Insane Difficulty: Well, as Promised... - Insane Difficulty

Let's start this playthrough up! I'm ready to go! In this episode, I take on the intro stage.

Death Counter: 5 (I think, I just counted, I didn't check the death counter afterwards)

Part 1: GTA

"Take that, hole!"

"Wheeee!"

Those are the highlights of the video.

Also, you're all into tvtropes these days!

You're a funny guy, I knew as much. Loving this!

Alright, time to take down Chill Penguin.

Obligatory "cool" pun here.

Death Counter:

Intro Stage: 5
Chill Penguin: 68

Out of all the maverick fights that I've beaten IRL so far, this one has been my favorite! It took a while, but once I began to pick up his pattern I felt as though I was able to take him on. It's tough, but not luck-reliant or unfair at all!

As for the stage, it was well designed as well. I had to bother learning a little more about the enemies to deal with Hard Type (in vanilla, it was often easy to clear everything from the screen before it even mattered), but it was pretty reasonable once I knew what to do. I like having the dash boots right away; it opens up more options for stage design without necessarily forcing the player to go to Chill Penguin's stage first.

Enemy damage seems reasonable in this stage. It's enough to keep me on my toes, but not enough to remove all hope of a safety net.

I edited the video to show all of my deaths at the very least, but if there was anything else about any particular run that I felt was worth mentioning, such as when I learned something or tried something out, I generally showed that as well. It was originally about an hour and ten minutes of footage, which was cut down to under thirty. However, if somebody really wants to see the unedited footage (which has much worse pacing IMO and a lot of boring parts where I essentially just walk somewhere and die, but contains the entirety of my attempts) I can throw up an unlisted video of that.

It being nearly two in the morning, I may have forgotten to mention something here.

Part 2 - A Batman Villain?

@ you falling off the stage when going for the heart tank jump. Yes, that seems like a glitch.

You can call him either Megaman or X. He's referred to by both names in the X series.

Chill penguin really likes sitting on your face.

I was going to add that you can dash off walls, but I just reached the bit in the video where you discovered that.

Looking forward to more levels.

Edit: so disappointed you didn't finish him off while hanging from the wall.

Edit 2: Death count isn't so bad. Mine was around 200 after beating my first stage iirc.

Yeah, that's definitely a glitch. I'm gonna have to analyze how to fix it, that sucks. I was afraid it had happened to you *after* you had destroyed the... thingy.

In general... Man, this video was painful. But only because you didn't know about the dash wall jumps (I felt like I had thrown classic Mega Man into Penguin's arena). In general, Hard Type should be able to get you used to dashing and wall dashing constantly. Just... remember to dash a lot in the next stage (hint hint). And remember to use all of your upgrades. I want you suffer little after that vid.

Don't worry, I had already pretty given up that run where the glitch struck. It ended up being "Hey, I happened to find a glitch" rather than "Oh no, that glitch killed my run".

Yeah, I'm definitely learning some mechanics from Hard Type that weren't necessary to complete vanilla, like the dash wall jump. I've already defeated Storm Eagle's stage, and didn't have any problems there at all, really. I didn't find a great use for Ice Shotgun in that stage, but it sure got use in the next one after that.

Part 3 - Kentucky Fried Eagle

Death Counter:

Intro Stage: 5
Chill Penguin: 68
Storm Eagle: 22

This stage was definitely easier than the last, and definitely felt like a better warm-up stage than the one that I originally picked. In the first half of the stage, I would have done better if I had gotten used to the Dash Wall Jump a little faster, particularly on the part with the conveyor that moves downwards where you have to Wall Jump up. This stage is relatively easy because many of the difficult obstacles are not very punishing if you mess up, and many of the punishing parts of the level are not very difficult obstacles to avoid. Once I got the hang of the moving platforms and how to avoid respawning flamethrowers, the rest of the level went as smooth as silk.

In fact, the second half of the level was easy enough that I never died (in fact, I didn't even get hit now that I rewatch the tape), so I never found out where the "midpoint" was. I actually think that it could have been beefed up a little, because it honestly didn't feel any harder to maneuver through than vanilla, aside from the increased damage of course, not that it really mattered in any way, shape or form. I'd think that it might make sense as a level intended to be played early, but it comes after the significantly harder first half.

