ElCochran90's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Aug 25, 2018
Bio:
About time I updated this bio.
Name: Edgar Cochran
Country: Mexico
Currently living in: Mexico City
-God's servant and one of his blessed sons (John 1:12; John 3:16).
-Lover of the entire animal and plant creation.
-Film lover and reviewer for Letterboxd.com (https://letterboxd.com/elcochran90).
-Adjunct professor and personal tutor of Statistical Inference, Business Forecasting, Marketing Research and Portfolio Theory.
Fangaming experience began in August 2018, so only modest achievements here. However, I'll describe some relevant FAQs here made to me during my stay here since 2018:
Q: Are videogames art?
A: Yes
Q: Are fangames videogames?
A: Yes
Q: Why are your reviews long and unconventional?
A: I am a film reviewer; in a way, I sort of unconsciously dragged my style of film reviewing to the world of fangames. I often involve personal experiences in my writing. Expect that structure; I'm not planning to change it.
Q: How are you rating games? Do you compare fangames as normal games that your ratings are lower than all other people ratings or are you just a critical person?
A: My ratings are not lower than people's ratings all of the time regarding fangames, but they are most of the time. However, this is not my intention. I am rating them as normal games, as in, I don't have a different spectrum for rating "normal", "official" games than fangames. They are in the same scale, because they are all videogames. I don't like to think myself as a critical person; ratings are just subjective numbers. However, I have realized that I rate games more harshly than I rate films/short films, which I do more often.
Q: What are your favorite fangames?
A: I have not played enough fangames to make a comprehensive and representative list, but this can be answered by going to my Favorites list. Anything getting 6.7 or higher will be considered immediately as a favorite.
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For: I wanna go the DotKid!
I did manage to finish this before 2020 ended! I'm so glad. Oh, you legendary piece of old-school brutality... What am I supposed to do with you? How should I rate you?
Before I begin with my epic-length essay (not really), my mind begs the question:
Was this the first DotKid fangame ever? Like, the first fangame that ever featured the DotKid gimmick? Because if it is, for better or for worse, it just freaking happened! Imagine being introduced to the gimmick with one of the hardest fangame challenges ever back in the early 2010s, as I hear that K2 featured a screen or two of this.
What is key to understand about DotKid physics is that they are identical to regular Kid, but the point is that you only measure 2X2; however, you will still move three pixels per frame and a gate jump can still be done with a four-frame jump minimum. You're just smaller but all physics apply. This is interesting (and also convenient) because you know how the DotKid will behave purely based on muscle memory previously developed with regular Kid more than calculation, until you fully get used to it.
Go the DotKid is an insanely difficult challenge, not impossible, not one that is far off in terms of sanity, but certainly one that pushes the limits of many players, even experienced ones. It has four main stages which can be played in any particular order, each one featuring a Miku boss (and one of these featuring a miniboss), opening a penultimate stage with another Miku, and a final platforming section afterwards that ends... with another Miku, of course.
How to play?
First, pray.
Second, determine the experience you want to have. Difficulty ladder? From most generic to most creative in terms of level design (or viceversa, but why would you)? From most generic to most experimental in terms of gimmicks/visuals?
So! If you choose the difficulty curve path, the suggested order is:
1) Up
2) Down
3) Right
4) Left
If you choose the visual design/gimmick order, go:
1) Right
2) Up
3) Left
4) Down
If you go for level design/platforming, go:
1) Down
2) Up
3) Left
4) Right
I fully recommend the difficulty spike one so that you don't give up immediately. So go for up, down, right and left. Up and down are probably interchangeable.
-Up has water physics and very precise needle. The visual design is ugly, placing generic tilesets, spikes and cherries randomly all over the place (and freaking Nekoron!!!), but it has the shortest Miku.
-Down has a weird section with random visuals that I appreciate from time to time. It can be considered random visual trash by many, and understandably so, but it is not something you regularly see. So it's three screens that you don't know beforehand what kind of show they will throw at you. The grave thing about this section is that, after those three screens, you have to repeat them. What's the catch? No saves? No. Reversed controls? No. New traps? No. The screen is freaking upside down. Upside down! Want an easy way to add cheap difficulty? Just put it upside down. And good luck buddy, because the difficulty is multiplied by 3 even if it is exactly the same three screens. But the Miku is the easiest by far, and in rating standards, it is average. Shockingly compared to all Mikus.
