How the hell do I get the Hand enemy off me on Well Done?

[emjeeman]

It's unbelievable that this question was asked a few times on here and it went unanswered. On the well done difficulty, how the hell do you get these off of you when they choke you? I tried pressing spacebar as fast and as much as possible, but it doesn't do ♥♥♥♥.

I've seen youtube videos where people remove the hand in about a second, on the same difficulty. There's either something we're doing wrong or there's some glitch that isn't explained properly.

[Shôdan]

Did you rebind your "use" key? You have to spam that.

[emjeeman]

I just tried that. Did nothing. I came across a post somewhere from someone on gamefaqs who said that if the computer is too fast, it's hopeless to get the choking hand off; sounds like the PC performance (FPS, tic rate, cycles? hardware factor like CPU speed?) somehow determines how fast the use button needs to be pressed. Is it a setting in DOSBox with the game speed?

[Lusoka]

I had it on 240 at one point, but a hand would get a good chunk of hp, so I dropped it to 120 to prevent that if I got grabbed. Usually can get it off around 25 hp. This is with BloodGDX

[emjeeman]

Something about how this game works in its original release/version that makes it a problem on DOSBox.

[emjeeman]

Alright, so I just discovered something out of pure chance. It seems like the only way to get the choking hands off is by spamming the use key JUST BEFORE they start choking you? I tried this, and basically the hand appears very briefly on the screen like it's just starting the choke attack, but then gets flung a few feet in front of you. If you even delay by half a second, it's too late. It seems no matter how quick you press the use key, if the hand has already covered the screen for around 1 second, it's too late.

This is all on DOSBox on the Well Done difficulty of course. Maybe in BloodGDX or NBlood this behavior is different, in which case it was changed for those source ports.

This basically just reminds me of the countering mechanism in a lot of pro wrestling and MMA games: you need to press the button/whatever sequence at the right moment in a very small window of error to successfully counter the opponent's move or attack.

[emjeeman]

I take that back. Saw a youtube LP, DOSBox Well Done, where the guy manages to get the hand off a couple seconds after it's already latched on. So much for that. If an explanation for this can be provided, it would be greatly appreciated. It would make 1-shotting the levels much easier as I find these hands to be the most dangerous enemy type in the game.

[emjeeman]

So yeah, removing the hands depends on the framerate in DOS (what kind of design decision is this? the game punishes you for being able to run it smoothly?)

[>M@tEo$<]

It's called hardware limitation...

[emjeeman]

The faster your computer can run the game, the closer to impossible it is stop an enemy from killing you? Don't think anybody would call that anything close to a hardware limitation.

[>M@tEo$<]

Back then performances were a lot bound to refresh rate...
Just like all the graphics were processed, mainly or fully, by the CPU

In the Q3 engine you have special frame rates that allow for instance to skip reload animation