Meat Circus, you kill me...

[halfmonkey]

I first played this back at launch (when games still came packaged in giant, mostly empty boxes) but never made it past the Edgar level of the asylum because of my failure to understand key elements of the game (like upgrading with psy-cores and hidden bonuses to get better skills, or using the bacon to get strategies for specific enemies...or to teleport out of a sticky situation.) It didn't help that the game expected my crappy keyboard presses to respond like a game controller.
Coming back to it on now years later on Steam, armed with a better keyboard and more proficiency in platforming (as well as numerous internet guides to explain what the game doesn't tell you.)
I'll be damned if I can't progress through the spawn-of-Satan "Meat Circus." The most tortuous ramp up in level of difficulty within a few mere moments. If I had made it this far with my disc copy, I would have instantly ejected it and snapped it in half-ensuring one less person would have to suffer this tedious and impossible (for me) level.
I look forward to the sequel, but if I read even a hint about absurd changes in play-style or obvious difficulty spikes, it's a no-go. I'll cheapen myself by watching someone else play, like I'm about to do to see how this actually ends. I've waited so long, but it's not within my capabilites to play it through. To the designer of this level: Giant middle finger extended.

[tripbillie]

Publicado originalmente por halfmonkey:

I too was experiencing the invincible bunnies bug. The insanely precise platforming required still makes this a no-go for me. I've seen speedrunners glitch through the entire level in a few seconds, but I stick by my original thought (from nearly ten years ago) that the difficulty spike just isn't fun.

The Meat Circus as it is on Steam was intentionally nerfed. You now can never get kicked out of the brain, and there are more checkpoints than there were originally. So now once you complete a section (like the Oly escort quest or the grind rail) you won't be required to re-do it in that playthrough. You still have to be able to get past the insanely precise platforming, but at least you no longer lose an entire section worth of progress. (And I agree on the difficulty spike - the re-use of the Meat Circus music in P2 for the Aquato family theme initially made me cringe and want to yell unkind things about Oly.)

[halfmonkey]

Publicado originalmente por tripbillie:

Publicado originalmente por halfmonkey:

I too was experiencing the invincible bunnies bug. The insanely precise platforming required still makes this a no-go for me. I've seen speedrunners glitch through the entire level in a few seconds, but I stick by my original thought (from nearly ten years ago) that the difficulty spike just isn't fun.

The Meat Circus as it is on Steam was intentionally nerfed. You now can never get kicked out of the brain, and there are more checkpoints than there were originally. So now once you complete a section (like the Oly escort quest or the grind rail) you won't be required to re-do it in that playthrough. You still have to be able to get past the insanely precise platforming, but at least you no longer lose an entire section worth of progress. (And I agree on the difficulty spike - the re-use of the Meat Circus music in P2 for the Aquato family theme initially made me cringe and want to yell unkind things about Oly.)

I'll have to try again then. Since 2016 I've been occasionally using a gamepad for some games (like Deadly Premonition 2, which shipped with no mouse or keyboard support at all) and that might make it more bearable.