It says something about a game when i choose to play it over BOTW. Part way through area 3, hope the game difficulty starts increasing as i earn more upgrades!
Plot spoiler up to area 3
rescued Eve and i like how you can have conversations with her by clicking on her icon in the menus. The visuals are a nice touch, i like the art when you're out of the vehicle and talking to her over radio.
I had to turn rumble off, the implementation was so poor. The Switch's rumble is incredibly noisy in handheld mode for me and it triggered every time those flying enemies dropped bombs.
It says something about a game when i choose to play it over BOTW. Part way through area 3, hope the game difficulty starts increasing as i earn more upgrades!
Plot spoiler up to area 3
rescued Eve and i like how you can have conversations with her by clicking on her icon in the menus. The visuals are a nice touch, i like the art when you're out of the vehicle and talking to her over radio.
Well, I think it's kind of a food taste thing. Zelda might be the finest dish you ever ate, but you gotta break up that dish with something else every so often, right? And this lets you still play around with the shiny new toy and possibly be a more portable friendly game at at that.
I'm a little let down by it. I've played through the first two areas and the challenge is pretty much non-existent, which means the game basically plays itself. It's still somewhat diverting but without that feeling of constant danger, it's harder to overlook the bland level designs.
Also, the added story beats are about as cliche as you can get, complete with
Kind of in the same boat. After playing a couple levels, I actually noticed the NES version was also available on 3DS and purchased. Been putting a bit more time into that instead(save states being a god-send) and though its practically a far more challenging, punishing, and archaic version of the new one, I am drawn more to it.
The new one is prettier, more refined, and has ample new features designed to goad you into a very smooth and flat progression, but its also just kind of dull.
Going for the the full clear and stuck in a couple places clearing a boss in Area 3 and getting a life up in the glacier area.
For Area 3 it's in the top right corner of the map. There's a large wall blocking the way. Any ideas?
The map in Glacier area indicates there should be a hallway of rooms off a tall corridor leading to a life up but the walls are solid ice. It's the tall, skinny room with the moving platforms and ice blast machines. Any help would be great!
Update:. Figured it out! For those interested in the solutions:
For the Area 3 boss you have to exit the vehicle and crawl through a hidden passage. And the glacier area is similar with a hidden door marked by a small piece of jagged ice jutting from the wall but u can take your car through it.
Just picked this up to play on the handheld mode, but the pixel scaling is absolutely atrocious!!! The pixels on the fonts vary in size so much. Why is scaling using a non-integer scaling value?!
Just picked this up to play on the handheld mode, but the pixel scaling is absolutely atrocious!!! The pixels on the fonts vary in size so much. Why is scaling using a non-integer scaling value?!
Marathon session has me, I think, at the true final boss of the game. 3DS on the charger for some emergency power to finish the game.
Thoughts at likely 99% completion:
-- Most of the game is a nice re-imagining of the original Blaster Master with some newer environmental fluff....
-- EXCEPT Area 7. The redesign of the fire level is just god awful. You'll understand when you get there.
-- If you played the NES Blaster Master, you already know the general order of Sophia's primary power-ups. Game doesn't deviate from that, but does add optional additional power-ups not found in the original game (all NES bosses are in the game somewhere except
Blaster Master
) ....
-- Some of which are mindbogglingly gamebreaking. Jason's later grenade power-ups are just stupidly OP and are crazy effective even on the bosses. The last two trivialize pretty much every boss in the game.
-- Many tweaks to make the game less hardcore than the NES version, including:
-- Regenerating SP, meaning you'll never permanently run out of Sophia sub-weapons,
or Hover
, for more than a few seconds at a time.
-- Life extensions raise Sophia/Jason's life to a max of 16, double that of the NES version.
-- In-game maps tell the player exactly where to go to continue the story, so there's little to no possibility of the player becoming lost.
-- Falling off bridges in dungeon mode (Area 4 and beyond) no longer auto-kills the player, it simply takes away 1 unit of life and replaces the player back on the bridge.
-- Most original levels have been redesigned to be much simpler to traverse than its NES equivalent.
-- Some of Jason's weapons can counteract specific environmental effects on levels.
-- An optional power-up early on in the game that provides temporary, regenerating shielding against losing gun power-ups.