However, disregard that above paragraph if there's no checkpoint to the level (I didn't die there in vanilla either, so my guess that a midpoint exists is based solely on the apparent formula). If there is no checkpoint, then making the second half forgiving to reduce the chances of redoing the first half makes a great deal of sense.

Storm Eagle was fun to fight, although not as satisfying as Chill Penguin to take down (mostly because that fight is hard to top, not because this one is bad or anything ). Most of my deaths were clearly due to carelessness. I kept trying to shoot him when he was flapping his wings, which was dumb because he was only barely in range, and I had to stand near the edge of the platform. This meant that as soon as he stopped, I'd run straight off into the spikes! I defeated him on the very same attempt that I stopped jumping the gun and picked my offensive moments more wisely.



When it comes to missed secrets, please don't give hints as to how to find/get them. Feel free, however, to tell me whether it is currently possible for me to reach them.

Yep, you are able to come back and get another thingy there.

Man, I'm not sure why, but it's fun to see you play . I particularly liked how fast you nailed the platform section with the flamethrowers - That part usually takes quite a few tries to the blind player. Nice dodges there too. Also, grabbing the heart first try? That was some good reflexes as well. You're slowly getting the hang to dashing and wall dashing it's nice to see that.

Also, damn, I felt that death with Eagle having 1 HP left.

Part 4 - But Will it Blend (in)?

Intro Stage: 5
Chill Penguin: 68
Storm Eagle: 22
Sting Chameleon: 73

Here is the next installment in this series. This stage took me the longest to beat out of all the ones that I played so far. In fact, I've gone through six stages so far, and the boss fight against Sting Chameleon took longer than four of those stages in their entirety.

I liked how there are several ways to go about some of the platforming in the first part of the level. I mentioned this on camera, but it got edited out. Once I got the hang of the part outside the cave, the only part that remained difficult was that one jump downwards onto the flying logs. That part required some tricky timing that I never really mastered (you can see me die there once or twice every so often between the attempts that made it somewhere). But it was close enough to the start that it was fun and not irritating.

Inside the cave, I felt like I was missing something with avoiding the ceiling. I kept looking for a pattern, but in the end, "Rush through and hope for the best" was all I could come up with. Sometimes it felt like the rocks could fall onto you right over top of a hole, knocking you right in and there wasn't too much that I could see to do about it, as the jumps were often tight enough that you didn't have leeway to dodge falling rocks. Once I had my strat down it didn't eat too many attempts, but it still felt like the game could end me on a whim.

Similarly to Storm Eagle, the second half felt a lot easier than the first. However, this time it didn't feel too easy, and it was nice to have a breather after the first segment. Surprisingly, I didn't mess up the mech suit part nearly as badly as expected. The whole level was definitely a step up from vanilla, where you can just grab the 50% armor boost and literally just run through the enemies without even shooting because they don't really do any damage.

Sting Chameleon was definitely the hardest maverick so far. I really liked the stage design and how it works with the AI. It took me a while to figure out how to dodge his tongue attack, but once I did it made for an intense fight that still wasn't easily beaten just because I figured out how to deal with it. The only part I didn't like was the spike attack, which fit vanilla's smaller amounts of damage better IMO. It feels like the move can really trap you sometimes, which isn't a big deal if you can tank a couple hits as long as you dodge his other moves fine, but becomes irritating when it threatens to kill you on its own. It's always hard to tell if it's actually an issue or if it's just that I need to "git gud" (and admittedly, I don't have the armor upgrade, which would have helped if I could have gotten it), but this boss felt a great deal more difficult than mavericks that were rated higher on the difficulty scale. I really think that this could have been one of my favorite maverick fights if the spike move (and specifically only that move) did one or two bars less of damage.

PS: I hope the editing for this one doesn't seem a little sloppy. There was more footage to go through than usual.

