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mikwuyma: 2009-11-21 12:34:22 pm
My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

James "Aftermath" Downing's new game and new game+ hard mode with major skips run.

Verifier Responses

New game run

Quote:
S1: Intro fight was really good.  Getting Axe Armor early on was a great move, but I doubt anyone would think that skipping it would be acceptable.  No uncooperative Zombies either.  The runner could have manipulated an Axe drop to speed up the upcoming boss, but that's really up to the discretion of the runner.

S2: Good work on the Flying Armor.  The improvability on that fight would really depend on faster hits, as mentioned, but it's less than a second of slowdown.  Not using Axe Armor on the second Student Witch seems silly (it's obvious that the runner simply messed up the input), especially when you get a lot of hearts in the next room.  A few little hiccups in the Wizardry Lab, but it's not a big deal.  I'd venture to say maybe 5 seconds could be saved here, but it's a lot to ask for with so many chances for tiny imperfections to show up.

S3: Theoretically, the Balore fight would have been a bit faster if he had turned around, since that would make the Claymore hit earlier.  I would venture to say that two seconds could have been saved here if the Golem and Skeleton hits had been avoided as well.  Food for thought, I suppose.

S4: This segment is admittedly pretty sloppy, but the manipulation of the Yorick soul is really important here.  It's improvable, but that's asking a lot for how rare that soul probably shows up.  How much time does it take to get Doppleganger?

S5: Dimitri and Malphas get ruined fairly quickly here.  I'd say that both fights could have been faster if the runner was a bit ballsier with the Yorick skill, but it's not a whole lot of difference.  The hits taken after the fights don't really add up to too much time loss, but they aren't necessary by any means.  I would say that this whole segment probably has 5-10 seconds of mistakes in total, but they are really spread out and minor on their own.

S6: The Dario fight is very fast because the runner was willing to take hits.  This is what I was looking for in the last two boss fights.  The runner used the best puzzle solution to get to the Cutall, but he did rush it a tiny bit.  I can't really quantify any real improvements here: around a second, I would presume.

S7: In case anyone needs an explanation for what happens with the Cutall, each weapon has a specific attack that can be activated at the cost of MP.  The Cutall's attack makes you teleport forward a bit, attack, and return.  Normally, it's a pretty useless skill, but the teleport works through barriers and can be used to hit pressure switches, thereby skipping large chunks of the map.  I'm of the belief that this is a legit sequence break, but a run not using this (and other similar tricks) could probably be argued for a different segment.  I won't be making that argument, though.

Anyway, the damage abuse used here is great.  There aren't any serious flaws here.  Good work.

S8: A few misses with Yorick against Zephyr but... eh.  Some of the dodging could have been better.  I'm really reaching for improvements at this point.  Another Cutall skip here.

S9: I don't know how well Ukoback will work against Bat Company, so I look forward to that.  Nothing else to note, really.

S10: Welp, that was a cool strategy.  Kinda got beat up right at the end, but that's more based on bad luck than anything.

S11: A fairly game breaking glitch takes place here.  It's OoB and glitches the game in to giving you a soul that you couldn't get until way later.  It's definitely a different category run because of this segment.  Nothing to really say about the segment itself.

S12: Another warping glitch here.  This one isn't as intense, though: just a glitchy shortcut.  Everything is sold for Mind Ups and High Mind Ups, which restore MP.  The runner glitches through an otherwise sealed door to access a plot point early.  I don't get why the runner was so restrictive of using Black Panther here, since it's basically a guaranteed faster travel unless you accidentally shoot off of a high ledge.  Mine of Judgement is now unlocked and accessed, and then another big glitch to access some more souls.  Erinys could have been manipulated without the glitch before, but the Mud Demon (speeds you up in sand/mud) and Stolas (increases magical attacks by pumping INT) would be hard to get otherwise.  Hard, but not impossible.  I don't know if Stolas souls stack or not, but any bump in it will speed up the last boss fight.

Another glitch to get to Death early, followed by another to skip the fight entirely.  The segment itself was fine with me.  Lots of planning here, with very few mistakes.

