No Ray Race Stream today. Life got in the way.
In other news: Hyper mode is tough!
No kidding. I just finished Hyper mode as Beck today and holy [parasitic bomb] is Hyper mode brutal compared to the previous difficulties. As if locking up Patches away to keep them from
torturing Objection Man to provide healing items wasn't hard enough, healing items seems more scarce than Hard or Normal. It did feel satisfying for the most part finishing it, notably when I managed an S-rank for the final stage again as Beck this time, the frustrations I did had during Hyper mode did feel there was a payoff when I finally succeeded. If people are badmouthing this game for being too unforgiving on
Normal mode of all things, they'll certainly
cry and scream if they tried Hyper mode first. And is it just me or does Hyper mode penalizes your death harder than Hard?
A couple of other things I want to list here as suggestions or nitpicks/issues I have though:
[spoiler=Kind of a big list -EDIT-]- Couldn't they have the Options settings in one menu instead of two? It would help streamline configuring and tweaking settings and maybe saving time instead of having to wait for the loading screen to open up the General (or as I would refer to as "System") Settings.
- Instead of having the player having to erase a slot to make a "clean" save file and wipe out whatever progress they made or hi-scores, why not give the player to New Game+ the same slot by carrying over whatever score/rank they made in X stage yet it would still play like you're starting new. I'm guessing there's one for each difficulty, but about those that have the Retro Hero DLC that adds Maniac mode? I'd have to erase a slot to make a new game for a separate difficulty if they're already used. That or bump up the save slots to like 9 or something.
- An option to let you decide if you want all weapons from the start or not à la Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner across all difficulties would be nice.
- A "Skip-All Cutscenes" function where all story cutscenes are cut out akin to what DuckTales Remastered did after a patch address complains about its cutscenes eating play time. Kinda unfair that Ray sort of does this for her campaign where Beck's cutscenes are removed (though few like that intermission with Avi proroaching Beck after beating the mini-boss still plays but gets skiped over immediately) to make her story to work, though I think it would be better if they give you the option to remove them entirely from the Options menu like the Patch support on difficulties less than Hyper. This would not only streamline subsequent playthroughs, but also makes speedrunning the game, well, more streamlined.
- Having shortcuts for certain forms is helpful, though I think it would be better if they handled it like they did with Azure Striker Gunvolt on PC where you could quick select Gunvolt's special skills with the directions of the Right Stick. Plus this would alleviate not being able to use all shortcut buttons when trying to using the Wii Classic Controller/Pro instead of the Wii U Gamepad/Pro Controller since the former doesn't have clickable thumbsticks.
- Why no Boss Rush for Ray? I would love to wreck the bosses in the quickest time with her and Beck.
- Why does there have to be a countdown for each boss in Boss Rush? Considering the Wii U version, the time does add up in-between loading and this countdown.
- Brandish's bug where it makes you invulnerable to projectiles(?) gotta be fixed. Sorry, but to me, that's like using the pause trick in Mega Man 1.
- Does Retro Hero Beck have to be a pre-order or retail (PS4, Xbone, Wii U) exclusive DLC? Furthermore, why can't we just use Retro Beck for difficulties outside of Maniac, it would go nicely with the 8-bit soundtrack. I would like the Retro Beck to apply on Beck's other forms (I only see it affect Beck's normal form), but I guess they didn't have enough money to work with to make that happen.
- For the PC version from what I've read on PC Gaming Wiki, why couldn't there be a separate option for FXAA (fast-approximate anti-aliasing), tone-mapping, and bloom lighting instead of having the Bloom setting handle all three at once? In some cases I don't mind FXAA when MSAA (mutli-sampling anti-aliasing) isn't tanking performance or not working in some games, but if I had the option of either FXAA or MSAA (although its possible to use both), I'd go with the latter since it doesn't blur the screen. And on the Xbox 360 version (from the demo at least), why have a V-sync option when the game is locked to 30 FPS anyways unlike say BioShock where you can unlock it to 60 FPS (on the Xbox 360 version at least) at the expense of screen tearing.
- Adding to the PC version from what I've read from PCGW, there should be support for other aspect-ratios besides 16:9.
- An option to show or hide the Mighty Number's advice in the stage select screen? I think this spoils the whole idea of what Mega Man did where you had to guess which weapon you ganked from the boss you just beaten is going to be effective to the next boss you're going to fight or not.
- Taking an idea that Astebreed did, how would an option to turn off or hide all of the scoring-related elements from the HUD sound if you don't want to play/replay a level for high-score or rank sound? I mean Mighty No. 9 does give you the option to turn off the 100% combo counter and the message that pops when you do mid-air chain absorption or feats (e.g. speeding through a section/mini-boss or doing well in the stage), so why not an option to make it feel more a straightforward Mega Man-like game with an emphasis on speed.[/spoiler]
Also, should we gather some of our thoughts and feedback of Mighty No. 9 and try to contact the devs in hopes they'll maybe apply them for a potential patch for Mighty No. 9 or a sequel? I mean Inti-Creates has listened to feedback, issues, and suggestions with Azure Striker Gunvolt's PC port before. Assuming Inti and (most likely) Comcept are not being flooded with thousands of hate e-mails and tweets.
And now then...
Time for some straight up masochism...
[spoiler=Maniac]So far what I know about Maniac mode's changes so far is that you have all weapons from the get-go like in Hard/Hyper mode, but the enemies' and bosses' behavior seemed to be based on Normal, which I guess isn't too bad considering the Hard version of the enemies/bosses would have been
way more brutal than Hyper was.[/spoiler]