Catherine Q*bert-All

Minarchist wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

I'd like to mention that I was thoroughly challenged on Easy mode and do not feel like less of a man for it. So, yeah, unlike most games, I don't feel compelled to play on normal at least. This game is hard.

Remember, this was a game in which they patched Easy mode to make it easier. And added a "super easy" mode while they were at it.

And on the US version at that.

I'm finding I'm doing my best climbing in the wee hours of the morning before the wife wakes up. I really need that quiet, dark time to be able to focus on the task at hand, especially on those boss levels where you're being chased and the bell starts tolling and the music is blaring. They do a real good job of cranking the sensory overload to 11 to increase that sense of panic.

Speaking of bosses, finally beat night 3 today and OMIGOD!

Spoiler:

reverse sphincter tongue monster

Also: boob physics.

nel e nel wrote:

Also: boob physics.

Are you sure that's not why you're playing while your wife is asleep?

Stele wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

Also: boob physics.

Are you sure that's not why you're playing while your wife is asleep? ;)

Oh, I fully expounded the wonders of mammaries undulating like the ocean to her over dinner last night.

Blargh! After an hour of beating my head against a flat wall of cubes that was too tall to make the traditional pyramid steps, I broke down and turned to the internets for a hint. I knew I needed to do some sort of staggered back-and-forth step thing, and when I saw the first 10 seconds of that video I was all "GODDAMMITIAMSUCHANIDIOT!!" I knew philosophy of the solution in my head, but I was overthinking the actual implementation and making it way too involved.

Which brings me to two things I've noticed about this game:

1) it's like chess, and not so much in the 'look-4-moves-ahead-and-plan-accordingly' way. I read an article several years ago that looked into chess masters and why they are so good. Turns out, it's less about looking ahead, and more about experience and having seen almost every possible permutation of piece arrangement, and knowing what to do in any particular situation. That, to me, sums up the cube puzzles in a nutshell: there are certain ways to handle certain situations, it's just a matter of figuring them out and having an arsenal of techniques to deal with whatever is thrown at you.

2) I'm not entirely convinced that some of the hints are actually helpful. Case in point, chapter 4-1 last night which caused me to find a video guide: the narrator straight up says "in this next part, you will need to use the properties of falling blocks to solve the puzzle and escape". So I spent the better part of 30 minutes pushing blocks out and getting the upper rows to drop down only to find that the game kept respawning rows at the top to keep the section the same height. WTF?!?!?

nel e nel wrote:
Stele wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

Also: boob physics.

Are you sure that's not why you're playing while your wife is asleep? ;)

Oh, I fully expounded the wonders of mammaries undulating like the ocean to her over dinner last night.

Blargh! After an hour of beating my head against a flat wall of cubes that was too tall to make the traditional pyramid steps, I broke down and turned to the internets for a hint. I knew I needed to do some sort of staggered back-and-forth step thing, and when I saw the first 10 seconds of that video I was all "GODDAMMITIAMSUCHANIDIOT!!" Which brings me to two things I've noticed about this game:

1) it's like chess, and not so much in the 'look-4-moves-ahead-and-plan-accordingly' way. I read an article several years ago that looked into chess masters and why they are so good. Turns out, it's less about looking ahead, and more about experience and having seen almost every possible permutation of piece arrangement, and knowing what to do in any particular situation. That, to me, sums up the cube puzzles in a nutshell: there are certain ways to handle certain situations, it's just a matter of figuring them out and having an arsenal of techniques to deal with whatever is thrown at you.

2) I'm not entirely convinced that some of the hints are actually helpful. Case in point, chapter 4-1 last night which caused me to find a video guide: the narrator straight up says "in this next part, you will need to use the properties of falling blocks to solve the puzzle and escape". So I spent the better part of 30 minutes pushing blocks out and getting the upper rows to drop down only to find that the game kept respawning rows at the top to keep the section the same height. WTF?!?!?