-Right has the normal IWBTG tilesets, visuals and whatnot, so expect the most generic thing in the game, right? Well, no. It is probably the most fun stage. Mostly vanilla platforming with some water sections (Nekoron!). There is an infamous screen where you have to activate four switches in a go without intermediate saves to progress. I admit it is trash, but it is amusing and fun to pull off. Only two "traps" that could catch you off guard. However, the Miku here.... I won't deny that it was very fun to grind, but it was, hands down, the most difficult Miku for me, and it all comes down to one thing I'll mention in a bit that is a common denominator for all Mikus. It took me around 20 hours. I suffered. Ironically, though, it is fun and readable 80% of the times, even though it can wall/roof you from time to time in unfair ways.
-Left is a legendary path. Welcome to another generic design used by many: the classic metallic tilesets with a completely black background. These screens require timing, and suffering through traps before the end of a save. Expect that. Then there is a miniboss. After that, we have what I would argue is the most difficult screen in the entire game, which precedes a Miku that has become the stuff of bedtime stories. Red Miku is on a class of its own because of the final attack. Half of this final attack can be planned; after that, your plans get crushed during the second half thanks to oh-so-fun RNG. I'll admit that even though theoretically I can see this being the hardest Miku, it's the second one that took me the least time. Final bouncing blue cherries didn't choke me and I was past it. It was creative, fun and short, but I'll admit that the final attack just wants to screw you over.
So, you've passed your four main stages. Welcome to the penultimate stage. Same design than Left path stage (aye for variety!), but this section is also fun! It has a mechanic of red/blue switches, precise platforming that is not unfair because, by this point, you'll have your calculations already worked out, and even sections where you have to go fast before time runs out. After that, there is another screen loathed by many: an RNG screen where you bounce (very intuitive) on cherries, replenishing your double jump, and have to go across a large side-scrolling section. There is a "checkpoint" in the middle (not a save) which is just a line of water, and then you repeat the same thing but with platforms moving. Think of the Cheetahmen boss in Boshy when the floor breaks and you have to survive jumping on platforms before Cheetahmen become Megatron. However, in this game, it is way less balanced and fair. That is the part that rages.
Penultimate Miku is good fun, catchy vocaloid (almost no lyrics), reactable fast attacks and a nice sense of accomplishment when you beat her.
Enter the final stage. Boshy inspiration again. Think of the Tower section in the desert of Boshy's last stage where you have to go up and up in a moving platform while a giant Piranha Plant stalks you with a laser. I think it wanted to convey that vibe. Of course, there is no production value in here, so what happens is that there is an entire horizontal set of 16X16 water 3 blocks moving up, and you have to survive precise platforming and RNG cherries crap. It leaves the toughest precise jumps at the end, so good luck, buddy.
After you make it and cheer, you see this giant teleport that will take you to: THE FINAL MIKU.
Ironically, it isn't the hardest. It has the same dumb logic that Pi Miku (Right Path Miku) has: be readable and reasonable (even easy) until the final attack, which is just absolute bonkers. Also, you have to stand still for 10 seconds doing nothing, staring at Miku while she stares at you, every single attempt before you can start moving. Oh, so fun. The vocaloid is one of my favorites: The Intense Song of Hatsune Miku -InfinitY happy end, but only the second half, and thank God, otherwise it would drive me out of my patience[/spoilers].