Since you've already cleared the stage, I don't mind telling you the cave was hellish for you because you didn't have the head upgrade, which just makes the stones break on your head without taking damage. Without, you do end up in a "rush and hope for the best while improvising" set up. The cave also ends up being more spacey with the head upgrade, because of all of the breakable blocks Ia dded on the ceiling. Kind of a way to give the player a hint, plus givng the cave a more thematic layout.

Also, may I suggest turning off the frame skipping . It shouldn't take much memory to run it that way, and you'll be able to actually see the tornado when you shoot it, heh.

Damn, it hurt when you died to the last enemy before the checkpoint.

+rep for chameleon for dropping its tail on your face.

About the spikes damage, its set as 4 damage, and tbh I had the same inner discussion in my head. 3 damage seems like the most reasonable number for the early game, but at the same time 2 damage with armor parts feels too low. So what I did was making the armor parts accessible without head parts, and sticking with 4 without armor / 3 with armor. It's a bit more devilish but the result is a little bit more balanced, most of the time. What I also see is that you took a while to figure out how to manipulate his AI (until minute 24 or so), which is basically the key to defeating him. Most players catch that fairly quickly, since form there the boss becomes quite more manageable.

Also, your "Take that, random enemy! / random hole!" is becoming emblematic at this point.

One thing I've been thinking that I'll do for an update (that won't be coming up any time soon, since it's just a polish update) is to add one more tile of wall in each side of Chameleon's arena. Basically, you can actually wall jump from the door and the mirrored wall on the other side (intended, of course). But 3 tiles is too tight for the player, at least for the first encounter.

Hart-Hunt, on 15 February 2015 - 12:38 PM, said:

Okay, I realized that I'd have more space to maneuver with the head upgrade, but I didn't realize it would help against the falling blocks. That would make it fairly easy to get through that part.

Hart-Hunt, on 15 February 2015 - 12:38 PM, said:

Frames are only skipped in the recording, not by the emulator itself. I can see Storm Tornado when I play, but you can't see it in the video. I don't think I can get the recording any better than this unfortunately.

Hart-Hunt, on 15 February 2015 - 12:38 PM, said:

Thankfully, I pretty much had it down at that point, so it didn't even take five minutes to get back to where I was. It's a lot more painful when it snowballs into a dozen other deaths.

Hart-Hunt, on 15 February 2015 - 12:38 PM, said:

Fair enough, I can understand where you're coming from, but my personal preference would still be two with armor. I still prefer that attack if it's not a significant threat in itself (but rather just something to whittle down HP if the fight goes on too long), with the other attacks being the real killers if you fail to dodge them. While the editing in some ways makes it look like I spent half of the battle working out the AI and half the battle executing it, in reality ~2/7 of the time was spent working out the battle and I spent ~5/7 of the time mostly getting killed by the spikes after I understood the pattern. And I had Chill Penguin's weapon, too, which wouldn't have been in my inventory if I knew about the difficulty ratings in the Spec menu.

If the other mavericks were as hard as Sting Chameleon, I'd completely agree with you; the only reason why this fight sticks out to me is that Storm Eagle, Armored Armadillo and Spark Mandrill all went down within three/four attempts of me figuring out the strategy to fight them (with Flame Mammoth simply going down in three/four attempts), and all I've collected since then is two HP boosts (and the other mavericks' weapons, obviously).

Hart-Hunt, on 15 February 2015 - 12:38 PM, said:

I never thought that would be a running gag, but there you go.

Lockirby2, on 15 February 2015 - 01:44 PM, said:

Then don't worry about it, I mean it for your gameplay, not for the video itself. If you can see the shot then that's okay with me.

I'kk consider what you said about the damage. Whenever I get back to polish the small details I've yet to do, I'll test the 3 vs 4 damage with the spikes a bit more.

Part 5: Whose Skull is Thickest?

Death Count:

Intro Stage: 5
Chill Penguin: 68
Storm Eagle: 22
Sting Chameleon: 73
Armored Armadillo: 62

Wait, wait, why am I doing Armored Armadillo next, when he's Hardcore ranking? Well, I totally forgot that Chill Penguin was Veteran, so I thought that my next challenge was a toss up between Armored Armadillo and Spark Mandrill. And based on my vanilla experience, I chose to go here first. Overall, it probably just made things easier for me. After all, I got an HP powerup here, and found nothing in Spark Mandrill's stage (spoiler?), so unless E. Spark would have suddenly been stupidly effective against Armored Armadillo, doing the stages this way around was only helping me out (I doubt that E. Spark would have been effective in the stage, for the same reasons that none of my other weapons were).