S13: Mud Demon makes getting Hyppogriff a lot faster here, though I would point out that the room after has Mud Demons, forcing the concern as to whether the time lost by glitching the soul outweighs the time it would take to either get the soul here or simply sink at a normal pace otherwise.  Soon after, the runner could have manipulated a Stolas soul.  Granted, both souls are really rare as is, but it's an argument for manipulation rather than intense glitching.

There is a glitch warp to Abaddon and then a glitch warp past the fight itself soon after.  That sucks, since the fight is really interesting when you're under-leveled.  At the end of the segment, there is one last warp through a wall that I think is really useless.  It requires the runner to stop, switch souls, use a Mind Up, and complete the motions of the glitch, when going left and then right would have probably been faster.  I don't get why this was done.

S14:  Last boss fight!  I'll be the first to admit that this fight is really uninspired and boring.  Basically, Erinys is the only good spell to use here, and spamming it is the best tactic.  The runner does it pretty much as well as you can expect on the bottom target.  Hitting the top point of the boss is a little tricky, since its guard has to be down and you have to dodge a lot of crap.  Manipulating better boss patterns would be viable here.

A/V is fine, even with that one tiny pink pixel that would have gone unnoticed if the runner hadn't mentioned it.  The run is of good quality, no cheating, blah blah.  It definitely has a small but noticeable amount of mistakes that could have been corrected.  I wouldn't say you could shave a minute off of the run, but you could definitely get a better time with obsessive dedication to getting perfection.

I'm giving this my support for acceptance.  However, I want to note that this is super obviously going to get its own category, as the Succubus glitch is used both as a means for sequence breaking and as a means for actively glitching souls.  It seems like the shortcuts are just going to be considered sequence breaks due to a flaw in the game, and I'm fine with that.  However, I think the early soul glitching is really sketchy.  It's not necessary by any means, and it's a slippery slope.  If we are going to open the door for this, I don't see why we wouldn't accept a run that glitches out of the Dimitri fight and teleports to the final cutscene.  It's really up to the admins of the site as to how they want to treat this, but this submission is definitely not the same category as any%.

This isn't some "rawr GAMER PURIST" nonsense, by the by.


Quote:
First off, I gotta say that the quality is amazing for DS. His setup should become standard or something.

Segment 1: Okay. The way he killed the Golem looked slower than in other runs, though.
--1 minute faster vs. groobo's run

Segment 2: I sure hope it's worth it to kill all those enemies. He slows down quite a bit to kill the Student Witches, especially. Also, when hitting the switch that lowers the water in the moat, he could've used Axe Armor so that when the axe hit the switch, he could be closer to the door.
--3 minutes faster

Segment 3: He kinda forgot to backdash cancel towards the end of the Balore fight. And he probably should've stayed in the center of the room afterwards so that the soul didn't have to travel as much.
--6 seconds faster

Segment 4: The way he handled killing the Skeleton Apes wasn't as smooth as what groobo did. Why the runner didn't copy him in this situation I don't know. He also didn't kill the Corpseweed like groobo did.
--Time saved or lost is questionable since the save points are different.

Segment 5: He messed up a jump at the very beginning. The second time Malphas came down, he might've been able to hit him with one more Yorick. The room with the Valkyrie looked icky. That one hit by the Ghost Dancers was ugly. And the fudge on the second Treant was too. Overall, he probably shouldn't have kept this.
--2 seconds slower than groobo

Segment 6: His Dario fight wasn't the best. He shouldn't let him do the flame pillar move.
--1 second faster

Segment 7: He didn't get a Lilith soul, which may hurt him. Otherwise, this went very well, save for a Medusa Head or two.
--16 seconds faster, mostly thanks to omitting a save point.