I remember seeing a video hint for that type of puzzle when talking to the sheep. It can still be a little tricky. You definitely start recognizing patterns after playing awhile. I found it quite satisfying to see the "secret" to a section of blocks. There were quite a few times, however, where I screwed up and started pushing blocks out in an attempt to "reset" things so that I could continue up. I played it on easy, so I always had 90-99 extra lives, so dying was no big deal. I imagine normal wouldn't be bad either because it just makes extra lives less frequent from what I understand. I haven't tried it on hard yet.

nel e nel, there are a few things that are really important to get down, and some that can more or less be ignored. You're totally right about seeing them the same way a chess player sees them -- if you spend enough time with it to scale babel you won't see rows of blocks, but instead (like tuffalo mentioned) "5 story inazuma. 4-story pyramid. push out left, make stairs." Rapunzel can help immensely with puzzling out some of the more important techniques without the time restraints. Frankly, though Rapunzel is optional content, I don't really think it is in some ways. It's how you make concrete the ideas you otherwise have bouncing around in your head.

Re: the techniques, allow me to quote myself from page 8:

Minarchist wrote:

It really, really helps having gone through a couple of times to get the techniques to sink in. The first time is just to listen to them, the second time is to get them more concretely. Really, it mostly comes down to Inazuma and its 4-block derivative, as well as an unnamed one that has to do with extending a pyramid by wrapping half of it around a second level (which makes no sense in text but is obvious when viewed). Spider and reverse spider are also tremendously useful, as well as timber. Without timber you aren't getting more than 20 levels up on Axis Mundi.

There are a lot of cool little tricks, like you can spider around to a "notch" in the side of a solid wall, push the stack over twice, push the resultant fallen block opposite the stack off the edge, use the one that just fell to climb...stuff that's impossible to put into words but makes you feel so bad-ass once you've got it down. Just experiment!

I didn't end up going through Rapunzel all that much. I guess I should have. One of these days, I'll have a go at it on hard and go for True Neutral since you say that is the coolest ending, Minarchist. Can you change the difficulty midway through? Somehow, I doubt it.

it's been mentioned several times in this thread, but yes, you can.

I think you have to do it from your phone at the Stray Sheep, IIRC.

Thanks guys, that pretty much confirmed my thoughts on how I should be tackling/thinking about the puzzling sections.

And I've been playing the 'requisite' 3 lives of Rapunzel each night in the bar, and I'd say I'm at about 50/50 lucking into solutions and figuring it out.

I came to the same conclusion that you quoted yourself on: "Wow, it seems like you need to play through this game a couple of times before it's internal logic system really clicks with you"

And one of the techniques was explained to me that I eventually used, but again, they give you just enough information to try something new, but don't give you all the possible ways you can implement it.

Here's the link to the video I found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZjI2...

And I was almost there, but instead of doing the 2-cube step pattern from the start that this guy is doing, I was trying to do a pyramid to get up all the way to the left and then trying the slide-out/staggered step method he is doing.

Frustrating and refreshing all at the same time.

There's more than one solution to each level. It's been interesting to watch what each of my kids came up with and contrasting them with my solutions.

He definitely does a couple things the hard way, and keeps switching from the standard 3-block technique, but you get the general idea.

momgamer wrote:

There's more than one solution to each level. It's been interesting to watch what each of my kids came up with and contrasting them with my solutions.

Definitely. I don't think I could have beat the game if they expected me to do some of those advanced techniques.

However, it was nice pulling blocks out in certain ways, and then later seeing a video naming it as a specific strategy.

ccesarano wrote:
momgamer wrote:

There's more than one solution to each level. It's been interesting to watch what each of my kids came up with and contrasting them with my solutions.

Definitely. I don't think I could have beat the game if they expected me to do some of those advanced techniques.

However, it was nice pulling blocks out in certain ways, and then later seeing a video naming it as a specific strategy.

Yeah, I watched a different walkthrough of the same section (4-1) and the guy did a different approach and was also successful. It's interesting to watch others play because that whole "no-wait-pull-that-one-out-you-dumbass" effect comes into play. It's almost like you see the solutions better by watching someone else than when you're actually doing it yourself.