This stage is much heavier on the platforming than the others, and as far as the stage itself (i.e., ignoring the maverick), it was probably the second hardest after Flame Mammoth's. The first half had the speed segment escaping the (oh-so-cleverly named by myself) "Guy" about halfway through, so it was harder than the second half to get used to. When parts like this require a larger amount of reset time, it becomes easier to forget important things when the intensity starts back up again. But once I got through there just once, I was golden. After bypassing Guy the first time, deaths there on subsequent attempts were minimal in comparison. I thought this level had a pretty great learning curve, with just enough "learning by failing" to make you learn the level, but not enough to be annoying.

The second half was easier than the first (as per the usual, weirdly enough, in this hack). The speed segment was easier, thanks to the lack of bats, and right at the start. The HP powerup was easy to get provided I didn't take a hit anywhere beforehand (honestly, getting hit beforehand almost certainly meant death anyhow, so this wasn't a huge limiting factor). I'm going to have to search that last, fairly open-ended area again though. It's bothering me for some reason...

My fight against Armored Armadillo is what happens when one tries to bring their vanilla strats to a Hard Type mod. There's really not much else to say. When I spend a little longer than usual highlighting an attempt, I usually try to highlight what I've learned since the last attempt that I showed in detail. Here, however, it shows the lack of learning from my early attempts a lot better. Once I figured the battle out, he was dead as a doornail. I didn't even need an attempt or two at that point. In fact, I changed up my strat halfway through an attempt, and still destroyed him.

I've beaten all mavericks IRL, BTW. On to Sigma!

Death Count:

Intro Stage: 5
Chill Penguin: 68
Storm Eagle: 22
Sting Chameleon: 73
Armored Armadillo: 62
Spark Mandrill: 28

You may notice the relative lack of deaths in this episode. Believe it or not, this episode took me just as long as the last one to record, it's just that the deaths all took a lot longer to occur, rather than me having a great deal of two second deaths. This definitely makes for a better video though, IMO. Also, in this episode I spend way too much time paying attention to the R-Shield. XD

This stage has a lot of tough obstacles to dodge, but as I have a great deal more HP at this point, making it more than reasonable. Sure the enemies/stage hit me more often than usual, but now I have my safety net where I need it. None of those missile/electricity shooting robots are too threatening on their own... their main purpose is merely stalling me so that I have to dodge the electric balls for longer. Storm Tornado is great to wipe them quickly, but I still have to be vigilant and move quickly to avoid the electricity. Some of them are in less effective places, so I can use my Storm Tornado ammo more conservatively; I'll need it later too. Some of these jumps are extremely tight, but with a fairly low penalty for mistakes I have some leeway to make it through. But I still have to put some effort into avoiding damage here or I'll die later.

Next up is the dark room with the... uh... crescent moon thingies? Whatever they are, they sure move quickly. Again, avoiding hits is hard, but except when you get hit over a hole, you can recover and make it to the end. Again, taking a lot of hits can make the mini-boss a death sentence, but all it should take is one or two solid runs to get used to this part as well. I have a couple more deaths than that out of pure fail-sauce, but it got easier over time. Some of the birds are in strategic places where they would be hard to get by. Fortunately, this area is targeted fairly well towards the strengths of the C-Sting, and using that the birds become no problem. I should have tried C-Sting on the last bird too, as it probably would have hit, and I still needed Storm Tornado for the mini-boss.

The mini-boss is intense, but with enough HP and Storm Tornado left he is unlikely to kill the run, because he dies fairly fast. That's all I really have to say about him. As usual, there's a good solid learning curve in this level, but once you get it it's yours.

