For US the NG sheep to skip a release from NGDEV at this point? I don't think so.
Kraut Buster New NGDEV - 2015
- Thread starter Fox1
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For US the NG sheep to skip a release from NGDEV at this point? I don't think so.
So you preordered as well i assume?
ShootTheCore
Genam's Azami Sharpener
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I preordered the LE as well, so I'm also part of the problem. I can only justify the purchase because I haven't been let down by a NGDev title yet, and I hope that everyone's feedback to the pre-alpha preview will inspire them to really bring their A-game on the design side.
Next time though, a pseudo-sequel to In The Hunt would be amazing, and would still have the "imitating Nazca" challenge aspect to it. But maybe they'll surprise all of us and do Neo Turf Masters instead...with Nazis.
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I'm with him on this one. Even though it may "just" be a MS clone I think everyone should think a bit more about the work involved to create such a "lowly" clone.
Considering the footage we saw is pre-alpha material I feel we should wait a bit longer before bashing them 100%. They still have a lot of time to improve.
I have to agree though I also would have loved to see sth different.
xsq
Thou Shalt Not, Question Rot.,
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My experiences differ, but I tend to see too much good in people... and the friends I have overseas might not be too representative.
Many seem to be buying it simply because they have all of their other releases and don't want to have a gap in the collection. If this game was one of their earlier releases i doubt it would get even a fraction of the buys.
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Contra, it really bothers me when I can't shoot diagonally in a run n' gun. I want to love Metal Slug, but it really bugs the shit out of me.
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Too much of a metal slug clone as many have stated. It needs new gameplay mechanics. How about being able to jump to a different plane to fight enemies ala fatal fury
And its sequel Aloha Snackbar II: Baghdad Boogaloo
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Or that's sequel, The Kraut Ultimatum.
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Wow, that's pretty crazy. At least they seem to be taking all this criticism seriously despite the pre-orders doing well.
Yeah, im sure they took an assload of heat for this game. But i don't understand why the video was removed, i mean they disabled the comments so why remove the video? I hate social media but looked on their twitter and nothing there either. Weird??
They do have a pretty good track record of listening to feedback and implementing changes. I am a bit skeptical about their pre-order sales record however. Considering all the negativity surrounding this game i find it hard to believe they've sold in 12 hours what is normally sold in 3 months. That seems ridiculous to me. I'm willing to bet that that was posted as an attempt at damage control.
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I don't know - I know they are a small operation, but this game has had more hands involved and if just one person let on that it was misinformation it could be crippling. I tend to think they are being truthful. We will know for sure when it's off the website, I guess.
The video pulling is indeed strange, maybe they are about to show off the second retooled video. Thats the only thing i can think of. But again its only been like 4 days, would be a daunting task to get a lot of stuff done that quick and polished up imo.
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This 1000%!
Especially as this time it has a MS vibe to it so surely a lot of people already got dollar signs in their eyes.
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I personally feel people have been a little to hard in their opinion of the game. Yes its a lot like Metal Slug and its only natural people are going to compare it to that. Just for a minute though try and imagine Metal Slug never existed and then try to look at the game again for its own merit. It really is very good for its alpha rating, very very good.
Now if you take that and start to compare to Metal Slug this is what I see (remember this is comparing an alpha version to a complete game). I'm going to talk about graphics only here because I am sure one way this game _WILL_ be better than Metal Slug is it won't suffer from slowdowns.
- The background graphics are good enough to be Metal Slug in most areas seen.
- The large tanks are only just behind Metal Slug, but not much.
- The explosions are a little more behind Metal Slug
- Character enemies are a little below Metal Slug standard.
So looking at this the main area the game could be improved comparing to Metal Slug is the enemy soldiers. This is not that they are bad its just they don't stick to the backgrounds fully and some places are out of prospective. To give an example of what I'm talking about look at the third picture up from the bottom of their screen shots page. Two of those soldiers are not stuck to the background correctly and that causes the prospective illusion to be lost. To understand what I'm taking about watch a video of congo bongo and look at the climbing animation when not face on (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dok9ahpSacc).
Its little things like this that let the enemies down only, as other point out they also appear to slide over the backgrounds slightly. Just by making sure when they walk their feet stick fully to the correct placement in the background and not slide a singe pixel will improve things greatly.
