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Final Fight 2 (Any %) (Single Segment) (Expert) [Character: Haggar]
Verifier Responses
Decision: Reject
Reason: Suboptimal strategies (too safe, improper manipulation, inefficient damage strats, etc), and just in general not enough polish. The runner should also be more willing to reset over early mistakes.
https://queue.speeddemosarchive.com/queue/verificationfiles/1254/
This run will be available for a month. After that these link(s) will no longer work.
Final Fight 2 (Any %) (Single Segment) (Expert) [Character: Haggar]
Verifier Responses
Quote from galedog:
A/V is good and no signs of cheating.
The good:
- controls Haggar well
- uses AI exploits well
The bad:
- lets too many mistakes on stage 1 happen without resetting. for example, getting choked and knocked down at 1:20
- doesn't seem to use infinite (shifting) combo in all safe opportunities, but uses it while vulnerable to Elick/Andore and gets shocked/chest bumped around the 41 minute mark.
- doesn't use optimal attacks in all opportunities. for example, the time it takes for an enemy to stand after being hit with a piledriver is about 54 frames(about 1 second) longer than the headbutt and does an insignificantly larger amount of damage. So in a lot of cases it should be more optimal to just headbutt. then in other situations, enemies seem to have just enough health to die from a piledriver, but a headbutt/suplex is used instead, which leaves them alive with just a pixel of health.
- the final boss fight. It is hard but possible to use the infinite combo on him. otherwise he is still easy to beat if you patiently approach him from north/south and combo him, which the player did well for most of the fight. later, the player seemed too anxious and made a lot of mistakes when the boss's health was low/his AI got more aggressive.
Despite all of this, it's still a fairly fast run from an obviously skilled player. I would just like to see the runner be a lot more strict. Final Fight 2 is ridiculously long(seriously, it's just about impossible to make this game look fast) and you get punished harshly for tiny mistakes, but this can definitely be polished quite a bit with enough persistence. I would also invite the runner to try a normal mode speed run if interested at all. This game is just way too long and slow.
The good:
- controls Haggar well
- uses AI exploits well
The bad:
- lets too many mistakes on stage 1 happen without resetting. for example, getting choked and knocked down at 1:20
- doesn't seem to use infinite (shifting) combo in all safe opportunities, but uses it while vulnerable to Elick/Andore and gets shocked/chest bumped around the 41 minute mark.
- doesn't use optimal attacks in all opportunities. for example, the time it takes for an enemy to stand after being hit with a piledriver is about 54 frames(about 1 second) longer than the headbutt and does an insignificantly larger amount of damage. So in a lot of cases it should be more optimal to just headbutt. then in other situations, enemies seem to have just enough health to die from a piledriver, but a headbutt/suplex is used instead, which leaves them alive with just a pixel of health.
- the final boss fight. It is hard but possible to use the infinite combo on him. otherwise he is still easy to beat if you patiently approach him from north/south and combo him, which the player did well for most of the fight. later, the player seemed too anxious and made a lot of mistakes when the boss's health was low/his AI got more aggressive.
Despite all of this, it's still a fairly fast run from an obviously skilled player. I would just like to see the runner be a lot more strict. Final Fight 2 is ridiculously long(seriously, it's just about impossible to make this game look fast) and you get punished harshly for tiny mistakes, but this can definitely be polished quite a bit with enough persistence. I would also invite the runner to try a normal mode speed run if interested at all. This game is just way too long and slow.
Quote from JackintheBox333:
A/V is fine.
No cheating detected.
As for the time, I got a 53:52 when I timed it from when Haggar first moves
to the final hit on Retu.
One thing that should probably be
noted right off the bat is the sheer
length of Final Fight 2. Final Fight 2
is slow and plodding. Expert mode only
exasperates this because enemy health
is increased and there are more
enemies (and harder enemy types) than other difficulty modes.
To put this in perspective, a really,
really bad easy mode run I did on the
game just to test things out to note
differences clocked in at 44 minutes,
which is almost 8 minutes faster than
this one. And what does expert mode
actually give you for beating it on
this difficulty mode? All the ending
cutscenes of course!
Also some other things to get out of
the way, due to the SNES's
limitations, there can only be 4
sprites on the screen at any one time.
This is generally Haggar and three
enemies, however barrels and boxes are
flagged as sprites while they are on
screen, and the game will not allow
other enemy sprites to spawn. This can
be a good or bad thing depending on
your strategy for areas in which they
appear.
With beat em up games, deaths are
going to happen. They player does end
the game with more lives than they
started with, which is good, despite
the number of deaths they did have (I
counted 12).
