F4F-From Siberia With Love Pt.3: Skills Of SAM, Parts 1+2 spotlighted - pics included

[GruntosUK]

From Siberia With Love Pt.3: Skills Of SAM by GruntosUK

After a complete rebuild due to the level failed to load error, and around a month and half, I've finally finished part 3.

After being chased and stalked by the chopper, 0013 finally reaches the SAM site and his chance for revenge. After learning of another step in Dr. Cloth's plan, he must defeat an old russian guard, and make his way to Dr. Cloth's base.

The chopper fight is split into two different battles, one with the paintinator, the other using an AA gun. After this, there is a small miniboss before a short journey gets 13 to his destination. I've also finally been able to make a change in the materials I use, and think this level is a great buildup to finale, coming soon. :-)

Here are some pics...









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Part 1 can be found here
http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7038

Part 2 can be found here
http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8356

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy.

Grant

[NinjaMicWZ]

Awesome. I thought I was done playing LBP today, but I guess not.

[cornontheCOD]

I'll try to remember to play it, I liked the other parts

[OCK]

I played this earlier today, here are some thoughts:

Well you really kniw how to kick things off! Any level that begins with a boss battle is great in my books lol (I know you are following your story-arc but still). The details on the chopper is first rate, probably the best chopper I have seen in LBP (and I have seen a few). I thought the idea of making extra lives optional and the decision actually having an effect on something was ingenious, really really great idea man. The battle was fun and if I have any complaints it's that I wish the chopper was more animated. However, I am sure you are working with a full thermo and simply could not fit any more in.

I really liked the paintinator implementation and thought you managed to use it in a few creative ways. My favorite part in this regards was aligning the three valves into the right position, very cool.

Your architecture is true to the series and highly polished as always. The one big difference that I really enjoyed was the "verticality" of this level. The story says that you are moving up the mountain and I thought you really nailed that feeling, good job. Your use of LED's was superb and there is a general complexity to these levels which I really appreciate.

I enjoyed all the bosses although I did not find any of them too challenging (I know difficulty is extremely relative though). I liked the moving elements in the last boss and firing at the chopper with the rockets was really fun.

I enjoy levels with a story and your tale is moving along nicely. It is not the deepest story in the world but I am sure that was not your intention and what you have really serves it's purpose.

I loved the monorail section, probably may favorite part of the level. I particularly liked your use of foreground decoration near the end and how you implemented blue VR.

Suggestion

- After destroying the chopper with the rockets I was a bit uncertain of what to do becuase the elevator did not activate. I ended up backtracking through the whole level and finally went back to the cannon, fiddled around with it and somehow turned on the elevator. Did I miss something in the speech bubbles? A bit more direction would not hurt.

- I think coloring your checkpoints could add to the overall polish.

Overall a truly wonderful level that earned 5 stars and a heart! I look forward to the conclusion but I am really interested in what else you can do with a different story/theme/atmosphere. I think you are a very talented creator and I would love to see what else you can come up with

[GruntosUK]

After destroying the chopper with the rockets I was a bit uncertain of what to do becuase the elevator did not activate. I ended up backtracking through the whole level and finally went back to the cannon, fiddled around with it and somehow turned on the elevator. Did I miss something in the speech bubbles? A bit more direction would not hurt.

I dont know what the problem is there, the blades to helecopter have a magnetic key on them that triggers when they fall off the helecopter, I'll try widening the trigger radius. Although after many many playthroughs it has'nt happened to me yet. I'll take a look

Thanks for your comments OCK, much appreciated, I want to move on to something different also, one more level to go

[CCubbage]

I actually played through all 3 of these in one shot this morning. Fantastic! I had played the first one a while ago but I think I lost the key when I had to restore my game save at some point....

I only had 1 thought as I was playing this morning (and it fits exactly what OCK says) - it seemed odd at the beginning that the chopper boss wasn't moving at all. The only improvement I could think of was to have it slowly move up and down to give it a little life.

5 stars and hearted! Great series!

[GruntosUK]

I tried to make the chopper move but the rockets flew off course allowing the player to avoid the explosion at times. They could also shoot the rockets at points destroying the cloth it's made out of stopping the attacks and stopping it flying away.

I tried a few of ways of doing it but none seemed to work.

[CCubbage]

Heh.... not even a tiny tiny tiny bit, just to give it kind of a hovering effect?

No problem. In the scope of the entire level it's probably minor anyway.

[ThommyTheThird]

Played trough this, and i LOVED it! At first i was sad, thinking it was just a boss.. But you still had awesome gameplay elements, and ofcourse, SECRETS! On my first run trough, i acquired the #2 score. I found all Intels, and i missed 1 Black Box part... Also, i shot all the 4 recon drones I love your series man.. You're insane

[GruntosUK]

Thanks for the comments.

I'm still accepting F4F, and rather bored at the moment so I'll get straight onto it

[CCubbage]

I would love feedback on some major changes I did on Splat II if you get a chance.

[superezekiel]

!!!!!

I flippin loved the first ones, so I'm all over this. I hope you did more unique things like the heating of the pipes from the first one, as I loved that part. Anything where it looks like I'm affecting the environment is great. Plus it's time to destroy that **** chopper

I'll be giving this a look as soon as I can! (at work, atm)

[dkjestrup]

Sorry I couldn't playtest for you! Ohh well... I got my PS3 back a couple days ago, so if you need playtesting for your next level I'll be glad. Will play this level, and your second, now!

[uzman]

I'll play the first two before playing this one. Thanks for the feedback!

[sny]

I wanted to play through parts 1 to 3 one after the other, but I had to give up on part 2 because there was a part where I simply couldn't progress no matter what I did. I'll PM you with the details, because I really enjoyed the rest of part 2 and all the other parts as well, and I'm also the type who loves going after secrets, so these type of levels are my kind of stuff.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on part 3:

- I'm very happy that you stick to the same visual style you established in the first part, it gives the series a distinctive look and sets it apart from other wilderness type levels.
- Some parts looked fantastic, I think the small glimpse of Cloth's lair that we got there is enough by itself for me to keep checking Level Showcase every day in hopes of a part 4... It's one of the most brilliantly designed "base" type architectures I've seen.
- The secrets are very cleverly hidden, contrary to part 1 (where I got all the secrets the first time through the level), I only got 3 out of 5 in part 3, which will surely make me replay the level soon!
- The chopper looks awesome (as always), and the first battle with it was pretty fun as well.
- As with parts 1 and 2, the feature I enjoyed the most (and the one that gives the level most of its originality, IMO) is the ability to choose multiple paths. Some of the best games I played were ones with a lot of multiple paths, so I'm bound to love any LBP level which lets the players pick their route.
- Oh, almost forgot: brilliant use of humour coupled with Bond movie references!
- One of the two things that kind of broke the immersion for me was the typos and lack of punctuation in speech bubbles. There's "to" instead of "too", "girlfreind" instead of "girlfriend", the protagonist is referred to as both "0013" and "13", some chat bubbles are inexplicably terse even though there has to be space to add more words. I normally wouldn't remark upon these issues individually, but I enjoyed the series so much that even the slightest lack of attention to detail is easily noticable and detracts from the near-perfect experience
- I thought that the second chopper fight was very anti-climactic... I mean come on, one shot and that's it? I was expecting something twice as tough as the "weaken" part. It was still fun, but you could do so much more with it (if you have therm space left, that is... but I'd even consider rearranging stuff to add more action there).

Anyway, great series, can't wait for part 4! =)