Segment 8: His Dio Brando fight was a little rough; he lost a couple seconds thanks to those misses.
--12 seconds faster

Segment 9: Okay.
--9 seconds faster

Segment 10: He got messed up pretty good in The Pinnacle.
--6 seconds faster

Segment 11: Backdash spamming Ukoback is faster than jump cancelling. Why did he kill the Erinys? I'm not sure why he put in the extra save, either.
--3 seconds faster at the suspend

Segment 12: I think he didn't have to be so conserative with using Black Panther. He wasn't able to get Hippogryph the second time he SG'd like groobo did. I know the time lost later isn't too great, but it's time lost nonetheless.
--8 seconds slower at the suspend, 11 seconds slower overall

Segment 13: He should've just taken damage from the Final Guard, instead of flying over it. He could sacrifice one potion if necessary, I'm sure. A few times, he would run up to a wall without making any effort of jumping over it before he reaches it. His Hippogryph locations sometimes weren't the best, either.
--16 seconds slower

Segment 14: He wasn't aggressive enough with Menace's face. He ran away a few times, and in general didn't hit him quickly enough. He should've been using Erinys before Menace opened his mouth.

While he was on track to beating groobo's run for the first half of the run, each segment afterwards began a dip in quality, culminating in a 30 second loss. Considering he's adding time savers to groobo's route, he should at least be trying to match his time.

Not to mention the recent TAS shows that the game can be beaten even quicker. No one's been able to reproduce the TAS route on console, as far as I know. But there should be at least a few things that can be replicated.

Even assuming the TAS route is TAS-only, this run could definitely be improvable. I understand this is the runner's first submission. And this is good for a first attempt. But I have to encourage him to be less accepting of mistakes and plan things out more. Parts of this run did feel a little rushed. And if you're going to steal someone's ideas, you should be able to perform like he can.

Better luck next time. I reject this run.


Quote:
Mmm, watching this speedrun definitely did what I like a speedrun to do: make me go back and play the game, not only to test some of the glitches, but because I wanted to see the story again.

The recording quality was about what I expected from a filmed DS, though at first soma looked like a pure white blur. After a while my eyes got used to it, I suppose, though I never did see the dead pixel he talked about.



Segment 1: No time wasted, uses the Skeleton with jump-attacking to speed up the multiple-hit enemies.

Segment 2: I'd like to know how many tries it took him to keep that first boss standing still the whole time. I don't understand why he didn't take damage to skip the witch at 1:20ish - but I guess he was playing it safe in case of bad timing in damage-taking later on.

Segment 3: Yay for the Balor soul, an ability that the run only uses at one point! Still, the fight goes smooth as butter, and validates his picking up the axe dude's soul earlier. At first I didn't know why he axes the guys as he's escaping from the lab, then I remembered that they spit fire in a very inconvenient arc.

Segment 4: He lost ONE second to that flaming barrel after getting the Yorick soul. OMFG!!! He should have started over! ....Wait, maybe I shouldn't say that, you might take me seriously...

Segment 5: I admire his mastery of the Yorick soul, as I can never get the bloody thing to work. His hesitation during the menu screen over the Yorick soul was avoidable, but since time in the menu doesn't add to the official game-play time it can't matter.

Segment 6: Dario's not a speedrunner's friend, with his random flinging of fire columns. He was cooperative in this run; I'm not sure if it would be possible to do a Dario fight without him flinging fire at least once.

Segment 7: No problems here. Imps suck. I admire his fortitude in starting over if one of them ever struck him.

Segment 8: This boss gave me ulcers the first time I fought him - I just didn't get his pattern for some reason.

Segment 9: Nothing to add but this is my favorite level in the whole game. I want the BGM badly.

Segment 10: Wow, Bat Company molested like an anime schoolgirl who stumbles into a tentacle convention. I like his creative use of damage-taking at 2:05 to avoid flying down the spikes - too bad his stumbling into the malachi near the end of the segment pretty much lost him anything he'd gained. Only 2-3 seconds lost, though, so not too important.

Segment 11: Holy glitches, Batman, it gets ridiculous at this point - how did anyone figure this one out? Black Panther speeds this run up quite a bit, so it makes perfect sense to get it, but sheesh.

Segment 12: Man, I hate games that have ALMOST all cutscenes skippable except the 'most important one' that always, somehow, grates on your nerves the most. "So-soma-kun..." "RARRGH!" *farts black smoke*

Segment 13: No problems here. At first I questioned his getting the hippogryph soul, but in segment 14 it shows its worth.

Segment 14: Had just enough Mind Ups, which was what I was expecting, but still it was nice to see that he didn't bring anything extra to the party, as it were. No missed Erinyes (is it possible to miss an Erinyes?) and the falling makes perfect sense after reading the comments.