Most of the boss fights were decently
done. Freddie was well played, Bratken
was decent and Phillipe was a treat to
watch. Rolento was Rolento. Sometimes
he will let you grab him, sometimes he
won't. No idea what the frame window
for it is, but its incredibly
difficult to actually pull off for
some reason. This fight was okay.
However Won Won and Retu could have
been way better. In particular, the
runner goes out of their way to kill
all the enemies in order to use the
infinite on Won Won, however the
runner is whiffing completely on
attacks on Won Won leading up to that
point in the fight and the Stage 1
boss fight overall is kinda bad. With
stage 1 being as short as it is, I
would be expecting a reset here with
what I'm seeing. (Not to mention the
Atlas knock down a minute in to the
run.)
The bonus stage after stage 2 where
you smash the car can be done faster
by using regular attacks on the left
side of the car, then using the
nightstick on the right side of the
car. You can get a consistent in-game
seconds time of 14 every time this way
versus the 11 you got.
The 2nd bonus stage after stage 4
where you break barrels, if you are
going to break the last barrel with
only one in game second remaining, it
is actually faster to not break the
last one due to the score count up by
one real time second.
As for Retu, the stage up to him is
fairly well done. The two Elick
despawn is really well executed and
well worth the time it takes to set
up, as the Elick's have a huge health
bar at this portion of the game.
There is one particularly sloppy point
that I noticed in which the runner
kills a singular enemy instead of
scrolling the screen to spawn the
Leons. I know it would have been
harder to deal with, but it would have
been faster.
As for Retu, its not a great fight at
the end. The two deaths on him sting,
especially the 2nd one. And yeah, its
possible to infinite him, though its
difficult to do so.
So where does this leave us? I think
its clear that the run needs a bit
more polish, but the runner does
demonstrate an advanced grasp of the
mechanics of the game, performs very
well most of the time and gets a good
time on a really slow difficulty. It's
incredibly difficult to make this game
look fast.
In spite of the complaints I did
write, I will accept this run, as the
mistakes I did note, in comparison to
the rest of the run, don't cost a huge
chunk of time. The lack of polish on
the bonus stages is a very minor
thing, one I would like to see
corrected in future runs, along with a
better Stage 1.
No cheating detected.
As for the time, I got a 53:52 when I timed it from when Haggar first moves
to the final hit on Retu.
One thing that should probably be
noted right off the bat is the sheer
length of Final Fight 2. Final Fight 2
is slow and plodding. Expert mode only
exasperates this because enemy health
is increased and there are more
enemies (and harder enemy types) than other difficulty modes.
To put this in perspective, a really,
really bad easy mode run I did on the
game just to test things out to note
differences clocked in at 44 minutes,
which is almost 8 minutes faster than
this one. And what does expert mode
actually give you for beating it on
this difficulty mode? All the ending
cutscenes of course!
Also some other things to get out of
the way, due to the SNES's
limitations, there can only be 4
sprites on the screen at any one time.
This is generally Haggar and three
enemies, however barrels and boxes are
flagged as sprites while they are on
screen, and the game will not allow
other enemy sprites to spawn. This can
be a good or bad thing depending on
your strategy for areas in which they
appear.
With beat em up games, deaths are
going to happen. They player does end
the game with more lives than they
started with, which is good, despite
the number of deaths they did have (I
counted 12).
Most of the boss fights were decently
done. Freddie was well played, Bratken
was decent and Phillipe was a treat to
watch. Rolento was Rolento. Sometimes
he will let you grab him, sometimes he
won't. No idea what the frame window
for it is, but its incredibly
difficult to actually pull off for
some reason. This fight was okay.
However Won Won and Retu could have
been way better. In particular, the
runner goes out of their way to kill
all the enemies in order to use the
infinite on Won Won, however the
runner is whiffing completely on
attacks on Won Won leading up to that
point in the fight and the Stage 1
boss fight overall is kinda bad. With
stage 1 being as short as it is, I
would be expecting a reset here with
what I'm seeing. (Not to mention the
Atlas knock down a minute in to the
run.)
The bonus stage after stage 2 where
you smash the car can be done faster
by using regular attacks on the left
side of the car, then using the
nightstick on the right side of the
car. You can get a consistent in-game
seconds time of 14 every time this way
versus the 11 you got.
The 2nd bonus stage after stage 4
where you break barrels, if you are
going to break the last barrel with
only one in game second remaining, it
is actually faster to not break the
last one due to the score count up by
one real time second.
As for Retu, the stage up to him is
fairly well done. The two Elick
despawn is really well executed and
well worth the time it takes to set
up, as the Elick's have a huge health
bar at this portion of the game.