-- Unlimited lives, and save points, directly in front of every boss and subboss.
-- Every boss is weak against some type of gun. (think: Mega Man)
Some of the new stuff added to the environment of the game is very very cool. Sophia required bosses are a nice touch, as well as
a boss where you start with Jason and need to figure out how to get Sophia to the boss during the fight so you can board it and kill that boss.
There is a massive difficulty spike entering Area 7 as well. Took me a long while to figure out what I was doing wrong (the level has to be played a very specific way and is very unforgiving to the player).
Lastly, for some unknown reason, Jason's extreme fragility in the open world was carried over from the NES without any modifications. Jason will auto-die from falling damage if he drops more than approximate the height of his sprite in distance. This is extremely frustrating, especially in later levels where there are several "leap of faith" challenges that have to be completed by Jason.
I'm looking at you Key 5, specifically.
Still, despite the frustrating parts of the game, it's been a fun nostalgia ride.
Final boss cleared. Was definitely not what I was expecting
(ignoring very bad tropes for the fight /sigh)
, but was a fun fight. Can't use any of the OP powerups on the final boss because of the nature of the fight.
Still, cleared it on my second try, once I had the boss's pattern down.
Clear time: ~9 hours. Realistically was probably an hour less (8 total) because of wasting an hour trying to figure out the logic problems of how to navigate the maze of the final Area.
Clearing the game does not unlock a Hard Mode. Rather, it just simply unlocks starting a new game with full power-ups from the start. Meh.
For Jason's "leaps of faith" (first is in Area 4), you need to press B as he is falling through a ladder to get him to actually grab onto it. Game does not tell you this at all.
I told my friend about this game, he bought it instantly and we played co-op at lunch for about half an hour. It was pretty neat stuff and really did wonders selling me on the Switch's versatility and flexibility. So awesome. I played a bit of both sides and thought the lack of a good onboarding experience led to more confusion than it really needed. But it was neat to blast things!
I wish I waited and bought this instead of Snipperclips, which I'm not enjoying tbh. Gonna play it with my girlfriend tomorrow so I'll see how that goes.
Also two more things:
1. The HD Rumble at the start wasn't really that compelling. It... existed.
2. I keep calling this game Master Blaster and I keep telling myself it's the name that I don't think of first and UGH
Yep, the Hamster Neo Geo games are broken, but not with horrible pixel scaling like this. I knew about the broken pro controller support but I thought Blaster Master Zero was built with Switch and 3DS resolution in mind.
I played for 2 hours tonight, couldn't put it down. It is so much fun. I played the original 28 years ago (borrowed off a friend) but couldn't finish it.
How does the game play with the analog? I might wait to pick it up until they release a Joy-Con with a d-pad if it feels more natural. It's an exclusive, right?
Plays well with the analog stick, but I will say this...
I'm just like you and was put off by the fact that the left joy-con did not have a legit d-pad. Having said that, the d-buttons work surprisingly well for me in this game. I was quite surprised, actually. I would give it a shot.
I just finished off area 6 and i am still running into pitch black dungeons that I can't traverse. Are you supposed o backtrack to these in the late game or am I missing something?
Shit i just found it in area 3. Is there anything major behind any of the dim dungeons? I don't want to backtrack for nothing
I just finished off area 6 and i am still running into pitch black dungeons that I can't traverse. Are you supposed o backtrack to these in the late game or am I missing something?
I just finished off area 6 and i am still running into pitch black dungeons that I can't traverse. Are you supposed o backtrack to these in the late game or am I missing something?
Shit i just found it in area 3. Is there anything major behind any of the dim dungeons? I don't want to backtrack for nothing
It's a remake of the original NES Blaster Master at it's heart, with some light expansion of the original story. If you played the original game, then you know what to expect, although there are some new surprises. Overall, the majority of the game is re-tuned to be a lot more forgiving than the original game and doesn't need a hardcore mentality to complete for the vast majority of it.
IMO, the only real fault of the game is Area 7, where the devs tried a bit too hard to radically remake the theme of the zone and force an entire genre that didn't need to be in the game only for a single level. If you can get past Area 7, the remainder of the game is rather satisfying.
