EvaUnit02 on 30/10/2008 at 18:38

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Console ver. demos should be up soon, if they aren't up already.

Ostriig on 30/10/2008 at 23:34

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Could you share some more details? Anything that seems worth mentioning, really. What's the deal with "god-mode while running", is it true? Also, how easy is it to figure out an alternative path through the level, rather than the "red" one?

The Alchemist on 30/10/2008 at 23:52

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Definitely no god-mode while running. I was playing on Normal difficulty and running up towards one of the guards I got shot once, and two hits and you're out, luckly I made it to some cover on time. Unfortunately, I tried some fancy move at disarming him and ended up falling on my ass (literally), and he shot me dead. Basically when concerning armed guards the idea is to get to them as fast as possible and initiate melee combat so that you can take that advantage to disarm them of their weapon. Faith is fast, and there's plenty of stuff to hide behind as you dart towards them. For example there's a guard next to a wall, if I run right at him I'll get hit, but if I run at the wall it's harder for him to aim at me, I wallrun on the wall, turn around, jump at him, and perform a sliding kick, enabling me to then knock his ass out or just disarm him and keep going. Button combination for this would be L1 to jump at the wall, R1 to turn around, L1 to jump towards the person, L2 to slide, and R2 to kick him, then Triangle at the right moment to disarm him or just further melee attacks with R2. Don't be afraid of the "combo-like" nature of this, it is not so much time intensive as strategy intensive. You have a good buffer of time for the moves, it's more about what you choose to do with that time. The disarming, though, is time intensive, as the weapon will become red when it's in a position available for disarm. Jumping isn't too time intensive as it's not necessary to jump at the very last last second to make a jump, it's usually forgiving, but weather you land on the ledge or the flat surface makes a difference in your speed, and you also have to take into account timing for a roll just before you hit the ground. So yes, there are some timing intensive difficulties but it's not ridiculous it's well balanced, it's mostly decision making rather than precision punching of buttons.

Finding alternate routes is a matter of intuition and "faith" you could say, but the outlined path is definitely not always the fastest. For example, in one area your only obvious choice is to wallclimb onto one large obsticle, then wallclimb again onto another, this is slow as she has to wallrun upwards then pull herself up to the ledge. Instead, I found an alternate route as there was a slight space between the two large obstacles I was trying to climb. So instead I tried to walljump a-la Jackie Chan style. At first I confused the buttons and landed on my ass. I tried again, wallrun, 180, jump, 180, jump, and made it to the top. Way faster than the alternative. Also finding routes where you can slide when you land are always better than routes where you just hit the floor and keep running, there are several of these and it's usually not obvious, your best bet is to use your imagination and a leap of faith (sorry for that one again) and hope you find a good route, or else you fall to your death. Also navigation of certain areas, for example there's this walkway thing that goes up on the left and then down on the right, it's easier to just slide under it if there's enough space, you have to judge the space available properly or you just hit your head and have to go the other way. There's a slo-mo function that you get from making good time which helps with those leap-of-faith (sorry) moments where you're not sure if you'll find a landing pad or a 40 story fall on the other side. The game is designed so that there's usually -something- to land on, but how and where is what you have to figure out in a split second so that you make the jump, or abort the jump if it's a suicide. I haven't been able to master the disarms but the guards in the demo only have pistols, in the videos it is obvious that guards with rifles/shotguns are at a disadvantage thanks to the length of the weapon, and I've seen you can do cool moves such as the Trinity style behind the back kick shotgun over your shoulder and smack you in the head with it.

And again to get back on the god-mode idea, definitely not, this is what I wrote on irc:

Alchemist: despite years of playing games where you're rambo they manage to make you feel very vulnerable and its actually more intense to escape [in this game] than it is to take down a bunch of grunts [in any other shooting game].
Alchemist: almost made me break a sweat, especially since i am no good at disarming people yet.

The Alchemist on 31/10/2008 at 00:10

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The paths are varied enough so that you don't feel too "on the rails", thanks to the nature of the intricacy of executing one move (wallrun, jump, slide, or whatever) compared to executing another move (wallclimb, zipline, leap of faith etc). And the pathways themselves are wide enough to allow for this feeling of freedom. But really the sensation of its complexity doesn't come from this, rather, from what specific set of jumps and slides and runs you choose over a certain course and how some work out faster than others. It's really something you have to experience to understand, but there's great satisfaction in finding (and successfully performing) some much more complex but quicker path. The game wants you to be on the run constantly, and this is mostly true but there are times where you are slowed down (ie: managing a difficult area such as a straight up climb in a storage room or slowly making your way alongside a ledge), and sometimes you have to stop and think your plan of actions before you go, as it's all about momentum, so taking a second to know what you want to do before hand is better than trying something on the fly and ending up losing all your momentum with a failed jump or something.

You also get the sensation of urgency to be constantly moving as you're usually being chased and your guide is always telling you to pick up the pace, but that's the fun of the game really.

The Alchemist on 31/10/2008 at 01:02

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Um, yeah? Sorry, it just seems a strange assumption. Movement is like any other FPS.