Monaco Catch-All / Don't-Get-Caught-All

Cyranix wrote:
shoptroll wrote:
PWAlessi wrote:

I played the first 3 or 4 missions. I'm a bad thief. I can do stealth for about 2/3 of a mission, then, all hell breaks loose.

That's normal, one of the character unlocks makes stealthing a lot easier.

And some people just like cracking heads and don't bother with stealth much. That's part of what makes co-op so fun.

I definitely fall into the stealth camp. Early characters to practice stealth on are the Lookout and the Pickpocket -- the former will reward you with positional intel for sneaking, the latter will snag coins easier, and both are reliant on patient play because they don't have very "active" abilities. Later on, the Gentleman will allow you to "hide in plain sight" which relaxes some constraints on stealthiness, but his ability is wasted if you run a lot so it's still patient play.

Yeah, I've been playing mainly with the lookout because it seemed that his skill was the best for trying to be stealthy.

PWAlessi wrote:
Cyranix wrote:
shoptroll wrote:
PWAlessi wrote:

I played the first 3 or 4 missions. I'm a bad thief. I can do stealth for about 2/3 of a mission, then, all hell breaks loose.

That's normal, one of the character unlocks makes stealthing a lot easier.

And some people just like cracking heads and don't bother with stealth much. That's part of what makes co-op so fun.

I definitely fall into the stealth camp. Early characters to practice stealth on are the Lookout and the Pickpocket -- the former will reward you with positional intel for sneaking, the latter will snag coins easier, and both are reliant on patient play because they don't have very "active" abilities. Later on, the Gentleman will allow you to "hide in plain sight" which relaxes some constraints on stealthiness, but his ability is wasted if you run a lot so it's still patient play.

Yeah, I've been playing mainly with the lookout because it seemed that her skill was the best for trying to be stealthy.

Lookout is good, also can be fun in co-op for kiting the guards as she's the fastest thing in the game. Pickpocket is also good for stealth because there's a passive bonus that allows him to enter bushes faster than the other team members. Even if you get "caught' by the guards you can usually ditch them by running around the corner and into a bush or vent. The game is fairly forgiving... at least until the guards start to up their arsenal

I really wish the Hacker wasn't so dependent on level layout and electrical outlet, that would probably be my favorite class. Cleaner is probably my favorite just because it's one of the more flexible roles.

I'm finding the maps confusing in that sometimes I can't tell what is map embellishment that I can walk through and guards can see through and actual barriers that guards can't see through. Does anyone else have this problem?

PWAlessi wrote:

I'm finding the maps confusing in that sometimes I can't tell what is map embellishment that I can walk through and guards can see through and actual barriers that guards can't see through. Does anyone else have this problem?

Yeah, you're not alone. I can think of two distinct places where something that looks like decoration has obstructed my path -- in both cases, the offending element didn't fill the tile completely, which made it all the more confusing.

shoptroll wrote:

I really wish the Hacker wasn't so dependent on level layout and electrical outlet, that would probably be my favorite class. Cleaner is probably my favorite just because it's one of the more flexible roles.

Did you see the buff that the Hacker got? The number of electric outlets was greatly increased, and the hacking "pets" are FAR Faster now.

Valmorian wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

I really wish the Hacker wasn't so dependent on level layout and electrical outlet, that would probably be my favorite class. Cleaner is probably my favorite just because it's one of the more flexible roles.

Did you see the buff that the Hacker got? The number of electric outlets was greatly increased, and the hacking "pets" are FAR Faster now.

When did this happen?

shoptroll wrote:

When did this happen?

Details are here: http://www.pocketwatchgames.com/foru...

Valmorian wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

When did this happen?

Details are here: http://www.pocketwatchgames.com/foru...

Oh thank goodness they also addressed outlets spawning in inaccessible locations. I remember running into that a handful of times and it's certainly infuriating.

Linux support and free content update coming on Monday!

Who wants to dive back into the criminal underworld?

Just need to finish Pokémon X and I'm in. So no less than 50 hours to go.

Does this have SP? I got gifted a copy in the Steam Sale, and am intrigued.. but don't want to play MP until I figure it out.

You can play by yourself in offline, or do some local co-op to get up to speed. Honestly though I never felt bad if I did a poor job when playing MP. That's part of the fun, the mayhem of unexpected madness.

I think the update is out for PC (according to the Twitter account it's not coming to XBLA). Here's what I've managed to scrounge up on details:

* Zombie Mode - No idea what this is
* New mini-campaign which is 8 new levels focusing on an "origin story" for each character
* Additional features for map makers - Keys & Key Doors, NPCs can carry keys/trophies/coins
* Linux support

EDIT: Here's more information

Not sure if this is rolling out with the update:
* Weekly speed running competition using maps from the workshop

Previous updates:
* Hacker overhaul
* RPG / rocket launcher

If anyone wants to play tonight send me a message on Steam. I'll probably be online around 9 PM EST.

I would be interested in playing this week. I might not tonight though due to big Dota patch. Send me a message when you start.

I will be on Steam -- send me an invite, though I can't promise I can join because things are a little crazy at the moment. Creating my own Monaco levels took a back seat to all the craziness, sadly.

Perhaps the cleaner should bust himself back out.

Zombie mode looks tough:

Zombie mode looks fun!