I finally started getting sick of Zelda today, so I decided to pick this up, and DAMN. It's really good! I never played the original as a kid, but I always wanted to. What a cool surprise!
It's a really unfortunate situation. I want desperately to love this game -- I support everything Inti does and the content of the product itself is exceptional -- but no Pro Controller support until two weeks after Japanese launch and no 1:1 scale mode docked or undocked kinda sucks.
The scaling in particular doesn't even make sense. This is a 3DS capture 1:1 scaled to 1280 x 720, the native resolution of the Switch's screen:
It has black bars on the sides, yes — but the game has bars of the same dimension in portable mode anyway. And yet pixel ratios are still borked. Why?
A 1:1 scale in docked 1080p mode would be more problematic, with fairly large bars on all four sides, but surely even dynamically scaling the 720p framebuffer for 1080p output would produce better results than what we get.
(I don't know if this would be technically feasible on Switch with its realtime rendering resolution adjustment, but imagine how rad a 1:1 scaled 1080p docked mode with extended "draw distance" would be...
Greyed out areas represent the area extended "draw distance" would cover. Mmm. Sexy.)
Anyway, I'm sure it was a very rushed port to Switch, and here's hoping Inti addresses the mysterious scaling issue as promptly as they are the Pro Controller.
It's a really unfortunate situation. I want desperately to love this game -- I support everything Inti does and the content of the product itself is exceptional -- but no Pro Controller support until two weeks after Japanese launch and no 1:1 scale mode docked or undocked kinda sucks.
The scaling in particular doesn't even make sense.
I'm pretty confident the Switch game scales by 4.5x to 1080p nearest neighbour and then downscales this 0.66x to 720p using the Switch's default scaling (bilinear?) resulting in an unholy mess.
But let's face it, scaling to 4.5x can be done well. This was done horribly.
Shovel Knight runs at the exact same resolution and I'm assuming this looks as good on Switch as it did on Wii U.
As someone who grew up playing a lot of blaster master, because it was one of 3 games I had for a long time, this remake or new version is so good. Really balances the game better and has great controls and visuals.
I appreciate the attention to detail, but sometimes it's better to just ignore things and enjoy a game if you enjoy it.
Something like image scaling shouldn't bother you so much that you can't play. That's kind of unhealthy in an OCD way. We grew up playing these games run through rf or through a VCR that fucked the image beyond recognition.
I appreciate the attention to detail, but sometimes it's better to just ignore things and enjoy a game if you enjoy it.
Something like image scaling shouldn't bother you so much that you can't play. That's kind of unhealthy in an OCD way. We grew up playing these games run through rf or through a VCR that fucked the image beyond recognition.
What happened there was mainly getting really blurred, which was usually accounted for in development. Also why there's often some sort of filter option whether to make things a bit or a lot closer to how it used to look, or just straight up smoothing it to mask the pixels entirely. Bad scaling like that is something else and can be really distracting and awful looking in another way entirely. It's why I usually wanted filtering when emulating way back, because that bit of fuzziness would cover up scaling issues (and be closer to that look on old TVs.)
I appreciate the attention to detail, but sometimes it's better to just ignore things and enjoy a game if you enjoy it.
Something like image scaling shouldn't bother you so much that you can't play. That's kind of unhealthy in an OCD way. We grew up playing these games run through rf or through a VCR that fucked the image beyond recognition.
The limitations of RF/composite were true of all games at the time, but this is specific to this game. This is incredibly distracting for me and I find it too distracting. I regret buying from a service with no sensible refund policy on defective software, but I'm going to delete this until they fix it.
The limitations of RF/composite were true of all games at the time, but this is specific to this game. This is incredibly distracting for me and I find it too distracting. I regret buying from a service with no sensible refund policy on defective software, but I'm going to delete this until they fix it.
The limitations of RF/composite were true of all games at the time, but this is specific to this game. This is incredibly distracting for me and I find it too distracting. I regret buying from a service with no sensible refund policy on defective software, but I'm going to delete this until they fix it.
This might be EU only but look in your order confirmation email. There's a refund process described in there. I've not had to try it myself though so I have no idea if it works or not but no reason to not try it.