Also: CURSE YOU ICE BLOCKS!!! Finished the first two sections of ice blocks, and while the levels are easy, I kept forgetting to only walk in a direction where I would stop or fall and grab a ledge.

Key to ice blocks: pulling the block above directly out, so that you're hanging off the ledge, then skirting around to where you need to go. You can move while hanging all you want without slipping.

...and just wait. They keep adding blocks.

Minarchist wrote:

Key to ice blocks: pulling the block above directly out, so that you're hanging off the ledge, then skirting around to where you need to go. You can move while hanging all you want without slipping.

...and just wait. They keep adding blocks. ;)

Yeah, ice blocks are relatively easy in comparison with some of the pains in the ass they add later.

ccesarano wrote:
Minarchist wrote:

Key to ice blocks: pulling the block above directly out, so that you're hanging off the ledge, then skirting around to where you need to go. You can move while hanging all you want without slipping.

...and just wait. They keep adding blocks. ;)

Yeah, ice blocks are relatively easy in comparison with some of the pains in the ass they add later.

Yeah, I figured it out pretty quickly, it's just that I would make really good progress, then get sloppy and suddenly Love Is Over.

I hadn't played in about 3 days as well, so I forgot that the controls are from Vincent's perspective, not the player's, and kept getting hung up on spidering/cornering.

nel e nel wrote:

Yeah, I figured it out pretty quickly, it's just that I would make really good progress, then get sloppy and suddenly Love Is Over.

....this is a great microcosm of life in general, I think.

Minarchist wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

Yeah, I figured it out pretty quickly, it's just that I would make really good progress, then get sloppy and suddenly Love Is Over.

....this is a great microcosm of life in general, I think. ;)

no. It's the form that allows you to scale a wall 3 blocks wide. It also has a 4-block variant that is sometimes useful.

I used it all the time on my hard run. Totally worthless for Babel, though, since you never get a nice clean wall like that in Babel. Babel is all about deconstructing the tower correctly.

Minarchist wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

Yeah, I figured it out pretty quickly, it's just that I would make really good progress, then get sloppy and suddenly Love Is Over.

....this is a great microcosm of life in general, I think. ;)

Double

min: you mentioned 'inazuma' earlier in the threads when talking about techniques. I googled, and all I could find was the anime soccer game. Is that what you were referencing?

Also just finished re-reading the entire thread here, and am captivated by alot of the cultural quirks. All the Babylonian references that momgamer brought up are fascinating, and I'm looking forward to discovering all that and learning more about it. Wondering if the reporter making references to historical events that are similar to what's happening in-game is part of that mythos as well. (the wife and I just watched "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" this weekend and that re-telling of the tooth fairy legend got me thinking about how myths/legends/folklore has changed over time and most of the stuff we grew up with has had all the gruesome stuff edited out).

There were some questions about some of the lines in the dialogue, and I know they definitely have a lot more Japanese references in the overseas release. Try and find the Joystiq Show episode where they are talking about localization. They talk about the scene where Vincent and Orlando are in the toilet together and in the Japanese, they make a reference to red or blue toilet paper, which in turn is a reference to a well known ghost story that apparently has relevance to the plot of Catherine.

Also curious if there is any meaning to the ants in Japanese culture.

Minarchist wrote:

:lol: no. It's the form that allows you to scale a wall 3 blocks wide. It also has a 4-block variant that is sometimes useful.

Ahhh, haven't gotten to that level yet.

And here I thought you were pulling out Ancient Japanese Puzzle Techniques™ from your a-hole! lulz

Minarchist wrote:

And that's why you should play hard mode first. I would have completely given up on night 2 or 3 without it on hard mode.

Wait, so they have different technique tips on the different difficulties? And didn't you suggest to play on easy first so you can practice the techniques more?

No, they don't, and that's my point. If you don't learn Inazuma 'til night 5 or 6, but need it earlier, that's pretty tough.

Of course, I'm sure there are ways to solve those lower levels that don't require those techniques, but IIRC I definitely needed some of the techniques that you learn at higher levels.