Of course I have complaints. ElCochran always does. Traps. Generic, unfun, unfair, abundant and breaks the gameplay pace. Being this a brutal fangame, traps just are there to bother. They add absolutely nothing, like they would do in a well-made Carnival fangame (and I still complain about those). Mikus: every single one of them have their most difficult attack at the very end, and they are very long. Screw that. Why should I grind through easy stuff if I will lose to mostly luck-based trash??? Also, NEKORON WATER! Jesus Christ, you know how much trouble that gave me? It's not only in the water stages, but in the infinite-jump sections too. It is rather simple to one-frame jump with my keyboard, so you have zero idea how many times I "accidentally" one-framed after being consistent through many saves, only to be betrayed by the engine making a full jump because according to the engine's logic: 1 frame jump - 1 frame substracted by default in Nekoron = Full jump = Death. In the water stages, this was hell. In the penultimate Miku, this was worse. And it was the ugliest in the final Boshy-like final tower section before final Miku. I easily attribute 8% of my total amount to deaths to the Nekoron engine.
In short:
Platforming: Uneven, from very fun to cheap trash
Mikus: Very fun, until last attacks
Nekoron: Burn in the flames of hell
The challenge, still, I'd say is worth taking if you want to sharpen your needle skills. Even if you're DotKid, you train your muscle memory for future challenges.
This one was a difficult one, to appreciate, to rate, to enjoy and to review. It's a mixed bag, but you feel like a greater man once you say you are THE DotKid.
Not interested in the Easy version.
For: Designer L's Wacky Randventure!
For: I wanna go the Trap Way 3
He asked me politely not to rate this a 3/10, and I complied. Sorry for myself being a bad meme.
Play it; it's the best of the trilogy. For it's kind, I still remain with Bigger P****.
For: I wanna be the Phantom
I definitely was expecting something more difficult, and a more consistent suckness given the game's average rating. What I got was something like felt like a random time series: great at times and horrible at others. Take the fire stage: it got the looks of a CaballerosⅥ trash stage, and plays like so. Are you a fan of doing entire saves at least more than twice? This stage is for you, full of the most generic and unfun traps overdone to death.
Now take the blue temple stage (can't recall the names, honestly). Great soundtrack choices and an ok design. Creative gameplay that is entertaining enough.
Take the desert stage. Clichéd choice but the graphics are really cool! Also very nice design. But when you stumble upon the damn sand blocks, everything becomes tedious and dumb beyond belief.
Green stage is fun. Visuals can be annoying and the trial and error section where you must choose either a left or right path correctly five times is a big no.
Now the final stage is great; it is the trademark sign for this. Cool gimmicks and the reversed-control triggers make a couple of screens interesting, but I don't think this is used in the most creative ways and at times it makes your platforming intentionally repetitive. There's unexploited potential. A particular screen (the first one of this kind, actually) has a final trigger that actually does not reverse your controls and you keep trying like dumb until you realize it's fake. This is just cheap tricks because the final jump is tricky.
There is one huge grudge towards the final stage though: it is mostly visual challenge. Who on their right mind would place spikes of this color against this background and say: "Screw it; it is fine." Free deaths await you so you better be patient throughout the entire stage.
Soundtrack is one of the highlights for the game and the song "Moon Race" used during the final stage is a big YES. It suits the surreal atmosphere of the area very nicely.
The bosses: they are downright terrible. RNG can be unfair. With Flare, making a bunch of platforms falling does not make it easier because you can get an awful setup and get trapped between your jumps. With Freezer, having to jump high during a boss fight with ice raining down at random spots is also not cool. Pandora has an attack that lasts more than half its HP before it gets tricky. B.E.P. is the one that is amusing, since it is one of those "being patient"-kinda bosses. If you had trouble with Giant McGoo in Boshy because of impatience, this will give you trouble, heh.
And hey! The avoidance! An absolute banger of a moment. It is surprisingly easy, mind you, because it is 90% position-based, which can be considered pattern, so it is easy and very fun to learn. It features the vocaloid "Bonus Stage" with Rin and Len, which is one of my favorites; it has an upbeat rhythm very distinguishable from others. Avoidance is creative, greatly synched and amazingly designed. The background is great stuff for a wallpaper. The entire game is worth going through just because of this.
So yeah, it is an adventure game that tries and makes bad decisions in the process, but just to showcase some of Doruppi's actually good ideas.
Try it. For the final avoidance alone, even if you will beat it quickly, it is worth it I guess.
For: Simple Hentai
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