This might be EU only but look in your order confirmation email. There's a refund process described in there. I've not had to try it myself though so I have no idea if it works or not but no reason to not try it.
The pixel scaling thing, it would be nice to have an opton to add some black borders around the entire image if it means better scaling, choices can be good.
I appreciate the attention to detail, but sometimes it's better to just ignore things and enjoy a game if you enjoy it.
Something like image scaling shouldn't bother you so much that you can't play. That's kind of unhealthy in an OCD way. We grew up playing these games run through rf or through a VCR that fucked the image beyond recognition.
Tell this to the framerate crowd and see what sort of reaction you get. Everyone has their line when it comes to visual fidelity. Considering this one is crazy simple to fix is a fairly reasonable request.
I'd wholeheartedly recommend it, just know that it's only going to last you about 6 hours. It's a different beast to Shovel Knight, and even though it's a complete blast I can't say it's as good as SK because SK is just fantastic, and the game length and content you get in the Treasure Trove set is gonna keep you busy for much longer, but for £9 this is well worth the price of entry imo. I'm up to area 4 of
I'm having a lot of fun with it. I wouldn't say it's better than Shovel Knight, that game is chock full of stuff, but I think it compliments it pretty good.
Just finished it. Still need to 100% it, but here are my thoughts of what I played.
Pros:
Soundtrack - Best part. I loved every theme for each area. There's memorable stuff here.
Presentation - I can't comment on the sprite scaling, but the colors, animations, and overall sprite work/artstyle is pretty nice.
Level design - Nothing fantastic, but it does the job especially in the later areas. There's some nice mechanics in each area that are pretty neat.
Story - There's no story really. Thank goodness.
HD Rumble - Hit and miss, but overall I think this is the best title for HD Rumble out now (though that's not saying much). It uses it in a variety of ways. Boss introductions and environmental cues are great. Explosions not so much.
Boss design - This is kind of "eh". There's nothing really standout here to me, but it's not bad either. Bosses look/sound incredible though.
Cons:
Difficulty - Pretty easy game, especially when you abuse certain power ups. I one shot, literally, quite a few bosses.
Exploration - There's not really a lot of reason to explore. There's power-ups, but they aren't really hidden too well and the game hands out maps for free. Maps show everything.
Enemy variety - For the most part you see all the enemies after the first couple of areas. There's a couple of surprises at the end, but nothing insane.
Controls - This is really just a Switch thing. I played the entire game with analog stick and it's serviceable. EXCEPT when you want to jump on a fucking ladder. Impossible to do with the stick, lol. I died more times to ladders than anything else in the game. I have no problems playing 2D games with analog sticks. I do it on the PC all the time, but the Switch's stick is far too sensitive. The Joycon Dpad got me by when I needed to jump on ladders.
Well worth the $10 I paid. Hopefully they release hard mode as DLC, but that would only somewhat fix the difficulty issues. I think they'd have to retool enemy placement to really make the game difficult. Increased HP/damage wouldn't be enough. I'd definitely pay a premium price for DLC that does just that though.
Sorry for the overall basic impressions. Game reviews aren't my forte and I never played the original game. So I can't really offer detailed stuff, but hope it helps someone on the fence. It's $10 and even cheaper from other regions. No reason to not buy the game.
I'm pretty confident the Switch game scales by 4.5x to 1080p nearest neighbour and then downscales this 0.66x to 720p using the Switch's default scaling (bilinear?) resulting in an unholy mess.
Good lord, you're right — that's exactly what it's doing (fired up Photoshop, scaled an uncompressed 400x240 3DS version screen to 1080 with nearest neighbor, then back down to 720 with bilinear. Identical subpixel mangling).
I have Treasure Trove; it does. Why Inti couldn't use Yacht Games' 240x400 scaling method, which manages to look great even stretched to 16:9 from 15:9... or simply render at 720p internally with perfect nearest neighbor scaling... smh.
Just started streaming this this morning, my first Twitch stream. Fun game! I've got no history with the series, but, MAN... Feels damn good to see a Sunsoft logo again.
I didn't even know they were still a company!
HD Rumble is neat. The Joy-cons can really kick out some vibration. That said, if I were Nintendo I wouldn't have made a big deal out of it.