You see its not that the enemy soldiers are drawn badly because they are not, its just that your brain draws your eyes to them because something is not right in their movement in relation to the backgrounds.
I am quite sure their testers would have pointed these things out to the programmers. If they have not then maybe its time NGDEV look at getting more serious testers that are not only looking for bugs but are also giving feedback on where things can be improved.
Now if you take that and start to compare to Metal Slug this is what I see (remember this is comparing an alpha version to a complete game). I'm going to talk about graphics only here because I am sure one way this game _WILL_ be better than Metal Slug is it won't suffer from slowdowns.
- The background graphics are good enough to be Metal Slug in most areas seen.
- The large tanks are only just behind Metal Slug, but not much.
- The explosions are a little more behind Metal Slug
- Character enemies are a little below Metal Slug standard.
So looking at this the main area the game could be improved comparing to Metal Slug is the enemy soldiers. This is not that they are bad its just they don't stick to the backgrounds fully and some places are out of prospective. To give an example of what I'm talking about look at the third picture up from the bottom of their screen shots page. Two of those soldiers are not stuck to the background correctly and that causes the prospective illusion to be lost. To understand what I'm taking about watch a video of congo bongo and look at the climbing animation when not face on (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dok9ahpSacc).
Its little things like this that let the enemies down only, as other point out they also appear to slide over the backgrounds slightly. Just by making sure when they walk their feet stick fully to the correct placement in the background and not slide a singe pixel will improve things greatly.
You see its not that the enemy soldiers are drawn badly because they are not, its just that your brain draws your eyes to them because something is not right in their movement in relation to the backgrounds.
I am quite sure their testers would have pointed these things out to the programmers. If they have not then maybe its time NGDEV look at getting more serious testers that are not only looking for bugs but are also giving feedback on where things can be improved.
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Raz, I agree that if Metal Slug didn't exist we'd have a much different take on this game. On it's own it's certainly one of their most impressive games to this point and it's evident that a lot of time and effort has gone into it. If Metal Slug was on a different system and Kraut was all we had we'd be singing a different tune. The problem is that they're competing directly with something we already have and something I'm pretty sure they are not capable of improving on. Taking inspiration from MS instead of blatantly ripping it off would have been a better move on their part IMO.
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Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the game, I just wish that NGDEV polished it up a little more before making a demo that really showcased the engine as they did with ALL the other titles. I love seeing new homebrew games being made for the Neo, the problem with posting a pre-alpha is that you should expect to get a lot of criticism if the demo is lacking the obvious fixes. If they showed an MS level demo then people would have just been like "Wow, I can't wait".
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Raz, this is exactly what I did when I was testing for Gunlord. I wasn't just testing for bugs but also for proper balance and difficulty in the stages and boss fights. While I didn't really post much in the Gunlord threads while I was testing, I did keep notes on any bugs people posted on here so I could verify them, and also on comments I thought were insightful so I could pass them along. I found that they were extremely receptive to my comments.
For example, in version 1.0, many of the boss fights were either too easy or (in one case) too hard compared to where they were in the game progression. I gave them a lot of specific feedback on how to modify the boss attack patterns to give them an appropriate amount of challenge that increased as you progressed through the game. This is especially true of the final boss. The original version was a pushover and we got it to a level where it was a balanced epic fight that really gave a sense of accomplishment when you beat him.
I contacted them last night, here is their reply:
"we removed the video as we are heavily reworking the game due to feedback.
Due to the feedback all related projects are stopped for now. It's not a
good idea for us to create games that will be compared to holy grail
Neogeo games. We can't win that comparison.
We are rethinking our other projects too.
If we reboot the top down soldier game, it would be placed in a SCIFI
setting or something else that won't be compared to Shock Troopers."
Good news for sure they want to make it a great game. So I would expect the next video might be a good while though to be pretty sweet.
"we removed the video as we are heavily reworking the game due to feedback.
Due to the feedback all related projects are stopped for now. It's not a
good idea for us to create games that will be compared to holy grail
Neogeo games. We can't win that comparison.
We are rethinking our other projects too.
If we reboot the top down soldier game, it would be placed in a SCIFI
setting or something else that won't be compared to Shock Troopers."
Good news for sure they want to make it a great game. So I would expect the next video might be a good while though to be pretty sweet.
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