The second half of the level is, yet again, probably the easier half, although it's closer than other levels. Most of the turrets are fairly easily dodged/killed, and the turtle tanks get wiped by Storm Tornado, at least once it is replenished from the first half of the level (through the magic of dying). Mistakes seemed to bite me in the butt more here though, so it's a trade-off. Those wheeled guys tend to either be really stupid and non-threatening, or tanky and in the way. One good charge shot can incapacitate them, but it isn't always a great option.

After that is Spark Mandrill. You might notice that there is very little focus on him. Really, all it took was one big discovery (probably a discovery of the variety that everyone who has played this game knows about and I'm just late to the party) and he was down for the count. I get the feeling that the vanilla mechanics really got in Hart-Hunt's way for making this one a tricky but fair boss fight. I don't mind a breather maverick though. Although one other thing that I noticed is that I seemed to have trouble dashing properly in his arena. It's probably just me messing something up trying to go too fast. But did anybody else notice a lack of control in this fight, or am I just going crazy?



Delayed a little by ID's brief coma (and lots of other things), but it's here.

Yes, I know early what you're talking about. There's a 'bug' in vanilla where you can't dash if you're next to a wall, and then press a direction and dash. I wasn't aware of this bug into very recently, so I've been meaning to fix it these days.

The bug can be noticeable in tight arenas like Spark Mandrill, where you're likely to be next to a wall.

Be aware it's not a game breaking bug (since it was in vanilla as well) but yeah, there's no point in not mentioning it.

Ah, okay, good to know for the future. It was really irritating not understanding what was happening there, so it's nice to have the light shed on that.

It's one of those things where you don't notice it in vanilla because you have a lot of room, but it can mess you up if you're too much time on the ground like you did. Hopefully it'll be fixed in the next version, which shouldn't take that much time to be released.

Death Count:

Intro Stage: 5
Chill Penguin: 68
Storm Eagle: 22
Sting Chameleon: 73
Armored Armadillo: 62
Spark Mandrill: 28
Flame Mammoth: 29



It's weird, this episode felt very difficult when I was playing, but when I look back on it this was definitely one of the easiest stages. In fact, Storm Eagle was probably the only easier one. I didn't find a darn thing in terms of collectibles, but as it turns out, there's no way that I could have. Actually, I pegged exactly where each of the items were while I played through, if you notice, but I forget about everything before I actually went back to get stuff, so it doesn't help me at all.

For perhaps the first time, the first half of the stage is actually easier than the second! The laser robots and miner robots in this stage can be hard to avoid sometimes, but their damage alone is a minor inconvenience with the amount of HP that I have now. I beat this part quickly enough that I didn't even need to edit any of it afterwards.

The second half of this stage is definitely the meat of this episode. There are a lot of tricky obstacles in here that are very difficult to avoid damage on. Often there are a whole bunch of moving enemies on screen that you have to avoid all at once and/or a shield guy in an awkward place. Throw in a couple of tricky piston jumps, and this area is something of a gauntlet. Thankfully, I have enough HP to practice several of the tricky areas on any given run, which cuts down on the amount of restarts I need to figure this place out. I never do figure out how to dodge the one shield guy on a small ledge, but once I managed to get the hang of the rest of it, that was pretty much the only hit I took on the way to the short ladder that I have to climb up. I clearly have no idea what I am doing after that, and almost blow it by being careless, but I tank my way through the last bit and make it to the boss.

And, mirroring the first part of the segment, the boss goes down easily enough that I don't even have to edit the footage. He's a big target, and it's easy to use the walls to my advantage here. Electric Spark pierces his defenses (as does Storm Tornado, but for some reason I didn't catch on to how useful it could have been until I went back and looked at the footage here), which allows me to focus on my own defense more easily. I have a lot of leeway to dodge him when on the walls, as he has more difficulty jumping in my face than a lot of the other bosses have so far. There's not much else to say, really.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, you don't need to avoid spoilers in this thread anymore.