EDIT: d'oh! I meant shouldn't in the above post. No wonder you're confused.

And that's why you shouldshouldn't play hard mode first. I would have completely given up on night 2 or 3 without it on hard mode.

EDIT: see edit below.

Minarchist wrote:

No, they don't, and that's my point. If you don't learn Inazuma 'til night 5 or 6, but need it earlier, that's pretty tough.

Of course, I'm sure there are ways to solve those lower levels that don't require those techniques, but IIRC I definitely needed some of the techniques that you learn at higher levels.

Yeah, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread it would have been nice for them to have included a 'Technique Theater' where you could replay those tip videos at your leisure and then practice them in Rapunzel.

Maybe that's a cultural disconnect between us teaching our kids to hold hands and sing, and Asia teaching their kids math?

I think Rapunzel is the technique theatre...doesn't let you replay them (that's what the internet is for!), but lets you practice them.

On that note, in a country as connected as Japan maybe it's just assumed they'll look them up on the internet? I dunno.

I don't know. Reading this thread is giving me more evidence that I am weird like chicken mittens.

I don't think looking them up is a necessity. I never bothered to learn them by name or anything. To me it was far more a matter of learning the different ways the blocks could move and how they fell then just doing what made sense to get to the top. By the time I got to the lessons I'd invariably already been doing that technique and just didn't know it had a name.

The Rapnuzel playing I did was because I thought there was more story in there.

Minarchist wrote:

On that note, in a country as connected as Japan maybe it's just assumed they'll look them up on the internet? I dunno.

I read an interview with the designers of Dragon Quest IX where they said that they made the game harder on the assumption that players would be looking up information on the internet. You have to think Team Persona knows their fans are really plugged-in and have designed their games with that in mind.

momgamer wrote:

I don't know. Reading this thread is giving me more evidence that I am weird like chicken mittens.

I don't think looking them up is a necessity. I never bothered to learn them by name or anything. To me it was far more a matter of learning the different ways the blocks could move and how they fell then just doing what made sense to get to the top. By the time I got to the lessons I'd invariably already been doing that technique and just didn't know it had a name.

The Rapnuzel playing I did was because I thought there was more story in there.

It might just be more fitting to what sort of brain you have or something. I tend to be more abstract and can't remember names for the Hell of it. Principles, not rules. So I basically just learned patterns for moving blocks and memorized them. They said "Inazuma" and I thought "that one of the complicated ones?"

I dunno if I'd say you're weird momgamer, you did have your 'human computer' team working on it, and I can easily see how this game would be a much different experience as a group effort. Kinda like looking over someone's shoulder playing solitaire: "DUDE! There's a red queen right there".

Finished night 6 this morning (goddamn 6-3 was a pain, had to look up some hints on that one) and have noticed a couple of things:

- I really have to be in a proper frame of mind to play well. Right now, pitch-black 6am with a cup of coffee seems to work best. Even though my job isn't terribly demanding, I can't seem to focus or have the patience to tackle this at the end of the day. I also get cranky when my wife is in the room, and not because of the relationship questions, but because I don't do well with logic puzzles with someone pacing around the room.

- the 'boss' levels seem to be the easiest puzzles of each section, but are more frenzied because of the monster chasing you and throwing out attacks. Creates a higher sense of urgency which leads to hurrying, which leads to stupid mistakes. Case in point:

Spoiler:

Chainsaw Baby

was actually quite simple puzzle wise, but I got killed about 4 or 5 times because I was hurrying and kept running right into traps.

- have reached the part of the story where Vincent

Spoiler:

is having doubts about one of the C(K)atherines possibly cheating on him

and now I'm not as upset about the spoiler I posted above. Why?

Spoiler:

I'm not entirely convinced which C(K)atherine is the succubus!

I noticed the longer I played the sloppier I became. I forget which stage it was, but I remember thinking the puzzle was near impossible as I just couldn't figure out how to go about it.

I went back the next day and finished it on my first try with ease.