There is one particularly sloppy point
that I noticed in which the runner
kills a singular enemy instead of
scrolling the screen to spawn the
Leons. I know it would have been
harder to deal with, but it would have
been faster.
As for Retu, its not a great fight at
the end. The two deaths on him sting,
especially the 2nd one. And yeah, its
possible to infinite him, though its
difficult to do so.
So where does this leave us? I think
its clear that the run needs a bit
more polish, but the runner does
demonstrate an advanced grasp of the
mechanics of the game, performs very
well most of the time and gets a good
time on a really slow difficulty. It's
incredibly difficult to make this game
look fast.
In spite of the complaints I did
write, I will accept this run, as the
mistakes I did note, in comparison to
the rest of the run, don't cost a huge
chunk of time. The lack of polish on
the bonus stages is a very minor
thing, one I would like to see
corrected in future runs, along with a
better Stage 1.
Quote from MURPHAGATOR!:
First off, I'd like to point out that the video seems to have been encoded in a widescreen resolution, which is completely unnecessary and adds a lot of dead space to the video. It's not stretched or anything, but yea.
There's definitely some good in this run, and I appreciate the effort that goes into a game with as much randomness as this in both enemy movement and action. That said, there's a few trends I noticed throughout the run that I really don't like.
The first is that the infinite seems to be used completely at random, and not utilized in a lot of situations where it would have been very beneficial. While there are a lot of enemy types in this game who prevent you from doing it with Haggar, there's a ton of situations where it could have been applied and it just wasn't. The Freddie fight is the first place I saw that really emphasizes this in a clear and demonstrable way. Several times during the fight, there were either no random enemies on screen, or that the boss and the random enemies were on the same side and easily could have all been kept together and eliminated that way. I pretty much expect to see the infinite at any opportunity, even if it has to be interrupted due to the spawns later.
I also feel like there are several situations where the effort to ground enemies up for the infinite just isn't attempted, or where easy opportunities to set it up are just completely not used (19:55 is a strong example of failed grouping, there are more but it happens to be where I was at the time of writing.)
The runner seems to sometimes randomly decide to piledriver, often not even finishing the enemy it is used on. The only situations I'd ever expect to see that move used in would be if the health difference between it and the 3rd hit of the headbutts would kill (which is extremely rare since piledriver damage is garbage in this game), or if using it allowed him to hit another enemy who was on the verge of death. In most cases, neither of those things is true in this run.
Another thing that the runner either doesn't know or purposefully avoids doing is that breakable items on screen take up an enemy slot, so anytime he leaves one on screen it's one less enemy that he could be damaging.
Honestly, I've watched through stage 3 at this point and I see no reason to watch the rest. There's some decent groundwork here, but I expect to see far better grouping and use of efficient moves than is present here.
Reject.
There's definitely some good in this run, and I appreciate the effort that goes into a game with as much randomness as this in both enemy movement and action. That said, there's a few trends I noticed throughout the run that I really don't like.
The first is that the infinite seems to be used completely at random, and not utilized in a lot of situations where it would have been very beneficial. While there are a lot of enemy types in this game who prevent you from doing it with Haggar, there's a ton of situations where it could have been applied and it just wasn't. The Freddie fight is the first place I saw that really emphasizes this in a clear and demonstrable way. Several times during the fight, there were either no random enemies on screen, or that the boss and the random enemies were on the same side and easily could have all been kept together and eliminated that way. I pretty much expect to see the infinite at any opportunity, even if it has to be interrupted due to the spawns later.
I also feel like there are several situations where the effort to ground enemies up for the infinite just isn't attempted, or where easy opportunities to set it up are just completely not used (19:55 is a strong example of failed grouping, there are more but it happens to be where I was at the time of writing.)
The runner seems to sometimes randomly decide to piledriver, often not even finishing the enemy it is used on. The only situations I'd ever expect to see that move used in would be if the health difference between it and the 3rd hit of the headbutts would kill (which is extremely rare since piledriver damage is garbage in this game), or if using it allowed him to hit another enemy who was on the verge of death. In most cases, neither of those things is true in this run.
Another thing that the runner either doesn't know or purposefully avoids doing is that breakable items on screen take up an enemy slot, so anytime he leaves one on screen it's one less enemy that he could be damaging.
Honestly, I've watched through stage 3 at this point and I see no reason to watch the rest. There's some decent groundwork here, but I expect to see far better grouping and use of efficient moves than is present here.
Reject.
Decision: Reject
Reason: Suboptimal strategies (too safe, improper manipulation, inefficient damage strats, etc), and just in general not enough polish. The runner should also be more willing to reset over early mistakes.
https://queue.speeddemosarchive.com/queue/verificationfiles/1254/
This run will be available for a month. After that these link(s) will no longer work.
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