Death Count:

Intro Stage: 5
Chill Penguin: 68
Storm Eagle: 22
Sting Chameleon: 73
Armored Armadillo: 62
Spark Mandrill: 28
Flame Mammoth: 29
Launch Octopus: 48



The stage itself was by far the easiest. With the water physics, jumps are always fairly forgiving, and the mini-bosses are pretty easily defeated, although fun. In hindsight, the way the ship falls probably worked similarly in vanilla in terms of revealing a secret, so I'm not sure what I was talking about at the one point. There's not much else to say about that. Actually, the easier stage means that I'm not distracted from what I'm saying, so my speech comes out as gibberish a little less often in this episode.

However, the boss managed to make up the difficulty here for me. I usually find it difficult when there are a lot of moving things onscreen (especially when they move fast), and this boss was no exception. The Launch Octopus fight took me almost as much time to defeat as Sting Chameleon, but unlike Sting Chameleon, this fight is contending for being one of my favorites rather than my least favorite. It's pretty intense and it feels like there's a lot of options available. R. Shield comes in handy for me once I've sorted through the glib of using my other weapons, because it allows me to hit him when he's on the lower level and I'm on the higher one. My other weapons ultimately end up being a bigger distraction than a help. Often I'd want to shoot my weapon, but then he'd fire his own weapons at me. Then I'd feel the urge not to fire (in order to conserve ammo), and it would cause me to take a hit. This fight seems to me like it would be the most dramatically changed if I had found the armor powerup on my first go through Sting Chameleon's stage.

Death Count:

Intro Stage: 5
Chill Penguin: 68
Storm Eagle: 22
Sting Chameleon: 73
Armored Armadillo: 62
Spark Mandrill: 28
Flame Mammoth: 29
Launch Octopus: 48
Boomer Kuwanger: 14

I am the most powered up state that I reach while going through the mavericks' stages, and it shows. The enemy placements aren't nearly as threatening when I have such a large arsenal of weapons. And the stage sure forces me to use a great variety of them. Storm Tornado, Ice Shot, C-Sting and the Homing Torpedo are all quite helpful for making it through, and R-shield got use against the boss. Although whether that last one helped or not, you'll have to be the judge. Also, gosh dang it, how often did I mess up the name "Homing Torpedo"? Seriously, why can't I say that correctly? The Flame weapon and E. Spark are the only ones that I ignore, although the Flame Weapon could have seen use against those tank guys if I was running out of Storm Tornado.

The first half of the stage is fairly easy at this point. There's not too many spikes, enemies can be destroyed strategically without damage often, and the hits that I take can be absorbed more easily by my massive HP. I mess it up a couple of times, but I would have found it even easier if I had known at that point that I can stand on those sentry bots. And then I reach the elevator, which thankfully gives enough warning of what's coming so that I can defeat it on my first try. Which is good, because unlike the speed sections of Armored Armadillo, backtracking all this way to slowly work out what movements I need to make would be painful.

After that comes the hardest part of this stage. Climbing through the turrets and ladder spiders requires taking your time, but making it through with little damage is fairly easy. Making it through with no damage would be much harder though. After that, I need to climb up the area with the moving turrets and spikes. The area that comes before the HP powerup is simple so long as I start using my weapons strategically again. Which is good, because I end up having to redo that part a lot. But after that comes a tricky jump that I definitely didn't master while playing. I fluke through that part once, and if I hadn't had a stupid death to the spikes up top due to a miscalculation on my end, this stage would have had not only the smallest number of deaths since the intro stage, but also taken the shortest amount of time. My mistake forces me to do back and learn how to beat the tougher part in a more sane way. Despite having many less deaths than Storm Eagle, this stage took much longer because my mistakes required less backtracking.

I suspect that the jump that gave me trouble would have been a lot easier if I had known that you can dash wall jump towards the wall that you are clinging to. But for some reason, I had no clue that was possible. So I end up needing one of two very precise jumps to make it through. However, once I make it through the rest of the level is fairly easy. I can systematically destroy everything above without taking too much damage.

Having had so little trouble with Boomer Kuwanger, I legitimately jumped to the conclusion that the only way in which I could have defeated a boss reasonably quickly in this mod is that the boss stage might be bugged (the double doors on the way in helped to throw me off too). But looking at other footage of this game reveals this not to be the case. All I have to say is that Homing Tornadoes... *ahem* Torpedos totally wreck this guy.