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YaBoiMarcAntony
For: I Wanna Destroy the Needleverse
For: I Wanna Destroy the Needleverse
Destroy the Needleverse has a rather impressive presentation to it, a slickness and overall pleasantly clean look that I really haven't seen all that often, though nonetheless being immediately recognizable as tralexium's style as he's the only one that goes for this look. As clean as it is, though, there's really not much under the hood insofar as these visuals are concerned - character, yes, personality, sure, but it all comes out to be a bit meaningless, mostly because I find it hard to really care about these very decent visuals when the gameplay gets to be as frustrating as it does throughout Destroy the Needleverse.
I think there's a pretty clear cut 50/50 split of quality here, the good stuff being stage's 1-3, particularly 1 and 2 with 2 being the highlight of the first half of the game, then insofar as the guest stages and beyond are concerned they are themselves a bit divided except for Wolfie's which is the highlight of the game up to this point. The secrets themselves are also overall okay with stage 2's being the obvious standout, though 1 is quite good in its own right. Finally, the last save is very, very good, though diminished for me because of a glitch which makes it not really feasible to play in fullscreen.
As for the bad stuff, obviously you can glean from the design of my writing that it's everything else, but I'll get specific on a couple things. For one, stage 4 is not so much reprehensible as it is just very, very, annoying. While I could chalk this up to my distaste for the gimmicks used, I know that this game can use them well as I find they're used well in stage 2 and, to a lesser extent, stage 3. The main problem of the stage stems from the fact that it puts a focus on difficulty without accounting for whether this difficulty is any fun to experience. I've grown to enjoy games that have a clear focus on difficulty, particularly I Wanna Reach Heaven is a relatively recent example of me totally re-evaluating a game that I felt was too concerned with difficulty. In the case of that game, difficulty is used as a tool for gameplay design in the sense of creating this mountain which you climb and inevitably reach the peak of, which is a tried and true method of balance that works wonderfully when it's in the right hands.
Tralexium, then, was not the right hands at this point in their gamemaking career, which I do not fault them for seeing as this was a very early outing for them.
To get back to the main point, I suspect that Destroy the Needleverse would be a much more enjoyable experience in its EZ mode, but I don't really have the patience to try it. All the same, I do not wish to focus much more on this negativity as I think it's not what I'm going to come away from this game thinking about even with the relatively low score. Destroy the Needleverse is at its best when it's feeding you its gimmicks and letting you get a handle on them. Once the game tries to test your skills with said gimmicks, that's when it stumbles. As such, the earlier stages are as a whole better than what goes on in the later part of the game, which tends to be the opposite for most games that use gimmicks in a similar fashion.
When you consider something like Save My Boy, that's a game that introduces so many gimmicks piecemeal, then gradually stacks them up and eventually becomes a real test of your abilities with the gimmicks used. In that case, I maintain that the best part of the game is when this stacking occurs and you're asked to really go to work with those gimmicks, something which can be said to be attempted here in Destroy the Needleverse to a smaller degree, but it is not done with anything close to the amount of tact and skill as arzztt does it.
Of course, it's comparing apples to oranges, or more accurately a seasoned veteran in gamemaking to a total novice with a lot of potential that they would eventually realize completely in NANC 2, which brings me to the main thought: there's really no point in playing this game with the advent of NANC 2 unless you are interested in seeing the growth from the old to the now for Tralexium. Otherwise, I find that I'd just much rather be playing NANC 2 when I'm playing this game, for the most part. That's somewhat of an empty criticism since it's not as if this game was made knowing NANC 2 would come about, nor is it ever really the case that a game can be truly made pointless (yes, I'm sure there are exceptions, both in a literal sense and in a more opinionated sense), which holds true here. Destroy the Needleverse is a fun game, particularly from a historical standpoint as you get to see several creators in their toddler days which is interesting enough to distract me from the annoyances of skulldude and dribix's (the latter stage being the superior of the two, wolfie's stage being better than both by far and the most consistent part of the game, to be clear. And hell, history aside, the game's decent fun all the same.
[2] Likes
I think there's a pretty clear cut 50/50 split of quality here, the good stuff being stage's 1-3, particularly 1 and 2 with 2 being the highlight of the first half of the game, then insofar as the guest stages and beyond are concerned they are themselves a bit divided except for Wolfie's which is the highlight of the game up to this point. The secrets themselves are also overall okay with stage 2's being the obvious standout, though 1 is quite good in its own right. Finally, the last save is very, very good, though diminished for me because of a glitch which makes it not really feasible to play in fullscreen.