Overall, I enjoyed watching it, and the little mistakes only add to the character of the run without impacting his time in any meaningful way. That treant at the end of segment 5 actually made me flip the bird at it for dashing what would have been an otherwise perfect segment.

My verdict: APPROVED.


Quote:
If it's in the major skips category then unfortunately I have to say no. Here's why (ignore the fact that it's tas - the route can be used in real time).


Well, I talked with James a bit about the TAS route, and after some back and forth commentary between him and the last verifier, James figured out that it is possible to use the TAS route. But instead of improving his run, James decided to do a new game + run. Responses below.

Quote:
It's good enough. I hope the part where the video slowed down a bit will be timed with the build-in timer (after this part, at about 0:55 he enters the menu where the time is still accurate), this would give me some piece of mind.


Quote:
The audio and visual quality of the rune were good, especially for a DS game.

From a gamplay standpoint it is clear there is very little to improve upon aside from tiny movement optimisations that only a TAS would pick up.  The use of the crazy glitch that skips the whole game made it a bit boring, and that half the time he was looking through a menu to change his items didn't help either.

which brings me to my only real critique of the run and that is, why does he have so many souls and items if he only need a few specific ones.  Surely you can sell items you dont need before starting the new game + and with that character get as few of the souls as possible and the onle you need to speed up time on the menu, for which there is alot.

also i'd like to at least see that glitch where he teleports through everything, especially because he admits that he has access to third pary software that alters the game, i've seen it done in a TAS so i know its possible but from what i can tell the TAS had to go into the depths of the DS's registers to manipulate the right souls, though im evidently wrong...

it still is a top quality run that utilises some real interesting glitches, the comments are almost more interesting than the run.

another note on timing, it doesn;t appear so but is menu time counted by the ingame timer, because i know it isn't in other castlevania games and if it isn't then does the runner want this to be timed by ingame time or time including menu times or not?

also why doesn't he have to fight the last boss.  again this happents in the tas but i just want to know why no real cause for concern or anything

oh yeah, accepted  Tongue


Quote:
Video Quality: Good, for pointing a camera at a DS screen.  No shaking.
Audio Quality: Good.

Categorizing this would have to be as NG+ w/ Glitches, given of course the Succubus Glitch, the Cutscene Glitch, and the Glitched Souls.

In-Game timer obviously can't be used - since it completely breaks during the Cutscene Glitch.

It's too bad that the top screen can't be recorded - it would better shop the zipping done after the Cutscene glitch, like the TAS run can show.  But its importance is minor - the runner does a good job in his notes explaining things to the viewer, IMO.

General play during the run is solid.  There may be ways to do minor touchups, but they'll all be very minor.

I'll accept it but only if it's in a category like NG+ w/ glitches.


Quote:
This is a very solid run. Very, very few mistakes, and those few cost barely any time at all. And it's always fun to see a game annihilated like this. I'm kinda iffy on not showing the top screen, reseting the time, and glitched souls. But Uyama apparently said that's all cool, and I don't see the need to fight it.

I approve of this run to be published.


Quote:
The NG+ with warps is pretty spot on.  There is so little time spent actually playing that there isn't much time for flaws.  I have no complaints, so consider this an accept.  I'm just glad that the runner decided to redo the run.


Decision: A reject that turned into an accept? Or a reject and accept? You decide.

Reason: The new game run had major skips but could have used bigger skips to skip even more parts of the game, whereas the new game+ run is just really well done.

BTW, if anyone wants to see the new game run, check out the runner's playlist:
Thread title:  
Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.
The NG+ "i'm messing with memory wheee" skips run needs to be published for sure, so we can laugh at TASVideos this time and say "hey, we can do that too"

The NG run, well, if it doesn't use the same skips, I guess there is no point in publishing it, since it's possible to collect all the stuff you need (Axe weapon to zip with, Yorick to destroy Dimitrii with the greatest of ease) in a fresh NG. Manipulating those drops would be a gigantic pain in the ass though.

Satoryu has a no-skip run on Youtube, groobo has a semi-TAS on Youtube as well, so it's not like there is a large clamoring for a run that uses some skips but not the best ones.