Pixel Junk: Sidescroller

[Ruldra]

How long is one playthrough? Also curious about how tough brutal mode is.

[MadScientist]

Not sure exactly - maybe ~2hrs or so? I was messing around picking up trophies, so I probably could have done it faster. Trophies are mostly easy by the way (if anyone cares). The only remaining one I have left is 'beat a sector on brutal difficulty', but I haven't unlocked that yet. I'm guessing you need to beat hard mode first. You can play the first sector from each stage (i.e. 1-1, 2-1, or 3-1) upon unlocking hard - as of yet I'm not sure if you have to just clear from 3-1 onward or beat all of them.

Last I checked, I was ranked #2 on the overall normal leaderboard with ~17 mill. That was still ~10 mill behind the leader though... Plenty of room for improvement as the first sector was the only I'd chained from beginning to end.

[roker]

It's ok.

Can be frustratingly difficult. But rewarding.

Playing it by sections is easier to take in than trying to 1cc it

but that may be up your guy's alley.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

This review seems well written but I cant confirm it since I havnt played the game. http://www.destructoid.com/review-pixel ... 4774.phtml

Detoid is actually pretty decent for shmup reviews nowadays, Allistair Pinsof the new shmup reviewer is a shmup nut himself so I generally trust what he has to say

[Udderdude]

Hey, you don’t want that. DO YOU? You want to go to school and have all the kids call you pissy-sissy pants and have sex with your mom? Because that’s what happens when you play on Casual, strangers come to your house and have sex all over your mom. ALL OVER! ON TOP, ON THE SIDE, FROM THE CURTAINS ... I SHOULD KNOW! I'VE BEEN THERE, MAN! I'VE SEEN IT HAPPEN! ALL A SUDDEN YOUR COOL FRIEND BOOZY WITH THE ATV AND KICK-ASS MULLET ISN'T SO COOL ANYMORE. THEN IT'S YOUR SHY FRIEND GABRIEL, THEN IT'S THE ENTIRE FOOTBALL TEAM AND, BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, THE SCHOOL FACULTY! IT'S LIKE A --

lol.

[freddiebamboo]

Game is excellent, hope more chaps from here start playing to get the scoreboards moving.

[MadScientist]

This review seems well written but I cant confirm it since I havnt played the game. http://www.destructoid.com/review-pixel ... 4774.phtml

The review seems largely agreeable, though I would question this point;

"However, the checkpoint system may kill it. You basically have infinite continues and you respawn at your last checkpoint."

You have a limited amount of lives to complete each sector. If you lose them all, it asks if you want to continue, but you also have to bump down the difficulty setting if you want to do that. It's only really there for people that want to see the whole game without expending too much effort. If you're playing for score, it's basically irrelevant and I've never used it once.

[Taylor]

I was confused by the continue screen but it doesn't lower the difficulty - there are actually 3 options and that 'warning' is the third. But continuing does reduce your weapons back to level 1 making some scenarios so much harder it's better to restart. I ended up continuing through some of the stage 3 stuff on hard just to unlock Brutal.

Brutal is very hard. A lot more enemies, a lot more enemy aggression, everything fires suicide bullets when it dies, and the suicide bullet patterns are not player relative so you can't just kill something and move X units each time. At the boss on 1-1 I pretty much hid in the alcoves firing lasers in scared. Getting a full chain would be very impressive to see (and chaining 1-1 is usually really easy, scoring well on the later levels on brutal will be, err, brutal).

I think the graphics look really nice, especially in the super-secret last stage, but if I have to complain about something then the palettes often make things hard to see. Like the 3-3 train gizmo thing where you have an inch to move and dodge green on green. And the particle systems for lava and water need to be read by their shape rather than colour (Ex: the last stage on hard has blue lava and red water). You get used to it, though.

[MadScientist]

I was confused by the continue screen but it doesn't lower the difficulty - there are actually 3 options and that 'warning' is the third.

Oh, you're right. I thought 'lower difficulty and continue' was just a warning that if you continued you'd be lowering the difficulty but it is actually a separate option. My mistake.

To unlock 'brutal' do you have to beat every stage on 'hard' or can you just start at 3-1?