As for the bad stuff, obviously you can glean from the design of my writing that it's everything else, but I'll get specific on a couple things. For one, stage 4 is not so much reprehensible as it is just very, very, annoying. While I could chalk this up to my distaste for the gimmicks used, I know that this game can use them well as I find they're used well in stage 2 and, to a lesser extent, stage 3. The main problem of the stage stems from the fact that it puts a focus on difficulty without accounting for whether this difficulty is any fun to experience. I've grown to enjoy games that have a clear focus on difficulty, particularly I Wanna Reach Heaven is a relatively recent example of me totally re-evaluating a game that I felt was too concerned with difficulty. In the case of that game, difficulty is used as a tool for gameplay design in the sense of creating this mountain which you climb and inevitably reach the peak of, which is a tried and true method of balance that works wonderfully when it's in the right hands.
Tralexium, then, was not the right hands at this point in their gamemaking career, which I do not fault them for seeing as this was a very early outing for them.
To get back to the main point, I suspect that Destroy the Needleverse would be a much more enjoyable experience in its EZ mode, but I don't really have the patience to try it. All the same, I do not wish to focus much more on this negativity as I think it's not what I'm going to come away from this game thinking about even with the relatively low score. Destroy the Needleverse is at its best when it's feeding you its gimmicks and letting you get a handle on them. Once the game tries to test your skills with said gimmicks, that's when it stumbles. As such, the earlier stages are as a whole better than what goes on in the later part of the game, which tends to be the opposite for most games that use gimmicks in a similar fashion.
When you consider something like Save My Boy, that's a game that introduces so many gimmicks piecemeal, then gradually stacks them up and eventually becomes a real test of your abilities with the gimmicks used. In that case, I maintain that the best part of the game is when this stacking occurs and you're asked to really go to work with those gimmicks, something which can be said to be attempted here in Destroy the Needleverse to a smaller degree, but it is not done with anything close to the amount of tact and skill as arzztt does it.
Of course, it's comparing apples to oranges, or more accurately a seasoned veteran in gamemaking to a total novice with a lot of potential that they would eventually realize completely in NANC 2, which brings me to the main thought: there's really no point in playing this game with the advent of NANC 2 unless you are interested in seeing the growth from the old to the now for Tralexium. Otherwise, I find that I'd just much rather be playing NANC 2 when I'm playing this game, for the most part. That's somewhat of an empty criticism since it's not as if this game was made knowing NANC 2 would come about, nor is it ever really the case that a game can be truly made pointless (yes, I'm sure there are exceptions, both in a literal sense and in a more opinionated sense), which holds true here. Destroy the Needleverse is a fun game, particularly from a historical standpoint as you get to see several creators in their toddler days which is interesting enough to distract me from the annoyances of skulldude and dribix's (the latter stage being the superior of the two, wolfie's stage being better than both by far and the most consistent part of the game, to be clear. And hell, history aside, the game's decent fun all the same.
Rating: 5.5 55
Difficulty: 74 74
Sep 2, 2022
Pigeon
For: I wanna nakayosi
For: I wanna nakayosi
Second attack is just a nightmare to read
[0] Likes
Rating: 2.9 29
Difficulty: 44 44
Sep 2, 2022
yangshuoen
For: I wanna break the Series Z 3 EX
For: I wanna break the Series Z 3 EX
Even the beginning takes some time
就連開始都要花一些時間
[0] Likes
就連開始都要花一些時間
Rating: 10.0 100
Difficulty: 100 100
Sep 2, 2022
Pigeon
For: I wanna be the Hard Needle
For: I wanna be the Hard Needle
The lack of save blockers kinda make things a bit easy to pass.
[0] Likes
Rating: 3.5 35
Difficulty: 39 39
Sep 2, 2022
Pigeon
For: I wanna be the Hakone
For: I wanna be the Hakone
Short and fast paced avoidance
[0] Likes
Rating: 5.4 54
Difficulty: 43 43
Sep 2, 2022
Pigeon
For: I wanna Derikea M's nostril hairs
For: I wanna Derikea M's nostril hairs
There can be a bit of challenging platforming but it's usually with short saves.
[0] Likes
Rating: 4.0 40
Difficulty: 42 42
Sep 2, 2022
Pigeon
For: あほげ2019
For: あほげ2019
No clear screen, but it does says end after the last attack despite a constant wobbling rotating circle of bullets sticking around.
You can stay there if you want to listen to the rest of the song.
Fast attacks overall and some bits of luck due to the low spacing at times
[0] Likes
You can stay there if you want to listen to the rest of the song.
Fast attacks overall and some bits of luck due to the low spacing at times
Rating: 3.5 35
Difficulty: 42 42
Sep 2, 2022