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PowerUp Forever - XBLA
Future Blues
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Anyone else buy this game?
I played the trial and got to the third stage before I was wiped out and I really liked it, so I dropped the 800 points on it right away and unlocked it.
Now I'm really frustrated. I turn the thing on and the first level goes fine. Kill some stuff, dodge the enemies, kill the guardian, move on. However, I go the second stage, kill a bunch, get close to enraging the guardian and then I'm surrounded by these tiny little ships that fire about 10x faster than anything else on the screen and I die in seconds. Unlike the trial, I can't seem to get any shields and these enemies are too small and fast to kill effectively without a bomb, which means that as soon as I use that first bomb, two or three more join the fray and I'm just ruined.
In the trial levels, I seemed to acquire bombs and some sort of plasma waves along with shields at somewhat regular intervals, but in the real game, there's a meter that grows until you get a bomb and then just sits there until you use it.
I've done a little more playing and I have more information now. Apparently you don't get the ability to use shields until the 3rd level, which also gives you the ability to gain the plasma waves. But I still can't get past the second level in normal or the third level in easy due to those crazy enemies that surround and destroy me. They're fast, take anywhere from 3-5 shots to take down and they shoot faster and more accurately than a gaurdian, even though they're a quarter of the size. The shield helps a little, but because you can't shoot while you're shielding, you just sort of delay the inevitable and eventually you either die from collision damage or take the shield down and get owned.
I really feel like I'm missing something... Like, these enemies feel like some sort of old-school DRM mechanism that kills the player outright after a certain amount of time.
So yeah, anybody else playing this? Any tips?
I played the trial and got to the third stage before I was wiped out and I really liked it, so I dropped the 800 points on it right away and unlocked it.
Now I'm really frustrated. I turn the thing on and the first level goes fine. Kill some stuff, dodge the enemies, kill the guardian, move on. However, I go the second stage, kill a bunch, get close to enraging the guardian and then I'm surrounded by these tiny little ships that fire about 10x faster than anything else on the screen and I die in seconds. Unlike the trial, I can't seem to get any shields and these enemies are too small and fast to kill effectively without a bomb, which means that as soon as I use that first bomb, two or three more join the fray and I'm just ruined.
In the trial levels, I seemed to acquire bombs and some sort of plasma waves along with shields at somewhat regular intervals, but in the real game, there's a meter that grows until you get a bomb and then just sits there until you use it.
I've done a little more playing and I have more information now. Apparently you don't get the ability to use shields until the 3rd level, which also gives you the ability to gain the plasma waves. But I still can't get past the second level in normal or the third level in easy due to those crazy enemies that surround and destroy me. They're fast, take anywhere from 3-5 shots to take down and they shoot faster and more accurately than a gaurdian, even though they're a quarter of the size. The shield helps a little, but because you can't shoot while you're shielding, you just sort of delay the inevitable and eventually you either die from collision damage or take the shield down and get owned.
I really feel like I'm missing something... Like, these enemies feel like some sort of old-school DRM mechanism that kills the player outright after a certain amount of time.
So yeah, anybody else playing this? Any tips?
Xbox Live: No Reply
Steam: Jacobontap
LoL: FutureBlues
Steam: Jacobontap
LoL: FutureBlues
Future Blues on
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Switch - SW-3699-5063-5018
Or at least until the killdots pound you into oblivion.
Steam: Jacobontap
LoL: FutureBlues
The difficulty in the trial ramps up pretty dramatically on level 3. I got the guardian rage gauge (that's fun to say) up to about 60% full and then got piled on by killdots and big asteroid-looking things that move too fast. Until I can get past that level consistently, there's no reason to buy the full game.
The evolutionary thing isn't all that obvious, at least in the trial. I'd rather see a XBLA game that runs with the gameplay concepts from Warning Forever or Battleships Forever.