[E. Randy Dupre]

This review seems well written but I cant confirm it since I havnt played the game. http://www.destructoid.com/review-pixel ... 4774.phtml

The review seems largely agreeable, though I would question this point;

"However, the checkpoint system may kill it. You basically have infinite continues and you respawn at your last checkpoint."

You have a limited amount of lives to complete each sector. If you lose them all, it asks if you want to continue, but you also have to bump down the difficulty setting if you want to do that. It's only really there for people that want to see the whole game without expending too much effort. If you're playing for score, it's basically irrelevant and I've never used it once.

You've effectively got infinite lives in at least one place. There's a 1UP immediately after the checkpoint and before the lockdown section on 1-3. Die on that section and you can keep trying forever, because the 1UP respawns every time you do.

I like the game, although I've only played the first stage (or first group of stages, depending on how you want to define it) so far. The Gradius nod right at the start seemed a pleasing indication of things to come, but in actuality the design picks and chooses from all over the place. Having the stages broken down into three sub-stages, each with its own dedicated score, suits me fine, as I've always prefered score attacking individual stages instead of full games.

It's a nice surprise. The PixelJunk has been hit and miss for me so far - hate Racer and Monsters (to be fair, Tower Defense titles are not my thing at all), really like Shooter, adore Eden - so this could have gone either way. When the videos first appeared I didn't have high hopes, as I thought the reuse of assets from Shooter was lazy and would rob Sidescroller of its own identity, but it works. And, going on the fact that it's labeled as PixelJunk 1.4b, it's clear that the developers don't consider this to be a new game as much as a kind of mod based on Shooter, which makes that asset reuse perfectly acceptable.

[DJ Incompetent]

Detoid is actually pretty decent for shmup reviews nowadays

hahahahaha You go back and read that Strania review and say that again.

[ExitPlanetDust]

This was discounted today on the NA PSN. Does the control scheme allow you to use the d-pad to control the ship?

[geremy]

I bought this game on launch day but gave up playing after the first week or so. It just didn't hold my interest. There isn't enough variation stage to stage.

[Dave_K.]

Can this be played with an arcade stick (digital controls), or is there analog bullshit or 8 buttons?

[ExitPlanetDust]

Eh, ef it. All of the Neo Geo Station stuff went on sale for 50% off. I went with Metal Slug 2 and Alpha Mission II instead of Sidescroller.

[Kollision]

Given the amount of awesome in Pixeljunk Shooter 1 and 2, it's no surprise that Sidescroller is getting so much MEH

My fear is that people will blame it on the strict shmup format, but I think the biggest culprit is actually the way textures were treated. Too much neon and lines with no substance to fill them. The game stumbled on its own main design motif. Also it feels slow - Shooter needed to be slow, Sidescroller should've been the opposite.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Detoid is actually pretty decent for shmup reviews nowadays

hahahahaha You go back and read that Strania review and say that again.

(A little late to reply but oh well) Yeah that Stania review was smeg, but the site has changed its shmup reviewer after we flamed it.

[Ruldra]

Demo is coming up tomorrow on PSN, for those of us who didn't buy the game yet.

[ExitPlanetDust]

Demo is coming up tomorrow on PSN, for those of us who didn't buy the game yet.

Actually, there's a demo on JP PSN right now. I found it while digging through the demos. Honestly... I wasn't impressed. It has this whole retro vibe going on, but it feels really sluggish like the physics are just fucked up.

You CAN use the d-pad to play, but the game clearly wasn't designed around it. The ships take a split second to pickup speed... This effect is completely gone if you use the analog stick to play.

[Ruldra]

There's a huge discount for Pixeljunk games this week.

PixelJunk 3-in-1 Pack (Eden, Monsters and Racers): now $2.00, original price $19.99
PixelJunk Eden: now $1.00, original price $9.99
PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe (PSP): now $4.99, original price $9.99
PixelJunk Monsters: now $1.00, original price $9.99
PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap: now $1.00, original price $6.99
PixelJunk Shooter 2: now $4.99, original price $9.99
PixelJunk Shooter: now $1.00, original price $9.99
PixelJunk Side Scroller: now $4.99, original price $9.99

If anything there interests you, now's a good time to pick it up.