my killcount to less than 10 (sometimes less than 5) per level, so I ended up with Killer status at like 57 kills total. I got hopeless status with my frequent deaths and such (I feel bad for killing Iji that much...), and my insistence on cracking some hard-to-crack enemies such as Komato Beasts took my cracking down from Nanomaster to Cybergeek.

I might play again, though not immediately.

One complaint that I had was that, given its castletroidy layout to each level, one that encourages exploration, the game feels rather difficult to explore, especially if you're trying to dodge all those enemies in the process.

I've found all 10 ribbons, apparently, but only 1 poster (the first one) and 3/4 hidden skills, and I can't remember the last stat.

My cyborg-skill enhancement choices:

• Health to a decent amount (like 5 or so)
• Crack to 10, in order to uncover the most features
• Komato and Tasen to 10, in order to have weapon variety
• Strength to 10, in order to kick down doors and explore more places
• then Health to 10, then Attack up finally.

I left Assimilate untouched, since I can't figure out what it does other than increase your ammunition, and ammunition isn't in short supply and I mostly tried to play semi-pacifist anyway. Though I enjoyed killing enemies by cracking them more than killing enemies by shooting them.

Yeah, this game makes it feel too fun to kill enemies for pacifism to be an exciting option. I can tell Iji initially felt sorry about killing enemies, but I can't say I did. That's what I mean when I said that the game wasn't sufficiently immersive—I didn't feel enough like I was in Iji's shoes. (Even her grunts of pain and screaming when dying weren't enough, apparently. I thought they were reminiscent of Metroid Prime's style, so I thought they'd work as well...) And while I could see, through the script, Iji's confusion and desperation, I couldn't feel it very well.

I think it would be far better if cracking enemies disabled them rather than killed them. Then that would be so much more interesting, as a sort of stealth game, and you could use your cracking skills in order to avoid killing them as well.

Question: How do you open those strength-15 doors, without a jetbike/car/whatnot? What about the crack-25 doors (which can't be opened by crashing into them anyway)?

edited 30th Apr '09 11:15:06 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

The heavy doors can't be opened directly. Either there's one or more terminals to open them, you use the shredder bike, or they can't be opened at all. (with two exceptions, which are opened in a special way)

I think he saw the exceptions in sector 9 if he's beaten the game. Anyways, it's certainly fun to kill everything at first, and it continues to be so for a while, but I'll admit that, especially if you mostly stick to the big guns, it gets old after a while. Especially since as you increase the difficulty it becomes much harder but without any more reward. And anyways, my recommendation is to always put a single point in Assimilate at some point, because that doubles your carrying capacity, and makes healing items more effective towards armor damage. Max ammo of 10 just feels limiting.

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

Oops; forgot about those doors. I was thinking Sector X.

The doors just to the right of the "Ridley"-like boss room, right?

Also, there are a bunch of doors at the start of a level that are level 25 doors.

edited 1st May '09 3:22:37 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

The heavy doors at the start of each level vary in strength and security. (although are always at least 15, excluding Sector 1) They are of the sort which are always unopenable.

The doors to the right of the Ridley-like room are completely unopenable, to my knowledge. They're just there to tease you.

The doors in Sector X I was talking about were the ones which get opened by destroying them with Annihilator Beta. These doors say they require a strength of 25.

edited 2nd May '09 1:36:30 AM by Sabbo