I imagine the solution is to not use your bombs until that point.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
At first, was getting killed constantly by those stupid homing balls of death, until I realized that was the game's way of telling you to hurry up. Then, figured going for the squid like aliens was the best priority, and it got flowing pretty good. I'll say that the reward of getting bigger to where the smaller enemies are just tiny blips on the screen is pretty neat.
I seem to be flashing back and forth between "man this is intense and fun" to "man this is alright, still fun though". I'm looking forward to unlocking the other modes. As for purchasing... I'm really digging it so far, but to others, seems like it'd really have to be your thing to get into.
PSN: Toma84
Also, apparently it's not that popular because last night I was in the top 60 of the leaderboards.
This actually makes me more interested, because I felt like the one thing flow was missing was guns.
I am not being sarcastic.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
I'm one of the devs who worked on PuF, so I thought I'd see if I could help out.
@Future Blues: Sorry to here about your frustrations. As Toma says the hunters (or killdots) are the game's way of telling you to hurry up. FYI - the structure of the game means that without incentives to summon the guardian, players could just graze an early level for cheap points and top the leaderboards by spending silly amounts of time on easy levels. So the game takes a carrot and stick approach to solve this. The score multiplier is the carrot to encourage you to move on. The hunters are the stick that make sure you do (or otherwise they'll kill you). The first one turns up after 2 minutes (or 2 minutes 40 seconds on Easy), and after that they'll start turning up more frequently until they've done the job.
The Guardian Rage Gauge is only filled by killing the squid-like parasites, so you really want to concentrate on them where possible. One tip if you can't find any parasites or you're not near terrain then follow the next thin parasite you see and chances are it'll lead you to a parasite grazing site where you can bag a bunch of them (and likewise if you see a fat parasite chances are it's heading away from a grazing site, so kill it and then go where it came from).
@Zoku Gojira: One mistake we've definitely made with the game is not specifying clearly enough that the demo uses custom levels, and that the difficulty rises much more sharply than in the full game. There is a message to that effect, it's just not explicit enough or in your face enough. Lesson learnt there.
Hope that helps.
Tried the demo. Mouth agape the whole time. Got raped pretty bad on the second level.
I think I will buy this.
Nice work. The visual style and colors are brilliant. Kudos, MarkN.
PSN: BuckySuperJew
Spoiler'd GamerCards
Must be a DBZ game.
heeyyoooooooooooo
Thanks for the words Mark. I'll go back and find me some squidies.
Steam: Jacobontap
LoL: FutureBlues
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
Still, very interested in this one. Might take the plunge today.
Whereas before I thought I had to kill enemies randomly until the Guardian was enraged, actually having to physically seek out the right type of enemies in order to progress changes the whole game. Like, the loading screen that mentions the parasites only made sense after it was explained to me. Before, I figured that "parasites" meant "all enemies on the screen" rather than just that one type.
This time I managed to get to level 5 and get a 5x multiplier before I accidentally ran into a guardian and blew myself up. The game is a lot more fun and fast paced when you play it correctly.
And the art here is great. If I could take this game and combine it with the music gameplay in Lumines or Rez I'd be in heaven.
Steam: Jacobontap
LoL: FutureBlues
This was my initial thought from the title
It's not as hard as the demo, but Level 3 is still not a breeze. And there's an Easy mode where I made it to Level 13 without much trouble on the first try. Very helpful for unlocking bonus game modes.
The one frustration I've encountered so far is that sometimes, a map started me out nowhere near the host organisms, and with no squids anywhere in sight to follow to a host. I patrolled far and wide, and it took me ages to find one to pick clean of parasites. By then, I'd lost my score multiplier. And I barely cleared the map in time to avoid being crushed by killdots. This is rare, but it has the potential to screw up a good run and force the player to start over.
Fun game, though. It's challenging on Normal and Hardcore, but also more accessible than Geometry Wars because of the Easy mode and the health bar.
Just DL'd and tried it - really good fun. Medium presents an excellent challenge, while getting further with Easy is a rather blissful chill-out shooter experience. And the graphics are pretty cool to boot, definitely one of the better-looking shooters on XBLA. Going to try for a decent score tomorrow.