So I got to try out some stuff with Boogle tonight. Here's my thoughts:

Prologue campaign - As best I can tell this is a set of 8 survival missions where the objective is to grab a handful of trophies and then keep racking up as much cash as possible before you die. Cash continues to spawn randomly like in the PvP/Epilogue map, but guards also continue to spawn in. The first two maps are for the Mole and the Lookout and they're not really great although the Lookout introduces the RPG carrying guards (I think these guys have much narrower cones of vision but they're toting explosive ordinance). The next two maps are for the Pickpocket and Locksmith and are more involved since they involve picking up keys and trophies from NPCs. The actual game mode itself isn't anything to write home about, but the Locksmith and Hacker maps seem a lot more like traditional Monaco than the earlier maps. Oh, it's worth pointing out that you're locked to a single class for these maps.

I'm not totally sure how well these maps work as multiplayer experiences, but as a single player score chase they seem sound. At worst, they're a good demo of a "new" gametype (I think this was already in the game but you needed to find maps in the workshop for it) and some neat mechanics for the workshop.

Zombie mode "Zonaco" - This isn't a huge tweak to the rule set but they are important changes. First off, the entire color palette is desaturated which I think is why the laser beams now have a slight green tint to the "off" laser which was previously pure grey. Second, guards and dogs are replaced by zombies. There are two types of zombies: normal and chunky explosive ones. Zombies are pure melee attackers, but they seem harder to shake if they spot you much like the dogs and they might move faster than normal guards. Third, zombies gib when you kill them so they can't be resurrected. However, the explosive types die in a C4 explosion which seems to take off about 1/3rd of your health. Lastly, the Cleaner kills zombies.

Overall it's not a bad mode. I think I was expecting something a little more than this, but it does change the approach to the campaign a little bit. I'm not sure if the Cleaner killing zombies is intentional but it made the first few levels of the Pickpocket story fairly trivial playing solo. There's also no real change to the storyline as any level you load in zombie mode just changes the intro text to the same dialogue for every every level.

All in all, it's more Monaco. I'm glad we got a free update, I'm lukewarm on the zombies but I'm definitely interested to see what the community does with the new features they introduce in the Prologue campaign. I'm also hoping that Pocketwatch gets a bunch more sales so they can keep working on this great game.

---

The other thing we checked out were a couple of the featured workshop levels which seem to be some tutorials and 6 winners from an official map making contest held a few months ago. The first two maps featured for the contest were pretty good. One is a bank heist reminiscent of the Banque Albert mission while the second involves sneaking into a turret factory. We managed to clear the first one without a lot of trouble but I botched the last bit of the turret one thinking I had the final trophy as the Gentleman instead of waiting for Boogle's Hacker. Oops, but if you love the Hacker that's a great level for it.

shoptroll wrote:

Zombie mode "Zonaco" - This isn't a huge tweak to the rule set but they are important changes. First off, the entire color palette is desaturated which I think is why the laser beams now have a slight green tint to the "off" laser which was previously pure grey. Second, guards and dogs are replaced by zombies. There are two types of zombies: normal and chunky explosive ones. Zombies are pure melee attackers, but they seem harder to shake if they spot you much like the dogs and they might move faster than normal guards. Third, zombies gib when you kill them so they can't be resurrected. However, the explosive types die in a C4 explosion which seems to take off about 1/3rd of your health. Lastly, the Cleaner kills zombies.

A couple major things to add to this which I learned today trying out Zonaco on some of the later levels:

Zombies cannot open locked doors, nor do they relock doors like a standard guard. What this means is that you can somewhat control the number of zombies on a level in addition to controlling the pathing routes they'll take. This is vitally important if you're trying to solo or if you're the Cleaner and trying to dispatch as many of the lesser zombies as possible before going to town. Also, because the zombies don't relock doors, the locksmith is even less important now. Not sure if Zombies are susceptible to the Redhead's charm yet.

Another observation is that the the regular zombies return to their regular patrol paths much faster than the normal guards. However, they seem to lose aggro at the same rate as normal so if you're a Cleaner going zombie hunting, you need to be a lot more patient before going after the last zombie you alerted.

Another free update is out. This one is interesting. They've gone through the levels and tweaked the layouts to try and streamline the experience and cut some of the cruft from them. Haven't tried the new versions yet, but fortunately they were nice and the old versions are still playable in the game A handful of features from the Halloween updated (ie. keyed doors) have been added to the original campaign as well (presumably in the new versions of the levels).

Also, they announced that the game has sold 275,000 copies across all platforms. Not bad!

Full details are here: http://blog.pocketwatchgames.com/pos...

I need to fire this up again. Hopefully I can find some more people tolerant of how not very good I am at the game.

demonbox wrote:

I need to fire this up again. Hopefully I can find some more people tolerant of how not very good I am at the game.

If you ever want to co-op drop me a line. I'm always down for more Monaco even if I'm still rubbish at it.

Any impressions on the reworked content? Still not sure if the game is for me, but I'd like to hear some thoughts from people who've played it before.

Just picked it up in new Humble Bundle. Anyone playing? Seems like it's heavily geared towards co-op play, so getting through those missions alone is tad boring.

UCRC wrote:

Just picked it up in new Humble Bundle. Anyone playing? Seems like it's heavily geared towards co-op play, so getting through those missions alone is tad boring.

We'll steal more than yanukovych.
Ok maybe not that much.

I haven't played in a while but friend me up on Steam and shoot me a message if you want a co-op buddy.

I don't play it but still have it installed. I played a bit, loved it, and stalled on it. As long as I have the time I'm more than up for it- even if in most any other game. Send an invite sometime and, if I can, I'll join you.

Cool. I'll probably give it another shot today and generally should have plenty of time over next week or so, so I'll just keep pestering all three of you. I am on GMT but keep pretty late hours.

The game is free to play on Steam this weekend, in order to celebrate the addition of the final (and apparently brutal hard) campaign. Pocketwatch is now moving on to new things so this is the last official content update we'll get.